If Nora the office rabbit is right, it is going to be an exciting evening during the WC2014! To everybody’s surprise the Netherlands will at first get behind Costa Rica – we will be flabbergasted, but get back on our feet and next crush the Costa Ricans. That is if we read the body language of Nora right.

What happened when the carrots with flags arrived? She went for the carrot with the Costa Rican flag and started nibbling away. I looked on in horror, thinking it must be the close resemblance of the flags. She stopped, looked at the flag … and next started chewing the flag! Then she hopped around the carrots and started totally at ease chewing the Dutch-flagged carrot. She did strike once with her whiskers the Costa Rican flag as if she wanted to say sorry and next happily chewed at the Dutch-flagged carrot again.

Wow – if we understood this correctly, we are in for an interesting game tonight. And to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised.
The Costa Rican team is the outsider, the club that nobody had voted for at the start of the World Cup 2014. But this small country with its courteous people has not come this far in the tournament for no reason. They just don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. That is in their cultural DNA. They rather prefer to say ‘maybe’ than a plain ‘no’, even if they know they cannot do something the word ‘no’ is just better avoided. If you compare this with the Dutch culture where the word ‘NO’ is often the standard start of any answer … well then you start to understand the score Nora the Rabbit is predicting. Let’s hope she is right ☺

Nannette Ripmeester
Expertise in Labour Mobility

© Expertise in Labour Mobility B.V. All rights reserved.