Tags
culture, daily life, electricity, government, humor, politics, Syria
I know, dear readers, it’s been a while. I’ve been on vacation and hither, thither and yon. And now I am facing, as the TV tells me, a hurricane the likes of which the East Coast has never seen. Doesn’t bother me too much aside from the possibility of losing power, because I’ve regrown accustomed to warm showers instead of baby wipe baths. But it all reminds me of a joke I heard in Syria once, that just gets more cynically funny as things stretch out there. So before I lose connectivity…
(Oh, and I should preface this by saying that one way to call someone stupid in Syria is to call them Chinese. I didn’t make it up, nor do I condone it, it just happens that wildly inaccurate stereotypes exist in every culture.)
An international team of researchers were conducting a poll on people’s opinions of power outages.
Fist they went to an American and asked him, “What is your opinion on power outages?”
He replied, “What does ‘power outages’ mean?”
Next they went to a Chinese man and asked him, “What is your opinion on power outages?”
He replied, “What does ‘power’ mean?”
Finally, they went to a Syrian and asked, “What is your opinion on power outages?”
The Syrian replied, “What does ‘my opinion’ mean?”