Culture shock | Hacker News Reader

Culture shock

siddhesh.substack.com

335 pointsbkudria251 comments

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.

> 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.

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.

Another thing is india tends to be one of the fatter poor states due to its diet. If you came from east or south east asia, americans would seem fatter to you even if your in a fitter place. Same with many europeans.

(As an American) I used to think we had too much sugar in our culture, then a couple of friends extolled the virtue of and convinced me to try gulab jamun...

Indeed - the U.S. has some of the most extreme health differences between the top end and bottom end of the income spectrum (roughly correlated to class). At the top end, the outcomes (and health measures) are better than anywhere in the world, while at the bottom end they are below most first-world nations:

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/

For an apples-to-apples comparison, one must look at the corresponding distributions in other developed countries. It could be that the poorest people live significantly shorter lives in other countries but that the middle do better than in the states.

If you have any data about similar distributions for other countries (life expectancy by income) I would be very interested - I have not managed to find similar.

Are there no wealthy people, over there, who just don’t want to work out?

There are, but it is seen as a moral failing or lack of discipline in the circles I am familiar with (on the coasts).

Not being obese has basically nothing to do with "working out". It's all about diet. Nobody worked out before 1960 and nobody was fat (and lots of people were poor). Nobody in India is fat and nobody work out and they're largely poor.

To your question - Lots of them. I'm (relatively) wealthy and I don't want to diet. But I do it anyway because it's worth the short-term suffering for the long-term gain. It's a super obvious good mid and long term investment with a great RoR.

Parent commenter had the causality reversed. Being poor doesn't make you fat; high time preference makes you both poor and fat.

i.e. Someone poor with low time preference won't stay poor for long. The kind of person who stays poor in America for years and years is generally the kind who also has too high time preference to stop eating a full bag of chips every day.

This is not really true. The amount of physical activity you do absolutely influences both your shape and your health.

Also, we do have more sedentary lifestyles then typical 1960 person. Just in terms of how much you walk during the day, we are already not moving.

You have moved the goal posts. Exercise has a positive effect on health, yes. It does not have an effect on whether you're fat. That is down to food intake. That is what the poster was actually saying.

Of course exercise has an effect on whether or not you are obese, because if you spend more calories than you absorbed through eating, you will loose weight. Exercise is a way to spend calories.

Although technically true, it's much easier (and quicker) to gain X calories than to lose them via exercise. So if you're overweight, your number one priority is to control your diet. Regular exercise is important for health reasons, but not to lose weight.

There are exceptions. If you're a professional cyclist, for example, and able to output several hundreds of Watt for several hours, 6 days a week, you'll quickly lose weight through exercise. But that's not actionable advice for regular people with a full-time job and a family.

If only thing you will do is to control calories, you are pretty much guaranteed to get into the yoyo cycle of loosing/gaining weight. Majority, like almost all, people who only focus on calories stop performing in their lives, becomes tired/sick, give up and gain weight.

If you are overweight, if your concern is not purely temporary esthetic, focusing on calories control is receipt for long term failure.

Also, the exercise is not done only so that you immediately spend some calories. It is to build muscle, raise temperature, speed up your metabolism. All these affects you calorie consumption long term.

High level competitive sport has nothing to do anything. It has zero to do with what average adult experiences.

Yes, that's great, exercise is important for your health, I already mentioned that. Doesn't change the fact that you generally won't lose weight through exercise, but through a change in diet.

> It is to build muscle, raise temperature, speed up your metabolism.

Those effects are negligible compared to eating, say, 20% less. In particular because exercise makes you hungry, and if you don't control your diet, you'll regain the lost energy through increased appetite afterwards. So again, yes, please exercise regularly, but that alone won't make you lose weight.

> High level competitive sport has nothing to do anything. It has zero to do with what average adult experiences.

Uh, yeah, that's exactly what I wrote: professional athletes are an exception, and their case doesn't apply to regular people.

It absolutely does. As proven by people who stopped doing sport without changing diets and then gained weight. As proven by people who started doing sports and then over time lost weight - without any effort to change food (or even without conscious effort to modify their weight).

Also, I said "influences both your shape and your health". I did not moved goalposts.

> Nobody worked out before 1960 and nobody was fat (and lots of people were poor). Nobody in India is fat and nobody work out and they're largely poor.

What percentage of the population had desk jobs before 1960? Standing/moving all day burns a lot of calories, I would assume enough so that you don't put on a few pounds each years which can lead to obesity in the 40s. Of course that's not all the population, some are obese before being teen. But I think that's still an important part. You can't outrun your stomach if you eat a surplus of 2000 calories each day, you can if you eat a surplus of 200.

