Whilst gripping anxiously onto the handrail of life…..

I found out the following, hope you find it interesting: The word escalator, which originally referred to a brand of “moving staircase,” was coined by inventor Charles Seeberger, who combined the word elevator with the Latin word for stairs (scala).

However by the 1950s, the term escalator had become so synonymous with moving staircases that the U.S. Patent Office ruled it should fall into the public domain. The Otis Elevator Company, which produced the escalator, subsequently lost its trademark.

Thanks to the escalator we now have the verb “to escalate,” meaning both to “raise something higher” and to “make something worse.”

@Zealandia That's pretty cool considering "escalate" is so commonly used today, as well as de-escalate.
Re brand names, when I first went to the states I asked for a "biro" and got totally blank looks. Biro is widely used in Australia for a ballpoint pen which I found out was actually a brand name, thus the yanks not knowing what the hell I was talking about.
In Thailand a pencil is called a "midt" and a pen a "bakkar" (tonal language, hard to write in English sorry so writing how it sounds to me). It was only years later I realised that "Bakkar" is a Thai accent stuffing up saying "Parker", a very popular and I suspect the first, brand of pen in available in Thailand.

@puff That’s interesting info. Yes, agree, escalate is so commonly used, it’s hard to believe it was originally a brand name. I wouldn’t have picked up on the origin of that term.

Parker pen makes sense in Thailand.

BIC seems to be the common brand here associated with biro.

Can relate to your experience in the USA. I worked in a summer camp there many years ago and caused some consternation when I innocently asked for a rubber for use with a pencil. Nope, you have to say eraser.

I said to one guy that there was a lot of shit in his van, I couldn’t understand at the time why he seemed offended by the comment. In retrospect, there was definitely a cultural misunderstanding going on there.

@Zealandia Luckily you never lost your thongs and started asking around. I asked for an iced coffee in the states also and got a tall glass full of ice with water and coffee only.
My funniest one though was in Laos. Some young entrepreneur opened a flash cafe with proper coffee with cakes on display in Savanaket on the Mekong river; aircon the lot. Was doing a visa run with a mate, ordered coffee and mate asked "Do you have cheese cake?" "Jao." (yes)
When it came out, he got sponge cake with grated cheese on top. Funny as..........but we ate it (had to have a taste).
NB Losing face a big thing in Asia, which means they will never say "I don't know" or "What is that", instead attempt to bluff their way out of it. Supervising over there after giving instructions, I would always ask "Understand?" and they always nod yes, got caught a few times. In the end I made them repeat my instructions back to me so I knew they got it.
Poor guy in Laos had never heard of cheese cake, but at least he gave it a go. We googled it for him.

@puff Yes, am aware of the losing face cultural thing. Cheese cake is funny, at least they tried.

Good strategy to ask to repeat back, must remember that one.

The shop where my sister works, a customer pranged into a boss’s expensive Mercedes car in the car park. Left without telling anyone, apparently the Asian driver was very embarrassed by what she had done. I can’t recall if she called back later.

My mum’s couple of hours per week shopping support worker is Korean, she goes through the shopping list to make sure she understands what’s required before the supermarket run. Fair enough. Samantha, her chosen English name, is better than the previous kiwi one who was useless.

@Zealandia In Thailand if you ask for directions and they don't know, they just tell you any old shit. Have to laugh.

@puff I lived in the UK for a while. Gave the young Chinese couple/uni students in temporary boarding type accommodation our old road atlas since they had a car as well. . The couple seemed mystified by the gift. I later figured out that they probably didn’t know how to use it, since China doesn’t allow maps of the country due to excessive restrictions.

I have no idea how they navigated around, maybe using GPS. Was a while ago, 2003.

There’s a step by step program that can gently and smoothly lower the condition by a level or two.