Improving My Culture

Lately I've noticed my English and table manners have suffered from two years of speaking half-English/half-language-o-the-month while eating rice with my fingers. In my attempt to learn new big words or brush up my etiquette, some of the other debriefers have taken me for an etiquette expert (ah, if they only knew about Nic 'n' I's crazy TMI classes). Perhaps it was the mentioning fo the correct manner of eating asparagus with the fingertips that fooled them.

Yesterday on of the ladies gave me a copy of Emily Post's Ettiquite book from 1945. It's a riot! I find as I read it that the world seems to have a bit more certainty. Here at debrief I may be wrestling with the abstract questions of life, but can be confident that someone else has answered the question of how you seat a dinner party of 12 in the house of a widow (apparently the objective is to avoid her serving herself from an untouched first dish).

Here are a few gems:
- Did you know flight stewardesses used to be registered nurses? Fascinating.

- When removing bones from fish you are to first lift the bone with the fork then pull it the rest of the way pinched between the fork and knife.

- "He whose manners are only put on in company is a veneered gentleman, not a real one"

- [discussing how a visitor takes leave]"Naturally a woman is less effusive in what she says to a man than in what she says to another woman. And yet she may very well exclaim, 'I've been completely thrilled!' if he has told her anything that can be truthfully described as thrilling, but not otherwise. (p.10 - do I detect some sarcasm?)