Georgian tales part 2: Meeting some stupid people in Georgia

Hi guys, in part 2 of my travel stories from Georgia, I have to turn to a topic that I've talked about a lot on my blog before: stupidity. Allow me to set the context for this: when I was 9 years old, my parents took us on a grand trip to America, Mexico, Canada, Japan and Hong Kong - we spent nearly four weeks traveling though my entire June holidays. I don't know what on earth possessed my parents to do something that ambitious as they had never taken a trip that long before and they never ever took a trip as long ever again. But it was great for me then as a 9 year old to finally get a chance to see the world - however, every time we encountered a problem whilst abroad, my parents' first reaction was that they were being racist towards us foreigners without once assuming that there could be any other reasons. I remember once being in a restaurant in Anaheim when I had a sore throat and one of the aunties we were traveling with said, "let's ask them for some honey, it will make your throat feel a bit better." However, the waitress replied, "I'm so terribly sorry, we've just ran out of honey, someone else has just asked for honey as well and I have just checked in the kitchen - they didn't have any but I'm happy to go try again, but I don't think I can get my hands on any." Now my father doesn't understand much English, without waiting for the rest of us to translate what the white waitress said, he just assumed that she said we can't have any honey because we're Asian and she hates us but my father is the most racist person you'll ever meet.

Did I encounter some problems on my trip to Georgia - oh you bet, there were plenty of logistical problems of getting around, with public transport in a sparsely populated, poor country. and of course, I encountered a lot of stupidity and incompetence as well. But should we confuse stupidity or incompetence with racism? No, we should not do that. So let me start with my first encounter with stupidity (or incompetence - that's pretty much the same thing if the competence stems from stupidity). When I arrived at Kutaisi airport from London, I encountered a really stupid customs officer at the airport - this young lady looked like she was in her early 20s and could barely speak any English. I handled my passport over and said, "გამარჯობა, საღამო მშვიდობისა." (Hello, good evening.) She looked at my passport as if there was something wrong and then got on the phone to call her supervisor over. Now I have studied Georgian before this trip - in fact I had made a huge effort with the language since I am such a total geek, give me any excuse to learn a new language and I will, so whilst I may not have a wide vocabulary, I could at least follow what was being said to a certain degree. It seemed that her supervisor was busy but would be available in a few minutes. I was worried and curious at the same time, so I asked her what was wrong (in English, my Georgian isn't that good). She merely shook her head and said, "please wait, you have to wait a bit." That was so incredibly frustrating as I wanted to know what the problem was.

The flight had arrived from London and there were plenty of British people on that flight, all of them were let into Georgia without as much as a question - British citizens didn't need a visa for Georgia and I was the only passenger on that flight who had been detained at customs. Furthermore, I was the only Asian person on that flight - everyone else was white, so was this a clear case of racism? What could be possibly wrong with my passport? Or did they suspect that I am not the person I claim I am? Did they freak out because I am an Asian person traveling on a European passport? All this while I was given no information and I decided that it was best to remain calm and cooperative to avoid aggravating them. Finally after about 15 minutes or so, when her supervisor - an older man - came over, he didn't looked at my passport and was mostly staring down at his phone. The bone of contention seemed to be over my place of birth: Singapore. They then had a short conversation in front of me in Georgian, assuming that I couldn't understand a word. That would be true in 99.99% of cases but they didn't realize that I am a hyper-polyglot Youtube sensation linguist who had studied Georgian so I could actually understand quite a bit of what they were saying. So please allow me to write an approximate transcript of what they said in front of me with the disclaimer that I am far from fluent in Georgian, but I was also reading into their body language, their intonation and the context actually played a very big part in figuring out what the hell was going on.

Young lady: What does 'place of birth' in English means? It should mean where he is born as a baby, right?

Supervisor: Yes. That's right. So it should say the country, the city where the holder of the passport was born.

Young lady: In this man's passport, it says his 'place of birth' is Singapore - that is a country in Asia. But he is traveling on a British passport. How come a man from Singapore is traveling on a British passport?

Supervisor: Huh? What? (Without looking up from his mobile phone) So where is he from? What country?

Young lady: Singapore. This man is from Singapore. You know...

Supervisor: But did you check if people from Singapore need a visa to enter Georgia? Where is that list?

Young lady: Oh, wait. (Types away at her computer, brings up a list.) Okay,  S-I-N-G-A-P-O-R-E, Singapore. Yes.

Supervisor: You know that should always check that list if you're not sure before calling me over.

