I just bought a new tea kettle (the whistle flap-thing broke off on mine) and it was a huge PITA to find one that did whistle. Lots of nice-looking kettles, but try finding one that whistles… :rolleyes:
It was like a search for the Holy Grail. I need one that whistles!
Another weird thing about kettles - the electric ones are so very SSLLOOOOW due to the low power over there. Voltage of 120 instead of 240. A stovetop kettle is definitely quicker if you have gas.
What amazes me about the US (I lived in Delaware and New York City for a bit, and visited several other states, mainly California):
- “Drug stores” are a very comical concept.
- The incredible amount of standing in line that people seem to do - possibly the “small government” idea prevents them actually having enough staff in the motor registry or post office?
- National parks with 40 busloads of people at the designated lookout, and no-one on the 3 mile loop short walking trail with the same views…
- So many women wearing so much makeup and high hells, oops, heels
- So many hugely fat people
- Sandwich shops that sell only soft drinks, not juice, flavoured milk, mineral waters etc etc
- So little variety available in food in general (yes, even in NYC)
- 500 brands of each type of supermarket item, that somehow are all the same (and usually you can’t get even one plain one, it’s all scented/flavoured etc)
- Bread that tastes sweet (yuk!)
- Barbie breakfast cereal with pink marshmallows!!!
All that is the trivia; the seriously most amazing to me is the idea of normal workers having only 2 weeks holiday a year. That sucks so very very much.
I’m a fellow Jersey resident and I agree it is quite an eye opener to see hard liquor in grocery stores when I travel.
Perhaps the most amazing inter-state difference to me is the gun laws. I think that New Jersey is probably closer to the rest of the world in our own gun regulations – you cannot purchase a pistol without a special permit, one per gun, from your chief of police, and it takes several months for these permits to be approved, if ever. Hence, the (legal) sale of guns is treated with extreme caution, and they won’t even take the gun out of the display case unless you can show them your permit to purchase.
In contrast, I walked into a gun shop in Washington state that had all of its merchandise hanging on pegboard walls. Just walk up and pick the pistol of your choice off the wall, cycle the action a few times, pop the clip out, whatever. The store was arranged in such a way that you couldn’t just grab one and zip out the door, but I can’t imagine that anyone who has tried survived. All they required to purchase one was the basic Federal paperwork that applies to all states, the 3-day waiting period, and a Washington license.
In a California gun store I had the pleasure of looking through the 30-power scope of a Barrett 50-calibre sniper rifle that they had sitting on display out in the open. Since longarm sales follow less rigorous regulations than pistols, I suspect that had I wanted to, I could have walked out of there carrying it slung over my shoulder in a nice case, with a box of ammo. At the time, such a rifle was probably legally no different than a lever-action .22 plinker.
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The Foodexits kept amazing me while driving around florida. There were just so many of them! With every variety of junk-food imaginable (although somehow no great sandwiches or other life-sustaining food in general. I find it amazing that it’s even economically viable to have them so close togheter.
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**Malls.**The first one was great. The second one was ehm…just as great. And by the third one I thought groundhog day had caught me in its grip and I was doomed to spent the rest of eternity in a mediocre mass-market limbo dream.
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New York, Manhattan The sheer size and man-made beauty of the place was burned in my mind when I went there for a holiday a decade ago. I remember that upon returning to my home-town I was amazed as how small it seemed from then on.
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I was underage at some bar (I think I was 17 at the time) and they wouldn’t allow me to be there. Well that wasn’t so strange (although here it’s 16) but they said I should come back after 23.00! There would be live music then so I wouldn’t be there for the alchohol but for the music. mmh ok I’ll just wait in this alley over here…
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At 16 you learn how to drive and just when you’re comfortable and confident they throw alcohol in the mix. The other way around seems safer IMO. First teach how to deal with alcohol then give deadly weapon. I also think a 16-year old isn’t responsible enough to deal with so much potentiol to damage others.
It’s not that it’s weird, it’s saddening because there doesn’t seem a way out of this (short of a revolution or a miracle like an independent president)
Smaller parties and thus more specialized parties would provide an actual choice for a lot of people who are now feel that they are choosing between evil and evil-er. Not that you can totally take that away but it would be a big improvement IMO.
According to this study in The Review of Economics & Statistics,
When the water’s boils, an electric kettle turns itself off. There’s no need to rush over and turn the gas off.
Petrol stations: you pull up and use the petrol pump yourself. Here in Australia, there was a period ending perhaps in the late 80s where there was usually an employee standing by to pump your petrol (there was sometimes a sign “No Self Service”), but you often just hopped out and did it yourself. Nowadays, service stations only have a single attendent, who stays inside behind the counter.
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BTW, what’s with Americans and making retail payments by checks/cheques?
Water, even. :rolleyes:
Then again, if the drinks are self served, one can easily just drop one or two cubes in the drink(press the button for just a second or two) with the soda and not do the half-ice thing.
Some of my points have been mentioned already, but with the length of the thread, that is to be expected.
I’ll just me-too the money design thing. Yes, it has numbers and stuff, but where I used to be able to roughly count my cash while it was still in my wallet (One glance: 2 big red ones, five small blue ones, I have 650 kroner, cool), I now have to look at every single note. Where I’m from, you just don’t pull out your wad of cash in public and it still jars me having to do so. It’s - it’s indiscreet, that’s what it is.
