News of the Weird
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
News of the Weird has previously mentioned how difficult some Japanese and Singaporean people find it to smile, even when their jobs depend on it, and Chinese people preparing for the 2008 Olympics are having similar problems turning Beijing into a “city of smiles,” as the campaign is called. Said one man attending a class on smiling: “At first, I thought (it might be) difficult to smile after you became tired. But later I realized if you don’t treat smiling as … work … you may find it very easy to smile all the time.” (In popular literature in China, people who smile frequently or for no particular reason are often regarded as either silly or devious.) [China Daily, 11-24-06] Retired ad agency executive James Finegan, 76, plays at least 250 rounds of golf a year at a course near his home in Gladwyne, Pa., and 50 to 60 rounds elsewhere, according to an October Wall Street Journal profile. When not playing golf, he writes books about golf (histories of golf in Philadelphia and of a course in New Jersey, and four books about golf in the British Isles).
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD