(no subject)
So I was watching this video the other day and couldn't even make it to the end. Her very attitude is why some British people mock Americans for being stupid and uneducated. I know that's not the case. I've seen examples of both smart and stupid Americans, just like there's smart and stupid British people. But instead of calling her out as being stupid, I've decided to take her reactions with a pinch of salt and will make this post that will hopefully help none British people understand my country just a little bit more. Linking the video below:
1/ British people drive on the "wrong side" of the road.
In the UK we drive on the left side of the road, just like around a third of the world including countries like Japan, Thailand, most of South East African and former British colonies like Australia, Pakistan and India. To say driving on one side of the road is "right" and the other "wrong" is in itself retarded.
Travelling on the left side of the road is a British tradition that dates back for pretty much all of written history. The reason for it is that when two strangers pass, it's their sword hand closest to each other. Assuming that most people are right handed. Spiral staircases are also built for it to be easier to win a sword fight for the defender higher up than their opponent. Woman also walked to the left side of men so that they were further from any potential threats on the road. At least in a built up area this would be the case.
When the British, and other Europeans, colonised America times had moved on and guns were begining to take over. The need to defend themselves with swords decreased, and travelling with horse drawn wagons increased. The way these wagons were rigged up to the horses made it much easier to turn right than left, so they moved to the opposite side of the road to allow more space for the horses whenever a left turn was necessary. If you can think of any reason why driving on either side of the road is wrong, that goes beyond "This is what I'm used to. My country does it so it must be right" please comment to explain.
The rest of her comments though I feel sympathy for. I've been to a variety of European countries, Canada, Florida and Mexico and every time facing traffic on the right hand side of the road messes with my head. All your instincts are suddenly wrong, and it is a little unerving at first.
2/ Accents
Everyone in Britian has a British accent (which is many accents and not just one). Except tourists of course. At the point where she's like "It's even on the loud speakers!" I gave up entirely. However I do remember my surprise in Paris when the English is spoken in an American accent, despite England being so close. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt because of this, but I really can't. Why would we British use anything but British voices on our loud speakers? Unless perhaps we were using a celebrity voice for whatever reason, or the person had immigrated over here.
3/ TV Shows,
America copies our shows, we copy their's. This goes double for reality TV, but is halved for dramas. Is it really so surprising?
4/ "How are you doing?"
This point was actually interesting. In the UK there are two answers to "How are you doing" one is "I'm fine, and you?" and the other is "Good, how are you?" The conversation goes along the lines of:
Person 1: How are you?
Person 2: Fine, and you?
Person 1: I'm good.
Person 2: That's good. My dog just died........
"How are you" is pretty pointless over here, you say it only to be polite and the only complaint that can follow is about the weather, which always sucks. It can be too wet, too cold, too hot, too icy, too windy....
5/ Food
She acknowledged the lemonade. It has to be fizzy, otherwise it's lemon juice! And yes, they change the recipes for almost everything to suit the tastes of the countries they're being sold in. They also rename the same products just to confuse things even further. That's marketing for you. Believe it or not, we tend to think our products are nicer, American tends to prefer their's. It's almost like the marketing agents know exactly what they're doing!
6/ Money
Money is always confusing when it's not your own currency. But seeing as America is a country where every bank note is the same colour and size I feel it incredibally hypocritical for her to judge a country that makes out notes easily distinguishable. Green for £5, Orange for £10, Purple for £20 and red for £50, each getting larger in size as the currency goes up. Canada too has nice colourful notes, as does the Euro and it's ten times easier to handle these currencies than American dollars. It's also really strange that America doesn't change the colour of their notes. Even Japanese yen notes are subtly coloured if you look closely.
7/ Time Zones
Jet lag is hell when travelling east, but not so bad travelling west because all you need to do is stay up later to get used to it. I'll let her complain about this all she wants.
***
This video in itself was pretty much click bate. "Look at the difference between America and the UK" is the quickest way to get likes on youtube. I do feel a little harsh about mocking her, but it had to be done. She's just showing so much ignorance in this that I don't know how I even made it through the video. Some parts were actually interesting, but they get lost in the tide of comments that show just how little time she thinks about the world outside the US borders.
I've been to America and really it's not as different as people like to make out. "Have a nice day" got on my nerves pretty quickly, I remember that. We British are incredibly stubborn, tell us to have a nice day and we'll want to have a bad one just to spite you. (We're not quite that bad). To me though it always sounded too fake and over happy.
