Time Talks, with an Accent by Robert Levine and Peruvian culture

Time Talks, with an Accent by Robert Levine The text is about the big difference between the perception of time among people from Brazil and the perception of time among people to New York. Levine is a social psychologist that went to gave classes in Brazil. On his first day of class, he realized that Brazilian people are usually late in their classes and appointments, and sometimes they can arrive up to a half an hour late. They usually think that other people could understand without problems the delay. But Levine was shocked with Brazilians sense of time because he was taught since he was a child to do things fast and arrive on time to his appointments. In Levines city people always are on time or at least thats what they are taught at an early age. Punctuality is an important value in his life. As you can see, the perception of time is totally the opposite between these two cultures. Peruvians dont usually do the thing at the time that they said, but later, and time is flexible too but not too much like in Brazil. In classes and sometimes in formal situations, People can arrive 15 minutes or 30 minutes late and every Peruvian person can understand why. But arriving a half and an hour late could be taken as bad manners or a sign of disrespect. At a party, its totally different because its acceptable to arrive from an hour until 3 hours late. Thats why nobody wants to arrive early and wait until people start to dance and enjoy the party. They prefer to arrive when the party is animated and everybody is dancing and laughing. That also happens in childrens parties. For example, on invitations it says that the party is going to start at 5pm, but at that time there are just the parents and family of the birthday boy or girl. Almost everybody starts to come an hour late and the party usually starts at 7pm. Its probably that Levine became crazy or frustrated if he decided to have a party in Peru and he didnt know what the times rule of parties is.