Young lady: Okay yes. Singapore is indeed on the list.

Supervisor: So you know that means this man from Singapore can enter Georgia for one year without a visa.

Young lady: Okay yes sir, I will stamp his passport now.

Supervisor: Next time do your job properly, check the list first before calling me over! I am very busy!

Young lady: I am very sorry sir, I will not make the mistake again.

Then the annoyed supervisor storms off without even looking at me (or my passport), the young lady stamps my passport and then just hands it over to me and says, "okay, you can go now" to me in English with a smile, she probably assumed that I didn't understand a word of that conversation. Note that the key thing that enabled me to follow their conversation was the fact that she kept saying the words 'place of birth' in English rather than Georgian, which led me to understand what the bone of contention was about my passport. And of course Singapore is still Singapore in Georgian - well technically speaking it should be სინგაპური pronounced 'Singapuri' but they still said Singapore. I then said to the young lady, "თქვენ იცით, მე ბრიტანელი ვარ ახლა? ეს არ არის სინგაპურის პასპორტი." (You do know that I am British now, right? This is not a Singaporean passport.)  She did a double take, trying to process the fact that I just spoke to her in Georgian and that I had probably understood most of the conversation earlier that was carried out right in front of me. But instead of answering my question, she asked, "შენი იცით ქართული?" (You know how to speak Georgian?)  With my passport safely in my hands, I merely gave her a nonchalant shrug and replied, "ცოტა - საკმარისი". (A little - enough.) Oh you should have seen the look on her face when she realized that I spoke her language, but I do get that all the time when I am traveling around Europe. I did double check with my partner that I did get the same stamp in my passport as he did and sure enough, I had no problems there. I was only delayed in total for about 30 minutes, so it wasn't too bad.

So let's analyze what happened there - this Georgian lady had clearly no concept of economic migrants leaving one country and settling in another. She assumed that my place of birth should automatically match my nationality, which obviously in my case, does not. I was indeed born in Singapore many years ago but I had given up my Singapore passport. Firstly, my place of birth is totally irrelevant, I had no idea why she was so fixated on that - regardless of where I was born, I am a British citizen today and foreign-born British citizens have exactly the same rights as those born within the UK. Secondly, I was allowed into Georgia under the wrong circumstances - as I no longer hold a Singaporean passport, I no longer have the privileges that a Singaporean citizen would have traveling on a Singaporean passport. This was why I had spent so much time and effort trying to find the cheapest and easiest way to get a visa to visit China earlier this year - if I still had the privileges as a Singaporean citizen, then I could just show up in China without a visa! Would China let me enter today without a visa, just because I was born in Singapore? Of course not. So I should have been allowed to enter Georgia as a British citizen as I was traveling on a British passport, rather than as a Singaporean citizen because I was born there (but no longer hold a Singaporean passport). Of course, I could have spent more time and effort telling his woman and her supervisor why they were both wrong, but it was late and I just wanted to get on the next bus to Kutaisi city - this was not the time or place to try to fix their stupidity and incompetence. I don't think such jobs are particularly highly paid anyway, that is why they will never attract the most highly educated graduate professionals.

If my father had heard that I was detained for 30 minutes at Kutaisi airport, he would automatically jump to the conclusion that it was a direct result of their racism. But given my ability to understand a enough Georgian, my conclusion is that it was not really racism at all - my skin colour was not an issue, it was just a staggering amount of incompetence on display here. We have a young, inexperienced who didn't know what the hell she was doing and a supervisor who wasn't listening to her at all whilst he was busy doing something on his phone - he had simply assumed that she was wondering if Singaporean citizens needed a visa or not for Georgia and thus he was not even answering the question she had initially asked. I wanted to ask them, "have you ever seen an Asian person traveling on a European passport, or a black person traveling on an American passport? I have a friend who is as white as they come, yet he is traveling on a South African passport - would you have detained him as well?" I understand that in this day and age, custom officers need to beware of illegal immigrants who are traveling on stolen passports - but surely that's where technology can solve the problem. When I returned to the Luton Airport in England, all I had to do was to shove my passport into a machine and allowed my face to be scanned: the computer then matched my face to the photo in my passport, so they knew that the passport did indeed belong to me. All that was done automatically in a matter of 3 seconds thanks to computers, doing the job far more efficiently that any human ever could. So was the lady at the airport stupid or racist? My gut instinct tells me that she is just plain stupid, rather than racist - but hey, feel free to disagree with me in the comments section below.

