People watching is such a delight. An endless source of interest and amusement, frustration and irritation. I have written before about "Drains & Radiators". This cruise gave me the opportunity to observe the species of "Givers & Takers"at close quarters.
I think both descriptions of human behaviour are self explanatory. I must acknowledge at the outset that I know I am making sweeping generalisations.
The thing that shocked me was the arrogance, rudeness & self absorbtion of some of my fellow passengers. The sense of entitlement that wealth seems to endow some people with is quite surpising. "Please", "thank you" & "excuse me" seemed to have been expunged from the vocabulary of some. Quite a few people I had conversations with just wanted to tell me about themselves. I wasn't required to say very much - just listen attentively. Many conversations I overheard were basically bragging about making money, posessions, achieving your own ends, who you knew. etc etc. Brits tend to be polite. They certainly queue & don't tend to be pushy. So maybe that's why I was so surprised. We had a lot of Australian, American & Italian passengers. Maybe it's a cultural thing. Or maybe it's just me.
The other thing that made me take a sharp intake of breath was judgemental attitudes & ignorance about other cultures & countries. Very few seemed to know much about the history, culture or geography of the places we visited. Because of the current political situation in Greece, maybe a little more was known about that, but coloured by a European press perspective. Very little seemed to be known about politics in Turkey. I suppose the thing is it was a holiday. So people didn't feel the need to be informed.
Fortunately all of that was completely offset by the care and consideration of the paid employees & of course not all the passengers were like that. I did meet some really interesting people whose company I enjoyed.
As my dad would say "There's nowt as queer as folk". He was from Derbyshire & would have been completely nonplussed by all of this.
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