46 ms·

Culture shock

• baby 5y ago
  > 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.
  • dartharva 5y ago
    High-capital industries like telecom generally end up in oligopolies making if left unchecked. Before Jio entered and disrupted it, India's telecom market was also very consumer-hostile and gave terrible prices and service despite being one of the countries that had adopted both GSM and CDMA. For US it might also be the case that WiFi hotspots are everywhere and mobile data isn't used as much.
• arwhatever 5y ago
  I don’t think I could ever get enough of this type of writing and observation. The good, the bad, and going to and from possibly every combination of societies. People are often too polite to be as purely candid as I might personally prefer. This take on the U.S. from an Armenian perspective was also very enjoyable https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22777745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22777745
• e4d5 5y ago
  Hey, as another Indian immigrant here I do want to say that most of these observations are spot on. 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 had quite a surprise when I started working at a smaller town and consistently started seeing older and grumpier people. Culture shock is real. For me personally, I didn't feel like I was going through anything unusual in my first 3-4 months in the US, but later a lot of my choices at the time made sense through that lens.
  • KarlKemp 5y ago
    I'm European and everything in the article is the same from this perspective, except the scale of class differences, which tends to be even lower here (or inverted: I don't have a single friend who owns a car, and I'd be afraid of being ostracized if I ever bought one)
  • hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    > 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 literally every single person I saw was morbidly obese, including children.
    • ameen 5y ago
      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.
      • birksherty 5y ago
        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.
        • ajuc 5y ago
          Wealth is relative. Yes you can be so poor that you can't afford enough calories to become obese. It's rare in the developed world. But you can also be so poor that you can afford calories, alcohol and little more as an entertainment. It's easy to get obese then.
• m0zg 5y ago
  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 only then that it dawned on me that I'm not in Moscow anymore. Yet 99.99% of US natives have no idea how great their country is. Perfect? No, far from it. But pretty great, even now, in its diminished form, as long as you have the right perspective. My second culture shock was when I went to TX a couple of years later. Everything is still bigger and more "American" there. Going back to the Pacific NW felt like going from PNW to Canada. To Russian readers who might be put off by my US enthusiasm, some 18 years later, Moscow was also a bit of a shock. It improved by leaps and bounds in all regards, to the point where I could see myself buying property there and perhaps even spending some time there every year. United States is my "home" now, though. Feels that way coming from abroad. I kind of just exhale and relax.
  • riantogo 5y ago
    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.
    • mixmastamyk 5y ago
      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.
  • uyt 5y ago
    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.
• kodah 5y ago
  > 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 to be done at a big chain retail store like Lidl or Megamart or Target or any of the other big-names. 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. > Stoves are always electric. No lighter needed. Kinda. Places I've lived usually have natural gas, but electric ignition is standard. > But for bathroom taps, I don’t understand why there’s two different knobs for hot and cold. It’s binary. There should be just one knob which decides the hotness of water, depending on how much it’s moved. I've never thought about this. My current place has one, but other places have two. I'm not sure if that was just style though. As for the comment on curtains, this is mainly cultural. Some people like them, others don't. They require cleaning (moreso than blinds) and not everyone wants to do that. For what it's worth, my mom still hangs curtains. I don't think anyone can convince her that blinds are worthy of a trial. I really enjoyed this read. Thanks for the observations, and I'm looking forward to the next post!
  • sokoloff 5y ago
    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.
    • Markoff 5y ago
      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
• losvedir 5y ago
  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?
  • AutumnCurtain 5y ago
    I'm interested in the apparent intolerance of shirtless men, I didn't realize that was a thing.
    • ameen 5y ago
      To be fair, shirtless men are a lot less common in urban India. Not the same in the "countryside" or villages as we refer to rural areas. India has certain public decency laws which prohibits exposure (not sure if shirtless would qualify), PDA, etc. India is also famously not one of the fitter countries - so it's also a matter of body image issues.
    • notsureaboutpg 5y ago
      The other commenter has misplaced ideas. It's conservatism (meant as a compliment, not an insult) which shames men for going around shirtless as most men who do so in the West do so out of vanity and a need to show off. Indian culture really doesn't vibe with that at all, it's really offensive to be garish in that way (it's okay to be garish in terms of showing wealth though, like fancy car, etc.) I'm not judging just saying the differences here. It's the same with women's clothes. The way women dress in the West would be very unacceptable to the vast majority in India.
    • paganel 5y ago
      > I'm interested in the apparent intolerance of shirtless men, Not sure about India but in a lot of European countries walking shirtless on the street might be a fineable offence. A larger discussion on the subject can be found on this recent /r/europe thread. [1] [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/qixnsa/filling_up_a_water_bottle_in_1980s_florence/ https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/qixnsa/filling_up_a...
