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This is going to seem minor, but it was a shock to me.
I grew up in Texas. I lived in very metropolitan places – near downtown Dallas, and near the Houston medical center. So I never thought that I was culturally isolated or anything.
When I finally left the state for a job, I went to Los Angeles, circa 2007. In my first week there, a lady pulled up next to me on the street and asked me where the courthouse was. I had a vague idea, but explained that I was new to the area so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt. People familiar with the LAX area will know that the nearby courthouse is a tall building with something resembling a crown or halo, I pointed her toward that.
It wasn’t until a couple of minutes later I realized what seemed strange about the encounter. The lady was of African-American descent.
I thought back on 3 decades of living in Texas, and I cannot once remember being approached by a black stranger and asked a question. Not one single time. Houston has a large homeless population, I had many encounters with panhandlers. I couldn’t remember one single black person.
In fact, as I thought about it, a HUGE difference between Texas and California was that black folks on the street behaved very differently. In California, they looked you in the eye, they said “hello”, etc. In Texas – at least, up until I left in 2007 – black folks were strictly “heads down, eyes on your own business”. Even thinking back on some black friends and co-workers, I realized that they behaved very differently in public than my white friends did.
The whole thing made me sad for my black friends back in Texas. And now that we know how police treat black folks, I guess I can see why they behaved the way they did.
This was not the kind of answer I was expecting. Thank you for sharing.
I moved from California to Texas, and that has not been my experience at all since getting here. Perhaps it’s the city I live in, but black people here seem no different than any other person, same as my experience when I lived in California. The percentage of the population that is black here is much, much higher, though.
I’ve lived in Houston my whole life and I have no idea what this guy is talking about. It’s one of the most diverse cities in the country of course we talk to each other lol.
Same here in Houston. I have no clue what this person is talking about. I have had many black people talk to me, and I work with quite a few. There’s nothing odd about our encounters.
Going to sound weird but going to one of my childhood friend’s house
He had a loving family where everyone was happy and helped each other. They communicated with each other happily about things that interested them. They were unafraid to share what was on their minds and what they were passionate about. They asked each other to do things without threatening or screaming. When they did have disagreements they talked them out. They’d say, “I love you,” without a hint of pain or irony.
It was jarring. It threw me off. I went over to his place a lot (like literally almost every day for the time were friends) and it wasn’t until I had been going to his place for a few weeks did it dawn on me that I had never seen his parents argue.
And honestly one of the most eye opening experiences from when I was young about how a family is supposed to function.
I guess you could say it was culture shock because my relatives operated on a culture of fear, hatred, and a lack of love. The phrase, “You have to love me, I’m family,” was uttered entirely too many times. Violence and the threat of violence was the only motivator my relatives used.
I was friends with that guy for 3 years. I’ll never forget his parents telling me that they saw me as family. I’d say those years did more good for shaping who I am today than all the years I spent with my relatives. I look back fondly on the time I spent with them. I wish it didn’t end the way it did though.
I hope they’re all doing well.
Sounds pretty similar to how my gf responded to my family. We don’t always realize how lucky (or unlucky) we are.
I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have my immediate family, my mother’s extended family, and my husband’s family. We get along well and can talk openly even about contentious or difficult issues. My mother and her sisters have showed an excellent way to structure a family, where each has specialized on certain areas: finance, technology, organization, etc. They all have a deep trust built up over a lifetime that they will work in the best interest of each family member.
As I got older, I started hearing people’s experiences with terrible family situations, chiefly online. I also started to hear and see more of my dad’s side of the family. Two individuals on that side have bipolar disorder. My grandmother’s bipolar disorder destroyed her marriage to my grandfather and led to a messy divorce. The treatment that was given in those days likely did more harm than good. Then my uncle also has bipolar. His bipolar destroyed a marriage. Unfortunately, Switzerland where he moved to has old fashioned laws that allows one spouse (my uncle in this case) to drag their feet on a divorce.
