A thread for Expats. List of what we like about the ol USA.

1. Drive thru pharmacies
2. NFL
3. Snow
4. Plentiful Mexican Food

5. The Bold and the Beautiful isnt years behind

6. Seasons

7. Corn dogs.

this will be a short thread. there's not much to like here.

Most of the stuff I miss is food-related but also

8. Kiehl's products available at a sane price.

here is a list i started making in rural Kenya, about what I didn't enjoy about life there. removed all the work-related stuff.

-"travel" (not being around family and friends and my life enough)
-BOREDOM (primarily due to where i live)
-insects - cockroaches, mosquitoes bothering me at night when i'm sitting on the couch
-awful roads
-malaria and typhoid
-verry limited shopping options

so i guess to answer the original thread question, things I like about the USA:

-live near family and friends
-i'm not bored
-i'm not plagued by insects 24 hours a day (seriously, this is such a quality of life reducer)
-nice roads
-i don't get awful diseases
-i can buy things that i want

9. Decent sandwiches

10. Less sexism

I'm a britisher ex-pat, anticipating what I'll miss when I go home, is this allowed?

11. Weather (in CA). Makes an unbelievable difference to my general happiness.
12. People are overwhelmingly friendly and polite, when they're not raving lunatics
13. Not-terrible public transit (in SF)
14. Strong drinks
15. Ease of getting driving licence :)
16. Cheaper video games, electronics
17. Tax deductions
18. Fortune cookies (although -1 for no prawn crackers/prawn toast).
19. In restaurants, getting glasses of water without asking, and getting doggy bags w/ no hassle

20. Pharmacies sell cigarettes and beer

15 is OTM btw

21. Not being behind on tv shows.
22. Late night/early morning access to things like supermarkets.
23. Cheap books! OMG mass market paperbacks. Such a thing doesn't exist in Australia.
24. Neosporin
25. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade
26. Thanksgiving in general. It's like practice Christmas without the presents!

27. BBQ

^^^otm

(although -1 for no prawn crackers/prawn toast).

I've had shrimp toast at a dim sum place.

I would like to request that ex-pats say where they're originally from.

BBQ in what sense?

I've had shrimp toast at numerous Chinese restaurants - maybe we're talking about different things. The shrimp toast I've had was shredded shrimp and seasonings, molded onto some kind of bread, and deep fried. Maybe battered, too? Maybe no bread?

I'm originally from Australia (sort of noted in my post but stating for the record)

BBQ as in pulled pork, ribs, slow-cooked tritip over charcoal & wood smoke. A far cry from snags and frozen hamburgers on Dad's sad old flat-plate gas bbq back home.

Though I still love me a gas-cooked snag in white bread with tomato sauce, don't get me wrong :)

what's a snag?

oops. Sausage. Australian super-processed kindof pork product type sausage ...not the fancy actual-meat sausages they have here in the US.

Kinda sounds like "vienna sausage" aka "potted meat with an erection"

lol yeah kind of like Vienna sausage but we don't have them in cans, they're fresh. but similar color, thin casing, long & skinny

When I studied in the UK for six months, it took me a while to figure out whether certain unfamiliarities I experienced had to do with being at a British university or merely being at a much larger school than the small private college I attended back home.

Have the expats on this thread had similar issues?

I guess another problem might be extrapolating some broad national/cultural difference from a specific situation you don't realize is anomalous.

I experienced some similar oddities, in particular with hanging out the washing on a clothesline to dry vs drying in a clothes dryer.

When I first moved here my husband told me pretty much categorically 'we don't hang out our clothes here'. Later on I found out that wasn't exactly true -- he just grew up in a family where his Mum thought it was trashy to hang out your clothes on a clothesline, and their social circle felt the same way.
But for a long time I thought it was a cultural thing - omg Americans don't have clotheslines!

18. Fortune cookies (although -1 for no prawn crackers/prawn toast).

dude, if you're having trouble finding these in the bay area/sf, you need some serious help:
http://thehungrykorean.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/shrimp-chips.jpg

15. Ease of getting driving licence :)

And ease of driving in general. I learned to drive in England right before moving over here and was struck by how much easier it was. Wider streets etc. Though might not be so true in big eastern cities.

