Ex-pat Dopers, what drives you nuts in your host country?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Not much, I love Sydney. I like to walk, and I’ve mastered the fact that “just around the corner” doesn’t mean just around the corner closest to me. I like trains and busses, and maybe drive once a week. This is good.

But I hate hate hate this conversation:

Them: Are you Canadian?
Me: No, I’m American
Them: Whew, I thought so, but Canadians get all upset if you ask if they are American.

WTF?

I hate this conversation worse:

Them: Are you American?
Me: Yes, yes I am.
Them: Wow, your government sucks, and I hate all that it stands for. America is an awful, awful place, where you torture innocents and make war on everybody. You let people DIE because they can’t get healthcare… (Segue into all that is wrong with the American government and how we should fix it. One fellow declared that we had no TREES because we cut them all down! Um? Yeah.)
Me: Um…dude, ya been there?
Them: No, why?
Me: Uh…yeah.

WTF?

Also - every conversation I have with Australians about America generally includes the statement (rightly or wrongly) that we like our food too sweet and put sugar on everything and this is why we are all fat and going to die before we reach 30 of massive heart attacks (usually said between mouthfuls of fatty “meat” pies, but I digress). And yet - YET - I finally see in my local store two brands of cereal I have been dearly missing, Chex and Cheerios. Except they aren’t, of course, because while the boxes say either Chex or Cherrios respectively, they are, in fact, not even close to either brand because - get this - they are absolutely sticky with added sugar and flavors like honey. The hell? How’m I supposed to make Chex Mix with that?

WT absolute blowing my mind all to hell F??

But then, I went down to Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair the other day (not today, last week when it was sunny) and sat and read a book for hours and remembered why I love this place.

Cheers,
G

42

I laughed at the exchange, but their rationale makes sense, to a degree, doesn’t it?

Why do you need to visit a country to hate its government and its policies, especially foreign policy?

Did you have to visit Soviet Russia to get a feeling that communism wasn’t that great?

43

I agree with everything except the difficulty of taxes;

I’ve lived in the US my whole life. My taxes have never taken more than ~30 minutes to do. What exactly are you talking about?

Granted, both my father and brother are accountants, and I get enormous help from them.

But really? US Taxes? That difficult? I’m calling shenanigans.

44

So, you get “enormous help” from professional accountants, and yet you are surprised that laypeople might find the labyrinthine tax forms and regulations difficult? I guess, by your logic, if my father is a dentist, i should call “shenanigans” on people who can’t perform their own root canal surgery.

The US tax forms are simple enough if you have a very basic pay-as-you-earn income, and have a straightforward financial situation that requires no extra, special forms or unusual requirements. If 1040EZ is all you need, you won’t have any trouble. But as soon as you step outside the very basic setup, the whole thing gets incredibly complicated. You are inevitably sent on a bureaucratic treasure-hunt, where the information you need is allegedly in one form, which then tells you to look at another form, which then sends you to a third.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it involves quite a lot of work and some very careful reading of what are often rather poorly-explained or arcane sets of requirements and regulations. And, as i said earlier, i have three other western, English-speaking countries to compare it with, and it really is by far the least user-friendly of the four systems i’ve used.

45

Well, the old joke is - if you hear a North American accent, ask them what province they’re from. If the person is Canadian, he or she will be happy. If the person is American, he or she will be too stupid to be offended.

In all seriousness, I think I’m pretty good with picking a Canadian accent, but if I don’t know, I’ll either say something generic like “How do you like Sydney?”, or maybe “What city are you from?”

The people Gleena posted about are just ignorant arseholes.

46

When I lived in Germany, quite awhile ago, the main thing that annoyed me was that university students all seemed to think they knew more about the US than I did.

I had people inform me in no uncertain terms that not a single person in the US had health insurance, almost every American owned a handgun, every black American lived in a ghetto and Americans only eat hamburgers and have no other cuisine.

It got to the point that I would not even say where I came from if I were in a bar with a lot of university students…I got tired of the endless, and useless, debates based upon articles they had read in some magazine (Der Spiegel mostly). And often, halfway through some heated conversation, they would either say, “You just don’t understand.” and stand up and walk away or they would claim I really wasn’t American and just faking it. I couldn’t win.

47

“Transport? Transport?” That’s a tourist-area thing, I think; I’ve heard it all the time in Ubud (Bali) but never in Jakarta.

You are right about the lack of Balinese food in Bali, it drives me crazy too! The only times I’ve had good Balinese food are

(1) during Nyepi, when the proprietor of the bungalows where I was staying tried to keep us from going out by enticing us to stay in with us a delicious Balinese feast (for those who don’t know what Nyepi is, it is a “Day of Silence” and you aren’t supposed to go out, at least foreigners aren’t)

(2) following one of Janet’s cooking classes - you can sign up at Cafe Luna in Ubud - and

(3) when I stayed for a month in a simple hut bordering on the rice padis, and the wife of the landlord did a lot of cooking for me.

Balinese food is delicious! Worth tracking down.

