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Some of the things listed are very specific to recently built up wealthy suburbs in the DMV area. There's plenty of fat grumpy people living in un-air-conditioned apartments with doorbells, curtains, tile floors and single handle faucets.
What a fun read! I've never been to India but it's fun to infer what the reverse culture shock would be for me from the points here. Like, can you not sit on the grass at a university there?
Argentina was the biggest shock for me as an Australian:
They dont do sugar in cafe's they do artificial sweeteners, and on top of that they dont do them in 1 tsp measures but 2 tsp measures.
They have LOTS of chocolates shops.
They really like Beef and sushi
Their restaurants don't start opening up until 9 or 10pm
Their police roam the streets in full Tac gear with auto rifles and their lights are on ALL THE TIME.
Their roads are lined, but they don't seem to pay attention to the lines. A 4 lane road with have 5 or 6 cars wide travelling along it.
The gutters are deep...
Some of their architecture is brutality and others are quite beautiful.
Hey, as another Indian immigrant here I do want to say that most of these observations are spot on. There's a couple of things in there that are just correlated to the fact that the author is around young/wealthy people, like the low obesity rate, fancy cars, shirtless dudes, book-reading in public. I had quite a surprise when I started working at a smaller town and consistently started seeing older and grumpier peop…
> There's a couple of things in there that are just correlated to the fact that the author is around young/wealthy people, like the low obesity rate, fancy cars, shirtless dudes, book-reading in public. I mean, he was on a university campus, so fit young people reading books isn't that much of a surprise. But I agree with you, US is a nation of extremes in some ways. There are places I've been in the US where quite l…
What a fun read! I've never been to India but it's fun to infer what the reverse culture shock would be for me from the points here. Like, can you not sit on the grass at a university there?
I'm interested in the apparent intolerance of shirtless men, I didn't realize that was a thing.
India has certain public decency laws which prohibits exposure (not sure if shirtless would qualify), PDA, etc.
India is also famously not one of the fitter countries - so it's also a matter of body image issues.
> Sugar here is powdered, it doesn’t come in tiny cubes like I’m used to. It’s very easy to confuse salt and sugar (as I have done) because they look exactly the same. Made me snort. I grew up here and I've still mindlessly done this. > There’s no kiraana stores (i.e. small local stores) that sell grains and rice and vegetables here, it seems. (Or small stationery shops, or shops of any kind.) Almost all shopping has…
I find this literally to be the exact opposite of the truth. At least in NYC and NJ, these kinds of small stores are everywhere. Because, crucially, we don't have cars to travel to these big box stores and get a months worth of groceries in one go. Within a 5 block radius of me, I have grocery stores that sell Japanese, Greek, Indian, and Hispanic each to cater to the demographic living close.
Driving through the south and midwest, I mostly just saw immensely massive parking lots for Walmart, Dollar Generals, some liquor store, and other common big box markets with an ocean of gleaming SUVs in front of them.
I can walk 5 miles down an avenue and buy groceries from small shops that I don't even know the name of from a dozen different countries.
Interestingly, most of them had built up a lot of preconceived notions about the United States from social media sites like Reddit. Many of those sites project an extremely pessimistic and negative view of the United States, either directly by complaining with hyperbole ("third world country with cell phones") or by simply emphasizing every negative story about the United States.
I have to admit, one of my guilty pleasures was watching people slowly realize that the United States, while not without problems, is actually not a bad place. This comment hit home:
> I know that the US has some of the highest obesity rates in the world, but from what I’ve personally seen, it doesn’t seem that way at all. The people that I see day to day are generally extremely fit. (Or is it just students?)
We talk a lot about America's obesity problems online. So much so that people assume America must be one of the most obese countries by a wide margin. However, when you look at the numbers the United States is only a couple percentage points worse than countries like New Zealand or Canada which have no such reputation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r... ).
Don't get me wrong: Obesity is still a problem and the United States is incrementally worse than most countries. However, the way it's talked about leads a lot of people to believe that the United States is some sort of extreme outlier and nearly everyone they encounter will be obese.
Obesity is just one example of how the internet, especially sites like Reddit, tend to exaggerate the problems of the United States while downplaying the positives of the country. It was always kind of fun to watch visitors and transplants slowly realize that the country, while far from perfect, was actually nowhere near as bad as the dystopia they read about on sites like Reddit.
I wonder where in the D.C. area he is. Many areas around D.C. have an enormous variety of places to go grocery shopping, and there are grocery stores of varying sizes (from tiny to huge) from all sorts of countries - Chinese, Korean, Indian, Filipino, Ethiopian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Iranian, etc. There's also an enormous number of farmers markets, as well as a decent number of boutique grocery stores (though those tend to be on the pricier side of things), independent grocery stores, delis, and seafood markets.
This reminds me of my own culture shock in 2001 where I, a fresh arrival to these blessed shores, was trying to cross a road to enter the local supermarket. The cars _stopped_ when I got near the pavement. That was so unexpected, I thought it was some kind of a catch and they'd try to run me over once I proceed. Then I entered the store and saw 20 (!) types of table salt and other kinds of consumerist excess. It is o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's a couple of things in there that are just correlated to the fact that the author is around young/wealthy people, like the low obesity rate, fancy cars, shirtless dudes, book-reading in public. I mean, he was on a university campus, so fit young people reading books isn't that much of a surprise. But I agree with you, US is a nation of extremes in some ways. There are places I've been in the US where quite l…
As an Indian in the states - my observation was that obesity in the US seems like a class issue. Most well-off folks are fit and working out is woven into their lifestyles. Others can't as they're probably working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet.