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Tuesday, March 08, 2005

People!!! Alarm Clock
Lately I have been to some public meetings and conventions here in Iceland and I find myself shaking my head every time.
One thing that always disturbed me here, is that people in Iceland are never on time. If you have an appointment at 8 and someone shows up at 8.45 than that is fine, almost expected. If you actually show at eight, people might be slightly suprised. Being German myself, I was always the first one to show up at any party. But I got used to that and have learned to put an effort into being late...but 20 minutes tops. Now: showing up late for a party is fine, but when it comes to some meeting you go to, where there are hundreds of other people you have to take into consideration, you should make an effort being on time. But no such thing is happening here, people come from 10 minutes to an hour too late. And they are not trying to shuffle silently into their seats...oh no...they move the chairs to a place for better vision...recognize someone in the crowd and try all sorts of gestures and noises to draw that person´s attention to them. After five minutes the attention of the audience has been drawn away from the speaker to that one late person. And the person the attention was initially directed to, has not noticed anything because... he is busy on the phone. Seriously, there was a phone beeping every 15 minutes. Come on people, turn of those bloody phones! There is almost no consideration for the speaker...you do not leave during a speech and make everybody next to you stand up so that you can noisily depart. No. One waits until that speech (which took like 10 minutes)is over and leave when the next speaker steps onto the stage...because all the attention will be on the new speaker and not you...the one who has to leave early.
And one final thing...why oh why ar you messing up your cinemas? Whenever I visit some icelandic people at their homes, the places always look so neat, recently dusted and uninhabited. I always thought icelandics were these really tidy people. Until I went to see a movie!
Popcorn bags, sweet wrappings, Half empty coke-cans, chewing gums ...all chaotically ditributed over the floors. When the second show of the day starts, the chances that your shoes are going to stick to the floor, you seat will be decorated with cold popcorn and once the movie starts everyone will start chewing and ... the occasional phone will ring!

Posted by Minka :: 11:39 pm :: 2 Royal Subjects

2 Comments:

At 19:49, Blogger Biene said...

Oh, yes! Icelanders are so proud of their clean contry... The only reason that it is clean: There live too few people to make it really dirty.
Mom

 
At 10:42, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well here in Iceland, we like to be noticed... and therefore coming late to something and letting our phones ring, gives people the impression that we are so important that we couldn't possibly come on time because we have such busy lives... and our phones must ring because people need to get in touch with us... it's all about appearances, sweetie darling!!! My mum went to a frænka party last night, which started at 7:30... she arrived at 7:30... having been used to keeping time in the UK and the next people arrived at ten to 8 and the last person arrived at 5 past 9!! It would make a perfect psychological experiment to see these people at their homes before they get there.. are they sitting there ready at 7 and burning down time so as to be late or are they genuinely without the presence of mind to plan accordingly... I'm of the latter group these days!

 

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