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lost in translation

the teacher who taught us globalization this afternoon was like a comedian actor. he cracked numerous jokes at the beginning of the lecture, some of which were funny, but some were incomprehensible. can any intern be kind enough to tell me what was so funny about the SHIFT HAPPENS thing? it was frustrating to see Julie sharing some kind of happy laugh with Erick who was sitting like a mile away, when we did not have any clue about what the humor was!

anyway, there is also some kind of border in terms of humor. sometimes the Chinese type of humor is so ingrained in my brain that i simply put this Chinese logic into English when i am chatting with the interns. and there have been situations that the air simply went dead when i cracked the jokes. the interns usually gave me a blank face wondering what i had intended to infer. it was embarrassing! but my biggest wish is that they had guessed my meaning in best way. please trust me: I WAS NOT REFERRING ANYTHING BAD ^^

Comments (4)

Quinn:

actually this dairy is pretty funny. your style seems cool but pleasant actually.

Brian McCarthy:

Regarding your question about the phrase, there is an old American maxim that is spelled only one letter different.

Tony:

Sometimes it is because of the cultural difference that we can't understand the humor in American's joke. I also had this kind of experience before. On a dinner, all Americans laugh a lot with their jokes except I sitting there like a idiot. So it's Ok, just be happy:)

Timur:

Yeah, I also wanted to tell that humor equals to cultural difference. And the situation you talked about shows that those people didn't live long enough here.

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