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Culture shock

siddhesh.substack.com

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Re: Culture shock

#251

Post by TMWNN »

brailsafe wrote: post #144

Some of these things are culturally surprising even coming from Canada, depending of course where you're coming from and going to. Our suburbs seem like a significantly scaled down replica of a good majority of U.S urban development since the 40s. Where it's impractical to get around without a car here, it's hilariously so there. Our biggest two highways seem to be the same size as half of each direction on a given h…

>Our biggest two highways seem to be the same size as half of each direction on a given highway in the U.S.

Highway 401 in Toronto is the busiest road in the US or Canada.

Re: Culture shock

#252

Post by pjc50 »

TMWNN wrote: post #249
pjc50 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> third world country with cell phones As a Brit who's visited a few times, to me it seems that America is both the glittering future and a banana republic at the same time , overlaid on top of one another. There's no ceiling and no floor. Lots of places have glaring poverty right round the corner from the tourist parts, all round the world. Unfortunately there was a spate of British tourists getting shot in Florida…

>As a Brit who's visited a few times, to me it seems that America is both the glittering future and a banana republic at the same time, overlaid on top of one another Would you describe an ex-mining town in northern England or the midlands as being the latter without the proximity to the former?

There is a lot of material decay in Britain, and it tends to increase as you get further from the Shard, but the highly central government means there's little opportunity for places to achieve the banana republic status of autonomous, large, corrupt political units. Certain places have seediness and violence; I might call out Bradford and Nottingham. But ultimately we might be poor but at least we don't have mass shootings; the only two events which might register on the American scale are Dunblane and Bloody Sunday.

Re: Culture shock

#253

Post by desi_ninja »

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…

but USA has a stranger danger culture too. you can engage and talk with someone else kids in public areas. in USA, that is considered creepy if not done properly through the parents.

Re: Culture shock

#255

Post by spdebbarma »

spurgu wrote: post #104

Loved 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…

I'm not the OP but I wanted to reply to a couple of your queries about life in India.

> What do you use when baking sweet pastries? Crushed sugar cubes? :D

When OP says sugar cubes, he doesn't mean the sugar cubes you might be thinking (large cubes of sugar used for tea, or fed to horses), although that is something found pretty ubiquitously out here too. Our sugar generally comes in a grain-like consistency shaped as tiny cubes measuring about 1-2mm squared, in general. A simple Google search for "India sugar" should provide visual reference. This is a personal anecdote but the size of these sugar grains vary in size based on how expensive they are. More expensive = finer sugar.

At my home, we either use icing sugar or powder the sugar in a spice grinder attachment on our blenders. That's how I prefer my sugar, just so much easier to work with. Wish it was more common around.

> Again I don't know what the limits are over there.

We don't have any limits, AFAIK, but that's mostly because without a PIN/OTP, no one is going to get any money out of your debit/credit card. I should mention I've used my card on a few US/EU-based websites and didn't need to input any PIN/OTP so it's still possible.

Re: Culture shock

#256

Post by spurgu »

spdebbarma wrote: post #255
spurgu wrote: post #104

Loved 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…

I'm not the OP but I wanted to reply to a couple of your queries about life in India. > What do you use when baking sweet pastries? Crushed sugar cubes? :D When OP says sugar cubes, he doesn't mean the sugar cubes you might be thinking (large cubes of sugar used for tea, or fed to horses), although that is something found pretty ubiquitously out here too. Our sugar generally comes in a grain-like consistency shaped a…

Interesting! The India sugar you refer to seems to be similar to "Nib sugar" or "Pearl sugar" in Scandinavia[0]. It's basically used for baking (decoration) here. For everything else we use regular "fine sugar". Or well, there's also "powder sugar" ("florsocker" in Swedish, unsure what the equivalent in English is) which is also used for baking. Sounds like you make this yourself!

Interesting differences indeed. :)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nib_sugar](https://en.wikipedi...

Re: Culture shock

#257

Post by 0xBDB »

codesections wrote: post #174
BugWatch wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TMK, (fineable) jaywalking generally isn't a thing in Europe, only in USA (due to car manufacturing industry's meddling and lobbying, of course, making the cars first class citizens). One EU country's example: it's perfectly legal to cross any street/road if there is no marked pedestrian crossing within circa 50 meters, with usual common sense requirement of demonstrating one's intention of doing so to the oncoming t…

This varies tremendously by city/county within Europe. For example, there are some German cities where crossing a road anywhere other than at a marked crossing not only risks a fine but also will earn disapproving looks from other pedestrians (something I haven't encountered in the states, though I'm not ruling out the possibility that it could occur somewhere).

It varies quite a bit in the U.S. too. I live near Dallas. In Dallas (pop 1.4 million) jaywalking will absolutely result in a very expensive citation. In Fort Worth, 30 miles away (population 800,000) it is of course equally illegal but you can do it with near impunity in front of a police officer. Depends on how relaxed the local culture is and to some extent how dangerous the roads are.

Re: Culture shock

#258

Post by mixmastamyk »

riantogo wrote: post #29
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…

It took me years to get used to cars stopping for pedestrians to cross. I don't think I'm completely there yet even after couple decades.

I don’t even like it. Most of the time the driver doesn’t seem to realize that cars are coming the other direction or other lanes and so you cannot cross anyway. Leading to a small traffic jam. Would rather everyone on the road got out of the way as fast as possible.

Re: Culture shock

#259

Post by no1lives4ever »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #235
no1lives4ever wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Please enlighten us as to what some of these rules are. As an outsider it just looks like chaos but you can tell there's some kind of code.

Frankly, these are not easy to specify rules. Now if you were on the passenger seat when i was driving and kept on asking questions, then maybe we could unearth a bunch of these rules.

Things like you know when another car will not cut across, or when another car is going to hit the brakes or cut across are more a function of understanding how the traffic behaves and this is what helps a majority of us indians avoid accidents.

Re: Culture shock

#260

Post by no1lives4ever »

LegitShady wrote: post #218
no1lives4ever wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you compare the way traffic behaves in India vs the US, you would agree that if you tried to drive like in the us you would end up with way more accidents than the ~9x figure would suggest.
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