There is also some distrust between other family members involving my grandfather’s second wife splitting him from contact with his beloved sister and her family. Of the family I listed in the first paragraph, I simply cannot imagine any of them doing something that horrible. I would consider that intolerable in my own marriage, not that my husband would think to do so (he was friends with my husband in high school).
What happened? Sounds like you guys stopped being friends after 3 years.
Warning: This story is kinda hard to read as it details one of the shittiest moments of my life that ended up being the catalyst for years more of a shitty life. I have gotten back on my feet since but that wasn’t until almost a decade after the fact.
My home life was falling apart around that time and eventually hit the point where we knew we were going to be homeless.
I asked his parents first if it would be ok if I stayed with them while I finished highschool and tried to get on my feet and they said it would be fine. I asked his parents first so he wouldn’t have to be put in a position of having to tell me that I couldn’t stay with them.
I then asked him if he was ok with it and he said that it would be cool and he just had to check with his parents. I told him I had already asked them and told him why I asked them first. He seemed surprised but understanding.
When the day finally came a couple weeks later I called them up and no one answered.
I walked to their house and no one was there.
I eventually left them a message on their answering machine saying that I tried to come by but no one was home and that I’d greatly appreciate a call back as today was the day we had discussed.
I walked to the library to hang out there that afternoon. And to sleep on the bench behind their building that night.
I couch surfed for a couple weeks with acquaintances and was reaching out to other people I knew hoping someone would let me stay with them for awhile and no one would or could.
Eventually he called me and I knew I was on speaker phone and he accused me of stealing from them. I told him that I’d never steel from them as the were more family to me than my actual relatives. He didn’t listen and said that that’s why they hadn’t reached out as they were trying to figure out everything that I had stolen. His parents then said that they were disappointed in me and that they never wanted to see me again.
I ended up being homeless for 8 years after that as no one I knew could or would help me. Not even my relatives would help me.
He was my best friend for 3 years, and his lie made my life that much harder for almost a decade.
Edit: To clarify a point, I asked his parents first because if they said no I wasn’t going to ask him and put him in that position of having the guilt of having to tell me that I couldn’t stay with them. Also in the conversation with his parents I had told them that I had already asked my relatives if I could stay with them while I tried to get on my feet and they had already turned me down. My grandma even said, “God has a plan for everyone, and sometimes that plan can be hard to deal with for a time.”
I must admit that I eventually got used to it and even started enjoying this attitude, which I also took part in, but I was quite amazed by the Finns.
For work reasons, I had to spend three months in Espoo and the interaction with my colleagues was strangely cold in social interactions. Examples:
- In the office canteen, they would sit next to you and start eating without even greeting or making conversation. I wondered why they had chosen to sit next to me.
- When they finished eating, they would get up from the table and not say goodbye.
- The scrupulous respect for personal space: in queues, crowds, etc.
- Small talk was generally non-existent. People often preferred to stay quiet rather than chat about the weather or other common topics. Even in an elevator, silence was the norm, not the exception.
- During meetings, the Finns would often speak only when they had something substantial to contribute. The silence in between wasn’t considered awkward, but a moment of thoughtfulness and respect for others’ ideas.
I ended up enjoying this way of social interaction. It seems to me that one uses less energy in social situations. There’s less stress about having to make conversation or engage in small talks.
Love you Finland.
Right … TIL I’m finnish and must have been adopted … cool!
This makes me want to go to Finland for a visit. The lack of small talk seems very efficient.
Maybe they wanted to conserve calories during colder climates. I wonder if other cold climates have less small talk in social settings.
“Shut up! I’m trying to stay warm here.” - Some ancient Finn
I’ve heard it’s fairly expensive place to visit though 😅
As an American I don’t want to interact with my coworkers. As an Italian I don’t want to either. I am so happy wfh right now. Socializing with people who aren’t my friends is not something I enjoy.
Even if it was possible to feel at ease and not in a work mindset while hanging with them, it’s just wise not to get that close, it makes it harder in future to be selective in what you divulge about your private life which can give your boss leverage over you. Sometimes you may need a “sick” day and it’s just better if they don’t know enough personal information to be able to determine how sick you are and make everything awkward.
