February 20th, 2005
Those people who know me will know that I lived and worked in Seoul, South Korea for a little while. I even wrote a story and another story (both quite fictitious) about living in Seoul.
I was warned by several people that the Koreans would have a normal day-to-day demeanour about them that would be considered rude by Canadians. So I steeled myself (when in Rome, etc.) and discovered that the Koreans I met and worked with were never "rude" (though one tried to indenture me into slavery, but that's another story). In fact, the rudest people I ever met in South Korea--including travel to and from--were three women from Toronto, who were so rude, in fact, that they were positively radioactive.
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Those people who know me well will know that I have twice traveled to Russia: Moscow the first time, and the Southwest the second time. I met a lot of Russians, both personally and in the course of securing hotel reservations, etc.
I was warned that Russians have a brusque, matter-of-fact nature about them that many Canadians would consider rude. Instead, I found even the "rudest" of Russians not very rude, since it was all surface. They were just practical people for the most part. And, besides, many of the Russians I got to know were ready to protect me from any and all ills that might befall me, just because I was a foreigner, and deserved protection. Not exactly "rude", is it? In fact, in my first trip to Russia, the only time I came across people that I could truly call rude were two couples from -erm- Toronto whom I was forced to be surrounded by in London's Heathrow airport.
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While we're on the subject, have you ever been to Toronto? Maybe it's the heat and humidity in the Summers and the tunnels people have to crawl through in the Winters ... or maybe it's something in the water of Lake Ontario. But whatever it is, they travel worse than Americans. Outside of Canada, Torontonians are giving the rest of us Canadians a bad name. Not even Calgarians can make that claim.
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OK, so why am I dredging this up? It's because yesterday there was a man who was making a terrible fuss at the airport terminal. He had pre-booked a flight, and specified the seat, then they moved him to another seat and he got angry. He yelled at the woman who was taking the boarding passes at the gate (as though, somehow, it could even remotely be connected to something she had any control over), even mildly threatening her and all airline employees equally. When two cops arrived out of nowhere (and pretty quickly, too), he got even angrier, and found himself somewhere else in custody, but definitely not on our flight. And where was he from? Why, of course: Toronto.