> I've yet to see a single thing here that is physically smaller than its version in India.
Statues sure are. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_statues
Culture shock
101–110 of 260 posts
Re: Culture shock
#102> police lights are bright
Completely agree. U.S. police lights are actively disorienting. loud sirens and the lights make me feel a high degree of anxiety each time I see/hear them.
> Most cars will immediately stop if they see you’re about to cross the street. It takes some getting used to at first. Pedestrians are given first priority, a concept alien in India.
Disagree. Indian cities are a lot more pedestrian friendly. Parts of US Northeast are the exception, not the norm. In India, you just kinda walk and the trafffic stops/ manouvers around you.
Re: Culture shock
#103> 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…
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.
What? Yes, it does. It's actually the cheapest to buy if you are a bit poor. https://www.walmart.com/ip/C-H-Premium-Pure-Cane-Sugar-Cubes...
Re: Culture shock
#104Loved reading this. While reading I was thinking I should do a similar comparison for countries I've lived in (a handful of European ones) but it wouldn't be half as entertaining (differing).
Toilet paper for pooping made me chuckle, I love bidets!
Stuff like this is really good for a reminder and for perspective. A lot of people nowadays seem to think that the US is shit but don't really have anything to compare it with, so it becomes a political idea based on their perceived utopia vs the worst parts of the American culture society. And oftentimes what is perceived to be the "correct way" in your local country is unthinkable/weird in many other places.
Some comments:
> Sugar here is powdered, it doesn’t come in tiny cubes like I’m used to.
What do you use when baking sweet pastries? Crushed sugar cubes? :D
> 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.
This is a sad universal in most of the western countries. Convenience/efficiency (as long as you have a car!) sacrificing local small businesses.
> People liberally carry coffees and soda cans to drink into flights. I’ve never seen this before. Is it even allowed in India?
I tend to buy a bottle of liquor and a bottle of water at the airport (after checking in). Then I empty the water and fill it with liquor and sip throughout the flight.
> The people that I see day to day are generally extremely fit. (Or is it just students?)
Haven't actually been to the US but I'd assume it's mostly just a local phenomena (campus).
> But here, no PIN necessary! You just swipe or tap your card and boom, the transaction is done.
Again I don't know what the limits are over there, but here it used to be €20 for Visa, €25 for MasterCard, but they've upped the limits due to Covid. I don't feel particularly threatened about losing €20.
> You just scan your student id (is it Id?)
ID I think? :)
> All house floors, apart from kitchen floors, obviously, are carpeted.
This is insane to me too, practically never seen it anywhere and where I have, it's been a disaster.
> Stoves are always electric. No lighter needed.
Sucks when you have a power outage!
> There should be just one knob which decides the hotness of water, depending on how much it’s moved.
Agreed. You kind of have to mentally adjust where you put both knobs. Most European shower heads have one control lever where you you have water pressure in one axis and temperature on the other. You just leave it in the sweet spot for temperature and pull to get water, push to shut it off.
> Most cars will immediately stop if they see you’re about to cross the street. It takes some getting used to at first.
I've heard there are huge differences in this regard between LA and NY.
Re: Culture shock
#105Lots of people don't like carpeting but I prefer it in the living areas. Benefits: Provides dampening of sounds Not freezing cold on my feet Comfy, welcoming and homely feeling (subjective) Spills are very rare and permanent damage can, in most cases, be avoided by cleaning the mess properly right away. Carpeting should be shampooed once in a while too. Carpeting does not last forever, however. I can't stand carpetin…
> Spills are very rare
You aren't accident prone, or you don't have kids, or you don't host large holiday parties!
My floor gets spilled on all the time.
> I can't stand carpeting on stairs though, such a pain to clean!
I insist on carpet on stairs because of how often I slip and fall down the stairs (3 or 4 times a year, I'm not the most graceful person on earth), carpet keeps me from getting hurt too badly.
It is a pain to clean though!
I had vinyl floors in my previous place, much nicer to stand on for long periods of time vs hardwood floors. Really if it wasn't for the environmental and health downsides of vinyl, it'd be an ideal flooring material!
Re: Culture shock
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Are there no wealthy people, over there, who just don’t want to work out?
Not being obese has basically nothing to do with "working out". It's all about diet. Nobody worked out before 1960 and nobody was fat (and lots of people were poor). Nobody in India is fat and nobody work out and they're largely poor.
To your question - Lots of them. I'm (relatively) wealthy and I don't want to diet. But I do it anyway because it's worth the short-term suffering for the long-term gain. It's a super obvious good mid and long term investment with a great RoR.
Parent commenter had the causality reversed. Being poor doesn't make you fat; high time preference makes you both poor and fat.
i.e. Someone poor with low time preference won't stay poor for long. The kind of person who stays poor in America for years and years is generally the kind who also has too high time preference to stop eating a full bag of chips every day.
Re: Culture shock
#107"I’ve seen shirtless guys walking, jogging, and cycling in broad daylight." It's unfortunate that the fight against biases hasn't reached this point yet, but it's certainly a cause I could support and donate to political campaigns who also support equality of rights as much as I do!
Re: Culture shock
#108Is the car respecting pedestrians a thing everywhere in the US, or just where this person has been? My very limited experience in the US (NYC, San Diego and Miami) has been hit or miss regarding traffic, and I wouldn't trust drivers to stop. I know the story in some European cities is different. I was impressed in London, and a Belgian friend of mine often crossed the streets of Brussels without stopping to look at t…
Generally, in rural US the pace is very slow and most everybody on the road is not in a hurry.
People will gladly wait a long time, I've even seen a case where someone jumps out of a car and diverted traffic until a turtle crossed the road.
Speed is otherwise very fast - be seen!
Re: Culture shock
#109> Mobile internet is much, much more expensive here. Maybe that’s because it’s less needed due to Wi-Fi ubiquity, but the difference is still staggering. Mint Mobile gives me 4 GB of mobile internet per month, while back in India, Jio gave me 1 GB of internet per day.
This is what gets me as a european, why do you get throttled so quickly in the US? I couldn’t find a plan that would give me real unlimited data.
Re: Culture shock
#110Earlier 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.
It's not work out or time but diet that makes people obese. They probably eat fast food, sugary drinks, packaged food a lot everyday instead of unprocessed food like meat, veg, fruits, nuts.
Edit: Poor people in India are thin and rich are fat, quite opposite, again due to diet. Indian poor can't afford fast food in chain restaurants daily, must cook which is cheaper.