This entertaining article from Canada’s national current affairs magazine Maclean’s reminded me of something similar someone told me years ago. She told me that she had read a guide book for Japanese people planning on visiting the United States, and on the section for dining etiquette it said something like:

A popular American meal is the hamburger. It is important when you eat a hamburger that you hold it with both hands and eat it as quickly as possible without speaking.

I’ve always thought that that was a very funny insight. The article linked below has some entertaining points as well such as:

American table manners involve holding the fork in the right hand and using it to eat. Hold it tines up. The knife cuts and spreads things. To use it, switch the fork to your left hand. To eat, switch your fork back to your right hand.

For the full article, click the link below:

Doing business with Americans? HSBC has some hilarious cultural advice – Business, Business Blog – Macleans.ca.

Friend Todd Kuipers (@toddkuipers) sent along a link to an interesting post this week from Eric Barker at www.bakadesuyo.com on what we can learn from Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

Highlights include:
All warfare is based on deception
Rapidity is the essence of war
An army without spies is like a man without ears or eyes
Preparation is everything
Excellence is breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting
How to lead and
How do deal with the enemy

Barker closes out the article by saying that he doesn’t think that Sun Tzu’s Art of War should be applied to most situations of conflict – the issues that most of us deal with are better handled with the tools of negotiation than war.

The article is well thought out and informative- check it out here.