Information Overload

On the website of the Dutch travel TV program 3 op Reis I’ve recently started watching all the episodes I’ve missed since the start of the program. The program captured my interest since I zapped to it accidentally a few weeks ago. Right now I’m at episode fifteen of the first season, of five seasons with 110 episodes in total so far. In the first season the presenter Floortje Dessing makes a long journey from Amsterdam to Bhutan through Europe and Asia. When she leaves Europe and Asia I notice that the population is much more hospitable to her. When she leaves Ukraine and arrives in Georgia, she is given breads for free by a baker. Later in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and and especially Iran she receives gifts and is invited for dinner or parties even more often. Of course I’ve merely seen fifteen episodes of the first season and a few more of the last season of only one travel program so far, but I detect a general tendency that some Asian cultures are much more hospitable than Western cultures. The question if that is indeed the case prompted me to write this post.

From my personal experience I remember when I was on vacation with my family in the west of the USA, in Zion National Park. When we stopped our car along the road in the middle of nowhere to enjoy the scenery, two cars drove by. Both stopped, with one driver taking our photo because he noticed us taking photos and another driver because he was concerned our car might have broken down. But I’ve experienced generous hospitality even more in Nepal: I was invited to weddings and dinners often and I was even given a place to sleep for free in a private home by Uttam and Meena. But, being such a rational person I’m not going to trust my and other’s anecdotal evidence alone, so I fired up Google Scholar. It was a bit difficult to find studies on the subject because unrefined and even more refined search terms return articles on the hospitality industry, but after filtering I read two interesting articles.

In a study of the hospitality of the Jordanian Balga Bedouin, Shryock (2004) writes that for these (formerly) nomadic people, hospitality was/is a means of public security. They are hospitable to strangers because they might one day be strangers themselves in need of hospitality when they have traveled for a long distance and are in need of food and a place to sleep. It is like a tax they voluntarily accept from each other, comparable to the Golden Rule they treat others how they would like to be treated themselves. Yet, the hospitality in its purest form is disappearing because now there is a government which imposes taxes and provides social security, among other influences of modernization. In the past hospitality served as a substitute for government (p. 48–51). But still, hospitality has it’s uses. Hospitality should impress your guests who will then spread the word about your hospitality, increasing your reputation (p. 36–37). A greater reputation gives you fame and influence. (p. 54-–55). While Shryock’s article is behind a paywall, you can read a shorter news article explaining his findings more briefly.

Lashley (2008) combines multiple social science perspectives to explain hospitality. He describes a common theme of religious and cultural factors as motives for hospitality (p. 71–72). In the studies he cites reciprocity is a red thread. What is very interesting is how people from a remote tribe in Indonesia invite tourists to their celebrations, even though the tourists are not able to offer reciprocal hospitality (because tourists stay for only a short time). They do not feel there is a lack of reciprocity however, because tourists bring news from the outside world and feel honored by the presence of tourists (p. 74). But there is also much discussion about what genuine hospitality is. Another scientist is cited who argues that genuine hospitality is fueled by altruism, which includes the following motives (p. 75):

• the desire to please others, stemming from general friendliness and benevolence or from affection for particular people; concern or compassion;
• the desire to meet another’s need;
• a desire to entertain one’s friends or to help those in trouble;
• a desire to have company or to make friends, and the desire for the pleasures of entertaining – what we may call the wish to entertain as a pastime.

The paper ends with a conclusion mentioning that cultural and religious obligations to be hospitable no longer have a weaker moral force in mature industrialized societies (p. 83).

I think the hospitality given to me by Uttam and Meena definitely falls in the category of genuine hospitality. Since then I’ve had a desire to offer them hospitality in return, but that’s not realistic because it’s unlikely I will meet them again in the near future. I probably have done something in return for their hospitality already by doing volunteer work in their country and helping Meena with teaching English. But if I can’t offer it to them, I can offer it to others. As soon as I’ll move out of my parent’s house (maybe this year or the next) and get my own place to live, I intend to sign up for CouchSurfing so I can provide others with hospitality.

References:

Lashley, C. (2008). Studying hospitality: Insights from social sciences. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 8(1), 69–84.
Shryock, A. (2004). The new Jordanian hospitality: House, host, and guest in the culture of public display. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 46(1), 35–62.

Since I’ve seen a Dutch news report on Siberian winters last Friday I have been fascinated by how some (or many?) people in cold environments can adapt to very low temperatures. In the news report they cover ice fishing on the Ob river near Barnaul. Let me translate it for those who don’t know Dutch.

Reporter: it is -27 ℃, the ice one and half meters thick. But the Siberians here don’t think it’s cold at all, it is ‘just’ -27 ℃, they say.

Siberian: what do you mean, cold? I don’t even have my jacket on. Are you making a joke? It is warm today, it’s not cold at all! We think it’s cold when it’s -42 ℃, -25 ℃ is warm and if it’s -15 ℃ it is so warm that it isn’t interesting to come any more. Then it’s like summer.

Reporter: tents provide some protection against the cold, but seasoned Siberians like Aleksandr don’t even need those.

Aleksandr: why would I need a tent? The sun shines! Today it’s extremely hot, it’s beautiful, it’s a delight to sit here.

Both Siberians which are interviewed are ice fishing without any gloves on, with their bare hands. The comment about -27 ℃ being extremely hot seems like hyperbole to me, because the average high for Barnaul in July is 26,2 ℃ according to Wikipedia. But they’re not bragging if they have no qualms about exposing their bare hands in that low temperature. The Wikipedia article on frostbite mentions that some individuals and population groups are more resistant to frostbite because of their adaptation and exposure to very cold environments. Curious as I was, I decided to fire up Google Scholar to learn more.

