The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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12:55pm on Sunday, 29th October, 2006:
Weird
On the door of the room next to mine in the hotel in which I'm staying is a colour-printed photoshopped sign reading:
It had an actual name where I put <name here>, but I thought I'd better not put it in case the person
concerned Googled himself.
This is an example of one of the differences between the UK and the USA: embarrassment. In the US, such a sign is
taken a genuine statement in recognition of someone's actions; in the UK, it would make pretty well anyone who
read it cringe. Yes, <name here> may well be A Champion in Every Way, but having a notice to that effect
on the door of their hotel room is just embarrassing. In the UK, if someone gives you an award then you
don't parade it around, you take it with modesty so as not to lord it over those who didn't get one; in the US,
you do parade it around, in gratitude to the people who gave you it. Except, sometimes everyone receives an award
and it still gets paraded around.
As I found out this morning when I went down for breakfast and encountered scores of people in running gear,
it's the 31st running of the Marine Corps annual marathon today. There are several organised
groups of runners, of which The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is but one. This would seem to suggest
that <name here> is A Champion in Every Way merely for taking part, which I guess means he maybe has
Leukemia or Lymphoma himself.
Yet still, it's just so American...
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Copyright © 2006 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).