Do Japanese people wear shoes to the beach, or is that an exception to the no-bare-feet rule?
Drinking while driving: the comparative popularity of manual transmissions in Europe makes this an awkward activity for a lot of people, which is perhaps why people haven’t gotten into a habit of it.
A friend of mine who had lived in Hong Kong for a few years said that if she walked to and from the gym wearing her gym clothes and sneakers, she would get strange looks. Those are for inside the gym only!
Kuala Lumpur, I would guess.
On the Continent this is true. In England it’s always been illegal to do this, but the law may be about to change. This page has some information on the subject.
This varies from person to person, night to night, and dish to dish. Someone might make some dishes from scratch, but not others (for example, I’m unlikely to make anything from scratch that involves rolling out dough, because I’m not any good at that). I suspect everybody who works is less likely to cook from scratch on work nights than on other nights. Most of us are more likely to cook from scratch for holiday meals than we are for a regular weeknight dinner.
Where in the US was your friend from? There certainly are supermarkets in the Bay Area that have a large selection of fresh produce and bread. But when I visit my parents in a small town in western Maryland, the situation is different.
Well said. If we have the time, my wife and I prefer to make things from scratch. If we’re in a hurry, or tired, or don’t have ingredients on hand, then we’re perfectly happy to use the prepared stuff.
So you’re telling me that they have mashed potato dispensers in Kuala Lumpur?
I find it hard to believe considering how seldom you see potatoes in asian cuisine.
Indian cuisine includes potatoes- aloo gobhi being one example.
IIRC, this points out another cultural difference: when an American says “asian”, they’re usually talking about someone or something that is associated with China, Japan, Korea, or southeast Asia. I think the British use “asian” to refer to people or things from India, but I could be wrong about this.
You’re correct - it generally is used as a term to encompass India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka. As a specific example, the self-identification ethnic groups on the 2001 census had ‘Asian’ and ‘Chinese’ as separate catagories (with sub-catagories, too).
Heh. The mark of a true American is the ability to eat a burger, drink a Coke, and drive at the same time–even a manual, which is all I drive.
Yeah, but every city & town is built entirely on a grid system, right, so you’ll never need to steer? 
Go to Boston…
Speaking of drivers, here’a handy field guide to identify where a driver is from
Yeah KL is Kuala Lumpur, but I was wrong about the potato machine being there. I actually found it a little further south in Singapore, as I recalled while searching for a picture.
Here is a pic of it from someone’s blog (not mine)
I really like the idea of a mashed potato dispenser.
Except that it would taste like crap compared to real mashed potato, which is a meal in itself. (It’s the Irish genes)
Yes ofcourse it must vary, my point is that you think of it as a normal everyday thing to do and that the ready to assemble items are standard supermarket items in great variety. That’s not to say that we don’t have ready made pastry and pasta sauces but we just don’t have so much variety. If someone said to me they were going to make an apple pie - I would assume they would buy real apples and cook them along with making real pastry but in the States you can’t assume this.
Does anywhere but the US have take-and-bake bread? They’re loaves of bread that are mostly baked, but not entirely, and you put them in the oven and finish baking them at home. Nice warm bread without having to make it from scratch.
Americans use clothes dryers, Europeans don’t. It’s illegal in many US cities to hang clothes on a clothesline outside- some people think it detracts from the look of the neighborhood. I think the only Americans I’ve ever heard of who had a washing machine but no dryer were my grandparents, and they were very old-fashioned.
Damn! Now how am I going to get anything other than that mineral water crap if I go to Spain? American bottled water isn’t mineral water- it’s not supposed to taste like anything at all, and a lot of us don’t like mineral water (I think it tastes like really bad tap water, the kind where I would only drink bottled water if the stuff coming out of my tap tasted like that). “Tap water” has been one phrase I’ve made an effort to learn in the local language of countries I plan to visit.
Not only that, but many restaurants here will refuse to serve eggs with runny yolks or rarer-than-medium hamburgers. The reason being that our government has declared such things unsafe (though a lot of us do eat undercooked or even raw eggs at home), and the restaurant is afraid that someone might get sick from eating one of those things and sue the restaurant. I don’t even like eggs with runny yolks, but I still think it’s a sad commentary on how lawsuit-driven our country has gotten.
That’s because manufacturers put “Refrigerate after opening” on damn near everything they sell in the US, and we’re gullible enough to believe it. Mr. Neville insists that we refrigerate soy sauce :rolleyes: Like anything bad could possibly grow in the presence of all that salt…
Do you not have problems with mold and mildew taking over your bathrooms? Where do you keep your towels so they don’t get wet?
Some of us don’t like this either- I definitely don’t.
The reason we have this insane system of not including sales tax in tag prices, though (as I’ve heard it) is that sales taxes vary from state to state and sometimes even from town to town. And large retail chains don’t want to have to put different prices on stuff that is going to stores in different places, or target the prices in their TV or print ads. Do sales taxes not vary between states in Australia?
You don’t take home your leftover food after a restaurant meal? Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me you don’t order extra when you’re getting delivery or takeout Chinese food or pizza so you can have the leftovers for breakfast…
What do you do on those nights when both you and your spouse/SO have had an absolutely exhausting day at work and a horrible commute coming home, and you’re both just way too tired for any kind of real cooking?
Where in California? I know it wasn’t LA, because there is no public transit in LA (kidding, but only just). I’ve ridden transit around the Bay Area and in San Diego, and didn’t feel it was terribly dangerous.
This is not true of a lot of large cities in the US. If you were insane enough to try to drive to a shop or theater in downtown San Francisco, you’d probably have to park a long way away and/or pay a king’s ransom for parking. New York and Boston are similar, AIUI. There is transit, though, so people do get to those shops and theaters.
This is another thing that varies by state. In New Jersey, it’s illegal to pump your own gas. Here in the Bay Area, stations that offer full service are relatively rare.
Heh. I just went on a trip to rural Kentucky, and was shocked that the self-serve gas stations were pump first and then pay.
I haven’t seen a station where you didn’t have to pay first since I was a wee one back in the 70’s.
Of course, I was also amusingly taken aback when the host/ess at the restaurants we went to would ask us “Smoking or non?”. We haven’t had smoking indoors at any bars or restaurants in CA since 1998.
No, not usually, it’s kind of considered uncouth - sometimes in Chinese restaurants you can ask for a container. Our portion sizes are much smaller so maybe that’s why.
Get take aways (take out)
It was in Sacramento and I was going to LA airport.
No, but we do have roads with room for the whole car in each lane. 