Ethiopia Rings in Y2K

I found this to be quite interesting. Of course my original question was, "What?!?! Where were they when the rest of the world rang in the new millenium? Was Ethiopia too busy with other activities to be bothered with celebrating with the rest of us? Would they also be pondering whether their appliances and electronics would fizzle when 1999 changed to 2000? And... sheesh! why begin a new year in the middle of freaking September?!?"

Well.. turns out that when the 'rest of the world', and by 'rest of the world' I obviously mean 'rest of the Christian world' revised its estimate of the birth of Christ in the 16th century, Ethiopia stuck with the old date. That would mean that it would always be 7 years behind the rest of Christendom.. but.. hey.. isn't 7 supposed to be a 'perfect' number? :)

I must say that being in Denmark has made me revise the way I thought about many, many things. Blame it on my Western upbringing. However, since I'm now in contact with many other cultures, I find myself googling more interesting stuff. For example.. who would assume that Iranians do not speak nor understand Arabic? I mean.. isn't Iran like.. that country right next to Iraq.. and aren't they positively Muslim.. and since Arabic is the language of the Qu'ran.. wouldn't be obvious that their first language would be Arabic? Nope.. WRONG! They actually speak Farsi or Persian, and no, it's not mutually intelligible to speakers of Arabic.

Another shocker is related to the Ethiopian issue, and how the Western world just assumes that everyone reckons time the same way it does. I mean, "Yes," everyone knows about the Chinese calendar.. and "Yes", Mr. President of North Korea forces the nation to reckon time from his own birth... but there are many, many more calendars and ways of reckoning time. This Iranian chick in my class was born in 1354, and the whole class (1 Brazilian, 1 Trinidadian, 1 German, 1 Dutchman, 1 Ukrainian, 1 Pole and 4 Burmese) were like "What?!?!" So.. Everyone 'naturally' assumed that.. ok, maybe they reckon their time from something Muhammed did, or something. However, turns out that since modern Iran was the ancient Persia, they use the Persian calendar, which is solar governed. So.. the year 2007 in Iran is actually 1386. (Oh.. and of course there's also an Islamic calender that corresponds to our pre-conceptions :))

Funny thing is.. some folks will go to their graves insisting that their way is the only correct way of analysing and interpreting things. And, naturally, the Western world governs in which direction the world should go, and how and when it should do so. Naturally, it behoves the rest of the world to learn and master the languages, culture, and "willingly" accept the current global hegemony. Thus, they adapt, by learning about us, and relating to us in a manner that is more comfortable to us, if they are to receive money, investment and compassion from us. That way we can set up our companies in their countries without too much of resistance. Globalization at its best? Many think so. However, it is my opinion that we come out culturally weaker.