Checks are still in such widespread use. Again, in Denmark, the banks hate checks and all the manual work involved with them and have worked relentlessly (i.e., made it cheap or free) to get people to use check cards, homebanking, automated bill payments etc. I’d go through perhaps 10 checks in a year.
Big, big, big servings at restaurants. I mean huge. And I seem to eat them…
Tipping. I’m not sure I’m convinced - most times it seems to get one great service, but quite often I just get bad service with a huge, fake smile plastered on.
The small selection in political parties - and the seemingly small differences between the parties. That may be linked to an unpleasant trend, namely the focus on private life and personality issues in political debate - and the subsequent smear campaigns.
The huge bookstores with the coffee shop attached and how you’re allowed, almost encouraged, to bring your coffee in among the shelves and not just browse but READ the books. Bliss.
Formal dresscodes in the workplace. Someone actually sat down to spend hours writing a multipage document defining “business casual” in painful detail.
There’s probably more…
Walloon, offended as you appear to be about ianzin finding this weird, it doesn’t alter the fact that a lot of us do find that sort of carry-on peculiar indeed. If someone in my daily life in a store in the UK (or Ireland) started banging on to me about the love of God or whatever, I’d run a feckin mile. The nerve of that woman indeed!
Anyway, some of us English appreciate having the Queen as fidei defensor so that we don’t have to bother with all that religion stuff…
What exactly is comical about drug stores? Or is it just the name?
What is comical is “chemist”–yeah, as if the pharmacists actually have a major synthesis operation going behind that counter and manufactures all the plasticwear there.
We don’t have a Chemistry Tzar, or the Chemical Squad branch of the cops, looking for Evidence of Chemistry Use. There’s no CEA nor War on Chemicals, either.
We do, however, have the word “drugs” which usually applies to illegal substances. “Drug Store” therefore sounds funny to people who don’t use that word.
It is illegal to serve alcohol (i.e., in a restaurant) if you’re underage in the US, but I’m not sure about selling it over the counter. I worked in a restaurant where my manager had another server mix and deliver all the drink orders to my tables until I turned 21.
Wow, never knew there wasn’t any peanut butter in other countries! Isn’t Nutella a European product, though? I would think that would prepare people somewhat for the taste/concept of peanut butter.
Someone mentioned a Chinese friend’s enthusiasm for marshmallows—I had a Thai coworker who loved them and told us that in Thailand, marshmallows are expensive and considered a “gourmet” food.
Um, what about the “God” part of “God Save the Queen”? I believe that’s what Walloon was talking about…it’s ironic that a Brit would complain about religious expression in the US when you’ve got “God” in your…whatever it is (national slogan? Is it like the “In God We Trust” on American coins?).
That said, I’m American and despise the in-your-face religion of certain fellow citizens, as in the florist shop exchange.
A European Engineer here, having been transplanted a while back.
Many points have already been mentioned, and I will not repeat descriptions of liquor stores, gas stations with required full service, bread (yuck), Hooters, use of middle names, drinking age is higher than driving age…
What I found very, ah, different , was
[ul]
[li]Graduation ceremonies at Kindergarten and almost every other grade. I think the big thing is in the end. Everything else is money-making from the people renting/selling the clothing. While we are at it:[/li][li]Social Promotion in school. Where I am from, it’s simple: You don’t make the grades for the year, you get another chance next year. It’s called consequence of your action, or in this case, inaction[/li][li]Stripbar culture among (even fairly educated) men. I have never been to a strip club, and I am not sure what the appeal is, and many of my European friends are also not quite sure what this is about. (I guess the fascination about Amsterdam would fit here as well, but I digress)[/li][li]“Looks over quality” as motto for many things, but most notably clothing and furniture[/li][li]Guns at Walmart, next to the bike rack (granted, that was only in one Walmart that I visited in the MA)[/li][li]Dating. Now I think it is a great concept. When I came here as a student, I was flabbergasted. [/li][li]Blind dates. (I want to see who I talk to!)*[/li][li]Importance of makeup and the time and money spend to discuss, buy, apply and remove it[/li][li]Fear of (showing) breasts. Can’t describe it any other way. I am from a country where nobody really cares. Seeing breasts at beaches and pools is (now) common, and that is not even mentioning the harrassment some women get when they breastfeed their kids in public. [/li][li]Difference between New York City, San Fransisco, and pretty much everything else in the country.[/li]
[/ul]
Oh I have so much more but I guess I should work
HAND
- Yes, I know what a blind date is. It just seemd to obvious a joke to miss
It’s our National Dirge, er, Anthem. I googled for lyrics, found here and here . I give two cites because the first one contains an extra verse. I suspect it was omitted from the second web page as being politically incorrect
Dorfl, do you mean that people in Europe don’t date?
That is, one person doesn’t ask another, “Would you like to meet for coffee/go to a movie/meet at the bookstore/take in a game/etc”, with the acknowledged subtext “I am interested in you. Are you interested in me?” How do people meet?
Or is there some US variant of dating that I don’t understand, being Canadian?
I agree though, on the apparent terrible fear of sex and public nudity in the States.
BTW, the only time I went to a strip club, I found it terribly lonely and not at all pleasant. Liking strip clubs seems to be more common among extroverted people.
We certainly do have peanut butter in Australia. In some states they insist on calling it “peanut paste”. It’s used as a sandwich or toast spread, often with honey or jam. Also as an ingredient for making satay sauce (yum!).
Which countries don’t have it?
amarone, that’s even more cheerful than ‘Their blood has wiped out their foul footstep’s pollution.’