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Re: CHAT: various infotaining natlang tidbits

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Friday, June 16, 2000, 2:41
Jonathan Chang wrote:
> Incidently, hardcore Cantonese see European-types as being similarly >monstrous - not just cuz of body hair, facial hair, large size/girth, &
body
>odour (due to eating horrendous amounts of red meat) >>
That's an interesting fact, confirmed by personal experience (I wonder if there's anything scientific to back it up?)-- maybe the absence of dairy, butter, wheat etc. has something to do with it too. My first six weeks in Indonesia, with radical change in diet, I dropped 20 lbs, which have never returned. Despite much sweating, I didn't smell. Oddest (personal confession time), I stopped biting my fingernails..........???(and haven't resumed). Toward the end of my year, I was in the countryside, and noticed that the water-buffalo didn't shy away from me, either. I only recall one Indonesian with BO-- an older Ambonese, Christian, probably ate a Dutch-ified diet?? To be fair, maybe he just didn't bathe that often-- at least twice a day was the norm for most. Maybe bathing with cold (room temp.) water keeps the pores more tightly closed?