ABSTRACT
As scholars, we all travel a lot and visit many a big city in countries all over the world. Although this provides us with exciting opportunities to explore exotic places and unfamiliar cultures, it may also confront us with an unsettling experience every now and then. Most of us know how it feels to get lost in a foreign city-straying into quarters where suddenly danger seems to lurk around every corner and realizing with a shock how useful it would have been to learn some basics of the language so as to be able to decipher the unfamiliar street names. In such a situation, most people would, like me, probably start looking for a local with a sufficiently reassuring face to ask the quickest way to a more familiar spot.