Let me give you one other example of offensive behaviour that I had encountered in a lot Georgia - again, I'm going to let you decide if it is racism or just plain old stupidity. I had traveled the length and breadth of Georgia in 11 days, including to some very remote areas, to small villages where they are highly unlikely to see many foreign tourists. Hence for me to walk into some of those places as a Chinese-looking foreigner (technically speaking I'm mixed), most of them assumed I'm Japanese. Don't ask me why they just assumed I'm Japanese - I don't think I look Japanese at all but then again, somehow these Georgians didn't once consider that I may be Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese or Mongolian. Mind you, this happened a lot in Tunisia as well - so much so that I had written a blog post about it. So I was at the Promete Caves near Tsqaltubo, waiting for the next guided tour to start and thus I was wondering around the gift shops outside the cave complex when this souvenir stall owner started shouting, "Япония! Япония! Япония!" That's 'Yaponya', or Japan in Russian. I ignored him even though I knew he was desperately trying to get my attention. But instead, he ran up to me still shouting, "Япония! Япония! Япония!" I then said to him, "Пожалуйста Будет! Вам не нужно так кричать. Я не глухой, я тоже не японец." (Please stop, you don't need to shout. I'm not deaf, I'm not Japanese either.) I'd like to think that my Russian was clear enough for him to get the message. He then asked, "Bы не японец? Откуда Bы?"(You're not Japanese? Where are you from?) in total disbelief, like this guy really wanted to have guessed my nationality correctly.

I refused to be interrogated by someone like that. So I tried to reason with him: look here, I am speaking to you in Russian, we're quite happily speaking Russian, yes? You understand my Russian yes? My Russian is pretty good, yes? What language do they speak in Japan? They speak Japanese. Do they speak Russian in Japan? No, they do not, Japanese people do not know how to speak Russian at all. So it is pretty darn clear that because I am happily speaking Russian with you, that I cannot possibly be Japanese. I then pointed out to him that there are plenty of places in Russia where people can look Far East Asian but speak Russian, notably in Siberia which covers all of the area to the north of Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. Ethnically, the people there are north Asian but culturally, they are Russian and are completely Russian speaking. Besides, since I am somewhat mixed, I could also look like the people from Kazakhstan as well and being an ex-Soviet republic, there are still many people from Kazakhstan who speak Russian. Since I don't speak Russian like a native speaker but like a foreigner with an strange accent, it would be far more plausible to guess that I am from somewhere like Kazakhstan: maybe I studied Kazakh language and English at school, but managed to pick up some Russian from my parents who grew up in the Soviet Union - but as I had never studied it formally, I would make mistakes when trying to speak Russian. So then the shop keeper than asked me if I was from Kazakhstan? I said no, I'm not. You know what he asked next? "Итак, вы из Японии?" (So, are you from Japan?)

Where do I begin? I couldn't begin to cure this man's ignorance. But I had to remind myself that I was in a beautiful but poverty stricken armpit of Georgia, where there were very few lucrative jobs and the only people who brought in any hard currency to spend in this impoverished place were the foreign tourists like me. I believe that you should pick a career that suits your talents and skills - so by that token, only those who naturally excel at sales should try to do what this man is doing: sell souvenirs to the tourists. He should know how to approach foreign tourists with charm and establish rapport quickly - clearly, this was something he was utterly hopeless at. This man probably never had much of an education - he clearly spoke Russian well, so he must have grown up in the Soviet era and was educated in Russian rather than Georgian. Yet his knowledge about North and North-East Asia was non-existent and if you're trying to sell to a foreign tourist, then simply yelling the country to think they are from like, "Japan! Japan! Japan!" is a really crass and downright dumb thing to do, but how could I possibly expect an uneducated man like that to have any class, wit or sophistication in his sales technique? Was I the one being unreasonable in looking down on him and having such high standards? I thought he was probably better off working on a farm where he didn't ever have to face a foreigner, but then again, selling food, drinks and souvenirs to tourists would probably earn him far more money to feed his family than working on a farm. I couldn't fix this man, so I decided to leave it and walk away. Was he racist? Nah, not at all - he was just plain stupid. Let's compare him with the famous Cambodian child who is far more successful selling souvenirs to foreigners!

