{"id":531,"date":"2008-04-10T00:44:58","date_gmt":"2008-04-09T21:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/en\/?p=531"},"modified":"2014-03-12T16:41:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T14:41:16","slug":"you-look-like-a-turkish-man-and-this-is-a-compliment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/2008\/04\/10\/you-look-like-a-turkish-man-and-this-is-a-compliment\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cYou look like a Turkish man and this is a compliment\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know that my physique can mislead people. When I travel to England, I am always questioned for 5 \u2013 10 minutes, separately than the rest of my friends, just because they find me Arab\u2026 I have been called Italian, Spanish and many more. Yesterday I became a Turkish man too!
\n <\/span>\u201cYou know, mr Ilias, you don\u2019t look like a Greek, you look more like a Turkish man. And this is a compliment\u201d. \u201cTurkish man? Compliment? Ooooooooooooooooooooook\u2026\u201d The guy explained to me that he didn\u2019t have good experience from the Greeks he met in the past and for him me being a Turk is something good. He knew that Greeks and Turks are not exactly the best friends in this planet, but he asked me not to insulted and he insisted in his comment.
\n <\/span>The truth is that I have plenty of Turkish friends. I respect them a lot and I have nothing against them. I also try to judge people based on their character, not their nationality. But you can not imagine the shock for someone who declares that he is proud to be 100% Greek to receive this kind of \u201ccompliments\u201d.
\n <\/span>(With this globalization thing\u2026 as time goes by\u2026 in the end I should be happy when someone finds me Turk, Arab, Italian, Spanish, Palestinian or whatever else\u2026 as long as he doesn\u2019t say that I look like Britney Spears or another woman\u2026 like how some people pronounce my name\u2026 usually the call me with wrong pronunciation\u2026 when they apologize, I reply to them \u201cas long as you don\u2019t call me Cristina or Susana, call me Elias, Ilias, Alias or whatever other version is more comfortable for you\u201d\u2026)
\n <\/span>What is the point of me saying all the above? In the level of international business, we have to accept that people may not share with us the same ideas, may not even understand our name, or they may find it proper to let us know that we belong to somewhere else than where we are\u2026 But if we don\u2019t try to understand and respect their opinion, if we don\u2019t search for the differences in culture, then we can not understand each other. This understanding through nationalities, countries, civilizations and histories is the key to succeed in many different fields of life, business and private too.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know that my physique can mislead people. When I travel to England, I am always questioned for 5 \u2013 10 minutes, separately than the rest of my friends, just because they find me Arab\u2026 I have been called Italian, Spanish and many more. Yesterday I became a Turkish man too! \u201cYou know, mr Ilias, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[240],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}