> and nobody was fat

So the baroque ideal of beauty was a contemporary fantasy?

Nothing like that. There are a large number of wealthy people in India who are into exercise and keeping fit. But there are also a a huge number who are overweight because they can afford to stuff themselves with a lot of food.

Poorer people in India end up getting more exercise and being either undernourished or eating just about enough calories to not get fat. As a general rule, poorer people will not be using cars or other forms of mechanised transport for shorter trips and will be more into manual work than the richer people. Also, the average poor person in India can not afford junk food or aereated sugary drinks.

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.

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.

Keep in mind that unlike in Europe in the US processed food is often cheaper than fresh vegetables, fruits and meats. I always thought the US would be "cheap" in terms of consumer prices compared to western europe but it was significantly more expensive to buy fresh produce in US supermarkets than in Germany or Austria.

On the other hand stuff like coca cola is cheaper.

$1 “any size” soda at McDonald’s up to 40oz where I live, with free refills. Most everyone I know spent a good amount of their teen and early adulthoods surviving off of cheap food - fast food is incredibly convenient and as cheap as a healthy “struggle” meal of staples without a long time in a kitchen which you may not really have.

Meat, veg, fruits and nuts are expensive - and they go bad. You simply can't always afford them and sometimes you can't actually buy fresh stuff.

You see, a fair amount of poor folks get paid once a month, and since there aren't a lot of little grocery stores nearby, folks wind up buying food once and hoping it lasts the month.

Poor folks don't always have steady electricity nor a refrigeration, either: Living without a fridge makes your diet go to crap pretty quickly.

Time is another luxury poor folks have issues with, which also makes diets go awry.

While there are clear differences between obesity rates between rich and poor in the US, basically everything you've put up is personal speculation:

> Poor folks don't always have steady electricity nor a refrigeration, either: Living without a fridge makes your diet go to crap pretty quickly.

Differences between access to steady refrigeration is extremely slim for people in the US for all but the poorest of the poor (basically homeless)

> Time is another luxury poor folks have issues with, which also makes diets go awry.

In the US poor people have more free time, on average, than wealthy people: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-fre...

There are other studies that suggest the causality is the opposite: obese people are more likely to become poor: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5781054/

That study is definitely not broadly convincing in my opinion, but just want to point out that there is a ton of baseless speculation in this thread trying to explain the obesity/wealth relationship.

At some point, it's the obvious that no one is stating: the American style of life makes a lot of people lazy as fuck, and they just don't give a fuck about working on their waistlines.

It's not time (very few people who exercise regularly do so to an extent that would undo significant overweight) but more likely a combination of chronic stress and a cultural norm among their family and friends. For younger and more educated people, it's a strong cultural norm to be at a healthy weight, so even people for whom it doesn't come naturally have a very strong social incentive, and they are surrounded by cultural norms that support them. For people in other classes who find it difficult to stay lean, there's much less cultural support (serving sizes, "normal" foods, etc.) and also less social downside to giving up and allowing their weight to drift up.

I remember visiting Atlanta for work for a couple weeks years ago (I'm not American).

"Everyone" in midtown was fit. Cross the border to the adjacent neighborhood (don't recall the name but it's a lot more residential and just barely still accessible by foot from down/midtown due to how far away everything in Atlanta is) and more than half the people you see are obese.

Oh and the homeless people are a lot less scary than in San Francisco. I felt safe asking a homeless man for directions in Atlanta (didn't realize he was homeless until he pointed at the tent he lives in & asked me for a dollar after we spoke) & I would probably not dare do that in downtown SF (I probably wouldn't do that in Berlin either for that matter, even though homeless people aren't as aggressive here).

Another difference is the police - in Germany, Austria & Israel (countries I've lived in so far) it's not unusual to ask a police officer who happens to pass near by for stuff like directions but when I asked a policeman (who wasn't obviously doing anything) in Atlanta where something is he very obviously didn't want to talk to me, just answered my question with "not here" and didn't even look at me while doing so. This was in broad daylight at a "nice"/central part of town so I don't think it was because I was interrupting some police action?

I cant speak to atlanta, but the police where I am (rural) and the beat cops (guys walking around) in bigger cities are generally friendly, especially if you are polite.

If the officer in a bigger area isn't a beat cop or stopping for a break, it isn't unreasonable that he was actually busy. Or, he was just a jerk and, like all humans, you'll find those in varying degrees anywhere you go.

Could very well be! I think it struck me as peculiar due to how friendly/helpful people there otherwise seemed to be.

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)

> 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

The other issue is geographic - the author is a grad student in DC, which is one of the more fit areas of the country. This is one of the few cases where I'd say it's more a class thing than a wealth thing. Political staffers and the generic military types by and large, are not wealthy people, but are very scrupulous about avoiding obesity.

Near DC. He mentions Baltimore as a street near his house. That's the main street that runs through the University of Maryland campus in College Park. It's just a few miles outside of DC.

Can you give examples of choices which in retrospect seem likely to be a result of culture shock?

> 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!

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.

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

Depends on where in Europe. You can certainly find rock sugar/lump sugar in supermarkets in, say, Germany (where it's called "Kandiszucker"), whereas in the UK you're likely to have more success in small ethnic shops.

yeah, but those are rocks with basically same size as cubes/dices, while in China you can find proper rocks like 10+ cm or bigger

I always thought rental apartments have blinds since preinstalled curtains likely wouldn't match the tenants style. Same reason they almost always have white walls and beige carpet.

> 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.

I find this literally to be the exact opposite of the truth. At least in NYC and NJ, these kinds of small stores are everywhere. Because, crucially, we don't have cars to travel to these big box stores and get a months worth of groceries in one go. Within a 5 block radius of me, I have grocery stores that sell Japanese, Greek, Indian, and Hispanic each to cater to the demographic living close.

Driving through the south and midwest, I mostly just saw immensely massive parking lots for Walmart, Dollar Generals, some liquor store, and other common big box markets with an ocean of gleaming SUVs in front of them.

I can walk 5 miles down an avenue and buy groceries from small shops that I don't even know the name of from a dozen different countries.

100% agree in the SF Bay Area as well. Small stores centered around many cultures from around the world.

> Driving to the south and midwest, I mostly just saw immensely massive parking lots for Walmart, Dollar Generals, some liquor store, and other big box markets.

If you're just driving through, as you stated, and never actually stopped or lived in any of these towns then I'm not surprised you have that impression.

What OP was mentioning is 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.)

What immediately came to my mind was feed stores mixed with a farmers market which there's an abundance of in rural areas. You're not going to find that that in a big city. For reference, I live on the West coast (not in NYC) and we have small grocers, but not specialized little mom and pops or something in-between like a feed store.

> What immediately came to my mind was feed stores mixed with a farmers market which there's an abundance of in rural areas.

What. Where are you getting any of interpretation this from?

The post mentions:

  > small local stores

  > that sell grains and rice and vegetables here

  > small stationery shops

  > or shops of any kind

I can literally walk out my door and in 5 minutes have pictures of all of these on my street.

https://meaningin.com/urdu-to-english/kiraana-in-english

Doing a blind translation, kiraana comes up as.

  > consumer goods sold by a grocer

  > a marketplace where groceries are sold

Where in any of these data points can you infer he means

  > specialized little mom and pops

  > something in-between like a feed store

A stationary store sounds like a mom and pop store. Yes, a kiraana from what I read sounds like a neighborhood grocer but pictures also show them looking a lot more like farmers markets. Feed stores can be like that, but it probably depends on what the area offers.

Stationery store as mentioned by the op here is a shop that sells stationery items. Things like books, pencils, pens, crayons, printer paper, etc. These are typically stores that will not sell you food items. Kirana stores are mostly those that primarily sell food items.

The kirana stores of India are essentially small grocery shops owned by a individual that sells a variety of grocery and daily use items. Mostly they are limited to dry and packaged items. Things like rice, lentils, breakfast cereals, chocolates, sauces, spices, pickles, jams, condiments, cheese, cooking oil, eggs, milk, packaged drinks and other such items. They will almost never sell things like coffee, tea or ready to eat food items unless they are pre-packaged. In most parts of India, the so called kirana stores will not sell vegetables, meat or fish, but they will very likely be stocking up on eggs. They are typically different shops from the kirana shops.

That’s not what the OP means.

The OP means stores that are within walking distance.

That’s why he mentions having to drive to buy groceries.

In India, as in most cities in Asia and Europe (and NYC, NYC satellites), you walk around the corner to buy the vast majority of your daily needs.

> farmers market which there's an abundance of in rural areas. You're not going to find that that in a big city

I lived in Boston for a couple years and went to Haymarket [0] all the time next to the amazing Boston Public Market. There are a bunch of smaller produce stands and specialty shops throughout the city like Deluca's. I am sad to see, however, that Russo's in Watertown has just closed. Elmendorf Baking Supplies in Cambridge looks awesome and I'm sad I left before they opened.

If ya just want a big bag of rice, Super 88 has a great market in addition to all the great food stalls. See also Little India next to Market Basket in Somerville.

You want stationary? Check out Loyal Supply Company in Somerville.