Finally, the last story takes place in the capital Tbilisi where I rented an absolutely gorgeous loft apartment penthouse that was big enough for six people. Sure enough, the place was stunning but the guy who had communicated with me during the booking process was not available the evening I arrived as he had to be in another city. Instead, he sent his colleague to let me into the penthouse and once again, like the guy at the Promete Caves, his colleague and I communicated in Russian and not English. I had already made a down payment for first night's stay and had to pay the balance in cash upon arrival - so this guy wanted to make sure I had enough cash. I told him I had enough, but he added that if I didn't, there was a money changer around the corner. He said something to the effect of, "if you don't have enough Georgian Laris, they will accept your Japanese Yen and give you a good rate." And I thought, sigh, here we go again, this was a slightly more subtle version of the guy at Promete Caves yelling "Japan! Japan! Japan!" I'm not Japanese. I could have gone through the whole lecture again about how it was fucking stupid to assume that I was from Japan since Russian is simply not spoken in Japan at all - heck, even the number of Japanese people who speak English fluently without an accent is tiny. What are your chances of finding a Japanese person who speaks Russian as fluently as I do? Surely it should be blatantly obviously that I am not Japanese but of another nationality? But no, this idiot couldn't get beyond my East Asian facial features. But it was late and I was hungry - I needed dinner, I didn't need to fix his stupidity, so I gave him the money quickly just to get rid of him. Was he racist? Again, I don't think so - he didn't say anything disrespectful about Japanese people; but was he stupid? Yes he was very stupid, I don't suffer fools gladly.

These were just three instances of meeting people who made certain assumptions about my skin colour in Georgia and to be honest, I wasn't surprised it didn't happen more often. I suppose it is hard to get angry with the souvenir shop owner who yelled "Japan! Japan! Japan!" because he was probably desperate to sell something - it was a freezing cold day in January and there just weren't that many tourists around that day, so he was desperately trying to make a sale to feed his family but he didn't know how else to attract my attention. His intention was never to offend or upset me - no, rather he was very desperate to talk to me and befriend me, yet he simply didn't have the necessary social skills to do so. And of course, the reverse could happen as well - white people traveling around in places like China, Korea and Japan get subjected to all kinds of racist abuse as well and I witnessed a lot of that last year when I visited a business event in Shenzhen with an Australian trade delegation - boy, the amount of racist abuse that the white Australians receive at the hands of the Chinese was pretty unreal. But of course, unless they spoke any Mandarin, they wouldn't know just how they were being insulted and they were blissfully oblivious to the racism they were facing. And to be fair, I don't think I encountered any blatant racism at all when I was in Georgia - nonetheless, I certainly encountered a lot of incompetence, rude people, terrible customer service and most of all, sheer stupidity but of course, none of that is the same as racism.

I am back now in London, back in my work routine of course. I am thankfully spared from having to deal with stupid people and my daily routine is pretty predictable as it revolves around work and gymnastics. I know whom my management are, whom my colleagues are, whom my clients are - we work in financial services, so we are highly unlikely to encounter people who are extremely stupid. Likewise when I am at gymnastics, I actually have a choice as to whom I talk to: so there are people I get along with and like, I will spend a lot of time being sociable with them. Then if there's this woman who's kinda weird and socially awkward, I will simply keep my distance and avoid her - that's perfectly fine, I just choose not to speak to her. I don't go out to places where I am likely to speak to complete strangers the way I had to when I was in Georgia. In fact when I was in Georgia, a lot of time, I had to speak to the locals when I had to figure out the best way to get from A to B as I didn't understand how the local public transport system worked - but in London, I know the system very well and if I needed to check anything (like the train schedule), I'd just take out my phone and look it up online rather than ask someone because all they will do is look it up on their phones anyway. So no, in London, I have somehow managed to ensure that I rarely ever have to deal with strangers and that minimizes the chances of me having to deal with someone who is extremely stupid. The randomness of the way I met people in Georgia whilst traveling the country did increase the chances of me running into stupid people but please don't get me wrong, I did meet loads of lovely, friendly and very intelligent people in Georgia as well through this very same process.

So there you go, that's it from me on this issue. What do you think? Is there a difference between incompetence and stupidity? After all, incompetence often stems from stupidity, but it can also stem from simply not giving a fuck. Why do idiotic white people think they will impress us Asian by doing shit like shouting "Japan! Japan! Japan!"? Would you be offended if someone did that to you? Are there Asian people dumb enough to do the same thing by yelling something like, "America, America, America!" when they see a fat, badly dressed white tourist? And why do so many people think I am Japanese? Like why do they go for Japanese when they could have gone for any other kind of Asian? Have you ever encountered true racism when traveling? Leave a comment below, let me know what your thoughts. Thanks for reading.