social dilemmas

I have a couple of social dilemmas that I want to share with you and I don't want to Formspring because there are retards who either like misinterpreting information or actually do not make logical deductions :L

1) When you get a gift that you don't really need.
I think there are a couple of factors that come together
a. What relation this person is to you
b. The cost of the present
c. On what occasion this present was gifted to you.


What brought this up was that my cousin + her boyfriend brought/bought (both apply omfg!) iPod nanos for me and my brother. As you may know, I own an iPod touch 3 and now an iPhone. My brother has a iPod touch 4.
If we were by ourselves, we woud never gawk at a Nano on display and say "WE NEED THIS" because an iPod touch can do everything a Nano can except "be small".

But seeing as they're like the only Gen Y's in our area of extended family with which we interact with, option a. is greatly filled. Next, an iPod nano in China costs... 900RMB? Which comes in between 50-100 hours of work for an average wage. But it's okay I think my cousin's boyfriend comes from a very affluent family. There is also the added factor that they brought it all the way from China, and that they'll be spending time with us and it'd be awkies if they just remained unopened.

For this particular conundrum, we started off by giving thankyou's profusely like all Asian kids to are forced to by their parents. I did indeed open it, and found its pedometer function quite fun in a trivial way. It's amazingly accurate. And I like how the interface is still so slick even though its screen is stupidly small and still touch. Plus it's like <30g which is very convenient. The clip is good for being a poser.

2) Being a guest and trying to help
Nextly - as houseguests, how do you help? It's a weird topic. How much should you do, when do you start, and how do you insist?
It's customary(?) to offer to help around the house as a guest. Think for Asians it's respectable to steal the jobs from under their noses to prove how willing you are to be a maid[citation needed].
This isn't something that applies to our household but it's a more compelling sccenario than anything I can recall anecdotally - let's say as a houseguest you offer to do the dishes because you've been there a week already. So you wash it, use dishwashing liquid, and leave it on the rack to dry.
The hosts, however, out of habit, prefer that you use the towel to wipe down the plates before you put them on the rack. There is no disadvantage of air-drying, but out of sheer habit the hosts feel uncomfortable seeing the plates slowly drip into the sink.
It's weird to say "thanks for doing the dishes, but please wipe them down", because you didn't ask them to do it, they did it out of good intentions. It's also weird to go in afterwards and do it yourself, as if to mock their work.

The only solution is to steal the job from their noses again, under the guise of "you're the guest, you're not working", as opposed to "you cannot do this properly".

3) Being a houseguest and spotting a terrible habit.
Okay another quickly invented scenario - lets say at home I really need coasters because watermarks are hideous.
I, as a guest, am invited to a friend's new house. He has new furniture too! He invites me for a drink, pours me an ice-cold beverage, and sets it down on the table. No coasters are in sight. A bead of sweat trickles down my forehead as the condensation trickles down the glass. I ask for a coaster but he says he doesn't believe in them. I diligently wipe up my water ring after I am done, but notice that my friend does not. He leaves the water there. Horrible images of watermarks flash into my brain, but I bite my tongue - is it my place to criticise how he treats his own furniture?


Food for thought. I don't know if all these follow logical or grammatical sense, so please tell me. This was done late :L