Un Ratito

So, my buddy Daedal is studying in Greece, and he wrote

dana, in my ethnography class today we got to talking about ecuador and how they used to have the same sense of time as the greeks in that it is event-based rather than time-based. apparently a few years ago the government decided that they were going to change this and make it so that meetings and other various things always started right when they said they'd start. i'm wondering if this was actually successful and if it's changed or if you find that the culture is still event-based instead of time-based like the US? let me know :-). blockquote>

I wrote back,

its really a mix. I also learned about the event based thing, but not in relation to the greeks. I learned about it as a ¨polychronic¨vs ¨monochronic¨which are such totally greek terms. Anyway, so most of western culture is monochronic, but Ecuador +Latin America + ancient greece were polychronic, so they are really into multitasking and not worring about time things, partially due to the fact that there are no seasons, so there´s no real rush to make it through the hard part of the year like there is when you have a winter.

Acutal manifestation of this: the word ¨un ratito¨ is super common. it means ¨in a little bit¨and its totally appropriate to say it to anyone, in a business meeting, on the phone, whatever, and just ignore the other person to do something else. So un ratito is still in effect, but classes, meetings, importatnt stuff starts on time, and my teachers get mad if you arrive late. However, dinners, going out, casual stuff is usually late. Usually things start on time, but end up running over so the second parts start late. Like my friend George came over when he said he would, at nine, but we didn´´t actually go bikining until 945. Its just less stress about time.