Thursday 23 August 2007

Odd Moment

I called into Dollond and Aitchisons in town the other day to buy some eye drops. Imagine my surprise when I was told 'I'm sorry sir, we don't sell eye drops, we're an opticians'...

Hmmm. That's a bit like Waterstones saying they don't sell 'Lord of the Rings' because they are a bookshop. Odd.

Monday 6 August 2007

Bigger than you think

In 24 hours you or I could travel from the UK to New Zealand, just about the furthest country from our shores. Bearing in mind it took Captain Cook, the discoverer, about 2 years to get there, that’s improvement! With my work, I have travelled to most continents and many financial centres around the world. So it could be argued that the world is ‘smaller’ than it used to be.

Right and wrong. We only know a small amount about the world we live in. For example, a couple of years ago, a whole new species of mammal was discovered in Borneo. As this thing was quite a lot bigger than a cat, it really does show how little we know about our world.

When I was in Shanghai, I met some students from Beijing. They told me that they could immediately tell the difference between people from both cities- mainly to do with the size of the nose! (Incidentally, Westerners are all ‘big noses’ to them!) There are so many different tribal groups in China, but to most of us, they are just Chinese.

The same with Asians. This is a quote from AA Gill in the Times: “Almost every Asian you see on TV is an Indian, whereas almost all the Asians you’re likely to come across in real life are Pakistani. Television’s sympathy has always been with India. It has the romance, the colour, the western values, Goa and your bank details.” India also has my wife’s ancestry, so guilty as charged! (I quite liked the comedy in the film ‘East is East’ where the Pakistani in hospital turns the thing around and objects with horror that he is being treated by an Indian!)

194 nations. Thousands of tribes and sub-nations. 6.6 billion people. Plants and animals still to be discovered. The world is still a big place.