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Culture shock

siddhesh.substack.com

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Re: Culture shock

#201

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #195
birksherty wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Meat, veg, fruits and nuts are expensive - and they go bad. You simply can't always afford them and sometimes you can't actually buy fresh stuff. You see, a fair amount of poor folks get paid once a month, and since there aren't a lot of little grocery stores nearby, folks wind up buying food once and hoping it lasts the month. Poor folks don't always have steady electricity nor a refrigeration, either: Living withou…

While there are clear differences between obesity rates between rich and poor in the US, basically everything you've put up is personal speculation:

> Poor folks don't always have steady electricity nor a refrigeration, either: Living without a fridge makes your diet go to crap pretty quickly.

Differences between access to steady refrigeration is extremely slim for people in the US for all but the poorest of the poor (basically homeless)

> Time is another luxury poor folks have issues with, which also makes diets go awry.

In the US poor people have more free time, on average, than wealthy people: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-fre...

There are other studies that suggest the causality is the opposite: obese people are more likely to become poor: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5781054/

That study is definitely not broadly convincing in my opinion, but just want to point out that there is a ton of baseless speculation in this thread trying to explain the obesity/wealth relationship.

Re: Culture shock

#202

Post by LeanderK »

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

At least in germany it's quite depended on your social class. I am also a student I am sitting in a huge library. There is literally not a single obese person here and nearly everyone I personally know goes to the gym. I only know a single person who's a bit bigger, but he plays American football and needs more "mass". He's definitely not out of shape. It's encouraging to not let yourself go too much, I think. A good environment to also pick up the habit of going to the gym.

Compare this to the stats of Germany ("Two thirds of men (67%) and half of women (53%) in Germany are overweight. A quarter of adults (23% of men and 24% of women) are seriously overweight (obese).") and one can see that it's a different world. Noticeable if you're in a bigger city.

Re: Culture shock

#203

Post by dan-robertson »

frettchen wrote: post #196

"Watchmen and policemen are heavily, scarily equipped." This one amused me, as an American who has been to India (though not Pune, so maybe the area was different in this sense), because while I don't remember what police carried (though I saw a fair number), I remember being shocked by the number of security guards I cam across (mostly in front of office buildings and when entering malls) who were carrying rifles (t…

An advantage of a rifle is that it is conspicuous. This can make people feel uncomfortable because there is a big obvious gun, but it can also avoid a potential confrontation (someone is more likely to mess with someone who’s gun is concealed than someone holding a large rifle). Personally I think I would prefer if the availability of pistols were very limited and people who wanted to carry firearms had to carry conspicuous large rifles. (I’d prefer this to the status quo but not to e.g. all arms being limited)

Re: Culture shock

#204

Post by frettchen »

latchkey wrote: post #31

> 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've wanted one of the jets ever since I went over there - as soon as I'm out of an apartment, I'm putting them on any and every toilet in my home.

I always kept some TP around, though, even when I was in places with the jets - but for the reason you mention the towel: it's handy to dry off with.

Well, and for sticking on shaving nicks or blowing your nose.

Re: Culture shock

#205

Post by teekert »

sweaty wrote: post #171
teekert wrote: post #156

Very recognizable, but OP is talking about 1 specific state or 1 city even. When you start to travel you will be marveled much more! I found the people to be very nice and helpful everywhere. The most obese people I saw were in Texas, with one woman in St. John's Lake I just couldn't keep my eyes off of, but people seemed to ignore it, almost surreal. Portions of food are always huge, here in the Netherlands I'll ord…

Oh boy, I love taking my big ass F-150 Lariat down to the drive-through ATM, through a Starbucks to grab some coffee for the hour long trip just to get some lunch in Tacoma because my mother in law is driving down to Portland to visit her sister and she figured she'd make a stop there because I live close by, I might even pick up my meds at the pharmacy drive-through on the way back and while I'm there I might as wel…

Haha, I drove around Texas in some small Kia (I just got the cheapest rental), I was constantly afraid someone would not see me (as many cars were much higher) and drive over me and my tiny car (thinking, "the road is really getting worse by the day!" ;) ).

Re: Culture shock

#206

Post by dartharva »

nomad225 wrote: post #134
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…

Also Indian here. If the OP is used to cubes of sugar, he’s probably quite wealthy in India. Indian middle class consumers usually use granulated sugar as the cubes are more expensive, and middle class Indian consumers are usually quite price sensitive.

To be fair the "granulated" sugar grains also look like little cubes if you look closer.

Re: Culture shock

#207

Post by Markoff »

frettchen wrote: post #196

"Watchmen and policemen are heavily, scarily equipped." This one amused me, as an American who has been to India (though not Pune, so maybe the area was different in this sense), because while I don't remember what police carried (though I saw a fair number), I remember being shocked by the number of security guards I cam across (mostly in front of office buildings and when entering malls) who were carrying rifles (t…

agreed, back in days at least in New Delhi you could see those "war nests" (military points) made of sandbags with heavy machine guns at some locations like Red Fort as if there was actual war going

but I can imagine seeing everywhere policemen with big guns can be scary, luckily in my not so multicultural location in Europe it's still odd to see policemen carrying those uzi guns, usually you see just policemen with pistol or nothing at all

and while we are discussing guns, my biggest experience with guns presence in Eastern Asia was in Phillipines, where you can see security guards with shotguns at normal shops every few meters (at least in Manila, outside Manila it seemed better), that was quite crazy and also security guards checking me when going to subway obviously not for drugs, but for guns

Re: Culture shock

#208

Post by dartharva »

nindalf wrote: post #115

The biggest one most people from India might experience is tap water - drinking it takes getting used to. The idea that tap water isn’t safe to drink unless it’s treated in some way is ingrained. And when you start drinking the tap water, it takes a while to get used to the taste (charcoal filters can help). The author hasn’t started driving a car yet, but when they do they’ll discover that the rules of the road are…

>electricity is always available although that might not be surprising to someone from a wealthy, urban background in India

It won't be surprising to pretty much any Indian. When was the last time you visited the country?

Re: Culture shock

#209

Post by MagnumOpus »

frettchen wrote: post #196

"Watchmen and policemen are heavily, scarily equipped." This one amused me, as an American who has been to India (though not Pune, so maybe the area was different in this sense), because while I don't remember what police carried (though I saw a fair number), I remember being shocked by the number of security guards I cam across (mostly in front of office buildings and when entering malls) who were carrying rifles (t…

Most security you'd encounter in India doesn't even carry sidearms, just Lathi sticks or batons.

At a guess you've seen the police with rifles at high value terrorist targets - airports, major stations, national tourist attractions/monuments. Such locations will have police with SMGs or assault rifles in most other places too, including places like the UK where police are rarely armed otherwise...

Re: Culture shock

#210

Post by Markoff »

sokoloff wrote: post #7
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…

What they call “powdered”, we’d actually call “granulated” which looks like salt. Powdered here (in the US) is a much finer confectioner’s sugar that is more of a pulverized dust than a granule.

pretty sure it's same everywhere in world, you have it either powdered (flour like), granulated (salt like, but slightly bigger) or in cubes

oh well and then there is China from what I remember, where they sell something like quite big rocks even in regular supermarkets, unseen in Europe

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