• emsy 5y ago
  I‘m from Germany and even I found the vastness of everything in the US remarkable. In some regards it‘s amazing: the country itself, the national parks, the wide roads, parking space, buildings. In other regards it‘s obscene: beverage sizes, package sizes in Wal-Mart (some are larger than what our local wholesale stores have to offer), and SUVs and pick-up trucks. When I rent a car on my trip, I was glad I upgraded to an SUV because otherwise I would‘ve been anxious between the huge SUVs, which seemed to make up the majority of all cars (this was in California).
  • TMWNN 5y ago
    >I‘m from Germany and even I found the vastness of everything in the US remarkable. Not everywhere. I met an American who had grown up with his US military family in Germany, who thought that Westchester County (just north of New York City) looked like the German countryside.
• varispeed 5y ago
  > 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. Isn't the "powder" actually a bunch of tiny tiny cubes? Certainly tinier than tiny Indian cubes :-) One thing that seems to be smaller in the US.
  • hyperpallium2 5y ago
    Broccoli is another fractal food.
  • matt_kantor 5y ago
    Sugar is actually tiny hexagons. Salt is cubes. https://montessorimuddle.org/2011/04/24/salt-and-sugar-under-the-microscope/ https://montessorimuddle.org/2011/04/24/salt-and-sugar-under...
• deleted 5y ago
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• lordleft 5y ago
  This reminds me of a post by another Indian student visiting the US. The observation that that person made which stuck with me the most was his realization that rich people dressed in a manner that wasn't very different from folks in other social strata -- it was much harder to tell at a glance how much money someone had. I think this is broadly true.
  • tartoran 5y ago
    Old rich vs new rich who are mostly desperate to display it out
  • LurkingPenguin 5y ago
    Another factor is that the cost of higher-end/"luxury" goods outside the US is often much higher outside the US. In the US, for instance, you can easily buy a Ralph Lauren polo for under $100 (on sale online, at an outlet, etc.). When I decided to buy some RL in Japan a few years ago, a polo that I could have probably found in the US for $75-$100 cost me around $175.
  • JeremyNT 5y ago
    > This reminds me of a post by another Indian student visiting the US. The observation that that person made which stuck with me the most was his realization that rich people dressed in a manner that wasn't very different from folks in other social strata -- it was much harder to tell at a glance how much money someone had. I think this is broadly true. The types of items tend to be the same (in some jobs/contexts - suits and formal dress are still worn in various industries/events), but even when so the rich person will buy higher quality versions from designer brands. For example, at a glance many people will not be able to tell Patagonia from Ozark trail, but the workmanship and price are very different, and somebody in the Patagonia-class will be able to identify it when worn by others.
  • deleted 5y ago
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• soumyadeb 5y ago
  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 will see 100s if not thousands of folks.
  • baby 5y ago
    Living in SF that’s what I find the hardest about living in the US. Everything is empty, there isn’t much life in the city. Unless you live in new york I guess. I really miss the density of european or asian cities :(
  • paleotrope 5y ago
    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.
• throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Some of the things listed are very specific to recently built up wealthy suburbs in the DMV area. There's plenty of fat grumpy people living in un-air-conditioned apartments with doorbells, curtains, tile floors and single handle faucets.
  • 2pointsomone 5y ago
    Lol sums up what I wanted to say
• Lamad123 5y ago
  I grew up in a small town at the food of the Atlas mountains in Morocco! My real culture shock was when I first visited Casablanca, the largest city in the country!! I felt so far away from home, like a stranger. The US didn't shock me that much.. It was just a bigger version of something I saw before!
• paxys 5y ago
  Nice list, although I will say that a lot of it is dependent on personal experience in both locations. Having made the same migration, I'd rate some of them very different, sometimes even the opposite.
• ljiljana 5y ago
  Great read, so many interesting and relatable points. Not all though (bathing from a bucket?), which makes it even more interesting because you get to learn about the culture of India as well!
  • Fnoord 5y ago
    Bathing from a bucket, I saw that in a movie about Germany (Hannah Arendt?). Apparently it got replaced by real showering after WWII, but if water is scarce, you'd still do it. And I bathe my children this way, cause its less scary for them.
• gumby 5y ago
  > There’s no kiraana stores (i.e. small local stores) that sell grains and rice and vegetables here, it seems. Come to the Bay Area, or New Jersey.
• allenu 5y ago
  Very cool list, and interesting to see the differences from someone with very fresh eyes. Little differences like this between countries makes me miss travel. One of the most exciting things about travel is those first few days in the new country where everything is still new and you're noticing every little detail. The ride from the airport is always a trip. When you return home, you notice even more things that are different in those first few days.