A more recent article by Daanen (2003) which is cited often gives a review on cold-induced vasodilation (CIVD). I noticed this term doesn’t have an article on Wikipedia yet so I hope to write one in the near future myself. When the finger tips are exposed to cold CIVD usually occurs after five or ten minutes and is believed to reduce the risk of injuries from cold exposure. People who are often exposed to local cold such as fish filleters develop an increased CIVD response with an earlier onset, and race (along with many other factors) also plays a role with black people having the weakest CIVD response. Further on in the article adaptation and acclimatisation are elaborated on, with a large table showing the large differences in CIVD obtained from many prior experiments.

However, the notion that black people would have an inherently inferior CIVD response as the introduction of the article seems to indicate is put into perspective at that point. One experiment showed that tropical residents who lived in an Arctic region for seven weeks acclimatized and showed the same CIVD response as the Arctic natives. Caucasians had a lower CIVD response than Japanese, but when the Japanese were compared with Caucasians living in the same region in Japan there was no difference. Therefore the conclusion is that ambient factors such as acclimatisation and diet may be more important than ethnic differences. The article concludes that while it is difficult to distinguish between the effect of adaptation and acclimatisation, people born in cold regions and people who expose their hands to cold for a prolonged period of time have an increased CIVD response.

We had some very cold weather in the Netherlands for the last weeks, see this graph with the grey line showing the normal average temperature for February and the blue and red line showing minimum and maximum temperature respectively. After witnessing the Siberians on the news I thought I should be able to handle the cold without gloves too, but it was not an easy ordeal. Let’s take last Monday for example, February the 6th. According to the graph the minimum temperature was -15 ℃ and the maximum -3 ℃. That day started with me going to the bus stop. Without gloves my hands felt cold and painful initially but after approximately ten minutes the pain went away and I regained the sensation in my fingers. However, later I had to wait at Utrecht Central Station and Rotterdam Central Station for delayed trains. As such, after my hands had warmed up in the bus they had to cool down again two times. These subsequent periods were much more painful for my hands and my CIVD response seemed to take a lot longer to kick in.

It seems like I still have a long way to go until I can compete with the Siberians, and right now it looks we’re going to see warmer weather in the Netherlands for the rest of the winter, without temperatures below freezing during the day. Not that I expected that increasing my acclimatisation would be easy. But even if the freezing temperatures are going away, there still is another solution, winter swimming.

Yesterday I watched the short documentary The Ice Tribe on YouTube, which shows ordinary Finnish people enjoying ice swimming. That’s winter swimming in a hole in the ice, in this case with a water temperature of 0 ℃. There are more video’s on YouTube showing this, for example a Estonian women even dives under the ice without too much discomfort. These persons do seem to have some experience which enables them to endure the cold water for at least one minute, because other videos show inexperienced people quickly leaving the water within ten seconds. And I was thinking only supernatural persons like our Wim Hof, the Dutch Iceman, could pull off feats like that.

What is notable is that the ice swimmers in the documentary describe ice swimming as a great experience. Some scientific research has been done on the benefits of winter swimming, with the consensus being that it indeed provides physical and psychological benefits. In their introduction Siems, Brenke, Sommerburg and Grune (1999) argue that we have effectively become weaklings thanks to our modern Western society because we protect ourselves so well from cold and heat stresses with heating and air conditioning. This sounds very familiar to me, with my sister and brother who are eager to turn up the heating to 21 ℃ with the recent cold temperatures here.

This absence of cold and heat stress is suggested to have led to a greater incidence of disease. These negative consequences can be partly prevented by exercise and body hardening, with cold exposure being a traditional example of hardening. They report that previous studies have revealed that winter swimmers contract infectious diseases much less often. They researched experienced winter swimmers who swim at least once per week in ice-cold water for about five, but not more than ten, minutes. Their research concludes that winter swimmers have a better defence system against oxidative stress than the Average Joe. Similarly, Huttunen, Kokko and Ylijukur (2004) also conclude from their experiment that winter swimming significantly improves general well-being.

So, if both anecdotal and scientific evidence says it’s good I want to start doing it too. There are several large bodies of water in my neighbourhood which are suitable for swimming, but I think it’s too much trouble to make a short trip to go winter swimming. I could fill the hot tub in the garden without heating it up, but this is also troublesome for me because a hot tub needs a lot of water before it’s filled and it needs to be cleaned because it’s exposed outside. What seems like a better idea to me are cold showers. This alternative is easy, saves water and saves gas for heating. With the current temperatures I like standing in the shower for a long time with very warm water. Today I’ve taken a shower with lukewarm water without any discomfort, and plan to lower the temperature each time for successive showers until the water doesn’t get heated at all. Unheated water from a water pipe is probably not 0 ℃ even in the winter here, but it should do. Maybe I’ll switch to hot water for a minute to finish off, but from now on I’ll be taking ‘winter’ showers and doing myself, my father’s wallet and the environment a favour.

References:

Daanen, H.A.M. (2003). Finger cold-induced vasodilation: A review.  European Journal of Applied Physiology, 89(5), 411–426.
Huttunen, P., L. Kokko and V. Ylijukur (2004). Winter swimming improves general well-being. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 63(2), 140–144.
Siems, W.G., R. Brenke, O. Sommerburg and T. Grune (1999). Improved antioxidative protection in winter swimmers. QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, 92(4), 193–198.