Global Moment, I

Ok, I’m officially freaking out.

As some of you might recall, this term I have been very much focusing on understanding globalization. In fact, I’m currently sitting here at the LSE library trying to write a 5,000 word essay on the topic: IS THE CONCEPT OF ‘CULTURE’ STILL ANALYTICALLY USEFUL IN AN AGE DOMINATED BY GLOBAL FLOWS?

When it comes to writing, I’m one of those people who has to have an introduction set before I can write the rest of the paper. Once I’ve got the introduction down, everything else comes naturally. Of course conversely, if I can’t nail the intro, then the rest of the paper doesn’t come.

In this case I’ve gone through three different iterations of my introduction and am about to endeavour on my fourth because of an experience I just had.

My third introduction started with a look a the typical construction of globalization: McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and CNN. As such, I wanted to make sure I had the names right (ie is there a dash between coca and cola?), so I went to their corporate websites just to check. Chez McDo I was directed first to their international site where I started playing around. I was trying to figure out in how many countries they operate, so I went to their drop-down list and started counting (very scientific, I know). I started at the bottom and the first (last) entry immediately caught my eye: Yugoslavia.

‘That’s weird,’ I thought to myself, ‘Yugoslavia isn’t technically a country anymore.’ And so, I instinctively clicked through to explore further. Lo and behold, the website URL was www.mcdonalds.co.yu. The .yu clearly referring to Yugoslavia.

‘Perhaps it’s Serbian, they might still consider themselves the seat of what remains of Yugoslavia,’ I thought as I clicked to open the flash site.

The flash player loaded and I was confronted with Roman script which surprised me a bit as Serbo-Croatian, while essentially the same language is written in Cyrillic characters in Serbia and Roman characters in Croatia.

‘Maybe by Yugoslavia they mean Croatia then, or maybe it’s just easier to operate in Roman script in an international company.’

A notice at the top of the page caught my eye. “Novosti,” it announced. Now I’m no speaker of Serbo-Croatian, but I my skills of deduction were working well enough to associate “novo” with “Novograd” in Russia, which I knew meant “new city.”

‘Ok, so what’s new?’

Branislav Knežević (40) novi predsednik McDonald’sovog zapadno evropskog regiona.

Alright, some guy named new regional president of McDonald’s.

‘Wait, does that say Branislav Knežević?! Knežević like Knezovich? My last name?’

And then I proceeded to quietly freak out.

Apparently some guy I’m at least somehow related to is the new president for McDonald’s in “Yugoslavia.” Now, if my last name was Smith or Chan, I might be less inclined to find this a bizarre event, but given the rather uniqueness of my last name, it just really seemed like a small world kinda moment.

Here’s his picture next to mine. Whaddya think? Do we look Knezovichy?




Creepy. Creepy. Creepy!