meself, the problem/challenge with and the interesting thing about posting on an internetional discussion forum is that sometimes what is witty or funny in one culture/nation is understood differently or not understood at all in another culture and thus isn't considered to be witty or funny.

Maybe a case in point-were you serious or cracking a joke when you wrote that "(I hear that now they've even begun to spell 'doughnut' as 'donut'!!)?

I thought the "standard" spelling for "donut" was "donut".

??

Also, I'm curious, do people in Europe [still] use the referent "Oriental" to refer to Asian people? And if so, which people is that word used to refer to? [yeah, I know it's bad English to end a sentence with a preposition, but hopefully you know what I'm saying]

Also, meself, when you said that "On another matter - the relative 'success of Orientals'. Azizi's post on the subject is very insightful", were you referring to the article I posted or my theory about the importance of Asians having never bought the meme from White people that they {Asians} were inferior, and that Asians had/have a strong sense of group esteem because they know that they are connected to a specific nation and culture?