It occurred to me recently that I know people from a lot of countries (naturally, it's because I'm an academic) and I was wondering precisely how many. I have an alphabetical list of countries in front of me.
In writing this list, I'm only going to define a first-degree connection as including people I've met and for whom I can identify what country they're from. (I'm sure I'd be able to add a couple from situations where I happen not to know or where I've forgotten. For example, there are some countries from which I believe I know someone, but I can't remember who it was. I haven't counted any of these. Actually, this is definitely true because I can get some countries down to being someone in a subset of N particular people I know, but it's not fair to list if I can't figure out who it was. I think I may easily be missing 10 countries from my faulty memory. I'm also missing a few because I can't remember the particular eastern European country of origin for several people.) People from relevant countries who are now dead can be legally listed.
Your job is to fill in countries from people you know that are missing from this list.
Anyway, here goes:
1. Albania
2. Argentina (my father, for one)
3. Armenia
4. Australia
5. Bangladesh
6. Belgium
7. Bosnia
8. Canada
9. Chile
10. China
11. Colombia
12. Costa Rica
13. Czechoslovakia (and related)
14. Denmark
15. Egpyt
16. El Salvador
17. Germany
18. Greece
19. Haiti
20. Hungry
21. Iceland
22. India
23. Iran (about 60% of the students from my high school)
24. Ireland
25. Israel
26. Italy
27. Japan
28. Korea
29. Malaysia
30. Mexico
31. Netherlands
32. New Zealand
33. Pakistan
34. Paraguay
34. Peru
35. Philippines
36. Poland
37. Portugal
38. Puerto Rico (they list this here despite their relation to us)
39. Romania
40. Russia
41. Singapore
42. Spain
43. Sweden
44. Switzerland
45. Taiwan
46. Thailand
47. Trinidad & Tobago
48. Turkey
49. United Kingdom
50. United States
If I used a stronger degree-one definition (such as 'am friends with'), then I probably would go down into the 30s (and possibly into the 20s), but I wanted to make this independent of how easily one forms friendships.
I can add Brazil, France, and South Africa. Overall your list is vastly longer than mine would be though... Did you mean to leave France off your list?
ReplyDeleteI notice oddball subunits are counted, so on that basis I'd also add Hong Kong and the US Virgin Islands. My officemate is a very handy guy for this list, since he was born in Hong Kong, lived in New Zealand in his teens, and went to college in Australia.
Leaving France off the list was definitely an oversight. I know several people from France, and it's at least in high single digits (and may even be in double digits). I probably missed it while reading through the list.
ReplyDeleteBrazil is one of the countries for which I have a nagging suspiscion that I know somebody and am just blanking out. Lloyd's RA from my frosh year might have been from South Africa, but I'm not counting him since I don't remember.