"Cultural crossings"

Update: see last in a series inspired by our Pope here. The end is also quoted in my last post here.

This is what happened during the Papal succession mentioned in my previous post here: I noticed that my sponsor in NYC read BBC,  and I the New York Times. That reminded me that in Kuwait, my driver listened to BBC Arabic and I to Al Jazeera English. 

That's what I call "cultural crossings", where we each access the other side's news, in order to better grasp the other side's views.

 

click to enlarge

To wit, above was a typical meeting in Kuwait City: my Syrian boss and I at the front, present to a mix of Kuwaiti boss & Middle-eastern men & women in a mix of traditional & formal wear; all spoke English together, but asides were in various Arabic dialects by Middle-eastern country.

The most patent "cultural crossing" was however on the morning of 9/11: I was at an international petroleum conference in Austin TX; on that morning, I had breakfast with a Saudi client... When the news rolled in about the Twin Towers, he immediately suspected Palestinians and I the Saudis! We burst out laughing at how we reacted cross-culturally... My Saudi guest had the good grace to forgive my suspicion of his country: later, much later I turned out to be right; Saudis funded Al Qaeda whose founder was of Saudi origin, and whose Saudi, Emirati & Egyptian members carried out the terror attack.

Greg Zolnai 1963, click to enlarge

That's the story of my life: I turn out to be right, but only to find out much later. In the meantime others benefit from being right, only to turn much later out to often be wrong. 

That allowed me however to have this half career in the oil patch - my other half was computer mapping and petro-IT -  I listened to my clients overseas. I then told my American or UK employers what needed to be done. I thus always had my clients at my back, regardless of their culture. 

And this was a big deal over the rump of the new millennium: The Global South was emerging from its colonial past. Countries I was sent to were largely funded by National Oil Company (NOC) revenue. But NOC's tech was brought in the last century by European & North American oil or service companies... And you guessed it, those were ye olde colonials! Oil cos. were nationalized and western staff was gradually replaced by local staff. They were in fact trained by western staff before they left. That was my ultimate "working myself out of my job" scenario. That needed however cross-culturalism illustrated atop.