Shroedinger's cat

Habari.

I would like to say, the thing about when some Americans make fun of Canadians is they really kind of leave themselves wide open as they don't know anything other than we get snow and say 'eh' (and in the west they say 'hey' - did you know this??). And we kind of know everything about America. So the battle of wits didn't last very long.

You can read about Canada.

This kind of reminds me of being in a taxi in Ireland with a friend from Peterborough, Ontario.
taxi driver: So you're Americans?
friend: No, we're from Canada
taxi driver: Oh, same thing.
friend: Yeah, I feel the same way about the Irish and the English.

zing.

We went to a rugby fundraiser on Friday night. There were a lot of white South Africans and draft beer. We probably stayed there for too long and definitely should have had something to eat before having three drafts. But what's done is done. After the party we went to a Indian restaurant. In addition to the restaurant, there is a large room in the back that serves food and drink and has a band. In addition to the band are six dancing Indian women. They perform some rigid dances and interact not at all with the leering Indian men. The only acknowledgement of the audience's existence comes when a man buys a wreath of flowers for 10,000 Tsh ($6.66 US) which is then placed by an employee around the neck of the dancing woman. G, our Irish anthropologist friend, says this is the way these women get paid. They are on 3 month indentured servant contracts from India and the only way they make any money is if they manage to sell some flowers.

G also referred to the women as "ethnographically out-of-reach". This means that because of the culture and environment, as an anthropologist, you can't study them. I gather this means that in the actions you would have to take to get to talk to them about how this all works, you would have to break down several figurative, if not physical, barriers. It would be like that quantum physics thing, the act of observing changes the outcome.