48

I live near Kingston, and work in the City, and spend time at a rowing club on the Putney Embankment, so I interact with lots of different levels of British society in my day to day. The Toffs all seem to casually, and constantly, look down on anyone and everyone not Toff, and the working class types I do know resent it a lot and aren’t afraid to answer this condescension with physical threat if not outright violence - as your post shows.

I’m not talking about open class warfare or anything overt, just an under-the-covers resentment of each other that is fairly subtle. I think if you’re British you hardly even notice it - my girlfriend certainly doesn’t notice the day-to-day class assigning and the resulting automatic treatment of people unless I point it out - but it is definitely there and definitely a part of British culture and history and glaringly obvious to someone who didn’t grow up with it all their lives.

49

Taiwan based expat here.

No decent Mexican food.

50

Join the club. :frowning:

51

We have family in Schneverdingen. (South, by Luneberg Heide) Ja, ain’t that exotic.

52

Oh hell yeah - forgot about that one. There is a small bit, here and there, but it’s often not that good and / or hugely expensive.

Never thought I would ever pay the equivalent of $100 for dinner for 4 people at a Mexican restaurant!

53

No, that wasn’t the point, sorry if I made it badly. I think DMark made it better when he said:

Substitute Australia for Germany, and you’ll see the flavor of the conversation. To be fair, it should be noted that the majority of the people I end up having that particular conversation with tend to be shoving the local socialist rag in my face at the time.

It gets fairly old - in fact, I agree with most of the criticism I hear about the US, but when it goes totally over the top (um, yes, yes, we have trees, forests of them even, and you can walk down the street without carrying a gun, and you’re unlikely to be stabbed, shot, tortured or detained in any way in Main Street, USA) I just get annoyed. And you’d be surprised at the number of times I have to have this conversation.

Bwahaha, and the funny part is, I’m an ice hockey fan, I keep asking people with any remotely North American accent if they are Canucks for that reason. Closely followed by a slightly maniacal, starved for news look and a desperate question of “Who’s your team?!?!”

Let me reiterate again, I love Sydney in particular and Australia in general, these are just minor nitpicks.

But if they keep fucking with my Cheerios, all bets are off, I tells ya.

Cheers,
G

54

I’m in that club, too. And it’s not even Mexican food. It’s Mexican-ish sorta food that kinda might be like Mexican food, or even Tex-Mex, but really really isn’t. It’s good food, but it’s not Mexican food. Except in the sense that the cook might or might not be able to locate Mexico on a map, with assistance and Google Earth.

FTR, black beans are black, and can be Mexican food. Refried beans are not black, under any circumstances. And yet…

sigh

Cheers,
G

55

Not to pick on you, TLD, because you say you don’t do it, but this always baffles me. Why would you want to guess where someone’s from, when there are so many ways that could go wrong? What’s wrong with a simple “Where are you from?”

I too, lack Mexican food, but I actually have some avocadoes on my kitchen table at the moment. I bought them about a month ago and they were hard as rocks, but they’re just about edible now. SOON there will be guacamole! It will be eaten with chips and on top of scrambled eggs, as god intended! Nom nom nom…

(Two and a half months and I’m in California! I’m going to ask my mom for chiles rellenos for my first dinner. Mmmm…mom-made chiles rellenos…)

56

I’ve been in the UK over 12 years now so have gotten used to most of the stuff that drove me nuts. Some things that still annoy are shops that only open 9-5. I’d like to use the local butcher, and my friends run a nice deli, but I can only get to them on Saturdays. I miss easily available Mexican food too. The Texas Embassy in London is OK, but not spectacular.

I like the compactness of the country. Within 20 minutes walk from home I’ve got 3 pubs, a shop, and 2 train stations.

57

FYI - if you’re about in London looking for Mexican, try Pacifico in Covent Garden (Langley Street I believe) - it’s decent Mexican, and although a bit on the expensive side it’s a good place and the food is fresh and pretty darn good. Texas Embassy is TEXAN, not Mexican - I don’t think Mexicans specialise in chicken fried steak! That said it’s a decent place for tequila, which I also kinda miss.

I’m in total agreement with you on the compactness, though - unless you live way the hell out in the boonies, there’s always something around walking distance from your house - I’ve a small market, three pubs, five restaurants, an about a dozen shops of various discriptions; I walk for 10 minutes and I’m in Kingston with all the shopping I could ever need. Other than getting out of town and picking up fish supplies (like huge jugs of RO water) I don’t even need a car. I like England, it’s just the class thing that still bugs me here. Oh, and the taxes, which seem far to high for what you get. And maybe the house prices in London - bit of a fucker there too.

58

That’s a good question, and I don’t know the answer, but everyone does it. Maybe because English-speakers feel dumb if they can’t identify an English accent?

59

Congrats! I’ve got just a month and a half left until I get home. If things work out well, I may not be staying long…so I’m gonna have to shovel the Mexican food in while I can.

60

I just moved to Hong Kong recently, but I guess it has to be the lack of spacial awareness of the people. Went walking in the beautiful country parks at the weekend, and the concrete path was quite narrow at some points overlooking the ocean, with only enouhg room for the people, one walking in each direction. Next time I’m going to be taking a whistle, as couples or groups walking towards you two abreast wouldn’t adopt single file when we needed to pass them.