"William, the tea towel stinks. You need a new one."
I was taken aback, not only by this wonderful example of German directness - the streamlined, teutonic "subject, verb, object" model of sentence construction - but I was also taken aback by how taken aback I was.
The fact is, life in New Zealand is generally pretty simple and easy; that is, until a problem needs confronting. At which point we Kiwis engage in a weirdly elaborate series of rituals including red-faced silences, eye-averting and all manner of verbal apologies, softeners and excuses. One feels compelled to perform a kind of musical act to avoid explaining what the problem is; it commonly involves a small jerky dance of shrugs, hand-wringing and facial contortions and a sing song of polite words.
So, in episode two of Lifeswap, Duncan teaches Joerg a five step method he has devised of confronting a New Zealander about a problem so as to cause only minimal offense. Watch this space!
Ja, I find the series very amusing actually. Things that I like: the music, the attention to detail in the animation (e.g. eye rolling), the planes at the beginning, the flags (but then I have always been a sucker for a good vexillological flourish), the accents, the beard, ja, the computers (life-like!), the fine transitions (as in, fine!), and - of course - the ending which I found to be quite clever actually. Congratulations. Please may we now have episode two. I thank you.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely love it! So funny, so self ironic, so true. Please continue!!!
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