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Culture shock

siddhesh.substack.com

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Re: Culture shock

#31

Post by latchkey »

> No toilet jet sprays too, because Americans famously use toilet paper for poop stuff. But my roommate installed one even though it’s not allowed. Don’t tell our landlord.

The infamous "bum gun" in SE Asia.

That's because USA people believe that if they got poop on their hands, wiping it with only paper would clean it off.

Why do you bring up hands?! Well, that is what is left on your ass when you wipe it with paper. I guess you can't see (or smell) it unless you're super flexible, so that makes it ok.

FYI, you can buy and install a simple bum gun in 10 minutes for about $15-20 off Amazon. They are great, I don't even buy TP anymore. Still wet? Use a small towel to dry off.

Re: Culture shock

#32

Post by spullara »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #26
kodah wrote: post #4

> 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…

> There are, just not in big coastal cities. I'm biased, but I generally tell people that big coastal cities are not a proper representation of American cultures vastness. They provide a boxed and abridged experience of a very opinionated nature. Instead, traverse the states and see what each geography has to offer. You'll find those things are still alive in the Midwest and South. I find this literally to be the exa…

100% agree in the SF Bay Area as well. Small stores centered around many cultures from around the world.

Re: Culture shock

#33

Post by uyt »

m0zg wrote: post #3

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…

I didn't realize this was an American thing until I visited another country (Hong Kong, which is very first world) and the truck actually sped up as I was about to cross instead of slowing down. It was like playing a game of chicken.

Re: Culture shock

#34

Post by lotsofpulp »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #27

I worked at a multi-national company that frequently flew people to the United States HQ offices for short visits or sometimes longer stays. For many of the younger developers this was their first direct exposure to the United States. 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…

> 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.

I imagine it is that extreme for people from south or east Asia.

Re: Culture shock

#35

Post by medvezhenok »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #27

I worked at a multi-national company that frequently flew people to the United States HQ offices for short visits or sometimes longer stays. For many of the younger developers this was their first direct exposure to the United States. 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…

Obesity is also not evenly distributed across the U.S. If you look at the rural/urban split it's more prevalent in rural areas[1], and if you look at the city breakdowns, the cities that foreigners are more likely to visit have lower obesity rates across the board [2].

So visiting the top-performing American cities (usually in the Northeast or West coast) understates the level of obesity in the country as a whole by a fair bit.

I had the realization that there are practically two different Americas after I took a road trip through the south after having lived in the Northeast for ~20 years.

[1] https://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-the-public/20180622mmwr-...

[2] https://wallethub.com/edu/fattest-cities-in-america/10532

Re: Culture shock

#36

Post by oh_sigh »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #34
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #27

I worked at a multi-national company that frequently flew people to the United States HQ offices for short visits or sometimes longer stays. For many of the younger developers this was their first direct exposure to the United States. 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…

> 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. I imagine it is that extreme for people from south or east Asia.

Really depends where you go. I grew up in NYC, then moved to SF and then Boulder, and it always shocks me when I see a fat person in my day to day life. But road tripping through Iowa, I see more fat people sitting in a diner than I do my entire year in Boulder.

Re: Culture shock

#37

Post by kodah »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #26
kodah wrote: post #4

> 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…

> There are, just not in big coastal cities. I'm biased, but I generally tell people that big coastal cities are not a proper representation of American cultures vastness. They provide a boxed and abridged experience of a very opinionated nature. Instead, traverse the states and see what each geography has to offer. You'll find those things are still alive in the Midwest and South. I find this literally to be the exa…

> Driving to the south and midwest, I mostly just saw immensely massive parking lots for Walmart, Dollar Generals, some liquor store, and other big box markets.

If you're just driving through, as you stated, and never actually stopped or lived in any of these towns then I'm not surprised you have that impression.

What OP was mentioning is 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.)

What immediately came to my mind was feed stores mixed with a farmers market which there's an abundance of in rural areas. You're not going to find that that in a big city. For reference, I live on the West coast (not in NYC) and we have small grocers, but not specialized little mom and pops or something in-between like a feed store.

Re: Culture shock

#38

Post by yalogin »

bnralt wrote: post #28

> 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 to be done at a big chain retail store like Lidl or Megamart or Target or any of the other big-names. 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 a…

The scale is still no where comparable to India. There they have one on every street corner literally.

Re: Culture shock

#39

Post by throwawaygh »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #27

I worked at a multi-national company that frequently flew people to the United States HQ offices for short visits or sometimes longer stays. For many of the younger developers this was their first direct exposure to the United States. 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…

> a multi-national company that frequently flew people to the United States HQ offices...

> The people that I see day to day are generally extremely fit. (Or is it just students?)

To be fair to your guests, replace "students" with "folks you'll tend to see around the HQ of a multinational / the places those offices tend to be located", and they hit the nail on the head.

The US is interesting because it's a HUUUUGE single market with political power distributed geographically rather than democratically. Have you spent much time in rural MS or WV? There really are huge swaths of the country that, very unfortunately, fit the "third world with cell phones" stereotype. Except actually without real cell phone coverage. And not quite third world because military bases and welfare dollars do a lot to prop up the floor.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that multinational corporate HQ campuses and their surrounding communities definitely aren't Real America (TM)(R).

Re: Culture shock

#40

Post by paleotrope »

soumyadeb wrote: post #13

Another big difference for me was the lack of people around and how empty US was. I came to University of Illinois (UIUC) in the middle of winter (was starting grad school in spring). Granted UIUC is in a small town but still it was a campus town and yet I probably saw 50 people in the first week. Saw as in not said hi but just "saw". Was the biggest shock coming from India. In India, walk into any market and you wil…

I've spent some time using google maps to look around the world and it's absolutly shocking to see huge parts of india and China where every piece of land for seemingly hundreds of miles are small family farms. The immensity of it is shocking.
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