America is better at managing queues. It's not that we like to queue, just we will wait longer and keep our complaints to ourselves half the time. It's not entirely to our benefit to behave this way, but trust me queue jumping is a terrible sin over here and it's rarely done.
I think the hardest American custom for me is tipping in restaurants. I'm actually opposed to the very idea. It's up to the company to pay their staff, not the customers eating the meal. I used to work in a super market, earning minimum wage, or close enough. Super market workers don't get tips, but waiters who also earn minimum wage do. £7.20 an hour is minimum wage over here at the moment, and a vast majority of jobs pay this to their staff. By tipping waiters you're actually saying that they deserve more money than every other form of minimum wage employee, something I 100% don't agree with. Trust me, super market employees work just as hard and deal with the same level of difficult customers. I get in America the waiters aren't getting paid anything you could reasonably consider calling a wage. They might as well be given left over scraps from the kitchen. They need those tips to live, and I will tip in America for this reason. The food is insanely cheap, but then the tax isn't included in the price, or the staff pay either. It's hiding the cost of the food from the customer, which in itself is pretty underhand. The whole tipping culture is perhaps the biggest difference between the two countries, but not one American's seem to pick up on. Perhaps the reason they complain that England is so expensive is because they still leave the same level of tips, despite the "tip" as it were already covered in the price of the food.
The other insane thing is having electricity in American bathrooms. Normal plug sockets around water is so dangerous that it's illegal here. You may find a low voltage socket in a bathroom which can charge razors and electric tooth brushes, but that's it. Hair dryers etc are usually used in our bedrooms, out of harms way. Thinking about a washing machine in a bathroom just seems crazy to me. Here, assuming the house doesn't have a dedicated utility room, the washing machine would be found in the kitchen or perhaps the garage. (A room used for storing junk, and electronics with no other home, more often than cars).
My final observations, though the one above I learnt from youtube not personal experience, was the doors on toilet cubicles being so high up. Our doors always go to the floor, or perhaps half a foot at most above it. There's a good foot between the doors and the floors in a lot of American toilets and I never did feel comfortable using them. Even referring them to the "toilets" makes you feel strange. I get "bathroom" and "restroom" are more polite, but calling them the toilets is a habit that won't die. Besides, if there's no bath in the room it's not a bathroom. I'm just saying.
Well, feel free to make fun of my remarks below, or call me out for making a post mocking a girls video. I think perhaps I deserve it!
Click to view1/ British people drive on the "wrong side" of the road.
In the UK we drive on the left side of the road, just like around a third of the world including countries like Japan, Thailand, most of South East African and former British colonies like Australia, Pakistan and India. To say driving on one side of the road is "right" and the other "wrong" is in itself retarded.
Travelling on the left side of the road is a British tradition that dates back for pretty much all of written history. The reason for it is that when two strangers pass, it's their sword hand closest to each other. Assuming that most people are right handed. Spiral staircases are also built for it to be easier to win a sword fight for the defender higher up than their opponent. Woman also walked to the left side of men so that they were further from any potential threats on the road. At least in a built up area this would be the case.
When the British, and other Europeans, colonised America times had moved on and guns were begining to take over. The need to defend themselves with swords decreased, and travelling with horse drawn wagons increased. The way these wagons were rigged up to the horses made it much easier to turn right than left, so they moved to the opposite side of the road to allow more space for the horses whenever a left turn was necessary. If you can think of any reason why driving on either side of the road is wrong, that goes beyond "This is what I'm used to. My country does it so it must be right" please comment to explain.
The rest of her comments though I feel sympathy for. I've been to a variety of European countries, Canada, Florida and Mexico and every time facing traffic on the right hand side of the road messes with my head. All your instincts are suddenly wrong, and it is a little unerving at first.
2/ Accents
Everyone in Britian has a British accent (which is many accents and not just one). Except tourists of course. At the point where she's like "It's even on the loud speakers!" I gave up entirely. However I do remember my surprise in Paris when the English is spoken in an American accent, despite England being so close. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt because of this, but I really can't. Why would we British use anything but British voices on our loud speakers? Unless perhaps we were using a celebrity voice for whatever reason, or the person had immigrated over here.
3/ TV Shows,
America copies our shows, we copy their's. This goes double for reality TV, but is halved for dramas. Is it really so surprising?
4/ "How are you doing?"
This point was actually interesting. In the UK there are two answers to "How are you doing" one is "I'm fine, and you?" and the other is "Good, how are you?" The conversation goes along the lines of:
Person 1: How are you?
