Costa Rica is regarded as a "polychronic land", where time is not as important as other countries. certain obligations such as class and particular professions require prudency, of course, but in general, time is flippant here. he spoke of the time block theory, which is a concept that i hadn´t heard of before. people regard time in blocks. different cultures have different durations of time equivalent to one block. for example, lets say you were meeting a significant other for dinner. how long would it take for you to start getting anxious, then angry... at what point would you expect an apology... at what point would you expect an explanation.... and so on. interestingly enough, a study has shown that people from the united states have a 5 minute time block. if a date is late, it takes the average american 5 minutes to start wondering....after 10 minutes, an apology is expected, and after 15, the frustration is rising and a full explanation is expected. this of course doesn´t generalize every united states citizen, but i believe it is a good estimate. on the pacific side of costa rica, the time block is one hour. meaning, it would take a full 3 hours for an explanation to be expected if you were late.
so next time your dinner date is late, be aware of your mood and your frustrations...and just relax.