I've been able to locate similar places in every city I've lived in, with the exception of feed stores (although my current city has one, and I just never really looked for one). I'm curious what city you're in, maybe I had it even better in Boston than I already thought. I'm sure the last two years have not been good for discovering new farmers markets in large cities, though.

Check into CSAs too, esp. if you can't find or attend a farmers market. I'm sure that model is branching out from beyond just produce, too. We have a mushroom grower and dairy creamery where I'm at these days.

As someone who escaped suburbia for the city and later countryside, my experience reflects that of the poster you replied to. Big box strip mall chain complexes are found in the burbs.

[0]: http://www.haymarketboston.org/

Yeah, numerous commenters from the North East came to point out how wrong I was about their town. I wasn't talking about visiting the burbs, and neither were they but I agree, there are a lot more big box stores in large suburbs.

What I was really getting at is if they're missing small mom and pop stores, that's most of what the town I grew up in had (specifically in the South, but the Midwest isn't that much different.) I was encouraging them to get out of the city and see the rest of America. Living in big American cities has been a bit soul-sucking for me and not at all reflective of the rest of America, but obviously there's a lot of pride that some people hold for them.

In my (limited) experience, really only New Orleans takes "no big box stores" seriously.

NYC and SF to a lesser extent: big box exist, but there are alternatives.

Can't speak to Chicago or the northern Midwest though.

> 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.

As another commenter mentioned here, these types of store are actually very common in NYC.

> There are, just not in big coastal cities.

My experience is exactly the opposite.

Depending where you are, curtains have a better thermal performance to blinds. I vastly prefer solid curtains that block light completely to keep rooms cool.

From reading the list it’s clear it’s from living in a low cost suburban low rise 1960s-80s apartment complex — which tend to be the defacto standard for international graduate students - average frame construction, low cost electric appliances, cheap to replace mid pile carpet, the cheap vertical blinds, the cheapest glacier bay dual valve faucet [1] - all very efficient to manage and turn over. They have convenient parking and decent amenities for the price. In the rust belt/northeast these complexes are 90 percent (made up number) international and some domestic students and old people (there isn’t much difference in these places and most “senior living” places outside of what’s on the sign out front)

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.

What? Yes, it does. It's actually the cheapest to buy if you are a bit poor. https://www.walmart.com/ip/C-H-Premium-Pure-Cane-Sugar-Cubes...

No, he's talking about sugar that looks like this - https://www.gomothers.in/store/garg-traders/product/sugar-lo.... It's small enough but clearly distinct from salt

Also Indian here. If the OP is used to cubes of sugar, he’s probably quite wealthy in India. Indian middle class consumers usually use granulated sugar as the cubes are more expensive, and middle class Indian consumers are usually quite price sensitive.

I think what the OP was trying to refer to here is the granulated sugar that is more popular in India. Mostly the sugar has crystals that are .5-1mm thick while in the us it is closer to the consistency of powdered table salt.

To be fair the "granulated" sugar grains also look like little cubes if you look closer.

On the topic of mixer-taps in bathrooms, the UK typically has separate taps due to the way the water is stored, or used to be stored:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfHgUu_8KgA

I was pleased when I remodelled my bathroom there and installed a mixer. So much more convenient.

Yeah I've been thinking about the two taps thing with shower taps. For my shower tap, you turn it counterclockwise to get water running. Where it goes from slow flow rate and cold, to high flow rate and hot. I thought that it would make sense to have two knobs so that one controls flow rate and the other controls temperature. As it stands, one knob ambiguously controls both the temperature and flow rate of the water.

Two taps - one for cold and one for hot makes sense. Since they each control the flow rate of hot/cold respectively. And from what I understand, this matches with the internals as you have one pipe for cold water and one pipe for hot water. Of course, rich people probably have more complicated setups that allow for even more precision...

In Germany, the thing I'm familiar with is a small lever that you turn left/right to control the temperature and (depending on whether it's mounted horizontally or vertically) either up/down or to/fro to control the flow rate:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Einhebelmischer.jpg

For the bathroom taps, I think the reason is purely technical. There are two pipes, one for cold water, one for hot water, each pipe gets its tap. It is the simplest setup and with that, you can control both flow and temperature. Systems that have a cold-hot knob are slightly more complex and therefore they are more expensive and less reliable, especially when they are thermostat controlled. And with a single, one axis knob, you can't control both flow and temperature.

I don't know how it works in India, but I know some places where there is no centralized hot water and only a single pipe. When you need hot water, there is a dedicated heater and you control temperature on the heater itself. So I guess that someone who is used to a system like this will find a two tap system unsettling.

