Improving my sense of the world

The communion of Google, Wikipedia and a host of people from different lands, coupled with a sense of embarassment about knowing so little about these countries is improving my sense of the world.

At work, we discuss things like the idiosyncracy of having subsidiaries named Yugoslavia, completely out of the sync with the fact that politically, Yugoslavia doesn't exist anymore as a country. Just the other day, a person from the US thought Slovakia and the Czech Republic were one and the same, and removed that country from a list of subsidiaries we held up as being part of EMEA, the happy region I support now - Europe, Middle East and Africa. We humbly call it a region, nevermind that in terms of land area and population, it probably makes up more than half of the world.

I see a delicate and sometimes tenuous blend between business and world affairs. This is an aspect of life that I had never considered before, is it really strange these days to discuss business in Bosnia, Israel, Iran, Kuwait, Tunisia? When one thinks of these countries, the general notion is that these areas are too poor, too war-torn, too politically fraught with danger for it to be possible to have business as usual, and yet its humbling to realize that despite war, despite hardship, life goes on with a resolute determination for normalization. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are places drawing business for the company.

Nearly every day I'm meeting and working with people who in their curious little way are teaching me more about the world, and making me rather embarassed about my own little assumptions about how things are. It is not all war and fanfare in these places around the world. There are little pleasures. And there is business as usual.