Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Bowing Rituals


People Watchers

I don't claim to be an expert on how to bow, but I do find the brouhaha over President Obama's bow to the Japanese emperor fascinating. Read about it here. Personally, I appreciate that Obama is being sensitive to different cultural greetings. However, I don't think he needed to bow 90 degrees. A slight bending of the upper body should have been sufficient. I'm surprised his cultural consultants did not advise him properly. But then again, you can't please everyone. If he had not bowed enough people would be complaining that he disrespected the Japanese, and so on and so forth. You just can't win.

About the Picture: This is one of my favorite places to walk by because there's always interesting people sitting on the stairs people watching. I like the way the people are placed in this photo. The guy sitting by himself looks like he's looking at the girl diagonal from him, but actually he's staring at the gaggle of guys in the left side of the picture. They look like a bunch of brainacs to me. I'm on a roll with alliteration aren't I?

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