They Don't Understand Us

Quoted from one of Jakarta Globe's article:

In polite Indonesian language, these are recommendations. In more direct language, these recommendations should be implemented.

This sentences remind me about Malcolm Gladwell's newest book "Outliers" about how airplane accidents happened because of miscommunication between the pilot and the copilot when they came from 2 different countries. And it make sense to me because I see that kind of thing happened at our office a lot, which has expatriates as managers.

So, according to Indonesian polite language, recommendations or suggestions mean that it should be implemented. But according to west people, recommendations mean recommendations.

Because I was born here, shame on me I do that a lot. So we sort of understand what people "mean" when they "say" something different. And whether they actually want something or not, when they say they don't want it.

You see??? It's so complicated, maybe east people [we] should fix their [our] way of communicating things by using words only without too much feeling inside.