That might seem dishonest, but there’s reasons why you might need to the employer to know only what they need to know and they aren’t necessarily laziness or incompetence. It’s a shame because it’s nice that your boss wanted to be friends but unfortunately there’s always going to be that fact that they’re your boss which gets in the way of that and everyone is better off keeping things arm’s length
Little kids taking a shit literally wherever in China. They have special pants (NSFW?) so they can just crouch down and take to take a dump in a shopping mall, the street, the subway …
This was more common back in 1980s and before, when it wasn’t urbanised enough to have public bathrooms. Nowadays of you do that, passerby will give you white eyes.
I live in China. It still happens today and nobody bats an eye. I’ve seen a kid shit on a hospital floor 2 weeks ago, and some old guy pissing against a wall of a shopping mall just yesterday. And this is in a Tier 1 city.
Regional differences? It is, after all, a very big country.
What the fuck…
The same thing I thought when I saw it. Not sure yet how things work here, but if there’s a wtf here this should go there.
You’ll literally shit your pants when you learn about the indians, jej
Same for me. It was particularly vexing seeing a child pee into a plant outside an open shopping mall in the center of Shanghai. The restrooms are free, why not just take your kid inside??? The other thing that got me was people refusing to let you off the subway first before they make a mad dash looking for seats. The same happens on the elevators, but there aren’t seats so that one is even more confusing.
That’s a society which had lots of hierarchy and very little social or even territorial mobility until very recently. And those people’s ancestors were likely peasants who’d just live all their lives growing crops in very scary conditions.
I mean, I’ve heard these things about China and manners.
I’ve event heard maybe not so scary, but similar things about Russia and manners in the early XX century (since I live in Russia, I do believe they are correct).
I certainly agree with the possible cause. The part I can’t figure out is the lack of logic in the actions. Why try to push into the people attempting to get off the elevator when one could just wait a few seconds and get on in a more efficient manner? It all seems to increase the time it takes.
I’ve been told that many generations grew up in conditions where they had to fight and struggle for everything. If they allowed someone else to go first or get something before them, then they would lose out. Only oneself and family, everyone else is one their own. I suppose this overrides the logic I mentioned that is missing in the scenarios. I don’t think they’re trying to be rude, they’ve just been taught since birth that if you want or need something (like getting on an elevator), then you do it however you can that ensures success. In the elevator example, if you do wait for people to get off, others might not and could fill up the elevator before you get on, thus leaving you to wait for possibly several more minutes.
Well, analogy is not a sufficient method of argumentation by itself, but I suppose things I’ll write would be even more visible in Chinese villages 100 years ago.
In Russia the peasant commune as an institution was created artificially (so all those Russian narodniks glorifying it as something perfect and wonderful untouched by bureaucratic machine coming from the depth of ages were just stupid ; it’s one thing one can’t argue with Lenin about - they didn’t have a bloody idea of what that “people” they considered inherently virtuous was) somewhere around Peter the Great’s time. So it’s had enough time to mature.
That commune had enormous families living together, with the patriarch (the oldest man still able to work and do things) being basically a despot. It was literally not so rare for him to casually sleep with wives of his sons and nephews, for example (if not daughters and nieces). Nobody could refuse him.
Again, that whole family would live in one bloody place, together. No personal space or individuality at all.
In such an environment, first, you don’t act differently (either you’ll seem weak or you’ll cause envy, both are worse than any gained efficiency justifies), second, your value is so low, that nobody cares if you make it, third, in a despotic system your own attempts at planning usually don’t work, so you don’t learn to do it, and planning is what’s needed for more honest behavior to be advantageous.
So yes, you are right.
I’ve got to say it was pretty shocking to be fresh off the boat, walking down the street, and some kid just bolts out of a store, drops her pants and starts pissing next to a tree.
Between this and gutter oil (Google it, or actually maybe don’t), it sure doesn’t leave me with a great impression of China and hygiene.
