Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 3:21 am Post subject: Explain Your Country's Little Foibles and Curiosities
America, Schmerica. Apparently you've learned everything you ever need to know about us by sitting in front of the boob tube. So let's turn the tables on the rest of you.
I'll start with Walker, my mild-mannered Viking-in-a-lab-coat. Nyckelharpa, huh?
Looks like a cross between a fretted dulcimer and a hammer dulcimer.
Both. My dad made a regular (fretted) dulcimer from a kit when I was little. He liked that kind of stuff.
The description says the nyckelharpa has an unmistakable "haunting" sound (not unlike a dulcimer). That's off of "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Herring", by the way. _________________ An apple a day....
Sorry for my late reply, but I've been enjoying summer (it's been a rainy one for the most part).
Porthos wrote:
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I'll start with Walker, my mild-mannered Viking-in-a-lab-coat.
Haha, funny. I sort of think of him like that too.
I'll just take that as a compliment.
Nyckelharpa, yes, it's a typical instrument in Swedish folk music. That's folk music, which means that you hardly ever hear it. However, I listen to a Swedish group called Väsen that plays traditional Swedish music as well as their own compositions. One of them plays the nyckelharpa. I couldn't find any of my favorites, but here are four songs.
In the USA this sort of thing varies from region to region. Here's some curiosities of the places I've lived (which is quite a lot considering how old I'm not)
In New Jersey you can't pump your own gas (or "petrol" as some of you might call it). All stations are full serve, in which an employee (usually a Middle Eastern or Indian immigrant) fills up your tank while you stay in the car. It seemed a bit strange while we (me & my parents) lived there, but it didn't really hit us how different this practice was until we went to Hungary this year and brought our extended family from Jersey with us. At a gas station in Hungary, my dad actually had to pump their gas for them because THEY DIDN'T KNOW HOW!
Omaha, Nebraska seems like anywhere else in the Heartland of America, except for these small bars and lounges which have signs reading "KENO" outside them. Everywhere you look there's a place with a "Lounge" and "Keno." This is actually legalized gambling. Keno is a casino card game, and these little establishments have one-player video Keno machines in them.
Sales tax. In European countries, if you buy anything, the price on the price tag is the price you pay. In the States, you pay that price plus a tax. To Europeans this is an unfamiliar concept. It is equally unfamiliar to people in the state of New Hampshire because New Hampshire apparently has no sales taxes!
There...now if you're an American, you're probably thinking you had no idea someplace in your own country could seem so foreign.
Sales tax. In European countries, if you buy anything, the price on the price tag is the price you pay. In the States, you pay that price plus a tax. To Europeans this is an unfamiliar concept. It is equally unfamiliar to people in the state of New Hampshire because New Hampshire apparently has no sales taxes!
It's because we enjoy doing math. There's nothing more fun than staring at a price tag that says $28.93 and wondering exactly what 7.125% of that might be!
New Mexico has no sales tax on food or prescription items. And once a year, right before school starts, we have a weekend where various school-related items like pens and notebooks and children's clothes are also tax free. It just happened. God, I was lucky I talked myself out of going to the mall! I'm sure it was wall-to-wall shoppers.
Texas has no state income tax. Lucky bastards!
I once ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and my German stepbrother did the same. My silverware never came out of the napkin. He ate his entire meal with a knife and fork!
During a discussion with his sister on the subject of finger foods, she intimated that in some parts of Germany, the older folks even eat bread and butter with a knife and fork! _________________ An apple a day....
Location: San Francisco, Noord-Kalifornië, Noord-Amerika
Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2007 11:59 am Post subject:
Uriel wrote:
I once ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and my German stepbrother did the same. My silverware never came out of the napkin. He ate his entire meal with a knife and fork!
Sick and wrong!
Quote:
During a discussion with his sister on the subject of finger foods, she intimated that in some parts of Germany, the older folks even eat bread and butter with a knife and fork!
Did you see the Seinfeld episode with people eating candy bars with a knife and fork?
Location: San Francisco, Noord-Kalifornië, Noord-Amerika
Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2007 7:38 pm Post subject:
Uriel wrote:
Missed it! Why on earth....?
I assume you're asking why on earth they were eating with a knife and fork. No explanation is given, except for one person who says it's because she saw someone else doing it and she liked it.
Here's a transcript of that episode, which was one of my favorites:
I once ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and my German stepbrother did the same. My silverware never came out of the napkin. He ate his entire meal with a knife and fork!
Sick and wrong!