• senectus1 5y ago
  I recently (oh crap it was over 2 years ago!), had a work trip through Argentina and Ecuador. Argentina was the biggest shock for me as an Australian: They dont do sugar in cafe's they do artificial sweeteners, and on top of that they dont do them in 1 tsp measures but 2 tsp measures. They have LOTS of chocolates shops. They really like Beef and sushi Their restaurants don't start opening up until 9 or 10pm Their police roam the streets in full Tac gear with auto rifles and their lights are on ALL THE TIME. Their roads are lined, but they don't seem to pay attention to the lines. A 4 lane road with have 5 or 6 cars wide travelling along it. The gutters are deep... Some of their architecture is brutality and others are quite beautiful.
  • gabythenerd 5y ago
    Have lived in Argentina for a few years now and I am still not used to having dinner so late, it's dinner at 6 pm or nothing for me.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  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 and negative view of the United States, either directly by complaining with hyperbole ("third world country with cell phones") or by simply emphasizing every negative story about the United States. I have to admit, one of my guilty pleasures was watching people slowly realize that the United States, while not without problems, is actually not a bad place. This comment hit home: > I know that the US has some of the highest obesity rates in the world, but from what I’ve personally seen, it doesn’t seem that way at all. The people that I see day to day are generally extremely fit. (Or is it just students?) We talk a lot about America's obesity problems online. So much so that people assume America must be one of the most obese countries by a wide margin. However, when you look at the numbers the United States is only a couple percentage points worse than countries like New Zealand or Canada which have no such reputation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r... ). 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. Obesity is just one example of how the internet, especially sites like Reddit, tend to exaggerate the problems of the United States while downplaying the positives of the country. It was always kind of fun to watch visitors and transplants slowly realize that the country, while far from perfect, was actually nowhere near as bad as the dystopia they read about on sites like Reddit.
  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > 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.
• bnralt 5y ago
  > 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 are grocery stores of varying sizes (from tiny to huge) from all sorts of countries - Chinese, Korean, Indian, Filipino, Ethiopian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Iranian, etc. There's also an enormous number of farmers markets, as well as a decent number of boutique grocery stores (though those tend to be on the pricier side of things), independent grocery stores, delis, and seafood markets.
  • yalogin 5y ago
    The scale is still no where comparable to India. There they have one on every street corner literally.
    • woodruffw 5y ago
      I think it varies heavily by region. NYC has bodegas that sell basic groceries and household goods, and their defining feature (other than cats[1]) is that they're on every corner. The street I grew up on had 3 of them: one on each end, and one right in the middle. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodega_cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodega_cat
  • kangnkodos 5y ago
    He mentions his house is near a street named Baltimore. And he said he's near DC, not in DC. One possibility is University of Maryland in College Park. The main street that runs through campus is Baltimore Avenue. And it's just a few miles outside of DC. It's close enough to be on the DC Metro. There's a Megamart a few miles away. A Lidl supermarket is just north of campus. And there's a very small Target with a nice sized grocery section with fresh fruit and vegetables, etc. right in the middle of campus. If you're walking from the middle of campus, Target is your best bet. Lidl is a possible walk, depending on exactly where he lives, but a little further. Next would be Whole Foods, two miles south of campus. Maybe he hasn't discovered that yet?
• latchkey 5y ago
  > 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.
  • frettchen 5y ago
    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.
    • latchkey 5y ago
      No need to wait. It is just a T adapter. It screws into existing connections. There is usually a water shut off valve at the wall, just turn that off first. Just takes a basic wrench and some plumbers tape. It can all be undone just as easily.
  • Gracana 5y ago
    Man, I'd be more skeeved out by the post-rinse ring-drying towel than the idea that somebody only wiped their ass with TP. If I can't smell it, you can't smell it, and I use my hands rather than my asshole to touch and grasp objects in my environment, what's the big deal?
    • latchkey 5y ago
      You're used to getting up and knowing there is still poop there. When you wash with water, it cleans it all off far better than smearing it around with paper. Use your hand and some soap if it makes you feel better. I assume you do that in the shower anyway, otherwise, ewww... The towel is cleaner than your skid-marked underwear, toss it into the laundry if you think it is still dirty. Heck use old underwear as rags... I hope you wash your hands before you leave the bathroom. Double ewwww... There is even a whole wikipedia about the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_hygiene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_hygiene
• nonethewiser 5y ago
  Some of these things are so region specific. It's funny that he found everything to be so big in NEWARK though.
• the_af 5y ago
  Is 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 the traffic, with blind faith they would just stop -- and they did. In Buenos Aires (Argentina) crossing the street without looking thrice at the approaching cars to make sure they've seen you and intend to stop at the red light is simply suicide. If there's no semaphore, good luck crossing, even if you're carrying a baby. I hear the Italians are like us, which makes sense because of our Italian immigrant DNA. I hear the author about the toilet water jet -- we Argentinians can be religious about the bidet. Though there is a trend to get rid of it (to copy other countries, but mostly for cost savings I guess), and I hope I'm dead and buried when it finally takes over.
