a malaysian abroad

What do you usually receive in your mailbox?  No, not your virtual email one; the physical one, where snail-mail arrives.

Swiss mailbox by Toni_V

Nowadays, this is what greets Kosh and me:

• Netflix DVD about once a week
• some statements/bills (many but not all have been switched to electronic statements viewed online)
• one or two birthday cards per person
• lots of spam (weekly adverts, local business announcements)

.

Back in Malaysia while growing up, I recall receiving:

• regular letters from grandparents in Switzerland
• semi-regular letters from pen-pals
• occasional wedding invitations
• bills / statements

.
From my observation, most of my “meaningful” mail no longer comes via snail-mail. Just as I am old school and prefer physical books to reading books onscreen, I have too many fond memories of the joys pen-palship — of finding my Swedish or US pen-pal’s letter waiting for me, the anticipation building up as I carefully opened the envelope, studying the stamp, the writing even, before devouring the letter proper — to let the electronic medium take over all communication.

A Letter from Malaysia by methTICALman

Remember the Postcard / Link Exchange earlier this year?  I had also done something similar back in 2007, and plan to continue with this effort for as long as there are blog readers who are game, whenever I have the opportunity to travel to Malaysia or other (cheap) destinations (I’m taking Switzerland off the list, though - too expensive!).

R2D2 mailbox by peyri

When is the next trip, you ask?  I don’t know yet — once I do, I’ll be sure to drum up some publicity, no worries!

All this wouldn’t be possible, however, if the Universal Postal Union hadn’t been founded — 135 years ago on October 9th, 1874 — in Bern, Switzerland.  With 191 member countries, they form the largest physical distribution network in the world!

To commemorate its anniversary, the Posts of many member countries offer specials such as free postage, special cancellation marks, commemorative stamps, free entry into postal museums, and many more.

Do you know if your local post office is doing anything special today?  Please share!

So you’re watching two random people having a conversation…

image by whitebeard

Without eavesdropping on them, how do you know what they are talking about?

Without any other body language as input, how would you know if the discussion is about something surprising, fearful, funny, serious?

What is it about the facial expressions that would clue you in?

What do you look at: The eyes?  The mouth?  The entire face?

image by Ulrik

It turns out that your answer might depend on whether you’re a Western Caucasian or an East Asian (I take this to mean Chinese/Japanese/Oriental):

• If you tend to take in the entire face, chances are you’re a (Caucasian) Westerner.
• If you focus on the eyes, chances are you’re an (East) Asian.

.

So what? you might ask.  Well, it seems that as a result of this difference in “input” choice, some emotions are not as easily discerned by East Asians.  This group tended to read the expression for “fear” as “surprise”, and “disgust” as “anger”, as discovered in a recent study.  So in an ambiguous cross-cultural setting with language barriers, it’s foreseeable that misinterpretation of attitude and meaning would happen if one were to have just facial expressions to work with.  (Let’s not start with the hand gestures!  That’s another blog post right there!)

Interestingly enough, this face/mouth-vs-eyes difference has long been reflected in the differences between Western and Asian emoticons!  Take a look:

Do you see it?  The main variable of Western emoticons is the mouth, while for the Asian ones, the eyes are the main focus.

Cool!

Me, I use the Western versions, maybe because that’s the style I first learnt.  I do like how the Asian emoticons do not require a tilt of the head, tho.

What about you?

(H/T to Adam, whose tweet led me to the article that spawned this post)