Yey, different countries/cultures have different traditions. Film at 11. If you want to be useful, set up a site/wiki that can describe the different traditions in different countries. That would be useful.
http://wikitravel.org/ does a reasonable job of this. Obviously it's difficult explaining the culture of a nation in a few dozen paragraphs, and doubly so on a wiki.
Allow some personal space between you and others in queues and elsewhere.
You will usually find this in such places as cinemas. Generally, unless
people know each other, you will find they will usually choose to fill up
every row of seating and keep as much distance of possible until there is
a requirement to sit directly next to each other. Exceptions are in very
crowded situations where this is impossible, like on the Tube.
That's the case in the US as well. I think it's common courtesy more than anything else. Same reason a man doesn't take the urinal immediately next to another that is being used, unless he has to. It is courteous to give people their personal space so long as it's convenient to do so.
I think you approached this article with a different set of expectations than I had. It felt like a personal essay early on for me. I don't think it's meant to be an empirical distillation of the ways in which a few cultures are different from one another. I found it to be elucidating in the way that a standup comic might be (I recognize the pattern, but never thought of it concretely; e.g., 'Guys always leave the seat up.') Maybe you have a more broad exposure to different cultures than I have.
A wiki on cultural differences is a really good idea, though.