  • codesections 5y ago
    > a Belgian friend of mine often crossed the streets of Brussels without stopping to look at the traffic, with blind faith they would just stop -- and they did. In some cities/countries, there's also the fine art of looking without looking like you're looking — some drivers will yeild to you when you have the right of way and they aren't sure you've seen them, but will cut you off if they can tell that you know that they're there.
  • NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    You look up the street because the Driver might be distracted, not because you think he might do something malicious. 99.99999% of the time the car will respect pedestrians (assuming of course the road is marked properly. If not, maybe say a prayer)
    • the_af 5y ago
      Yes, of course. Same in Argentina. The thing is, here the driver will be distracted with 90% probability or will simply think he/she has priority. It's a cultural thing. Of course they are not trying to actively drive over you... mostly.
• zabzonk 5y ago
  Once was flown from the UK to Chicago and then to Denver and then a car to Boulder for a one-day meeting, and then back. At Christmas. I have never felt so ill. Luckily, I'm retired now, but never, never again. Although I actually like the USA. People, food and such.
• SmartestUnknown 5y ago
  As an Indian who recently moved to the US, this list captures a lot of things that surprised me. One of the biggest things I was shocked by is the number of choices in US supermarkets - 100s of varieties of chips, 4-5 different sizes of eggs along with a choice of white/brown/cage-free/organic, 4 types of milk (skim/1%/2%/whole), 10s of types of bread etc. Back in India, we have considerably fewer choices in each of the ones I mentioned even in the bigger supermarkets.
  • strikelaserclaw 5y ago
    in terms of materialism and consumer good choices, usa is vastly, and i meanly vastly superior to India and maybe perhaps most nations on earth.
  • paleotrope 5y ago
    4 types of milk sounds quaint considering the number of nut milks available. There's got to be at least 15 types of milk now at my discount grocery. Besides the aforementioned cow milk products, we have soy milk, almond milk, oat milk, coconut milk, all variously flavored and of different fat levels. Kind of absurd in alot of ways.
  • hiyer 5y ago
    What you get in any country will depend on the local tastes. You will get hundreds of varieties of namkeens and sweets in India that you won't get in the US. You get several types of ready to eat breads in India too, but they're more "localized". For example, from Britannia, apart from the usual milk, white, brown, whole wheat, multigrain, etc, you also have Kulcha, missi bread, pav, fruit bun, etc. In the US you would probably see rye bread, sourdough, etc. Having said that, where I really envy US and Europe is the variety of cheeses. You get most of them in India too these days but they're prohibitively expensive.
  • fellellor 5y ago
    In some regions of the Midwest, like Missouri for example, the range of choices is comparable to what you would see in India. The wealth difference between places like California or Washington and India is staggering. It stands to reason that there would be a lot more companies fighting and thriving in such a larger economy.
• astura 5y ago
  Lots 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 carpeting on stairs though, such a pain to clean!
  • genocidicbunny 5y ago
    In a lot of counties, the building codes mandate a certain amount of carpet coverage in units that have downstairs neighbors. Where I live upstairs units frequently can only have hard flooring in the bathroom, entryway and kitchen. And its amazing what an annual steam clean can do for keeping the carpet maintained.
  • BugWatch 5y ago
    I'd take wooden/laminate floor over carpeting any day: - it can be soundproofed, - it can be floor-heated (but generally isn't that cold to begin with), - maintenance and cleaning is really easy, - potentially damaged areas can be fixed/replaced relatively easily (but greatly varies with the system and the mounting used), - extremely pet-(hair-)friendly, - very robot vacuum friendly, - generally doesn't get affected that much with "clashes with my new x" issues (but that's individual, I guess), - can be tastefully decorated and accented with smaller rugs, - probably some other things I missed. Basically, in my view, sans the "fluffy" feeling on one's feet, wall-to-wall carpeting is a nightmare, especially given the US prevalence of combining an inside carpet with outside shoes, which is in stark contract with majority of the rest of the world.
  • com2kid 5y ago
    > 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!
• stavros 5y ago
  Oh man, you can replace "India" with "Greece" here and I wouldn't bat an eye. I was surprised at how all these differences are the same for us as well.
• karaterobot 5y ago
  Fun article, but one thing to note is that taking a single sample at a grad school in Washington, D.C. won't give you a reliable model about the entire country. I don't think that's true anywhere in the world, especially not in a big, diverse country like the U.S.
