Author: Benjamin Mako Hill

When I was 7 or so, my mother and I took a trip to the UK. We bought a bottle of some orange flavored drink to take back to our hotel because I enjoyed the stuff.

For some reason, the store-bought stuff was pretty hard to get down and seemed a bit sweeter and more viscous than would be desirable. It took me about a week to realize that I was drinking undiluted orange-drink concentrate.

Upon reflection, it was within a year or so of that trip that I was diagnosed with ADD and began being medicated for concentration problems.

In Japanese, "good morning" is pronounced "ohayou" which is pronounced almost exactly like the name of the US state "Ohio."

In Sydney, the UDU attendees got a tour of Sydney’s harbor and heard about the time in the second world war that a Japanese submarine was attacked by the US warship Ohio in Sydney’s harbor.

I can imagine a moment of confusion as one crew member on the Japanese submarine sees the US warship coming and frantically wakes up his sleeping comrade by pointing at a porthole and yelling "Ohio!"

In a situation like that, a moment of confusion can mean the difference between life and death.

If you say that someone eats like a bird in English, you usually mean that that they eat very little. I’ve seen birds eat and I think the phrase should mean that the person eats very little because they make a complete mess by throwing the larger part of the food around the room.

Mika and I were talking about micronutrients and she was mentioning the importance of copper and zinc. I pointed out that pennies have both copper and zinc (although in a 19:1 ratio) and asked her how many pennies I would need to eat to stay healthy. She said 1 or 2 would do.

While I’m not about to start eating pennies, many people do. Eating non-food items after you are a couple years old is pathologic but surprisingly common. It’s often called pica although it has many other names — especially for people that particular types of non-food items (e.g., geophagia for folks who eat dirt, cautopyreiophagia for burnt matches, geomelophagia for raw potatoes, amylophagia for soap, acuphagia for sharp items, etc).

Mika asked me why adults would eat coins. I suggested that it was mental problem. She pointed out it that perhaps it was more of a metal problem.

In no small part because of the Gitlin book I’ve been reading recently, I’ve recently been thinking a lot about the way that media gives us a cheap and easy way to get intense little bursts of feeling (which you might otherwise have to work pretty hard for) on command. I’ve been paying a lot of attention to my feelings as I am exposed to media.

Maybe I’m sensative because I don’t watch television and I don’t normally watch movies anymore either. I can’t remember the last time I went to a movie theater and I don’t think I’ve sat down to watch a movie since last September. Except on airplanes.

On the planes from New York City to Australia, I had the opportunity to watch a number of movies. I’ve read a good deal on the Rwandan genocide so I decided to check out Hotel Rwanda. The movie, like anything that deals with genocide, is a pretty emotional experience. Afterwards, a little drained, I looked through the movie choices for something more humorous and fun.

I value the ability to produce all sorts of information the right of people to choose from it. That said, I’m slightly worried by the fact that it’s so easy to say things like, "wow, this genocide stuff is getting me down, lets move on to something funny."

Last night, I accidentally left my thong in someone else’s hotel room.

Because I suspect there might be ambiguity in the minds of some my non-Australian readers, this is what I forgot:

Even with full knowledge of the Australian definition, it’s sometimes difficult for me to talk about my thongs by name. I’ve been told that I can also call them "pluggers." I’m not sure that this is really all that much better.

My last post made me think of some of the other funny confusing cultural differences I experienced when I lived in Ethiopia.

One strange area is people’s names. In Ethiopia, like the West, a person’s first name is their given name. However, their second name is their father’s given name. Their third name is their paternal grandfather’s given name and so on and so fourth. People are expected to know up to eighth ancestors or their name up to eight places. For example: a man named Binyam who’s father is named Getachaw whose father is named Mekkonen would be named Binyam Getachaw or Binyam Getachaw Mekkonen.

Explaining the difference between the Western system (1+ given name(s) followed by a final family name) and the Ethiopian system fell on its face when I tried to use my own name as an example of the Western system because my second given name (my "middle name") is my father’s first given name. The conversation would go something like this:

Friend: "Your first name is your given name, right?"

Me: "Right."

Friend: "And your second name is your father’s first name?"

Me: "Well, yes. But that’s not normal. That’s a coincidence in this case."

Friend: "And your third name is your grandfather’s name?"

Me: "Well, yes. We have the same last name because all family members share a last name which is usually comes third."

Friend: "So it’s the same system!"

Me: "Ahhh!"

The long-standing motto of the Ethiopian tourism committee is "13 months of sunshine." Most people think that this is cute hyperbole. It’s not. Ethiopians use a calendar that includes 12 30-day months followed a 5 or 6 day holiday month. Even during the rainy season, it’s always sunny.

Sounds confusing, right? It’s only the tip of the iceberg.

The Ethiopian calendar is also seven and a half years behind the Gregorian calendar. Any computers in Ethiopia that use the Ethiopian calendar have yet to confront their Y2K problems. Dates on passports are all written twice.

And if that wasn’t enough, the clock is also six hours different. The day is split into twelve numbered hours of sunlight and twelve numbered hours of a night. The sun rises at 1 in the morning (7AM in the west) and sets around 12:59 in the night (6:59PM or 19 in the west). It works because Ethiopia is roughly equatorial.

You can read more about all of these different systems here.

While they systems are interesting in themselves, it’s when the Ethiopian and Western systems collide that things really get fun. Most Ethiopians’ prefer their own time and date systems but know that the rest of the world does not. Since it’s pretty easy to distinguish Ethiopians from many Westerners, Ethiopians will sometimes give foreigners the time, date or year of an event, date, or appointment in Western time. Sometimes.

As a foreigner, every time an Ethiopian gives you a year number or a numerical month/date birthday, you need to ask whether it’s Ethiopian or Western time. Every time you plan an appointment or a date, you need to make sure that when you agree which system you are using. If you agree to meet at 2, you need to insure that both parties are thinking of the same 2. Every foreigner in Ethiopia makes the mistake of arriving either six hours early or six hours late at least once.

As you might imagine, it helps to have a good sense of humor if you live in Ethiopia.

I am in Canberra at the Australian National University for Linux Conference Australia.

Here is a picture of the place where biology is done at ANU:

The way Mark Shuttleworth signs his first name reminds me a lot of a khomut — the Thai end of document character, which, I am willing to argue, is the coolest character in Unicode. I’ve included an image of both here because it’s not in everyone’s font:

The way Mark Shuttleworth signifies the end of a letter.		The way Thai people signify the end of a letter.

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