Ciao, Bella!

"Hi, Beautiful!" I guess that's how you should translate that. I got this opening from my Italian friend's e-mail (a girl). I guess it's quite a usual way of saying "hi" in Italy (Well, at least I saw many t-shirts with "Ciao, Bella!" writing made up in Coca Cola logo style everywhere in Italy).

Yet, somehow I can not translate that custom well into Indonesian language. The exact translation will be "Halo, cantik!". But, believe me you won't hear many, if not none at all, greetings like that. You must be in a situation that you really seriously consider the other person beautiful to say it. And that seldom a situation that occur everyday. The circumstances I could think of where that kind of greetings will be said are:
- in a flirting way, between lovers or lovers wannabe or admirer
- between mom and daughter (of course for your mom you're the most beautiful creature in the world =) ). This can be extended to between father and daughter, grandma and granddaughter, etc. All the parental relationship.
- when your name or nickname indeed is "Cantik"
- ....
errr...there you go, I can not think about any other circumstances.

Well, but then here I got this casual greetings from my friend. So, does that make me beautiful? [of course I am ;)].
Now, I am thinking about the Italian culture. One of my friend told me that Italians are almost the same like Indonesians when you are talking about courtesy things. When you meet you are usually supposed to ask at least "how are you?" out of courtesy and then usually the conversation will be a long conversation that involve everything.


I know I can rely on my own culture about this courtesy and politeness thing. There should be no way Italians can beat ours. But, then why my culture doesn't include this "Ciao, Bella" greetings? Especially in the form that I got here, between girls in a friendly way.

I still have no answer yet for that. So, I'll update this later.

But, anyway, I think this is also the case for other language,right? I mean I don't recall I remember "Hi, Beautiful!" greetings, or "Bonjour, belle", or "Hallo, schoenes" (Well, for the French and German ones I am not really sure actually, still learning them now ^^)

Family Guy

I found that my friend's website provide links to their familiy member's business. Not just the nuclear family member like brother, but also his uncle business. I also found this in Juergen Klinsmann's (Awwww, Klinsiii!) website. One of the section was about his family-run bakery back in Stuttgart. So sweet :)

I found this is interesting. I mean, OK, I might provide link to my brother's or sister's blog(if they have one) but that would be just something in the links section. Along with links to other friends blog. And most definitely I won't put their business on my page, unless, that also my business (but then that would be in the section about me, not about them). So, this mentioning thing (hey, this has correlation with my previous post) is really impressing.

Another reason why this is really impressing for me: the stereotype that I got for western family life is something like that family bound is not as strong as what you might find in oriental culture. One of my source for this is a Danish guy I met in train back in my country. He was a tourist, travelling alone. He said the rule of thumb for them is that when you are old enough, something like 17, then you are expected to be completely independent from the family. In the meaning that the parent will not support you financially and you won't live with them anymore.

Given that fact, I guess it's different here in German. They do have strong bound with their family.

And today I also witness that. I was eating in a restaurant with my boyfriend. In the table in front of me were three guys. I figured just like the rest of the customer they all were just friends having their luch together. Then came this woman and another guy with shopping bags joining them. And so the complete picture revealed, they all are a family, making an appointment to have luch together out of their own daily business.
I think that is so sweet :)