I actually saw them doing that once near where I lived. Thankfully I never ate there.
you’re hella brave saying that on lemmy.ml
Lol at least he isn’t trained by the political drama yet.
sounds like china
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How prevalent alcohol culture is in the West. I’m Southeast Asian and it’s more common for us to drink sugary drinks and have food at the local corner restaurant at night instead of having alcohol when we spend time with friends.
When I studied in the West, it really struck me how the only place you really could hang out at night was the bar, and alcohol was often the preferred drink. And they normally closed at 12am, so you can’t even stay out that late.
Personally I’m not very fond of inebriation just due to the issues it creates (not that my friends were alcoholics and got blackout drunk every time we hung out), so I found it kind of bad that it’s so socially accepted to see a need to get drunk in order to tolerate socialising with friends.
I’m not much of a drinker myself but. Some people use alcohol because it makes them “open up” and it’s easier for them to have fun that way. (this is what the finnish song “cha cha cha” is about.)
The Finnish song Cha Cha Cha is awesome. It should have won Eurovision!
Australian here, we have the same culture but it doesn’t finish at 12am, I found the Cinderella rule in the USA weird.
Here in NYC last call is 4am. Whenever I travel I always find it really weird that most places in the US close so early.
as someone from Berlin, it’s wild that you even have a “last call” rule in so many places/countries. Bars and clubs here can just decide themselves, when they want to close. There are even a few 24/7 places.
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Plenty of people in the West find the alcohol culture frustrating, especially recovering alcoholics. Personally I can’t drink much, so I tend to find myself sipping on a cranberry juice.
Well, I personally get drunk quicker due to metabolism and my hangover starts the same day.
That is, compared to most Europeans, but I’ve heard that for SE Asia this would actually be the norm.
So one can say in this case culture just follows structural difference.
But - yes, it’s much nicer to be with friends when they are not drunk.
Except for beer, there are weaker sorts, and the effect of hops on people I actually like.
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Believe it or not it was a trip to Memphis for training from Canada. I am not well travelled by any means. I made it into Memphis and after a short ride, arrived at my hotel. The people who worked there were some of the most lovely people I have ever met. Southern hospitality was in their soul. I even got to sit down one afternoon with some other guests and hotel staff to discuss differences in politics, healthcare and so on. It blew my mind when people were telling me the expense of just having a baby delivered at their local hospital. I could not wrap my mind around not wanting socialized healthcare. It was the first evening in the hotel, I decided to turn on the local news for Memphis. This was the first real culture shock. The violence. Shootings, stabbings, robberies. I honestly went from feeling like this place is amazing, to this place scares the sh!t out of me. I could not understand why in a place where I had met such beautiful and lovely individuals had to live in a place that was so violent. So after my training week had finished up I decided to head to Beal street and walk around the downtown core a bit. Beal was very much what I had imagined. Kind of felt like a tourist trap. Anyhow I ventured off the beaten path and headed into the town to do some shopping around. I had left a local record shop and heard the ranting of some biker coming out of a building. He was yelling the most racist things if I have ever heard. I was floored. Most of the racists I have encountered where I live are old asshats who keep it secret. But this man out in the street let his hatred fly.
Memphis was this weird crossover world where I was treated like gold and at the same time had to feel afraid for my safety. It still blows my mind the racism and bigotry people still face. It has stuck with me for years.
could not wrap my mind around not wanting socialized healthcare
Listen to this podcast
Frame Canada: Wendell Potter spent decades scaring Americans. About Canada. He worked for the health insurance industry, and he knew that if Americans understood Canadian-style health care, they might… like it. So he helped deploy an industry playbook for protecting the health insurance agency. https://www.npr.org/2020/10/19/925354134/frame-canada
What a travesty.
You can say shit on the internet
No you need to say sh.it
Pre pee poo poo
That’s my home. <3
Absolutely beautiful people. I wish the love and care I felt was how everyone treated one another there.
Can’t imagine forcing people to give birth and then charging them for it.
There’s over 300 million people. take care of each other
To be fair, the media absolutely plays up the violence about 1000x because it gets the most views / clicks. Don’t get me wrong, there is a ton of violence, and it’s absolutely a problem in the US, but the news has it pumped up to 11.
