I have some consultants here for a visit. It's absolutely wonderful to have a office full of people working on our backlog of translations - which occurred when I was literally alone in the office for a week (plus training time).
They're European. Western European. I guess I'd assumed that we, as westerners, were pretty much familiar with the same things. These past two weeks have proven me wrong.
I had the consulting couple over for dinner one evening. Among other things, we had pasta. After dinner, we went in to the kitchen to clean up and the wife, discovering there were about two bites of pasta left, teased her husband a bit about finishing it up. With a sigh, he said, "I have a reputation on three continents, might as well add a fourth", and ate the pasta. I mentioned that in my family, we would refer to him as "the human garbage disposal". Being British, he replied, "Yes, but in my family we call it a 'rubbish bin'". In my innocence, I said, "oh, I thought that just meant the trash." Which he confirmed, so I explained that I meant a garbage disposal system. They both sort of shot each other a look, and he said in astonishment, "You mean, those things actually exist?!" Apparently, they'd only ever seen them in horror films - a genre I largely eschew. They spoke of people being ground up by these things, to which I replied, "well, I did say it was for organic materials"....
Another evening we made pizza together and I sprayed PAM on the pan before putting the dough on it. Again, "what is that?!"
I must admit, I thought, "wow, are we Americans totally gadget obsessed or are they just SOOOO behind?!" I suppose that with what can be very old systems in Europe, one never knows whether organic materials would simply clog up pipes that were never meant to hold anything but water? And even if PAM is somehow problematic for someone, Misto just ROCKS (you know, the pump spray bottle that you can put any oil in). Wow, Europe is missing out.