Person 2: Fine, and you?
Person 1: I'm good.
Person 2: That's good. My dog just died........
"How are you" is pretty pointless over here, you say it only to be polite and the only complaint that can follow is about the weather, which always sucks. It can be too wet, too cold, too hot, too icy, too windy....
5/ Food
She acknowledged the lemonade. It has to be fizzy, otherwise it's lemon juice! And yes, they change the recipes for almost everything to suit the tastes of the countries they're being sold in. They also rename the same products just to confuse things even further. That's marketing for you. Believe it or not, we tend to think our products are nicer, American tends to prefer their's. It's almost like the marketing agents know exactly what they're doing!
6/ Money
Money is always confusing when it's not your own currency. But seeing as America is a country where every bank note is the same colour and size I feel it incredibally hypocritical for her to judge a country that makes out notes easily distinguishable. Green for £5, Orange for £10, Purple for £20 and red for £50, each getting larger in size as the currency goes up. Canada too has nice colourful notes, as does the Euro and it's ten times easier to handle these currencies than American dollars. It's also really strange that America doesn't change the colour of their notes. Even Japanese yen notes are subtly coloured if you look closely.
7/ Time Zones
Jet lag is hell when travelling east, but not so bad travelling west because all you need to do is stay up later to get used to it. I'll let her complain about this all she wants.
***
This video in itself was pretty much click bate. "Look at the difference between America and the UK" is the quickest way to get likes on youtube. I do feel a little harsh about mocking her, but it had to be done. She's just showing so much ignorance in this that I don't know how I even made it through the video. Some parts were actually interesting, but they get lost in the tide of comments that show just how little time she thinks about the world outside the US borders.
I've been to America and really it's not as different as people like to make out. "Have a nice day" got on my nerves pretty quickly, I remember that. We British are incredibly stubborn, tell us to have a nice day and we'll want to have a bad one just to spite you. (We're not quite that bad). To me though it always sounded too fake and over happy.
America is better at managing queues. It's not that we like to queue, just we will wait longer and keep our complaints to ourselves half the time. It's not entirely to our benefit to behave this way, but trust me queue jumping is a terrible sin over here and it's rarely done.
I think the hardest American custom for me is tipping in restaurants. I'm actually opposed to the very idea. It's up to the company to pay their staff, not the customers eating the meal. I used to work in a super market, earning minimum wage, or close enough. Super market workers don't get tips, but waiters who also earn minimum wage do. £7.20 an hour is minimum wage over here at the moment, and a vast majority of jobs pay this to their staff. By tipping waiters you're actually saying that they deserve more money than every other form of minimum wage employee, something I 100% don't agree with. Trust me, super market employees work just as hard and deal with the same level of difficult customers. I get in America the waiters aren't getting paid anything you could reasonably consider calling a wage. They might as well be given left over scraps from the kitchen. They need those tips to live, and I will tip in America for this reason. The food is insanely cheap, but then the tax isn't included in the price, or the staff pay either. It's hiding the cost of the food from the customer, which in itself is pretty underhand. The whole tipping culture is perhaps the biggest difference between the two countries, but not one American's seem to pick up on. Perhaps the reason they complain that England is so expensive is because they still leave the same level of tips, despite the "tip" as it were already covered in the price of the food.
The other insane thing is having electricity in American bathrooms. Normal plug sockets around water is so dangerous that it's illegal here. You may find a low voltage socket in a bathroom which can charge razors and electric tooth brushes, but that's it. Hair dryers etc are usually used in our bedrooms, out of harms way. Thinking about a washing machine in a bathroom just seems crazy to me. Here, assuming the house doesn't have a dedicated utility room, the washing machine would be found in the kitchen or perhaps the garage. (A room used for storing junk, and electronics with no other home, more often than cars).
My final observations, though the one above I learnt from youtube not personal experience, was the doors on toilet cubicles being so high up. Our doors always go to the floor, or perhaps half a foot at most above it. There's a good foot between the doors and the floors in a lot of American toilets and I never did feel comfortable using them. Even referring them to the "toilets" makes you feel strange. I get "bathroom" and "restroom" are more polite, but calling them the toilets is a habit that won't die. Besides, if there's no bath in the room it's not a bathroom. I'm just saying.
Well, feel free to make fun of my remarks below, or call me out for making a post mocking a girls video. I think perhaps I deserve it!