When my Muslim coworker told me that they didn’t use toilet paper and found it disgusting.
I later got a bidet and have never looked back.
Here we are, back to pooping again
the internet is for
- porn
- cat pictures
- poop talk
They just air dry? I’d still use a little after.
The bidet has a hot air dryer. Truly living in the future.
butt air dryers, like hand air dryers, are good in theory but horrible in practice. they blow toilet air around and blast infectious particles EVERYWHERE :[
Oh fancy. I’ve only used the spray cold water at your ass ones.
Count yourself lucky. All I have are these 3 seashells.
Twelve 🙄
Do you scoop front to back or back to front?
Count yourself lucky. All I have are these 3 seashells 🐚 🐚 🐚.
I count nine.
Count yourself lucky. All I have are these 3 seashells 🐚 🐚 🐚.
Count yourself lucky. All I have are these 3 seashells 🐚 🐚 🐚.
Eighteen.
Count yourself lucky. All I have are these 3 seashells 🐚 🐚 🐚.
Count yourself lucky. All I have are these 3 seashells 🐚 🐚 🐚.
Fifteen
Consider that for Arabs the old school way would be using their left hand and sand (well, in more humid areas - water). Which is the reason you should be careful with your left hand while interacting with a person of that culture.
I think I like some paper between hand and … more, than sand, ya knaw.
Only relevant if you talk to a Bedouin living in the desert. Otherwise bidet culture is pretty big in MENA.
Paper is definitely an upgrade over something that is coarse and gritty and gets everywhere…
And also separates your hand from the substance you are removing, not joins it. (Sorry, I just couldn’t)
I went to India (New Delhi, Goa, Chennai, Jaipur) as a middle class Canadian.
People hanging off the side of busses, monkeys running around everywhere, open sewage, cows eating garbage on the side of the road, literally everyone staring at me, tons of people following me trying to give me directions to tourist sites, different views on personal space.
Shit was wild.
I was in an airport argument with a British person. I was amazed to learn not only do they like to argue but they like being calm and reasonable about it. I think inviting and arguing with strangers is something they do to pass the time.
TIL I’m British
I should spend more time in places I can meet British people then.
Where I live many people think that arguing with them means that I want to insult or dominate them.
I recommend getting into it with a hot take on Harry Potter or English football. You can keep it going for hours.
The sheer avalanche of religious bullshit in the Finnish Military.
Can you explain?
Basically:
Have mental issues? Here, would you like to talk to a field-pastor? What? Whats a “therapist”?
Alright, time for a lecture on “justifications of violence in self-defense, blabla god blabla christ”. Wheres the secular moral discussion?
The main audiorium building of the brigade was straight up a church, covered in christian paraphernalia.
There are several military positions that are straight up just copied over from church hierarchy. My direct superior during initial boot camp was a freaking military deacon.
it was the christian way or the highway, and it fucking sucked. I am atheist and there was ZERO consideration for anyone who wasn’t christian. You’d think they’d get with the times, but this particular stuff is alive and well in that particular institution. I did not see it coming.
This was very interesting to read about, thank you. In the United States, we all consider Finland to be extremely progressive, and ahead of us in many ways. So this was odd to hear. Even my American friends who have been in the military have told me about visiting real therapists while on base.
I mean, the Finnish military should have inherited some things from the Russian imperial military, so this is to be expected. And it was a nationalist and traditionalist force which fought against Bolsheviks and won, getting itself a country (this kinda gets forgotten since the public image of Finland is very progressive and almost leftist now). And military is the most conservative institution in any country usually. Still weird.
Not me, but the first time my boyfriend traveled with my family somewhere, he could not believe that sitting quietly in a living room reading was a thing. My family didn’t feel the need to fill our day to the brim with tours or shopping or other activities. And that was shocking to him.
That’s shocking to me too. Why travel if you aren’t going to make the most of being in a different place?
So you don’t burn yourself out.
