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Meet the astronomers. See where they work. Know what they know.


The Project:

The Cosmic Diary is not just about astronomy. It's more about what it is like to be an astronomer.

The Cosmic Diary aims to put a human face on astronomy: professional scientists will blog in text and images about their lives, families, friends, hobbies and interests, as well as their work, their latest research findings and the challenges that face them. The bloggers represent a vibrant cross-section of female and male working astronomers from around the world, coming from five different continents. Outside the observatories, labs and offices they are musicians, mothers, photographers, athletes, amateur astronomers. At work, they are managers, observers, graduate students, grant proposers, instrument builders and data analysts.

Throughout this project, all the bloggers will be asked to explain one particular aspect of their work to the public. In a true exercise of science communication, these scientists will use easy-to-understand language to translate the nuts and bolts of their scientific research into a popular science article. This will be their challenge.

Task Group:

Mariana Barrosa (Portugal, ESO ePOD)
Nuno Marques (Portugal, Web Developer)
Lee Pullen (UK, Freelance Science Communicator)
André Roquette (Portugal, ESO ePOD)

Jack Oughton (UK, Freelance Science Communicator)
Alice Enevoldsen (USA, Pacific Science Center)
Alberto Krone Martins (Brazil, Uni. S. Paulo / Uni. Bordeaux)
Kevin Govender (South Africa, S. A. A. O.)
Avivah Yamani (Indonesia, Rigel Kentaurus)
Henri Boffin (Belgium, ESO ePOD)

Greeting people

In your own country you know how to greet people you meet, there are normal customs that everyone follows. But when you live abroad it can sometimes get quite tricky to know how to greet people. And I am not talking about what to say but what to do: shake hands, hug, kiss or do something else.

In Finland when you for the first time meet someone, or meet someone after a long time, you shake hands. No hugging and no kissing. When you meet your friends you just say hi, or if it has been a long time and it is a very good friend, you might give a hug. Of course most people in Europe would think that this kind of behaviour of just saying hi is cold and reserved. More south in Europe you go more kissing and hugging you do.

One thing that surprised me at first was how you greet your colleagues in Eastern Germany. There you shake hands with your colleagues even if you see them everyday. It is not a custom that is followed in the western parts of Germany, as far as I know, and even in the east it is mainly done by the older people. So, I assume it is a custom that was used in East Germany when the country was still divided. Anyhow, after a while I got used to the custom and started liking it.

When first living outside Finland I had some problems getting used to kissing people. Of course you are only pretending to kiss the cheeks, but still I was uncomfortable with it. Nowadays after living more than 10 years away from my native country I have no problems with that custom. Except to know how many kisses you are supposed to give! It can vary between one and three. And it is quite embarrassing when you do the wrong amount. In Chile it is always one kiss. That is easy and I like that custom. In Europe it is usually two, but it can be also one or three. EU wants to standardise everything. In my opinion this is something they indeed should standardise. Please, give us clear instructions on how many kisses we are supposed to give when we meet people. :-)

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 10:42 am and is filed under personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1
  1. Claire
    October 16th, 2009 at 12:18 pm

    I know what you mean about the number of kisses! Here in SA we normally give one kiss and a hug. But we have a number of Portuguese, Greek and Italian people here too whom we are friends with - and they each have their own number, sometimes 2, sometimes 3 kisses. It all is very confusing, especially when you bump your noses because you’re each going for a different number of kisses :)