Is there any problem...?

[three]

Tangent: I wasn't saying you were xenophobic, which is why I specifically stated that you consider the appearance of the statements. Everyone reads things in different ways and I just wanted to make sure nobody's toes got stepped on.

I understand thinking the posts were unusual and understand your curiosity. As someone who is part of one of the communities I mentioned, my red flags went up when I read the posts - and out of concern that others who are also members of those communities might think the same thing, I just wanted to make sure the issue was addressed.

I also understand the curiosity and will post the translation as soon as I get it. Thanks.

[Wahine]

I am curious but I also think that this is innocent. My thoughts were that, yes this fella is asking some questions that are unusual for someone with 15 years cycling experience but if he is from an Arabic country than could explain it. I doubt that he would have as ready access to cycling information as we do, or as many people to interact with and it would be very intimidating for someone in his situation to post on another cycling forum. And whatever information he is getting could be very different from what most of us seem to think of as common knowledge in our cultural context.

I also think it's very interesting that we don't have someone on the board that speaks Arabic, at least not anyone who's come forward yet. It's surprising to me seeing as we have so many other languages represented here.

[maillotpois]

My concern, in my first post to this poster is - if you have something you want to ask of the TE folks, give us a bit of background with which to work. How long have you been riding, etc.?

Arabic or Chinese or whatever. Bottom line is we just don't know what it all refers to. (If it were French or Spanish we could figure it out.)

[Possegal]

since i'm nearly always on my work computer, and it is a govt computer, i tend to only click a link if i'm certain i know where it is taking me. trust me, i've learned the lesson the hard way and hopefully the IT folks don't bat an eye if you flash on a porn site and then close it quickly.

but i asked a friend of mine what the words that are the links meant and he said the first one is "movies or film" the second one is "message" and the third one is "links". not sure if that helps at all, but since he's a co-worker, i'm not going to ask him to click on the links either. though he and another arabic co-worker felt certain none of it said 'porn'.

[RoadRaven]

Well, it is interesting to come back in after a couple of days and see how this thread has developed...

If I was Shaun, I wouldn't be back to even bother explaining myself.

I know two females with the same name and spelling as Shaun...

And what if Shaun's 15 years was since Shaun was 5?

What if Shaun has no idea about how cats work and was being overly optimistic?

And so what about the Arabic writing - yes it will be interesting to know what it means, but I have not clicked on many member's links in their sigs... no time on dial-up, so I have only "investigated" a handful of these links. And what would this mean about my friend's with tattoos of Asian or Arabic or Celtic symbols???

I see Shaun doesn't appear to have been back... so? We have lots of people who pop in make a handful of posts and never come back - and lots of people who never post in the getting to know you thread... I guess Shaun will fall into this category too.

No judgement in this post of any of us - just interested observations