mental models

When one thinks of France, two things inevitably come to mind, wine and cheese. This is a gross simplification and a generalization that's far from the truth. To learn what France is really like, I go to the Alliance Française. There, caring volunteers show us clueless foreigners the light and help us break down mental models and erase unjustified prejudice.

The topic of tonight's event, an annual highlight of the calender, eagerly anticipated each year by those who have been around for a while, was "Pain, Vins et Fromages de France".

And while the title didn't do anything to wipe out stereotypes, the evening did. While feasting on Camembert and Brie, Tomme de Savoie and Fourme d'Ambert, Sainte-Maure and Crottin de Chavignol and gulping down one glass of wine after another, each specifically chosen to best complement the cheese on the plate, I was busily talking to a Saudi.

In my many years in the US I had learned, only by hearsay, never by personal experience, that Saudis and Kuwaitis were a despicable lot. Oil money coming out of their ears, they are driving big Mercedeses around campus, looking down upon everyone who wasn't at least half as rich as they were.

I have a problem with this. If anyone shows off in front of me, I show him the door. Boasting is something I don't need. You are what you are, not what you have.

That's why it was such a satisfying experience talking to Khaled. He might own a Mercedes. I don't know. His dad might own an oil well. I don't care. Because he was a kind fellow and good to talk to. And he laughed when I told him what I had thought when I found out he was Saudi. It's something he had heard before many time and is profoundly sick of.

Down the drain goes the generalization of snobbish Saudis. The erasure of the image of Columbia as drug-infested hell is a whole other story. Too bad this is already the end of tonight's post.