Informalidad

Let me start with something nice. Here's the view of the Avila mountain from Ecoanalitica office:

And now to serious business. My time in Venezuela is unfortunately limited, thus I don't have much time left. On Wednesday I'm flying to Curacao. For everyone concerned about my life - I finally got to find a place to stay on this island through Couchsurfing, so I'm not going to be hanging out at the airport for 20 hours!

But let me focus on what is the most important thing from the point of view of this post: informality. Venezuela is a very informal state. What I mean by that is:

- almost everybody uses a "tutoyer" when talking to someone else. It's not something known in English, so I'll explain. In Spanish, as well as in Polish, you can either say "you" in a sense of the second person ("tu"), or "you" in the sense of "sir" or "madam" (third person, "Usted"). So what they are doing is they're using "tu" to almost everybody, it's common to say "tu" to your boss (even if he or she doesn't give you a permission) or anyone you've just met. It surprised me a lot that everybody that is at least a bit older than I am uses "tu" in my direction, I always respond with "Usted";

- pointing to people with your fingers is common and quite popular, as well as a physical contact. It's not as obnoxious as in the Balkans, but still more common than in Poland;

- the clothes people wear e.g. for the TV are almost universally informal clothes (you rarely see a person in a suit or outfit), only some people in the offices are dressed formally;

- most informality you can see in the streets; lanes don't matter, hardly anyone uses the direction lights and the horn is always in use.

Something that is not connected to informality, but rather strange and funny, is the habit Venezuelans have to form queues for everything. What I mean by that - if there are more than 10 people in a metro station, they start to form queues for assumed metro doors; if there are at least 5 people at a bus stop, they also form a queue. Which doesn't happen on bus stops, but does in the metro, is that when the train actually comes, everyone suddenly forgets he was in a queue and starts to push to the front as hard as he can. :)))

Sometimes the queues have a point - like in this photo. A queue to a SENIAT building - people waiting for their pensions and other social benefits:

I filmed a very nice situation, to show you how one fills up a car in Venezuela - but unfortunately the film is 109 MB and the site won't permit me to upload it :/.

Nevertheless, I hope I stopped your attention for a while, though. Buenas noches!

P.S. there's no water at my place, I have the runs (I don't know what have I eaten), and today in the morning there were queues in front of gas stations. That pretty much sums this country, doesn't it? ;)