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Inspired by something said....

I love to meet the ladies and gentlemen who are “instant authorities” on other countries, which they have visited for a few days. When someone who has lived in a country for a few years comes along, they immediately give that person a lot of information about the geography, history, customs and practices of the place….ask if s/he has visited “A”, “B” or “C” town/ places of tourist interest; when the resident says, “No,” politely, the response is, “But you MUST go there! How can you live there and not have visited that place?” Not for them the idea that different people might have different agendas in another place; everyone must do, see and experience what they did in the two or so days that they spent there….and they seem to have been everywhere and done everything, in the 3 days that they spent there, probably 15 years ago….. They will talk with great knowledge about what the people there do and how they behave and what they think….

I find that it’s the people who have travelled the most and visited the most countries who generally keep perfectly quiet about their travels and their observations!

Closely allied to this IAT (instant authority tourist) is the IRR (instant relative recollector.) This person, on hearing of, say, someone’s living in Kalamazoo, Mi ( I actually DO know someone who lives there btw, right ?) they say, "Oh, you are living in the US? My sister's brother-in-law's nephew also lives there, I think it's some place like Oregon, maybe you have met him?" This breed, however, is vanishing these days...after the advent of IT, every second Subramaniam and Krishnamurthy's son is in the US, so they are now more aware of the vastness of US geography, and less prone to this "If you are in Florida you must meet my relative in California" conversation!