I think it makes sense to use a knife and fork. That way you don't have to cope with pieces of onion and tomato hanging between the hamburger and your mouth, and you don't have to cover your fingers in dressing. It gets less messy and more hygienic. You betcha! I realize you're supposed to eat it with your hands (or fingers?) (that's what I do) but usually when I eat hamburger and fries, I finish the meal with fingers less clean than when I started eating. By the way, after that fork discussion I've been paying more attention to how people at work hold their forks, and they do hold it upside-down. Women do, that is.
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Quote:
During a discussion with his sister on the subject of finger foods, she intimated that in some parts of Germany, the older folks even eat bread and butter with a knife and fork!
Did you see the Seinfeld episode with people eating candy bars with a knife and fork?
I've seen it twice, and yes, it's a funny episode!
There's nothing more fun than staring at a price tag that says $28.93 and wondering exactly what 7.125% of that might be!
Now when have you ever seen something priced at $28.93? US ticket prices must end on a '9' -- it's the (unwritten) law! $19.99, $59.99, $999.99.
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New Mexico has no sales tax on food or prescription items.
California has no sales tax on food, unless it's served hot or can be consumed on the premises, prescription drugs, plants, fertilizer, utilities, alternative energy devices and supplies, and veteran pins! The statewide sales tax is 7.25% but cities and counties can assess supplementary sales taxes, which explains why sales tax in LA is at 8.25% while in neighboring Orange and Ventura Counties it's 7.75% and 7.25% respectively. I believe San Francisco is 8.5%. Makes a big difference on those high-ticket items.
NYC is at 8.375% while Oneida County in upstate New York is a whopping 9.5%.
Location: San Francisco, Noord-Kalifornië, Noord-Amerika
Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2007 10:19 pm Post subject:
When I lived in NYC, the tax was 8.5%. When people at in restaurants, an easy way of figuring out how much to leave for a tip was to add 25% of the cost of the meal, without tax. That would cover the tax and the tip. Of course, if you want to leave a 20% tip, that's even easier to figure out.
Retail should always be .99 or .95, but when I buy medical supplies, I get some weird prices! Things that make you tilt your head like a dog and make that little noise.
Walker, your fingers are supposed to get dirty when you eat -- so you can lick them off later!
I can see that it would be lost on you to explain the joys of eating corn on the cob, butter all over your cheeks and chin and fingers all burnt from trying to hold the hot ends (unless you have those little handles, of course)
the transcendent experience of burying your face in a giant wedge of watermelon, scraping the rind clean with your teeth, and spitting the seeds for distance as you go
Lick your fingers? I used to eat watermelon like that little girl when I was little. But I'm not a child anymore. I don't mind getting my fingers dirty when I eat alone, but when there's other people around I prefer to be a bit civilized. BTW, how clean do you get by licking your fingers? That's just... ew!
We have two different sales taxes here: GST (federal) and PST (provincial), which apply to different products. The rules are stupid sometimes, like if you buy one donut, there's GST, but if you buy a dozen, there isn't (groceries don't have GST, but snack foods do). Flights to the continental US have no GST, but flights to Alaska have it (I can't remember about Hawaii. They reduced the GST from 7% to 6% last year, so I've probably saved at least $4 in taxes this year. That got the Conservative Party elected too, which is pretty sad. _________________ L'homme est comme Dieu l'a fait et un peu pire/ L'homme est le seul animal qui détruit pour le plaisir
I actually saw a cat lick his own... once. Not nice!
Hmmm....I bet you'd be singing a different tune if you could do it, too!
Josh: any weird Canadianisms we should be aware of? I know as your neighbor, I should already know what they are, but really, we've made a solid policy of completely ignoring you all for so long.... (and we know it pisses you off. You hate to have to admit it, but we know.... ) _________________ An apple a day....
I'm sure you've all heard of poutine: french fries with gravy and cheese curds. It's actually pretty gross, but it's basically the only Canadian food I can think of. Restaurants sometimes have real maple syrup, which I've never seen in the US. We put vinegar on our fries; apparently when McDonald's first expanded here they were always running out of vinegar, because they didn't know that (so my Grade 12 business teacher told me.) Moving to sports: Canadians actually care about hockey (though I don't), our football field is ten yards longer, and you only get three downs. Some people do curling, but I'm not convinced it's a sport. A cold day is when it goes below -25 Celsius; anything else is just to be expected (thats' -13 Fahrenheit). Of course, contrary to what some Americans believe, that's only in winter; we do get three other seasons here, and summers are generally in the 30s Celsius (high 80s to 90s Fahrenheit). That reminds me of measurements: roads and temperatures are in metric, pretty much everything else is in Imperial. Packages are in Imperial sizes, but written in metric, so we have 454 gram packages of butter. That's all I can think of for now...
_________________ L'homme est comme Dieu l'a fait et un peu pire/ L'homme est le seul animal qui détruit pour le plaisir
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