Stereotyping the place where you live

It's one of those silly things. People have crazy ideas about other countries and cities yet often they can't explain where the ideas come from.

We make associations and attributions based on corny and hackneyed ideas that maybe made sense in some tiny way at a single point in time.

For example I live in Ireland. This is not news to regular visitors to this blog. Ireland is a great place for many reasons.

However when I travel abroad I hear all kinds of daft things about Ireland.

Many people, when I have told them where I am from, get this look of sympathy and compassion on their faces and look at me as if to say "you poor thing".

I explore these expressions of sympathy to find they are talking about all the bombings. I live in Dublin, while the bombings (in the past) took place mostly in the 6 counties of Northern Ireland.

I also get the "you're from Ireland, you must be a blathering drunk" line quite often. I've had it said to me in the USA, in Italy, in the UK (loads of times), in Holland, and in Germany. I am not a blathering drunk but the general perception is often that "all" Irish people are complete drunks who can't be trusted near bleach let alone alcoholic drinks.

Ireland is pretty, certainly green, but we don't all stand around at the crossroads with bodhrans doing ceili dancing (curse that Michael Flatley for that idea alone) in the rain with a grand pair of Brogues on our feet.

Do you understand what I mean by this.

So, anyway I was looking at the cluster map for this blog, which by the way I think is really interesting. I'm intrigued by some of the places from which people have been reading this blog.

Hawai'i caught my eye.

That's because I went there in 1999 with my lovely Wife on our honeymoon. We had a wonderful time and would love to go back some time.

One of the things that struck me about Hawai'i is how little people know about the place but most people have some associations in their minds. Examples:

Hawai'i Five-O.
The old enduring image of Jack Lord standing on top ofthe skyscraper in downtown Honolulu as the camera panned around, waiting to meet Danno and tell him to book some poor unfortunate.

I have to say that I didn't see any cops standing on rooftops while I was there.

A workplace shooting
Carried out by an employee at the offices of Xerox. This happened while I was there and I was amazed at how many people back home had heard of this when I got back.

It's something that people I meet seem to remember and associate with Hawai'i

Hula dancing
I think this might be a little like Ceili dancing. It's part of the culture but might just be that it's done a lot more for tourists who want to see it.

I saw some folks Hula dancing and thought it was great. I think I might prefer this to Ceili dancing or that "Riverdance" stuff. Am I a traitor for saying this?

Dog the Bounty Hunter
Yes. The great man does his best work in Hawai'i. I'm intrigued to know what people living in Hawai'i think of old Dwayne Chapman, the self-professed "world's greatest bounty hunter" although he did claim his daddy told him that on his death bed.

Is Hawai'i really that bad. He seems to beat up and pick up a lot of fairly flaky looking people down on their luck.

Then just when they think things couldn't get any worse his rag-tag mob of suburban-driving deputies arrive and things really do get worse.

I can't believe that these 4 things are so strongly associated with Hawai'i yet they do come up a fair bit in conversation when I talk about Hawai'i, not brought up by me of course.

Likewise I can't believe some people might think I'm a blathering drunk getting ready to go for a bit of Irish dancing to pass the night away in a dark and pokey little pub somewhere up in the mountains.

But they probably do.