Culture Shock treatments

[chilli]

I am sitting here doing nothing, waiting for clients to pay me. And Mergs had reminded me of all the things I miss from the States. Mostly it's foodstuff. If you were suddenly plucked from your culture and plopped down somewhere else, what would you start to miss with a crazy jones?
My short list:
Nilla Wafers - Can't make decent Banana Pud.
Tootsie Pops
Crawfish
Fat Texas Oysters
Kosher Dill Pickles
Boudin
Thats all for now 'cause I feel slightly ill reading it all together like that.

chilli - has joined arcon in a bit of SFD

[Zelda]

I would/am going to miss...
1. Vegemite
2. Warm weather
3. eating mangos in 35C heat
4. My puppy dog
5. and probably my mum's pizza

[Mergs]

As a kid lived in Den Haag for a year. Lusted after Oreo's. Favorite Aunt met us at the boat (am dating self!) with a big bag of oreos for each of us. Finished mine in 45 minutes, didn't eat another one for 15 years! Be careful of what you miss!

That said, can't really pin it down. Have lived outside the States three times (the aforementioned, 3 years stationed in Germany and my 8 month imprisonment in Bosnia) and can't say exactly what I missed, but then I wasn't really out of the American culture.

Tough one chilli. But I guess that being an AF brat, you understand moving around a lot and adaptability. Dad worked for big oil company so we moved around a lot, too. Guess I would miss Texas culture the most. Two-steppin, polka's, big open skys, friendly and self-confident people, Austin, Round Top, Shiner Bock, ice houses, the Gulf coast. An all dat cajun spill over!

[Mengarath the Dragon]

That which I most missed during my trip to England:

1. pressurized plumbing
2. blue skies
3. stars
4. plains (from Nebraska here)
5. streets which actually ARE wide enough to be two-way

The things about Enland I miss now that I'm home:

1. the underground and the train systems, I loved not having to driver everywhere
2. the architecture and the buildings
3. the feeling of history, age, and stories untold
4. the castles
5. the tourguide, man was he a hottie! :-)

I guess there are things to miss about everyplace. This world is so diverse and unique, everyplace has its own beauty.

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Mengarath the Dragon

Life is too short to be ordinary.

[space_cadet]

Different selection of commercial foods is not a strong culture shock?
Culture shock is like people living in shacks with dirt floors and no indoor plumbing; people eating whale blubber and blood; all women wearing head coverings in public; police carrying fully-automatic weapons; an entire village of people without shoes...
But if that shocked you, then shocked you were.

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Cadet à Space

[chilli]

Space - I was being light and airy about the subject. My topic was basically a corollary of "If you were stranded on a desert island..."
Some of you guys are way too serious for your own good. I have been to places that I don't want to remember. People living in horrific squalor, starving children sent out each morning to pick through a garbage heap. The other end of the scale, a technological, capitalist country, so like America in some ways, yet it is easy to be lost in the differences. (Ever see the episode of The Simpsons when they go to Japan? They were not kidding about the music-playing toilet. I'm still sure that I was programming it for a male. Never mind, that's another story.)
I have had to call a lot of places home.
I've had many friends. Viva la difference.
You can say I am being flippant when there is so much to the world but I still miss Aunt Jemima Pancake Syrup.

[Mergs]

Space (or Lumberg, what ever you're calling yourself these days) I agree with Chilli. Yeah, I don' miss the mile after mile of destroyed villages, shapnel and bullet holes in buildings, garbage dumps that cover mass graves, exhumations of bodies, the sounds of mines being exploded outside the wire, scenes of children shredded by mines just because they were in a field to pick wild strawberries to sell by the side of the road, livestock maimed because of the same thing (mines that is). Or families walking several kilometers to the only working watersource in town.

Or look across two 12' high chainlink fences separated by a plowed strip with towers every 300 meters to keep people IN the country, not people out.

What it does, though is make me more appreciative of the things we do have. And if some of those things are foodstuffs, what's the big deal?

[space_cadet]

To chilli,
Yes, I watch the Simpsons and I did see that episode when they went to Japan (when they were flying in, there was a Hello Kitty factory with two smoke stacks billowing smoke). I'm glad you pointed out more shocking culture shocks that you have personally experienced. It tells me you have been truly shocked culturally in the manner that the phrase "culture shock" is commonly associated.
To Mergs,
My statement was towards chilli's food-related cultural shock, not towards you or your personal life experiences.

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Cadet à Space

[arcon]

[ 10-19-2001: Message edited by: arcon ]

[Gav]

On a more sombre note...

I have an Uncle who used to be in the RAF. He served in bith the Falklands and the Gulf War. He can talk about the Falklands fine. Strangely he doesn't like to talk about the Gulf. From what I've heard him saying it was very horriic NOT the pretty war presented on the news. He's changed a lot since and there's been a parting of ways so I guess I miss my Uncle..

[Shadow Fencer]

Yes, there are many horrific situations in the outside world. But, take a look inside (yourself) and locate the wounds you can heal. One view is that the external world reflects the internal. We can't fix the whole world, but we can fix that part of it we sit in (ourselves)........OK, back to the original topic...... I'd miss:

A good merlot wine
A good piece of steak
An of course, fencing and everything associated with fencing!!!!!

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I live to fence and fence to live!!

[Gav]

Sorry guys went through a morbid phase there!

Not feeling too well at tho mo' so I'm feeling sorry for myself. If I was abroad what would I miss?

family.
friends.
CD collection.
Books
fencing - unless I found a club.

Things I wouldn't miss.

Schemies (closest in American is redneck, but that doesn't fully describe the people I'm talking about).
Foodstuffs (I'm quite adventurous when it comes to food - apart from seafood) so I just eat what I can get locally.
Work.




[This message has been edited by Gav (edited 03-18-2001).]

[Screaming_Girl]

I go to Hong Kong every summer, and the weird thing is not speaking English. I can speak Cantonese just fine, so that people can't tell I'm American, but it's weird because I still think in English. Plus, the lack of space because everything's built vertically, and the whole tropical monsoon climate. And not being able to read suddenly, because I'm a sort of really literate person when it comes to English, but not Chinese. Plus the fact that everyone's Chinese. It's not the feeling of being a tourist, since I have family and friends in Hong Kong, and I speak the language fluently, it's just like an expatriot coming home and finding things changed. Every year.

[space_cadet]

Is there fencing in Hong Kong?

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Cadet à Space

[attila]

Gav

You must be from Glasgow?! Haven't heard that term in a bit.The thought of Glasgow at night
wie schemies all about, it makes me shudder! Lovlie place in the bright day sun tho'. Someone ask id there is fencing in Hong Kong? Well the answer is yup. A fencer from Sacramento was on the team a few years back. Tough bunch they were too.