In the Germany version of the Office, Stromberg is played by Christoph Maria Herbst. Photo courtesy of the BBC.

Tonight marks the series finale of the US version of “the Office” after 9 seasons. You may have known it started with a version in the UK. But did you know it spread worldwide?

Versions around the world include:

• “Le Bureau” (France)
• “Stromberg” (Germany)
• “La Job (French-Canadian)
• “La Ofis” (Chilean)
• “המשרד” (Israeli)
• “Kontoret” (Swedish)

The foibles and frustrations of office life are more universal than you might think! Check out this BBC article about all the different versions around the world.

Which version of “the Office” was your favorite? And which versions could you watch without subtitles?

Photo Courtesy: http://www.srchoucair.com/

The Culture Trip discusses in a recent feature the current exhibition of the work of Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair at London’s Tate Modern.  Born in Beirut in 1916, Choucair is considered Lebanon’s first abstract artist.  An important figure in the Arab art world, she is now receiving international recognition after more than five decades of artistic production.  The Tate Modern exhibition is the first major collection of her works.  

The Culture Trip feature summarizes Choucair’s intellectual influences and the rationale behind her artistic decisions:

“Throughout her career as an artist, Choucair has consistently expressed a passion for Islamic geometric art and has always emphasised her rational way of thinking, having long been interested in arithmetics and rejecting any adjectival notions in her works. Using principles from Sufism, science and mathematics across all of her projects, her paintings of gouache and oil on canvas can be seen to show an influence from early Western 20th Century European art, as she explores the regular use of simple geometric shapes and the influence of colour upon the viewer’s perspective.”  

Choucair is still actively creating artwork and resides in her home city.  The Tate Modern exhibition will go on through October 20, 2013.

I have been interested in learning Chinese since I was about 16. I was lucky enough to have a world affairs history teacher in high school who focused on the impact of the rise of China and the other East Asian economies for an entire quarter, and it piqued my curiosity. Two years later, as a senior, I took an East Asian history and culture class, and that got me into Chinese history and culture as well.

Like a lot of people, I started formally studying Chinese in college, but never had quite the time to devote to it that I wish I had. I have been studying it off and on in the 8 years since. My basic fluency improved a lot during the year I spent in Beijing right after college, but I like to take courses here and there to refresh what I know.

I have been involved in GLN as a student for about two and a half years, now. I heard about GLN from a friend at GW, and it sounded like a good way to keep working on my Chinese while in grad school. I really liked the classes, and at the suggestion of one of my classmates, who was a director himself, I applied to be the Director of Teacher Support. I have been in that position for about 8 months, and it’s been a fantastic experience. I’ve met some of my best friends through working for GLN.

My favorite word in a foreign language is naturally from Chinese. It’s “马马虎虎/mama huhu”, which literally translated, means “horse-horse tiger-tiger.” Somehow, this phrase means “so-so,” as in “my Chinese is so-so.” One explanation I’ve heard is that you are saying that something is neither a horse nor a tiger, it is somewhere in-between. It is apparently an intensely colloquial phrase, and while I was in Beijing, locals always found it quite odd to hear a laowai like myself using it.