Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The Unflirtables

How to flirt? This question has anything but a comprehensive international answer. Flirting is a universal phenomenon but is largely culturally determined. In some countries, people flirt with everything and everyone openly on the streets, but in other countries flirting is taboo or even illegal.


In The Netherlands flirting is not illegal, but on the other side we don't flirt too much open on the streets. It's a shame, because it would have made our lifes much easier. Dutchies are known to be open and direct. Well I can tell you, not pretty much with regards to this part of life. Or perhaps, may be too much...


Like in the southern parts of Europe - over there people flirt for fun. It's like a hobby. anyone of the opposite sex can be part of flirtation actions. You're crazy if you do it with your partner, but the rest of the world lies at your feet. They look deep into each others eyes - eyes say more than a thousand words.


In Latin America flirting is also one of the daily activities that make live much more fun.  It doesn't matter how old you are. In fact, the older the smoother. Old men call and whistle after beautiful ladies and even girls. In these countries people dance! They dance till they drop - whole day, whole evening, whole night, whole morning until the sun comes up and with their bodies very close to each other.


They don't know red heads, no friends laughing and the guy buys a drink for that girl who does enter his advances. Nice and simple! 
Dutch think flirting is scary. We are afraid to crash and burn. Therefore flirting is a necessity which we do with a clear goal in mind and not just for fun. In advance, we factored exactly what our chances are with the flirting object and which opening sentence we will use. We don't dance. Why not? we just can't to be honest. Dutch dance like winefarmers pressing their grapes - we stamp. Not pretty romantic compared to the Latino's.


Ultimately, the goal of flirting is universal - and I will describe it nicely - the need for love and intimacy that we all share.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Forever Friends with the Dutch



Dutch can Be Nice, helpful, friendly, funny, but to become à 'close relation' or even a friend with a dutchy that seems to be quite difficult. 

Getting into contact with the Dutch does not seem to be very easy. I learned that again last week in the workshop Dutch habits & traditions. The Dutch can be very open. But until a certain limit. Then you're getting to close. An example of one the participants who has his origin in Uganda - he had spend a long time with a Dutchy in London. They had very good contact and undertook quite some activities together on a regular basis. Then came the unexpected - the goodbye was a definit goodbye. Especially in comparison to an Indonesian contact, who invited my participant to come over to Indonesia and spend some time with his family. 
Another example from a participant from South America - I called a Dutch guy who I regularly meet and know quite well right now 'friend' and it scared him off. But what for? In South America we call everybody ' friend', so what's the problem?

Weird weird dutchies, being friendly, but without coming to close. Dutch have open thoughts, but in fact, we are not open ourselves. We respect everybodies live and living area. We will help you wherever and however we can. But to get into our lives you have to be invited. To get over the threshold of our front porch is not that easy. Dutchies tend to stick to reality - only make promises if you can keep them. 
The funny thing is, we don't do it on purpose. It's just not in our genes. We don't understand that others do feel the intention of saying 'I love you' if you only mean 'you are important and I appreciate you' instead of spending the rest of our lives together. We need some teaching in that and Dutch are eager to learn. Show us how and we will most likely step away of 'going dutch'.  


Class June '11