Also, automatic cars as easy to drive.

are

28. Ordering something from amazon and having it arrive in 2 days instead of 3 weeks

OK, obviously I haven't been looking hard enough for prawn toast, but by prawn crackers I mean these:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2172/2233538029_9ea2539d36.jpg

Haven't actively sought them out, just that they're a staple back home at a Chinese or even Thai restaurant.

When I lived in the Vietnamese neighborhood those were everywhere. Not so much in whitey town.

xp Ah okay, those also should be available at any asian market. They come either premade or you can fry them up yourself.

If I ever move away, I will definitely miss huge rib eye steaks and prime ribs at somewhat affordable prices.

? for the ex-pats, what do you think of the lack of cigarette smoke everywhere?

(From an American living in the UK)

- Stores being open past normal office working hours, so that you can do some shopping after work (there are exceptions, but they are very few and far between)

- People sticking to one side of the sidewalk/staircase in crowded urban areas (the free-for-all chaos of, say, Oxford St., or any given tube station at rush hour BLOWS MY MIND - this would get you yelled at (or worse) in New York)

- Broader all-purpose "drug stores" like CVS, Rite Aid, Duane Reede (especially 24 hour ones). There is no place in the UK where late at night you can buy - in one place - Ibuprofen, Blank CDs, Doritos, and an issue of Rolling Stone, for example).

- Buttered popcorn

^^ YES to the first one. UK store hours kind of baffle me.
Re the 2nd one, that's possibly due to clueless tourists. People in the US don't seem to queue for buses and all just pile on regardless, so it's swings & roundabouts I guess /phrases I hate

Funny, as an American, I wouldn't mind a pharmacy where I could walk in and not have a Billy Big Mouth turn and start singing at me.

The only things I really missed when visiting abroad (can't say I was really an ex-pat) was hot sauce at my immediate disposal 24 hours a day.

What kinds of stores are we talking about that are only open normal office hours? Certainly not grocery stores? I can sort of imagine clothing stores and electronics stores doing so, but not grocers and drug stores.

I don't know how much this is the case in England these days but it used to be the case that nothing was open past 6pm, save pubs and the occasional Indian/Pakistani-run corner shop.

How do you BUY anything??

Not even grocery stores??

That goes for all-day Sunday too.

It makes no sense, especially with what were the reduced Sunday trading hours. Supermarkets are open late and compared to what I've seen in the US, there are a LOT of them in the UK, of all sizes and loads of locations in most big towns. IIRC most local butchers/greengrocers etc do normal office hours too, hence the massive growth of the Big 5 supermarkets (so I assume).
tbf a lot of newer shopping centres with department stores are open til at least 7pm weekdays but like SGTS says, they are relatively few and far between.

Banks p much all shut before 5pm weekdays too, right? So you're doomed to spend your lunch hour queueing if you need to go into a branch on a weekday. At least my local US one is open til 6pm.

I mean do stores not want your money? This is incomprehensible.

And here I used to think that small towns (and the southern U.S.) were ass-backwards because many stores were closed on Sundays or there wasn't a 24 hour grocery or drug store.

How can services for people who work in offices keep the SAME HOURS AS OFFICES? It patently by definition doesn't work!

We're all dole scum innit

I mean do stores not want your money? This is incomprehensible.

My fiancee and I have a running joke where - in the occasional face of baffling customer service - we quietly scream to each other "Please take the money I am trying to give you in exchange for the goods and/or service that you are in the business of providing!!!"

I've definitely had some mind-bending shopping experiences here. In one recent instance, I was walking into an HMV store at exactly 6:45. The store was due to close at 7pm. I was attempting to buy a CD as a gift for my boss. I knew exactly what I wanted; it was displayed a foot and a half from the entrance.