A lot of people end up miserable on vacations because they don’t give themselves time to relax and enjoy it.
You’re totally right! To be fair, we do go out. It’s just that people can choose what to do. There’s no scolding or pulling if you choose to stay in.
Also, we don’t really do big expensive holidays, and I think that contributes to people feeling okay staying in. The few times we have done big trips, the story is different. But my boyfriend only knows the smaller trips.
if you aren’t going to make the most of being in a different place?
They were though…
I’m getting flashbacks to our family skiing vacations…
Parents: Kempeth, come spend time with the family.
Me: alright, we doing something? playing a game? watching tv?
Everyone: *opens a book and sits quietly in a corner*
Me: *goes to do something else*
Repeat from the top
Oh man, this is relatable.
If I’m visiting my parents, my mom insists on “visiting” – that is, either sitting and talking endlessly, playing boardgames, watching a movie together, or going out to do something. She has complained about us being unsociable for sitting and reading for an hour or two after spending the whole day doing things she wants.
My in-laws, on the other hand… don’t. There is absolutely no pressure to do anything. They are just happy to have us there, regardless of what we choose to do (or not do). Speaking from 13 years of experience with them: it’s awesome.
10 years ago I was visiting friends in Melbourne. They casually proposed going out and hanging out like you would at around 11am on a Saturday. It was 9pm on a Tuesday. Blew my mind that most things were open and operating.
Where I live if you haven’t eaten by 8pm, you better enjoy McDonald’s because it’s the only thing open.
Lmao I experienced the opposite, also in Australia. I’m from HK and travelled to a small town where nothing was open past 4 pm, barring a couple of dinner places.
I found the same thing when I visited brisbane recently. I’m from NZ, and virtually everything is closed at 6 or 9, depending on the day & what kind of establishment it is.
Wait are you saying Brisbane is more open than NZ or the other way around? Because Brisbane is my reference point for the sleepy city. Don’t tell me NZ is worse…
AFAIK NZ has no more 24 hour supermakets. I remember brisbane used to, but a quick google search shows that might not be true anymore?
When I was staying in South Bank, restaurants were regularly open until 9:30/10pm. Finding places like that in christchurch is much harder, outside of thursday/friday/saturday. Auckland might be better, but it’s been a while since I’ve stayed there.
TBH, maybe it’s not that brisbane is good for late night stuff, maybe it’s just that NZ is even worse.
To my knowledge only 24 hour one is at the airport because it’s federal land not state, and I think there’s a state law against it.
Also Southbank is one of about 3 suburbs that don’t close at 8pm.
It was the opposite for me in Australia, maybe because I was in a smaller town. At least in restaurants, if you got there past 9, chances are the kitchen is closing or about to close. Took me a while to get used to it.
I graduated from high school in 1995. The community I grew up in was incredibly diverse. It was a decent sized city (100k+) and we had about 3,000 students the year I graduated.
That summer, we went to rural Idaho for a family reunion. It was probably the first time in my life that I visited a place that was exclusively white. I’m a white dude myself, but like I said, grew up in a diverse community.
The lack of diversity was a giant culture shock to me. I was in a small community with a population that was about half the size of the school I had just graduated from.
Wow, I have exactly the same experience but from somewhere totally different. I grew up outside London in the UK and then had to move to the Czech Republic (essentially Eastern Europe) with my parents. Going from a very diverse city where I had friends of many nationalities to a relatively homogenous one was something I definitely noticed.
Please do not refer to Czechia as Eastern Europe. It’ simply wrong: Czechia rejected the Eastern Christianity even before the Great Schism, it never was a part of the Russian Empire and it spent most of the last millennium as a part of the HRE. The only connection - being part of the former Eastern block was so long ago that in only 4 years Czechia will be a EU member longer than it was occupied by the USSR.
Ok sorry sorry I was just trying to make it easier for an American to imagine. I know it’s practically the definition of Central Europe but EE served well for what I was trying to describe.