Anyways, I think we can all agree that the worst system is the one with two separate taps with no mixing, like they still have in the UK.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.)

> 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?

"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 ;-)

> 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.

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!

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.

Yes probably! But they didn't actually do anything. I just said "ok" and went on and that was it.

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

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.

Old rich vs new rich who are mostly desperate to display it out

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.

> 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

In cities, it's hit or miss. Outside of that drivers tend to be pretty gracious.

> If there's no semaphore, good luck crossing

Do they actually call traffic lights "semaphores" over there?

Yes. We speak Spanish and we call them "semáforos"; my translation to English just wasn't very good :)

The traffic thing is night and day different from india. Go look up youtube videos of crazy india car traffic. It seems like nobody follows any rules of traffic there - if there's room to fit their car they just go.

The rudest american driver is friendly and accommodating by comparison.

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

...india has traffic collisions at ~9x the rate (based on rate per 100k vehicles) as the USA. If the USA had as 'very few accidents' as india there would be a major crisis and its just business as usual in india.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Generally, in rural US the pace is very slow and most everybody on the road is not in a hurry.

People will gladly wait a long time, I've even seen a case where someone jumps out of a car and diverted traffic until a turtle crossed the road.

Speed is otherwise very fast - be seen!

Living in SF, I’m always impressed that people stop so quickly to let you pass. Doesn’t happen that much in France. But also: streets in France are much narrower so it’s easier to just jay walk.

In France half of the time people don't even stop when they're supposed to (zebra walk without signals).

I guess it's relative. When I was in San Diego and LA it was terrible. Among other things, drivers are the leading killers of children and young adults in the US, and they disproportionately kill people walking and cycling.

> 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.

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.

>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?

Power cuts set to return to Chennai after disappearing during COVID-19 lockdown - 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/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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

American who lived in the English Midlands for a half year.

Your hunch is correct: Britain absolutely has more cultural variation than America. You see it in the accents the most. I never expected to have difficulty communicating with other native English speakers, but I was comforted by the fact that other Brits from different parts of the island struggled to communicate with each other a bit as well.

The roads, infrastructure, and general layout might make the US seem the same everywhere on the surface, though. Those are all built to essentially the same standard everywhere. It's deceptive.

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?

I'm interested in the apparent intolerance of shirtless men, I didn't realize that was a thing.

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.

> 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...

And in the places where it's not fineable it still doesn't happen. It would be super weird to see a shirtless person on a street in a Central or Northern European city, you'd either think they have some screws loose or they are pretty drunk.

Parks, beaches, saunas it would of course be normal.

Well.. it is more of a class thing outside of residential complexes. You can see a lot of Indian males shirtless or wearing a inner vest inside their homes, but visible from outside (e.g. on balconies, etc).

But out in public, the only men w/o a shirt would be those who are too poor to afford one or those who are poor, doing manual work and who want to get rid of their shirt on a hot day.

As someone from Europe, who's visited the states many times, the idea that the US is comparatively pedestrian friendly to India to a level worth commenting on is surprising.

I think I'd definitely be run over if I ever went to India now

Yes, that is one comment that really stuck out for me, too, since I have read, listened to, and seen (YouTube) pretty much the opposite. Might be a (highly?) localized "phenomenon", due to university campus closeness and local drivers' awareness.

There's a difference between a walkable neighborhood and cars that look out for pedestrians. There are a lot of US neighborhoods where you wouldn't particularly want to walk through them since they're suburban wastelands, but cars will respect you if you do.

i don't think it's about the grass (which generally they say not to walk or sit on, so as to not cause damage). Colleges/universities are run like schools (our schools are strict, have to wear uniform, mandatory attendance etc. etc.). So the level of freedom mentioned by OP in the U.S College, compared to India, would be 10x different

I spent a few months in Indonesia, and I swear, the culture shock coming back to North America was more of a culture shock than arriving in Indonesia.

Life was simple and means we're limited for the people of Indonesia, but everything they did followed a logical progression from the first principles of basic human needs, So nothing about it felt terribly strange.

In north America society has warped itself into some strange abstraction that doesn't make any sense.

You can sit on the grass at a university or even sit in most places where you can physically sit. But it is not a very common thing to do. I would say the main reasons why most people dont do that is because it would get books and clothes dirty if you sit on most parks and outdoor spaces. I would not want my books and other items to get dirty when I study, and hence would avoid most such locations to study.

Having said that, you can find enough people sitting in the lawns and steps around most indian universities & colleges.

You can sit anywhere you want, but it almost always is so dusty or dirty that you'd rather not. I have seen people even avoiding seats in bus stands and preferring to stand instead.

