Time Talk and Walk

In his article “ Time Talk, with an Accent” Robert Levine discusses about culture shock when he lived in Brazil and understand Brazilian people’s habit about time. When he began his scientific journey in his early career as a professor of psychology at Federal University in Niteroi, Brazil and he found the hardest part of his life about punctual time rather than different language, his own privacy, and standards of cleanliness issues.

As it described in article Robert Levine was a young American, that always cling on with timing in every hours, every minutes, and every seconds. He was taught to move fast in every way he did. In fact, Brazil has another thought of time, to slow down and do it later. It started when he lessons began in 10 o’clock, only a few students showed up, and another came late with smiled and relaxed, some of them greeted him with innocent, some of them apologized, some of them just came a minute when class came to end.

At that time, he realized that brazilian timepieces are inaccurate, and it seemed nobody care beside him. Furthermore, time made him to wait about one and half hour when he wanted to see his chefe. Until his chefe called him to come in and chatted for a few minutes because she had to run for another appointment at the same time. Robert Levine learned that she is a type person who like to make a lots of appointment for the same time and to be late for all of them.

Another time case, he had to wait for his appointment with his landlord, he planned to came back after twenty minutes. In fact, he found out the landlord gotten tired of waiting for him. Angry, frustrated, bewildered, and fascinated made him understand about how Brazilians’ beliefs and rules about punctuality. In the end, there are drastic differences from culture to culture, city to city, and neighbor to neighbor. He explained only time can tell those differences.