Hi,

sqrmax at cvtci.com.ar wrote:

> messages appear and some people can't stop laughing at them. April's fool is
> a local convention for joking, or something similar. That is, not everyone
> catches it when they see it. Ok, maybe in a local group of people that's fine.
> It's not funny when you simply don't know that April's fool exists. We all
> speak english, but we are not all from the US, or Europe, or wherever April's
> fool is known.

Things do happen when communicating across culture boundaries.
I remember myself once received a message with the first
line telling "HAPPY THANKSGIVING".  I wondered what wrong
thanks could I give to my friend who wrote it, and because
my last message to him was some two months ago and I was
not sure but wanted to know exactly what wrong thanks did
insult my friend, I went to our sysadmin to ask him to restore
my original message from that month's backup tape.  Ok, read
it and still don't understand why.  At the same time my
collegue asks me if I know what 'HAPPY THANKSGIVING' is supposed
to mean. - What???  You too????  After that the whole lab
stopped working until we finally uncovered the matter.

After that, I don't even think about complaining about time
wasted on inter-cultural misunderstanding...

Boris