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.

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.

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 :(

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.

The scale is still no where comparable to India. There they have one on every street corner literally.

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

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?

> 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.

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.

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

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).

>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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

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?!).

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.

Haha, I drove around Texas in some small Kia (I just got the cheapest rental), I was constantly afraid someone would not see me (as many cars were much higher) and drive over me and my tiny car (thinking, "the road is really getting worse by the day!" ;) ).

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.

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.

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.

Thank you for your impressions - very interesting blog post!

And welcome to America - we are glad you are here. :)

"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.

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)

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

> 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.

Most security you'd encounter in India doesn't even carry sidearms, just Lathi sticks or batons.

At a guess you've seen the police with rifles at high value terrorist targets - airports, major stations, national tourist attractions/monuments. Such locations will have police with SMGs or assault rifles in most other places too, including places like the UK where police are rarely armed otherwise...

The mall guys and some of those I saw guarding places in more expensive neighborhoods may have been police, I'm admittedly not 100% not sure - but the building I worked in employed private security with rifles (it was a Tata Consultancy office a little ways outside of Hyderabad, maybe 20 minutes or so from Ramoji Film City, for whatever it is worth).

Most of the guns carried by such security are very old design lee-enfield rifles, some version of the AK-47 or sten guns. The police in India traditionally had 6 shot revolvers as standard issue for the officers. These work well as a visible deterrent when most people you are guarding against dont have guns. These guns are rarely fired by the private security guards. You will also see double barrel shot guns used by security personell at banks and atms.

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

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.

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.

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.

Lol sums up what I wanted to say

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.

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!

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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/2017/07/0...

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.

The greater SF area is much more than the the area called San Francisco. I mean I might as well tell you that the City of London is a tiny square a mile on three side with a few tens of thousands of residents.

"SF" is not used to refer to the "greater SF area", which is rather "the bay" or "SF bay area", a reference to the San Francisco bay which all these areas adjoin.

Think of all the cities along a river. What they have in common is the river. They are not all called by the name of just one of the cities. The SF Bay is 4000 km^2 and there are hundreds of cities all along that bay.

The east bay has berkeley, and Oakland, the south bay has Palo Alto and the cities along the Peninsula and then Santa Clara county with San Jose (which has more people than SF). The North bay has Marin. These are all independent regions with their own history, economy, and demographics, and identity. They do not call themselves, nor are they commonly referred to, as "SF", nor does the SF muni service these areas, they have their own separate muni and lightrail. BART (bay area rapid transit) is the regional lightrail throughout the bay. Economically, SF is not even the most dominant of the regions along the bay -- Santa Clara county is much richer and home to more businesses and more people.

Back to your point, just because you are aggregating across a very big region, adding up all the people that live in that region, does not mean you can meaningfully compare that 4000km^2 area with a city and then complain about the differences in urban amenities between an actual city and the large geographic region.

The various cities along the bay are quite small - only San Jose cracks a million -- and none of them are dense. It is almost entirely single family homes with backyards, interspersed with very large parks and nature preserves.

The greater San Francisco area is specifically referred to as the "Bay Area".

When I see "San Francisco", it is not unreasonable for me to assume you are only talking about San Francisco.

If you were to refer to the surrounding areas of Oakland and San Jose as San Francisco, you would potentially upset those residents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

> 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.

You won't see it, spent travelling around India for few weeks on my own, obviously you will see the lowest class, dirtiest poorest people, many not even wearing shoes, but above that it's very hard to distinguish classes for foreigner in India. Local sure can distinguish them by bracelets/necklaces etc, since they live in that caste crap since birth, but it's not that obvious for foreigner.

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.

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_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.

> 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.

Really depends where you go. I grew up in NYC, then moved to SF and then Boulder, and it always shocks me when I see a fat person in my day to day life. But road tripping through Iowa, I see more fat people sitting in a diner than I do my entire year in Boulder.

Chinese obesity has increased a lot over the past decades, with over half of Chinese now overweight: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55428530

Largely the same reasons as the West; the cheap street food or fast food is not particularly healthy.

> Wang Dan, a nutritionist in the city of Harbin, told the AFP news agency that many adults in the country now "exercise too little, are under too much pressure, and have an unhealthy work schedule".

Anecdotally, there is also societal concern that the one-child policy now means that four doting grandparents are spoiling the one child with food because they remembered living through less abundant times.

Obesity is also not evenly distributed across the U.S. If you look at the rural/urban split it's more prevalent in rural areas[1], and if you look at the city breakdowns, the cities that foreigners are more likely to visit have lower obesity rates across the board [2].

