Today I had lunch with my boss, another coworker, and one of our Japanese resellers. We went to the all-you-can-eat buffet at Pizza Hut. I was curious to see how the reseller would react to the American fare and the forks and all, but we found out that they have Pizza Huts in Japan (well, duh!), although they are take-out only. The fork didn't seem to slow him down much, either.
I think it would have been neat to get sushi instead. That way, he could have told us how authentic it was. Or wasn't. Of course, that is probably overgeneralizing - imagine if I were to go to Japan, and my hosts were to take me to a Red Lobster (Ledu Robstelu?) so that I could tell them how the lobster compared to good ol' New England lobster. Well, considering I don't eat sea-bug, I guess that they'd be out of luck.
I have to hand it to this reseller. He is about my age, and seems rather shy. His English is not very good at all, and yet he comes to the States regularly to visit his suppliers. I can't imagine being in his situation, at least not voluntarily. During the month I was in Germany in high school, I was able to get by with English pretty much everywhere. The few situations I was in where English wasn't cutting it were very scary indeed.
Later on today we may have a lovely multicultural game of Quake 3. We'll probably play the Capture the Flag variant - that way everyone gets to participate, regardless of skill level. I think I'll make the robot opponents fairly slow - I like to win!
You can respond to my ranting here.
Please sir, can I rant some more?