Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Culture shock

siddhesh.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 260 posts

Re: Culture shock

#211

Post by dan-robertson »

LeanderK wrote: post #202

> 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 defi…

Part of the mismatch between statistics and what one observed is surely social class. Most people I know are also a normal weight (I think) but there other parts of the city or country where one will see many overweight people.

Another part is that people often don’t know what an overweight or obese person looks like. That is, people hear the word and think of someone who waddles instead of walking or who takes up two seats on an aeroplane or who needs a mobility scooter to get around. But the actual boundaries are much closer to normal weight and often lie inside what we think of as normal. (See The BMI Project, dead link: https://kateharding.net/bmi-illustrated/ and photo album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/sets/721576021990... )

Re: Culture shock

#212

Post by Markoff »

As he points out going from India to US ain't really cultural shock thanks to pop-culture which will make you familiar with US life, now do same article the other way from US to India/China to see the real cultural shock where nothing you know really applies to these countries (visited India for few weeks, lived in China for years) unless you are well travelled

Re: Culture shock

#213

Post by dartharva »

>in general, payments here seems to be: a) much more cashless, b) much faster, c) much less secure

UPI has changed this difference drastically. India's mobile payments network is probably the largest and most ubiquitous in the whole world. For the past 3-4 years I have never carried cash for payments here, only my phone. And each transaction is secured with biometrics/PIN too!

>Every single lecture is recorded by cameras in the classroom, and available online, in extremely high video and audio quality. That’s just bonkers. The tech inside the classroom is some serious stuff - multiple TV screens (two in front, two in the back), two prominent cameras, collar mics for the professors.

Could be just the COVID effect? My college in India has all of these too, though I admit not many smaller colleges here will be able to procure that much.

Re: Culture shock

#214

Post by frettchen »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #209
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...

The mall guys and some of those I saw guarding places in more expensive neighborhoods may have been police, I'm admittedly not 100% not sure - but the building I worked in employed private security with rifles (it was a Tata Consultancy office a little ways outside of Hyderabad, maybe 20 minutes or so from Ramoji Film City, for whatever it is worth).

Re: Culture shock

#215

Post by dan-robertson »

medvezhenok wrote: post #43
ameen wrote: post #24

Earlier 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.

Indeed - the U.S. has some of the most extreme health differences between the top end and bottom end of the income spectrum (roughly correlated to class). At the top end, the outcomes (and health measures) are better than anywhere in the world, while at the bottom end they are below most first-world nations: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/

For an apples-to-apples comparison, one must look at the corresponding distributions in other developed countries. It could be that the poorest people live significantly shorter lives in other countries but that the middle do better than in the states.

Re: Culture shock

#216

Post by dartharva »

ido wrote: post #177
madmax108 wrote: post #138

"I don’t know how many people will agree, but striking up a conversation with an American stranger is much easier than it is with an Indian stranger." LOL, as an Indian, I relate to this so much. In India, if a stranger walks up to you, nearly 8/10 times it's either to ask you for money, directions, or to scam you. So naturally over time, you develop a thick skin to avoid strangers or keep interactions with strangers…

I wonder if it's because I was obviously foreign, but I spent 2 months in northern India in 2004 and my impression was that the average Indian on the street was very happy to talk to me? The only bad experience I had was when I asked a lady passing by for some directions in Delhi and afterwards 3 young guys approached me and told me not to talk to "their" women (or something of that sort). I guess they assumed I was…

It's mostly curiosity. White people are perceived as exotic by most Indians.

And if three guys approached you to object your talking to one passerby, they were most likely just roadside trolls looking for someone to bully. I've heard Delhi has a lot of those.

Re: Culture shock

#217

Post by Markoff »

lordnacho wrote: post #184

As a European with as lot of US connections, the most striking thing is that strangers will talk to you. Pleasantly. You can just chat with someone, often of you're in an eatery it feels like the people next to you think they are invited to the conversation. Which is fine for me, maybe not everyone. Size of the people, I think this guy is at university in an affluent place. America is the only place I've ever regular…

> I'll have to go to India to see about class. I thought it was interesting that he thought it was less obvious in America.

You won't see it, spent travelling around India for few weeks on my own, obviously you will see the lowest class, dirtiest poorest people, many not even wearing shoes, but above that it's very hard to distinguish classes for foreigner in India. Local sure can distinguish them by bracelets/necklaces etc, since they live in that caste crap since birth, but it's not that obvious for foreigner.

Re: Culture shock

#218

Post by LegitShady »

no1lives4ever wrote: post #159
LegitShady wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The traffic thing is night and day different from india. Go look up youtube videos of crazy india car traffic. It seems like nobody follows any rules of traffic there - if there's room to fit their car they just go. The rudest american driver is friendly and accommodating by comparison.

And yet there are a shit ton of unwritten rules that help us indians navigate our crazy traffic with very few accidents ;-)

...india has traffic collisions at ~9x the rate (based on rate per 100k vehicles) as the USA. If the USA had as 'very few accidents' as india there would be a major crisis and its just business as usual in india.

Re: Culture shock

#219

Post by dartharva »

losvedir wrote: post #5

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?

You can sit anywhere you want, but it almost always is so dusty or dirty that you'd rather not. I have seen people even avoiding seats in bus stands and preferring to stand instead.

Re: Culture shock

#220

Post by JohnWhigham »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #201
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At some point, it's the obvious that no one is stating: the American style of life makes a lot of people lazy as fuck, and they just don't give a fuck about working on their waistlines.
Post reply on HN