• alexashka 5y ago
  I immigrated to Canada with my family when I was a child, from Russia. I remember my parents and other recent immigrant parents getting together for lively, fun evenings of drinks and talks fairly regularly. It lasted for years - everyone was in such culture shock mode and wanted to both experience the good old vodka + pickles among comrades and share their crazy ass stories of oh my god, these people will constantly say 'how are you' but look at you like you're crazy when you go on to tell them. They think I'm crazy, they're the one asking me questions they don't want to hear the answer to - that's crazy! :D
• Swizec 5y ago
  > What makes things worse is that American coins are really, really complicated. I can’t for the life of me identify what a coin is from its look (is it just me?), and I also can’t seem to ever remember the difference between a dime and a nickel and a penny. American cash is just impossible. I gave up after 2 years living here and if a merchant doesn’t accept cards or apple pay, fuck it I’ll go somewhere else. It’s just not worth the bother.
• akomtu 5y ago
  "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!
  • reducesuffering 5y ago
    (NSFW) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_the_nipple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_the_nipple
    • Freak_NL 5y ago
      That one seems pretty tame and SFW though. Wikipedia certainly has more explicit articles that would raise eyebrows.
• bruceb 5y ago
  Will slightly disagree on the cash thing. absolutely US uses more credit/debit cards, but for paying at Kiraana shops, basic restaurants, other shops, a decent portion of India’s middle pay with QR focused apps such payTM. At least in Pune, Bangalore, etc. It’s more cash than US but more China (in some cities) like in terms of mobile payments.
• User23 5y ago
  It's a total tangent, but this reminds me of one of my favorite novels, The Shockwave Rider[1]. It's all about this phenomenon, but dialed up to 11. Honestly, those of us who grew up in the USA long enough ago are basically immigrants now too. This is a very different country than it was 30 years ago. Not only that, but much like India, there is great difference between some of the individual States. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• rushabh 5y ago
  This brought back a lot of nostalgia. (I was Indian grad student in a state university in the North East in ‘01) For me the killer is the “master of the universe” feeling you get in the United States coming from India. Everything is in order and under control from the lawns in suburban homes, to supermarkets and libraries to traffic and restaurants. You see a lot more straight lines and perfect Bézier curves. This is a completely different texture in extreme contrast to India where “chaos” reigns and the spices and smells are a lot sharper. After coming back to India. I somehow feel more “free” and “alive” in the chaos. Giving up control feels like a more natural, intuitive way of living and dying.
  • silentsea90 5y ago
    When I go back home to India, the very first cab from the Mumbai airport to home is like a dangerous roller coaster ride. No lanes, criss crossing autos(tuktuks), bouncing on small potholes on the road, smoke, honks, buses and cars in close proximity etc is a sensory overload. I breathe a sigh of relief when I come back to the US, but I do miss home.
    • codesections 5y ago
      > When I go back home to India, the very first cab from the Mumbai airport to home is like a dangerous roller coaster ride. Somewhat oddly, I had exactly the opposite experience the one time I visited Mumbai — but I was coming from a few weeks in Ahmedabad, where traffic lights were basically a (typical ignored) suggestion.
  • perrygeo 5y ago
    I grew up in the US but when I visited India (Bengaluru) the first thing that struck me was the chaotic nature of the streets. Everyone seemed to be following their own personal set of traffic laws and it just worked out. The nice side-effect of the chaos is that you have to pay attention. I find it too easy, in the more constrained US culture, to zone out and assume I'm not involved. It leads to a sense of isolation. In India, I had to be present and mindful of everything around me at all times. It made daily life feel more vibrant, interesting and paradoxically more relaxing.
• whoevercares 5y ago
  We need a Chinese version of this - one retroactively from 20 years, one today
• outside1234 5y ago
  Thank you for your impressions - very interesting blog post! And welcome to America - we are glad you are here. :)
• codesections 5y ago
  > 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_statues
  • juancampa 5y ago
    Woah, the tallest one looks incredible, but danm > US$422 million
• screye 5y ago
  > 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.
  • birksherty 5y ago
    > Disagree I disagree with you. In India nobody respects walking people. They will honk multiple times, get angry if anyone walking blocks their road. Basically people in car feels they own the road in India and walking people are lower class obstacles. It made me hate walking in cities. Yes, there are footpaths where people walk all the time, but Indian people also ride motorcycles there in traffic jams. Multiple times they came close to hit me. It's total chaos in India.
  • stillblue 5y ago
    > 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. I've lived almost all my life in India, several towns and cities at that and there is not a single place that is pedestrian friendly. I think you're mistaking walking into traffic and causing a mini panic for the oncoming vehicles vs actual pedestrian friendly roads.
• spurgu 5y ago
  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 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.
  • 5y ago
• nindalf 5y ago
  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 actual rules, not guidelines. Lastly, electricity is always available although that might not be surprising to someone from a wealthy, urban background in India.
  • dartharva 5y ago
    >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?
