The "Aussies"

... or the english-speaking countries in general? I made a request at greenfleet - an organisation I found out about on Natalija´s blog. You can register your (australian) car at greenfleet and they plant native trees for you / the emissions your car produces. I asked if they know of a similar organisation in other countries (No). If I had made that request to a german organisation the answer would have started like this:

"Dear Mrs. $name$,
..."
(Sehr geehrte Frau $Name$,...)

Here it was simply "Hi Iris,...."

I remember 1999 in Perth in the Kingsway Caravan Park. I needed to ckeck if the cd-rom with my diploma made it through the heat of the outback and the manager said, hey, check Lee´s place, he´s got a computer in his cabin. I adressed him with "Mr. Lee" and he laughed his head off... certainly.

Same as an architect I looked for a job at. He introduced himself as Tony, handed me his business card on the run and said, "call me".
I thought I cannot call in and say, "hey, I´d like to talk to Tony" and his real Name was rather complicated for me (how do you pronounce "Rechichi" properly if you are from another country and never heard that name?) I went through the caravan park and asked others and got so many versions of the name. Tony himself kept introducing himself as Tony and had a long talk with me; even said he probably can offer me a job ("luckily" this was too far in the future and I ended up in the IT-business).

Well. All I wanted to state here: I think it´s refreshing to adress people with their first name, even if you don´t know them. Here it is often seen as unrespectful, but I think that´s an old-fashioned kind of view.