Cultural sensitivity

I wrote in a previous post about the French custom of kissing on the cheek when you meet a friend or acquaintance and that there were various customs and cultural rules about who you should kiss and how. Of course you can also use the fact that you are English and not sure about these customs to your advantage. Ian had to engage in some tricky negotiations about his contract last month with his agency. They are based in Belgium and the negotiator is a rather formidable woman who looks a bit like this.

 After some heated discussions they finally came to agreement but there was definitely some tension between them. When the agent visited them all at work last week Ian approached her with firm bize on each cheek and made her very flustered as she obviously couldn't tell whether he was just being a bit culturally naive or trying to take the p*ss!