    • nindalf 5y ago
      Power cuts set to return to Chennai after disappearing during COVID-19 lockdown - https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/chennai/2020/jul/10/power-cuts-set-to-return-to-chennai-after-disappearing-during-covid-19-lockdown-2168019.html https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/chennai/2020/jul/10/... Maharashtra staring at load shedding as 13 coal-run power plants shut down - https://m.economictimes.com/industry/energy/power/maharashtra-staring-at-load-shedding-as-13-coal-run-power-plants-shut-down/articleshow/86926661.cms https://m.economictimes.com/industry/energy/power/maharashtr... Is that recent enough for you? And these are urban areas, not rural ones that are lower priority. I’ve actually lived in a rural area for several years. For a couple of those years we only had electricity for 10 hours out of 24.
      • dartharva 5y ago
        Yes, power cuts and load-shedding are frequent, but not so much that it'd be an object of surprise for Indians abroad. Everyone is aware that electricity is something that's supposed to be on 24/7 even though it often isn't. You seemed to imply Indians are so starved for continuous electricity it will astound them if they actually witness it.
• hzay 5y ago
  You can get pseudo indian filter coffee with a little bit of money and effort. You have to choose a coffee grinder at your price range, and there are websites that sell good coffee beans (you have to experiment to find the one you like). Buy the indian coffee filter in an indian grocery store. Milk is the biggest problem -- you just cannot get that taste without fresh milk (usually delivered in early mornings in india). If you're willing to drink tetrapack milk, you have something approximating filter coffee.
• esalman 5y ago
  I moved from Dhaka to Albuquerque, then to Atlanta. I like to tell people that I got bigger cultural shock from the second move compared to the first. I think it is unexpected how similar life is in large metropolis even though they are halfway around the world. I am referring to the hectic traffic, dirty downtown, humid weather, rude people with a sense of urgency to everything etc. Even the level of bureaucracy in public offices and schools reminds me of back home.
• madmax108 5y ago
  "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 as "transactional" as possible. In the US on the other hand, there's a lot more of the "a stranger is a friend you just haven't met yet" attitude in the air, so people are much more open to interacting with people they don't know. The first month in the US, every time some stranger waved hello or good morning when I was walking from my hotel to the office or back, I clutched my bag a bit tighter ;-)
  • caskstrength 5y ago
    > 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. Same in Eastern Europe. Small talk with strangers is generally not a thing here.
  • ido 5y ago
    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 hitting on her but I really was just asking for directions!
    • dartharva 5y ago
      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.
      • ido 5y ago
• eitland 5y ago
  Norwegian here. I spent 6 work weeks in Canada and USA setting up machines and training operators around 2011. My observations: - huge meals. And "all you can eat" seems to mean exactly that. I didn't test though but remember waiters were eager to refill. - North Americans seems friendly to me. I was even invited over to dinner by a plant manager. - Talking to someone who was super-happy working 180% in three jobs because it allowed her to send all her three sons to college and because three jobs were less boring than one made me decide to never ever complain about Norway again. (Education including higher education is almost free here.) - Same goes for seeing more than one person working what is well paid industry jobs in Norway visibly lacking front teeth (when it is that visible I guess it must be they cannot afford to fix it.)
  • BlameKaneda 5y ago
    > Talking to someone who was super-happy working 180% in three jobs because it allowed her to send all her three sons to college and because three jobs were less boring than one If she is, indeed, super-happy working at all three jobs, she's definitely an anomaly. I can't imagine working 2+ jobs and not feeling stressed out about them. Did she say what the jobs were, and how many hours she spent in each per week?
• brailsafe 5y ago
  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 highway in the U.S. We have Walmart, they have Super Walmart. It just takes some getting used to. That said, the areas that were built before cars don't remotely suffer from this as much.
  • TMWNN 5y ago
    >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.
• makerofthings 5y ago
  I have travelled a fair bit in the US. I don’t think anywhere in the US gives a realistic representation of the US. It’s all different, you need to visit a few different states and types of city and think about the whole. It’s Vegas and NYC and Portland and Salt Lake City and Austin and Mountain View and a whole bunch of other places mashed together. I don’t get this as much with other countries. If someone on here thinks one single place in the US captures the whole country then I would love to go and visit.
  • Aeolun 5y ago
    I think bigness is everywhere though. At least I felt dwarved both in Vegas and Nashville, which are the only two places I have experience with so far.
  • Aromasin 5y ago
    I think this honestly applies for every country though, however it's impossible to recognize unless you grew up in said country, or lived there for many, many years. I would say the UK easily gives the US a run for it's money - but again that's only because I've lived my whole life there and have learnt to recognize the differences. The cultural disparity between Newcastle, Edinburgh, London, Cornwall, Liverpool, Belfast, Leicester, Birmingham, Inverness, Manchester, and all the small towns and villages in between are so vast, despite being so close geographically; the UK is only the size of Michigan, yet travel 40 miles in any direction and the dialect, food, buildings, clothing, and music preference can be completely different. The trip from Chester to Caernarfon is only as far as travelling half way down Long Island, but in one place they speak almost 100% English, and in the other it's more like 20. Granted we don't have the dramatic shifts in climate (although our microclimates are quite unique), but the population density and long, chequered history as a nation seem to make up for it. Any country, despite how unified they look on the exterior, is not a realistic representation of the country as a whole. I'm sure a person from Moscow has very little similarity to one from Vladivostok, or likewise Sao Paulo to Sao Lius. There's no where in the world you can visit, besides some microstates, that give a realistic representation of the country in one visit.