So visiting the top-performing American cities (usually in the Northeast or West coast) understates the level of obesity in the country as a whole by a fair bit.

I had the realization that there are practically two different Americas after I took a road trip through the south after having lived in the Northeast for ~20 years.

[1] https://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-the-public/20180622mmwr-...

[2] https://wallethub.com/edu/fattest-cities-in-america/10532

Agreed. This post comes from DC. I live there now. The obesity level, at least those in my public view, are much better than the other parts of America I have seen.

> I had the realization that there are practically two different Americas after I took a road trip through the south after having lived in the Northeast for ~20 years.

I've lived in ~8 states and can tell you that "two" is a significant undercount of the number of Americas. (And I suspect the same is true for most countries — it certainly is for India).

I'd also be careful about drawing that line in too purely a geographic way. Geographic differences exist, but parts of Alabama and parts of upstate New York have more in common than their geographic locations might suggest (to pick two places I've been lucky enough to have lived in)

> a multi-national company that frequently flew people to the United States HQ offices...

> The people that I see day to day are generally extremely fit. (Or is it just students?)

To be fair to your guests, replace "students" with "folks you'll tend to see around the HQ of a multinational / the places those offices tend to be located", and they hit the nail on the head.

The US is interesting because it's a HUUUUGE single market with political power distributed geographically rather than democratically. Have you spent much time in rural MS or WV? There really are huge swaths of the country that, very unfortunately, fit the "third world with cell phones" stereotype. Except actually without real cell phone coverage. And not quite third world because military bases and welfare dollars do a lot to prop up the floor.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that multinational corporate HQ campuses and their surrounding communities definitely aren't Real America (TM)(R).

> I guess what I'm trying to say is that multinational corporate HQ campuses and their surrounding communities definitely aren't Real America (TM)(R).

The company actually moved away from HCOL cities, so this wasn't NYC/SF/Seattle or whatever top-10 city you might be thinking of.

But your comment is precisely the type of Internet comments that create the pessimistic view of the United States: Everything positive is dismissed or downplayed or discounted, while everything negative is brought to the forefront and presented as the norm.

When the topic of the United States comes up, why are you so quick to bring up rural MS or West Virginia? Those locations are notable precisely because they're outliers, not because they're the norm.

You can build a picture of the US based on chunks of similar land area, or on chunks of similar population.

A huge amount of the land area of the US, if visited, very much supports "the pessimistic view of the US". But these are not the parts that most people will tend to visit.

If you focus on the areas where the majority of Americans actually live, you get a fairly different story.

That's not to say that either version is "The Truth About America". Both stories are interwoven and interconnected with each other, and very interdependent.

The smaller city where these HQs are is nicer IMO.

New York and Los Angeles, maybe throw SF in the mix, is in my experience the places that are furthest from the 'norm' in US.

Even the rust belt towns feels closer to normal than those cities.

Let's see how suburbia survive the 21st century - It surely was a unifying feature across America.

> or whatever top-10 city you might be thinking of.

I'm actually thinking of literally any metro area with over 2M people, or smaller communities totally dominated by highly educated workers (college towns like Urbana or corporate towns or Moline, for example)

> When the topic of the United States comes up, why are you so quick to bring up rural MS or West Virginia? Those locations are notable precisely because they're outliers, not because they're the norm.

Because I've spent substantial time in both.

The United States gets a disproportionate amount of attention online. That could be interpreted as some sort of endorsement.

But outside of that, and looking at specific judgment of the country, the opinions are overwhelmingly negative. Like, impossibly negative.

It's really inevitable that people's preconceived notions will be challenged if they spend much time in the US given how incredibly negative the claims about the US are, despite being the premier immigration destination.

Don't even have to go as far as Reddit. Try HN comments threads about SF or "Silly Valley" (Silicon Valley).

Thing is, for those that are here as interns at a FAANG, things really aren't that bad, because, well, around 6-figures they're rich, and America really isn't that bad for the rich. Never has been. It's the poor that are continually screwed and unless the internship has a module on SNAP/EBT, the interns aren't learning that the US isn't so bad to its poor, they're learning how great it is to be rich here.

Of course it is better to be rich than be poor in the US. By that standard, the poor are "screwed". However, if someone got a chance to experience poverty in both the US and in India, I'll bet they would choose poverty in the US.

> 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

I don't think the rate of obesity paints the whole picture here. The first time I visited the USA, I wasn't so much surprised by how many people were obese (they weren't that common), but by exactly how obese the outliers were. In my country, you'd ~never see someone so obese that they needed a cart to move around, whereas in the USA that wasn't uncommon.

