In the United States it is not customary to telephone someone very early in the morning. If you telephone him early in the day, while he is shaving or having breakfast, the time of call shows that the matter is very important and requires immediate attention. The same meaning is attached to telephone calls made after 11:00 p.m. If someone receives a call during sleeping hours, he assumes it is a matter of life or death. The time chosen for the call communicates its importance.
In social life, time plays a very important part. In the United States, guests tend to feel they are not highly regarded if the invitation to a dinner party is extended only three or four days before the party date. But this is not true in all countries. In other areas of the world, it may be considered foolish to make an appointment too far in advance because plans which are made for a date more than a week away tend to be forgotten.
The meanings of time differ in different parts of the world. Thus, misunderstandings arise between people from cultures that treat time differently. Promptness is valued highly in American life, for example. If people are not prompt, they may be regarded as impolite or not fully responsible. In the U.S. no one would think of keeping a business associate waiting for an hour, it would be too impolite. When equals meet, a person who is five minutes late is expected to make a short apology. If he is less than five minutes late, he will say a few words of explanation, though perhaps he will not complete the sentence. To Americans, forty minutes of waiting is the beginning of the "insult period". No matter what is said in apology, there is little that can remove the damage done by an hour’s wait. Yet in some other countries, a forty minutes waiting period was not unusual. Instead of being the very end of the allowable waiting scale, it was just the beginning.
Americans look ahead and are concerned almost entirely with the future. The American idea of the future is limited, however. It is the foreseeable future and not the future of the South Asian, which may involve centuries. Someone has said of the South Asian idea of time: "Time is like a museum with endless halls and rooms. You, the viewer, are walking through the museum in the dark, holding a light to each scene as you pass it. God is in charge of the museum, and only he knows all that is. One lifetime represents one room.
Since time has different meanings in different cultures, communication is often difficult. We will understand each other a little better if we can keep this fact in mind.The sentence "Time is like a museum with endless halls and rooms" refers to______.