    • 5y ago
• dafoex 5y ago
  The bit about road names borrowing from other places is true in the UK, but it has a function: London Road will, eventually, lead to London, as will most any road with another city for it's name. I imagine this couldn't be possible in the states due to the absolute vastness of it all, so unless New York Street grows four extra lanes and magically becomes an interstate, it's surely just named in homage to New York.
  • codesections 5y ago
    > I imagine this couldn't be possible in the states due to the absolute vastness of it all No, this absolutely happens in the states too — just on a smaller scale. Roads often have the name of the next town they run through. (One mountain town I'm familiar with in North Carolina has only 4 roads leaving town, each named for the town you'll arrive in if you take that road). The county that applies that to pretty much every road (or at least used to) is Italy. I have vivid memories of trying to navigate the Italian highway system pre-satnav when none of the signs used the highway names on my map; instead, they listed the next city the highway would hit — frequently one that I wasn't familiar with. (And no, apparently all roads do not lead to Rome)
• kylehotchkiss 5y ago
  I (random non-Indian American) spent a little time in Pune and thought it was a really special spot - people were very well mannered (I’m used to the bigger cities), driving was more comfortable, weather was really mild, very green overall. And cars moved over for ambulances! That blew my mind (again, used to bigger cities where that doesn’t happen). I don’t know if I’m reading this the same was as residents but it seems like Mr. Poonawalla has contributed back to his city nicely. Fun to see the perspective of Pune resident in USA.
• teekert 5y ago
  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 order a sandwich if I'm hungry, two if I'm really really hungry. In the US I often tried to eat the whole serving but it usualy left me feeling like I was about to explode. It takes some getting used to to decide to stop eating something when you are used to eating everything. The nice thing is, it's highly acceptable to take food home. When I just arrived I felt like everything, all the food, all the beverages were sweeter, but you get used to that quickly. As for the friendlyness to pedestrians, that is also a local things, I have had some very weird experiences walking around Galveston Tx. people think you are a criminal for walking. I was even shouted at for walking into a drive-in Wendy's, but the restaurant itself was closed! So it seems like you need a car for food at later hours. And yeah, things are big, and there are drive-through ATMs! And sometimes you can only get to the other side of a road with a car, so something can be like 100 meters away and you can't figure out how to get there. Oh and turn on the TV, I found like 3 out of 50 channels to have preachers saying things like "Yeah, I know you're poor but Jesus will reward you if you give money anyway" ...Now I really understand that song by Genesis. But I really like going there, I never felt threatened (except when walking into the Wendy's drive in), people didn't try to screw me over (try taking a cab as a tourist in a big city in Asia) and they know what service is (arguably because tipping is expected, which also takes getting used as is being presented prices without taxes, why?!).
  • sweaty 5y ago
    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 well stroll into the Target right across the 2 mile long parking lot to grab some last minute groceries for dinner! I did exactly this, as a Dutch person living in the US, not realising how ridiculous this is compared to my home country.
• sweaty 5y ago
  I've lived in the US for a while, this reads very nostalgic. But I never really had a sense of culture shock, I was going through the motions of course, adjusting and getting used to American culture, but the 'shock' was never really there while I was living there. The shock came after I moved back to The Netherlands and realised how strange the US was compared to it. Is delayed culture shock a thing?
  • rtuulik 5y ago
    I think "reverse culture shock" covers it somewhat.
• Fnoord 5y ago
  > 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. > But crossing streets is generally a huge pain: you can only do so along zebra crossings, which are always at signals, and you have to wait for the pedestrian signal to show the walking sign. (There are signals for pedestrians just as there are for cars.) At busy intersections, you sometimes have to wait for more than a minute to get to cross. I honestly prefer the “risk your life and cross from anywhere, anytime” model - it’s faster. Heh, Dutch here, I'd like to regard the zebra as a safety net for those who cannot walk quick. The elder, but also people who are ill, during bad weather, or parents with small children (like myself). When I am alone and commute to work, YOLO, I will manage (and I do take some risks to ensure I make it to say a bus or train). But when I am with one or both of my small children then I really appreciate a feature like this. Same with our legal responsibility cars have over bikes. Cars drive so much faster than 100 years ago (compare with "A Trip Down Market Street" from 1906). When I am with my kids I try to follow the traffic laws by the rulebook because they learn from observation.
