My part of the world

My part of the world

Opening situation: You are in a third country, say in the UAE or Egypt. You live in a fancy hotel, every night you go down to a fancy bar for a meal, a drink and a good time. You find yourself in a company of the young people of your age who live in the same hotel. Assume they come from the “developed nations”, say, the US, Germany, whatever… You start talking… then having meals together, enjoying the company of each another... Sooner or later you will have to say something about your home country. Definitely it won’t be pleasant for you to be treated like you are from ‘shithole places’ (sorry for Mr. Trump’s famous quote).

Consider possible choices and rate the arguments on the true-or-false basis (true – the proposed candidate represents your home country and makes you feel superior, false – bad choice, this person does not make me special):

Olympic Champion?

There are tens of thousands of them, and… your friends will be able to refer to a far bigger number of all sorts of champions. It will make you just ‘not inferior’ at best… T/F

Mark Chagall?

With due respect to the contribution of the Jewish community to the Belarusian cultural heritage, a) he is not the guy from your ‘ethnic tribe’ and b) not everybody you meet in a bar would care a lot about the ramifications of modernism and impressionism… They don’t talk about high art in the bars… T/F

Kostyushko, Yodka etc…

If you are Catholic, it might work, but if you are Orthodox… these guys are polish Catholics… They did not call themselves Belarusians… T/F

A saint?

Your new friends are from catholic and protestant countries, they do not care about your saints… T/F

Francisk Skorina?

He was not the first even in Europe, also…. Europe invented printing after Korea… T/F

Boris Kit?

He became famous in the country of your new friend, not in yours… Not everybody is supposed to know a lot about rocket fuel… You cannot google something scientific to impress a stranger with a picture or a video… T/F

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