> > Now that I've gotten going on this stuff, I might as well follow through on the thought. Has anyone else ever wondered about the arbitrary labelling of "The West" and "The East"? I mean, they're basically on opposite sides of the world, so why does the Pacific Ocean get the pleasure of being "The Impassable Barrier" at which we split the plant apart when making our flat maps?

> I asked Brunnen-G (from New Zealand, for those of you who don't know) about this once. I asked her if she thought of herself as living in "The West" or "The East," given that New Zealand is as eastern as it gets, yet NZ culture is so very British. (I've heard it said that the city of Christchurch, on South Island, seems more British than a lot of actual British cities.) She said that, yes, she considers herself part of "The West," even though exotic places like Japan and Thailand are just a bit to her northwest. I would assume Australia would think of themselves in a similar manner.

Yes, that's one of the little oddities of global culture. There are *real* directions, which would supply your answer if somebody asked "in what direction is Hong Kong?" (answer: northwest) and then there are those directiony words which don't actually *mean* a direction to us, but nobody thinks about that. The Far East is Japan and China, not Brazil, which would be more logical. We really ought to call Asia the Far North, California the Middle East, and the Western World would be maybe Africa, India and Australia.

Brunnen-"global culture doesn't always make sense"G