• lordnacho 5y ago
  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 regularly seen people who wouldn't fit through a standard sized door in Europe. It's very rare over here, hey common over there, by my anecdotal counting. Infrastructure. The US version sucks. SF has what, 4m people? There's quite small cities with better underground train connections. NYC has one but the whole experience is a bit gross to be honest. Looks like it's never been updated, and it's kept pretty dirty. I drove around Milwaukee, and there were mattresses and burnt out wrecks on the damned highway, and it's stayed there for my whole trip. The roadway itself is made of slabs of something that makes a clunk-clunk noise as you drive from one to the next. 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. My impression, and the impression of my 6 year old, was that there's massive differences between people there. Go to Scandinavia if you want to see minimal class differences. Some of my friends who are mega rich (owns an island etc) you will not know from looking or talking to them. Generally in the UK you can hear class when people talk, and I would guess so in the US to a degree, especially as it's tied in with race.
  • rsj_hn 5y ago
    > SF has what, 4m people? That's like saying "London has, what, 50 million people"? We have left the realm of plausible errors and are far into "no idea what is talked about" territory. SF is a 7 mile x 7 mile box with mostly flat, single family homes. It's ~850,000 people. Within that box is a small 1 kilometer x 1 kilometer square that has the big buildings. Here you can see an aerial view of the top half of SF, with the downtown area seen as a little section in the midst of a pool of single family homes: https://www.thepinnaclelist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/07-Aerial-View-of-San-Francisco-One-of-the-Hottest-Housing-Markets-in-America-1024x461.jpg https://www.thepinnaclelist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/0... The subway runs through that square underground, and then a few above ground lines connect to it - there is no need to go underground anywhere except that small downtown area. You can walk across the entire downtown area from north to south in about 15 minutes. The corresponding city in the U.K. would be something like Newcastle.
• frettchen 5y ago
  "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 (they looked a bit like AK47s/AKMs, though I don't know for sure if they were), whereas most security I've encountered in the US carries sidearms at most, and often no firearms at all.
  • dan-robertson 5y ago
    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)
  • Markoff 5y ago
    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
    • no1lives4ever 5y ago
      > 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 This is still a thing in Delhi. You can see sand bags or security shields with some security personell hiding behind them all over the city. Here in Delhi, you will be checked very thoroughly for guns and bombs whenever you enter a luxury hotel, shopping mall or the subway. That checking includes the combination of a doorframe metal detector, hand held metal detector and airport style baggage x ray scanner.
• dougmwne 5y ago
  I will add that the US is really huge with a lot of regional variation. About half these observations are pretty specific to the DC area. Everything from food, fitness, hobbies, dress, home construction, language, friendliness, patterns of small talk, political opinions, and demographic averages can be quite different from state to state and city to city.
• AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
  >All house floors, apart from kitchen floors, obviously, are carpeted. I have no idea why, someone tell me. You're in an apartment, carpets are cheaper than a hard surface floor for the price point of an apartment. So anywhere where a hard surface isn't required, wall to wall carpet will be put down. The other advantage of carpet, especially in an apartment, is that it muffles the sound of your movement. Last, it's also warmer in the winter, which is nice. Now, in my own home, I have hardwood flooring throughout and area rugs. >Stoves are always electric. No lighter needed. Electric stoves are actually low end, or if you live somewhere without natural gas. A gas stove has a built in igniter with a little spark generator on each burner. So no lighter either way! >But for bathroom taps, I don’t understand why there’s two different knobs for hot and cold. Stylistic choice. You can also get bathroom faucets with a central handle control. Kitchen faucets can be either way, too. >Names are re-used to an uncomfortable extent here: streets, cities, states, suburbs, all tend to borrow from each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield#United_States
• LeanderK 5y ago
  > 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.
  • dan-robertson 5y ago
    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/ https://kateharding.net/bmi-illustrated/ and photo album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/sets/72157602199008819/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/sets/721576021990... )
    • LeanderK 5y ago
      it might be true that there's a false perception of what overweight looks like, but I don't notice even a little bit of fat. I did my undergrad at a technical university where the standard was noticeable lower and overweight/obese people did actually exist. But it's very different here and it actually motivated me to work out every week. I didn't want to be the only one not really in shape. I wasn't overweight, just not really in shape either.
• Markoff 5y ago
  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
• dartharva 5y ago
  >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.
• da39a3ee 5y ago
  > 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. > But crossing streets is generally a huge pain … I honestly prefer the “risk your life and cross from anywhere, anytime” model - it’s faster. As someone from Europe, this! It’s extremely annoying the way American drivers stop when you’re trying to cross the road. The 2-body problem of planetary motion under gravity would not have been solved if the planets kept stopping for each other.
• known 5y ago
  And https://www.petition2congress.com/ctas/expel-indian-americans-from-usa https://www.petition2congress.com/ctas/expel-indian-american...