I am waiting for a company cab, now an hour and a half late, to drive me across town to a call center, where an Indian “culture trainer” will teach me how to act Australian. For three weeks, a culture trainer will teach us conversational skills, Australian pop culture, and the terms of the mobile-phone contracts we’ll be peddling.
Bright recent college grads pore over flashcards and accent tapes, intoning the shibboleths of English pronunciation—”wherever” and “pleasure” and “socialization”—that recruiters use to distinguish the employable candidates from those still suffering from MTI, or “mother tongue influence.” The lucky ones will secure Spartan lodgings and spend their nights (thanks to time differences) in air-conditioned white-collar sweatshops.
Indian BPOs work with firms from dozens of countries, but most call-center jobs involve talking to Americans. New hires must be fluent in English, but many have never spoken to a foreigner. So to earn their headsets, they must complete classroom training lasting from one week to three months. Speaking Hindi on company premises is often a fireable offense.
Next is “culture training,” in which trainees memorize colloquialisms and state capitals, study clips of Seinfeld and photos of Walmarts, and eat in cafeterias serving paneer burgers and pizza topped with lamb pepperoni. Trainers aim to impart something they call “international culture”—which is, of course, no culture at all, but a garbled hybrid of Indian and Western signifiers designed to be recognizable to everyone and familiar to no one. The result is a comically botched translation—a multibillion dollar game of telephone. “The most marketable skill in India today,” the Guardian wrote in 2003, “is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else’s.”
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Iceland is considering banning the sale of cigarettes and making them a prescription-only product. The parliament in Reykjavik is to debate a proposal that would outlaw the sale of cigarettes in normal shops. Only pharmacies would be allowed to dispense them – initially to those aged 20 and up, and eventually only to those with a valid medical certificate.
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But of course we still complain. I see $3.90 per gallon and I can’t help but give the stink eye, while our friends over there in the UK are forking over nine bucks per gallon.
The map above shows typical prices for RON 95 petrol, as they compare to the United States’. Countries colored red typically have higher prices, while those colored green typically have lower prices. Wikipedia didn’t have data for all countries, unfortunately, but there’s enough there to get the idea (minus African countries).
Why in the world does Venezuela have such incredibly low gas prices at 9 cents per gallon?
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America continues to get fatter, according to a comprehensive new report on the nation’s weight crisis. Statistics for 2008-2010 show that 16 states are experiencing steep increases in adult obesity, and none has seen a notable downturn in the last four years.
Meanwhile, cases of Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure that health experts have long warned would result from the nation’s broadening girth and sedentary ways are becoming increasingly widespread, according to the report, titled “F as in Fat,” released Thursday.
Even Coloradans, long the nation’s slimmest citizens, are gaining excess pounds. With an obese population of 19.8% — it is the only state with an adult obesity rate below 20% — Colorado remains the caboose on the nation’s huffing, puffing train to fat land.
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Need another reason to hate the TSA? How about sticky fingered employees like this. The guy stole fifty thousand dollars worth of electronics from travelers in just six months. Kinda makes you wonder about all those things you “lost” over the years, doesn’t it?
The man, who had been with the TSA for more than 2.5 years, was arrested after a Continental Airlines staffer claimed to have spotted him stealing an iPad from a suitcase and then stuffing it down his pants… A fact we’re guessing he didn’t advertise when he tried to sell his goods online.
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