Cultured Views

Buyer beware

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It is always tempting to save some money, sometimes alot of money, by buying second-hand rather than brand new. This applies to many different items, not just cars and clothes…

Unfortunately when a particular item is in great demand some unscrupulous people will go so far as creating counterfeit duplicates in order to capitalise on the market. This practice has spread especially into the computer supplies industry where the problem of fake used cisco is growing.

The industry is instigated in China and is being sold on places like Ebay - don’t fall for it even if you need to spend as little as possible. Fake products like this are proved to cause your equipment damage and will set you up for needing to outlay even more money in costly repairs later on.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Maestro - can someone please teach these celebrities the basics…?

I have been following the BBC series Maestro and I have to say that there have been many times where I have literally cringed in my chair.

David Soul’s conducting of the exquisite Barber’s Adagio for Strings is one of them; Jane Asher wiggling her shoulder’s and bum rather than actually conducting is another (oh boy, was she baaaadd). Another celebrity by the name of Goldie who conducted by waving both arms to and fro was simply excruciating…

As an orchestral musician, and as a string player, can I pleeeaase make just one request…?

Could those professional mentors please teach their famous(?) charges the difference between an upbeat and a downbeat…? it is the one thing I have noticed which is missing. And believe me, it makes all the difference.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Hotel owners - what language should you speak…?

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a facility, even one very much with tongue-in-cheek, for hotel owners to rate their guests individually just as the guests are able to rate hotels?

I think it would be wonderful. What categories could we use:

* attitude

* in-room cleanliness (taking in those who cannot work out what a toilet flush is for - or a waste bin for that matter)

* behaviour/table manners in dining room

* friendliness/consideration towards other guests

“Yes”, I can hear you say, wouldn’t it be fun…

That last point though is what I particularly would like to be able to rate some guests on - and I have to admit I would be brutal in this regard. How some guests treat other guests can be quite surprising - especially when the some guests are natives of the country the hotel is in and the other guests are those dreaded foreigners.

Take France for example. We are noticing an increasing number of French guests who seem quite affronted when they encounter fellow guests who do not speak French - and naturally - because those other guests are not French! in fact they are even going to the trouble of registering complaints about it…

I accept that the French basically do not travel that widely outside of France, if at all, so some of them are not used to people of other nationalities. They arrive at a little hotel somewhere in their beloved France and of course expect to greeted in their own language - which they are, maybe not absolutely fluently - but their language all the same. But what puzzles me is why on earth they object to their hosts greeting other guests in the language those other guests speak…?

Why should the host rattle off a barrage of French to a Spanish couple when the host can speak fluent Spanish and thus communicate more politely and amiably with them…? why would the hosts deliberately make communication with their American guests impossible by speaking in French to them when both they, and you, are native English speakers…?

The one thing we love about this job is clearly obvious during breakfast times when all our guests are eating in the dining room; a variety of nationalities - Italian, English, Dutch, German, Spanish and even Slovakian - and all chatting away between themselves in their own native tongues, a nice mix of cultures and languages. And in the middle of them all sits a French couple offended that they are doing so…

Certainly when we go on holiday we chat in english between ourselves and have some fun attempting the local lingo with the ‘natives’. But - and I wish that some French would learn this - it is just not practical, nor at all necessary, to expect your guests to be anything other than who they are. It is where they come from that makes them so interesting.

Popularity: 15% [?]