I think the saliency of that is what surprises people more than the actual frequency of obesity.

Hm, I wonder how accurate this reddit thread about third world countries is: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/imky2m/people_li...

One thing about america is that america loves criticizing itself, or at least parts of itself endlessly. Stating your political opinion is an american pass time.

> third world country with cell phones

As a Brit who's visited a few times, to me it seems that America is both the glittering future and a banana republic at the same time, overlaid on top of one another. There's no ceiling and no floor. Lots of places have glaring poverty right round the corner from the tourist parts, all round the world. Unfortunately there was a spate of British tourists getting shot in Florida because they'd taken a hire car to the wrong part of town.

The American media hegemony exaggerates everything as well. We're more likely to hear about bad events in the US because they're great at filling news channels.

>As a Brit who's visited a few times, to me it seems that America is both the glittering future and a banana republic at the same time, overlaid on top of one another

Would you describe an ex-mining town in northern England or the midlands as being the latter without the proximity to the former?

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

>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 did some work with a university that sent a lot of grad students to Europe. It was always fun watching the fantasy that Europe has everything figured out crash and burn.

>I did some work with a university that sent a lot of grad students to Europe. It was always fun watching the fantasy that Europe has everything figured out crash and burn.

Health care is an example of this. Having Canada and the UK, the foreign countries Americans are most familiar with, both have single-payer systems (and the UK also having a monolithic delivery system, and Canada more or less outlawing private health insurance) with zero cost on delivery for most care gives Americans a distorted view of healthcare in other developed countries. There's really no meaningful definition of "universal health care" that excludes the US post-Obamacare while including (say) Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. All three countries are like the US in a) mandating having some form of coverage, and b) having said coverage come from a variety of public and private sources.

Or copays and deductibles. In France, the normal reimbursement for care is 70%, much like that of a US high-deductible plan. Paying for ambulance rides in Switzerland is the norm, not the exception. But a comment on Reddit by an American complaining about how he had to pay for being taken to a hospital in an ambulance and how this wouldn't happen anywhere else will get 10,000 upvotes even though such a statement wouldn't necessarily be true outside Canada and the UK. To put another way, the Canada/UK model of single-payer and 100% free on delivery (much less the UK model of monolithic everything else) is, in their own ways, aberrations, with much of the developed world using mixed public/private models with meaningful cost on delivery that would not be unfamiliar to an American.

>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.

And of course, because Reddit is an American site that is majority American, most of said criticism comes from self-loathing Americans. The best description of Reddit I've ever seen is "maladjusted 19 year old desperate to prove that he is smarter than his parents" (<http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ihk09/iama_cuban_who_l...>).

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.

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!

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.

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.

> 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!

> Really if it wasn't for the environmental and health downsides of vinyl, it'd be an ideal flooring material!

Linoleum is what you want. Plant derived (linseed oil) and the modern stuff looks great and not like your aunt's kitchen.

> 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.

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/ and photo album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/sets/721576021990... )

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.

>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.

> 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

Woah, the tallest one looks incredible, but danm

> US$422 million

> 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.

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?

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

That towel sounds disgusting though.

How do you dry off after taking a shower?

I get what you are saying, but I'd take TP over the bum gun any day of the week. Lived in Thailand for a couple years, and was a bit shocked when I noticed no TP in many (most) bathrooms, until my co-worker explained it to me. Yeah, it definitely gets your underparts cleaner, but at the expense of your hand -- not everywhere has soap.

If you are using TP, unless you have pretty bad technique, I don't see how you can get any refuse on your hands.

I'd take my risks with a co-worker with a slightly unclean bum using TP, over one with poor hand washing habits that's using a bum gun.

However, I live in Japan and find the washlet to be the happy and cleaner medium. Also, no thanks on the communal arse rag.

I got my experience in Vietnam. Yes, it is much cleaner than smearing shit around with paper.

I never said "communal", that's just gross.

Yes, given you have soap and a proper hand washing technique.

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.

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.

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.

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.

>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.

> 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.

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

We need a Chinese version of this - one retroactively from 20 years, one today

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.

> 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)

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.

> 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.

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?

I think "reverse culture shock" covers it somewhat.

> 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.

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

> 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.

Broccoli is another fractal food.

Sugar is actually tiny hexagons. Salt is cubes.

https://montessorimuddle.org/2011/04/24/salt-and-sugar-under...

"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!

(NSFW) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_the_nipple

That one seems pretty tame and SFW though. Wikipedia certainly has more explicit articles that would raise eyebrows.

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.

Some of these things are so region specific. It's funny that he found everything to be so big in NEWARK though.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interesting differences indeed. :)

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

>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

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