Counterpoint: https://youtu.be/zGUY5_OObZI
Czechia has a racism problem sure, but that map has no data on actual Eastern European countries so there is no comparison possible. Also you can’t reduce the question of being Eastern European on one metric. Was Belgium under Leopold II. Eastern European? Nazi Germany? USA before 1863?
Sounds like my hometown 😔
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Haha, reminds me of the scene in the beginning of the film The Gods must be Crazy where you see someone getting in the car to drive down the driveway to pick up the mail.
I had a friend in school who went to South Africa for half a year and he was mugged several times. He always had like 20 Dollars of cash on him to get out of the situation. That was 15 years ago, no idea what it’s like now.
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I immigrated to Vietnam. That was ok.
Visiting north America again years later was quite a shock!
Going home after living abroad was a way bigger shock to me than living abroad was too. You suddenly see your own culture from outside.
I left home for a little over a year, here I am almost a decade later fascinated people here can’t see that things can work so much better than they currently do.
Can you explain more about this? What was shocking about it?
Ack, my long response got eaten.
I guess in North America, people I know seem to think that developing countries in Asia are these oppressive, miserable places.
While I do technically live in a slum, it’s safer and the residents are happier than any place I’ve been in Canada. The people here have so much freedom to do the things that matter! The barrier to starting a business is very close to zero, zoning and tax laws are not prohibitive either. You can do whatever you want with your home – no home owner’s association. Raise chickens on your roof, if that’s what you want to do. Anything not dangerous is OK – maybe talk to your neighbors first if it’s something unusual.
Going back to North America is something I do for family. It’s inconvenient, everything is far apart and empty, it feels dead. The food is less good. People are angry and divided about politics. There’s some low-but-everpresent degree of hostility towards people who look like foreigners, and overall it seems people have somewhat strange ideas about Asia. It’s not terrible, and there are many good things there too (it is clean and many forests!), but I feel woefully out of place.
Interacting with people from North America who visit Vietnam has always been the biggest cultural shock though. Often, they outright ask me how to commit crimes (I maintain a presence online to answer questions for confused tourists – Vietnam is not that accessible sometimes). Work permit compliance is low, also many fake university degrees and fake passports. Lots of people running MLM and crypto scams. Many drive without any valid license, and if they hit someone they flee back home. I met many selling drugs illegally (I wasn’t looking for them, either). It used to be shockingly bad. On the bright side, it drove me to integrate culturally and pay careful attention to my immigration paperwork.
So I guess I consider myself culturally Asian now, which I suppose is a reasonable outcome after 10 years. The language is still hard for me though, I still speak like a child – running a business doesn’t leave so much time to study human languages.
Nowadays, we’re getting more qualified professionals and tourists that are decent people, so things are generally way better than they were 5 or 6 years ago. Overall the things I’ve seen make me ashamed though. I don’t think any amount of progress can really wash that feeling away. I try to assist tourists online as a way to prevent myself from turning that shame into prejudice.
If you can afford it, I found that the Pimsleur technique taught me how to speak well better than anything else I tried. I’ve forgotten the Spanish I know because I didn’t keep using it, but it got me to a decent adult conversational level in about a month at half an hour a day and I was always speaking ‘adult’ sentences right from the start, both copying then making new ones.
It’s more a problem of economics. I’ve optimized my life to accomplish a single goal. There is no room for anything else. Time is the most expensive thing right now.
I had zero dollars and a company license 6 or 7 years ago, so my focus has been bootstrapping myself into land+home ownership, which is very expensive here. A home in Vietnam is much more expensive than what you’d expect considering the cost of everything else.
So I’ve spent 100% of my time studying whatever I think will make me the most money. This has typically been technology and programming languages, with some brief forays into economics, finance, law, and accounting. I studied the Vietnamese enough to deal with daily life only. I can’t really socialize in Vietnamese very well, but then again, I don’t have a social life in any language.
It’s intense, but going well. If I continue at this rate, I’ll be able to retire after a career of about 10 years (so a couple more years). Then I can learn Vietnamese. Maybe I’ll learn to paint too, or run a machine shop, or help students build their careers!
Very good luck with all of that!
