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Ridiculous traditions - in your home country


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UK.

Dinner table.

Before even tasting food, add copious amounts of salt and pepper.

 

Never fails to amaze me - and I've only really noticed it since I came to Japan.

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Wearing suits and neckties to work.

 

Grossly overeating to the point of morbid obesity.

 

Attempting to legislate morality.

 

Puerile obsession with professional sports from childhood through retirement age.

 

Bad haircuts for men.

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Being obsessionally into sports - you just pegged 75% of american guys.

 

How about real american traditions like Thanksgiving: "Let's celebrate the rape, pillaging and genocide our forefathers commited against native americans, wOOT!"

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 Quote:
Originally posted by MistaSparkle:
How about real american traditions like Thanksgiving: "Let's celebrate the rape, pillaging and genocide our forefathers commited against native americans, wOOT!"
Dont worry mate, blame it on the English settlers. That's what I do when I feel guilty about the Aboriginals. [Aboriginals is a really stupid word to call indigenous Australian. Indians, Eskimos, Incans etc etc are/were all aboriginal].


Another Australian one I don't like: Combining the sport obsession with buying a home and renovating. There is silence in a room if one of the two people can't talk about both sport and their new bathroom/pergola/guest room. It is one thing I enjoy about Japan - the break from these conversational topics.
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Australia's cultural inferiority complex - aka the cultural cringe.

 

Can't stand listening to people who want to beat themselves up over the fact that Aussies in general prefer sports to a night at the Opera as if that somehow equates to cultural inferiority.

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Antonio - just twist your view of your own post a little and one could say that you have the cultural inferiority complex, not me.

 

I have only been to the opera pehaps 5 times. But I have never seen a cricket match, nor an AFL match and I left a ARL match after 20 minutes. Culture is visible by what a country's residents do, but it really consists of what the residents think, how they think and why they think like they do.

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Db, you're off on a tangent.

 

You said "Australia's obsession with sport as a cultural replacement". That's textbook, Oxford dictionary cringe material.

 

Sport is culture. Opera is culture. They don't need to be evaluated.

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Whoops, I forgot I said that. Bummer.

 

Either way, for me sport is the second reason I prefer the company of women over men.

 

Regarding sport as a cultural replacement, perhaps I will correct myself and say that Australia is obsessed with sport as an excuse for global relevance.

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What's the first reason....have to be better cooking wouldn't it?

 

I understand your point re searching for global relevance. I'm a big sports fan myself but in recent times even i've come to question the amount of financial capital we're investing in global sporting success as opposed to hospitals, education etc.

 

I think you're referring more to the investment of emotional capital but its an interesting point.

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What then....

 

a dab hand with the vacuum?

 

quicker with tips on how to get the red wine off your new white shirt?

 

a better appreciation of the rules of netball?

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