I was stopped by an employee: "Sorry, we're closed."
I checked my watch. "But it's only 6:45."
Stone faced. "Still, we're closed."
"I don't want to be difficult, but I know exactly what I want - it's right there. I have cash, if that's quicker."
"We're closed."
"I really don't mean to give you a hard time, but can I speak to the manager?"
Huge sigh; big production; Manager comes over: "What's the problem?"
"I just want to buy that CD, but I'm being told the store is closed. It's 6:50, and the sign right there says you close at 7."
"Sorry, mate - if he says we're closed, we're closed."
"But I want to give you this money..."

And that's at a CD store - of all the businesses that probably can't afford to turn money away!

I grilled my coworkers about this, and got a variety of explanations. I was told that many retail employees are paid hourly but NOT paid after closing time at shops, so it's in their interest to shuffle people out as quickly as possible by closing time. Some people said that there just ISN'T that culture of "if there's someone with a dollar to spend, there's someone to take that dollar" - people just value their homelife too much to let this be the dominant attitude towards selling and spending. Stores don't seem terribly worried about a shopper's "experience"; there's definitely not a "customer's always right" thing in most places.

Then again, a couple of my co-workers told me they HATE shopping in America - namely getting mobbed by overeager, perky sales kids.

vegemitegirl otm about clothes lines!!!!

i'm from NZ and def agree about store hours - practically nothing is open after 5.30 in terms of shopping (apart from supermarkets). there is 'late night shopping' on fridays, where a lot of stores might be open till 7pm but weekends everything is closed by 4 or 5pm.

- love the weather here. love not having to consider the weather when planning anything, at any time of the year.

- food, utilities, clothes, everything = way cheaper

- like sunny said: buying stuff online - don't have to pay an arm+leg for shipping and wait 3 months

- amazing and diverse landscape. so so beautiful, and so much stuff to explore just in our area.

I have never seen a Malaysian restaurant en mi vida.

I eaten at three in the LA area (one has since closed). San Gabriel Valley reprasent!

There's a ton of them in Melbourne. I haven't tried any here though. Apparently there's a Malaysian restaurant in Sac but (shrug). I don't feel as compelled to eat it here, because it's not everywhere you look.

There used to be an awesome Malaysian restaurant in Boston, then it moved to Harvard Square and then in closed ;_;

yeah i don't know about the rest of NZ but wellington is full of malaysian restaurants, and i really really miss a good mee goreng :(

wtf is with me and typos today

overcome with emotion at the end of the nabisco era

Mee Goreng! omnomnom...possibly one of my top 5 favorite hangover foods.

There's a few malay places around Seattle, but my favorite one closed about 6 months ago.

There's a good low-end one in DC, and a couple of others I haven't tried yet.

Apparently there WAS one in Chicago, but it's closed, now there are only two or three in the suburbs. That's weird. I don't think they're even particularly Malaysian or Asian suburbs.

many x-posts to Dan - Penang, right? It was driving me nuts earlier that I couldn't think of the name.

That's also the name of the one in Chicago that closed.

The USA has a kind of international food culture that's hard to match. UK does pretty good, but obviously with different geographic strengths. I miss eating a broadly international array of foods week after week. Growing up on the West coast, I think I ate a different ethnic cuisine just about every day of my young-adult life, and got kind of hooked on that way of eating.

Trying to recreate that habit is a real chore. When I lived in Japan, I didn't try – too hard. Living in Thailand, I had it a bit easier cause of all the internationals and tourist-driven businesses. (Don't get me wrong, I love Japanese and Thai food, but try eating it every day for months on end... The dominant flavors and textures become far too ordinary). Now, living in N. Europe, easy to eat SE asian and Middle eastern food, but not much else. Despite a current "mexican food" fad that seems to have struck Sweden, the stuff available in the stores is basically stale tacos.

Europe has the worst food.

ALL OF EUROPE

potato farls says u rong

I hate to use the "s" word again, but we call them Potato Scones

i gotta nice short 's word' for u and ur fuckin scones man

xp Not least because farls reads as 'farts' if you're speeding along... mmmmmmm, potato farts...

i can see where that'd cause doubts, fair enough.

between ireland and usa....usa has more variety but basic food (by basic food i mean bread, dairy products, PROPER BACON YO) at home is better.

comfort food is comforting

¯\(°_°)/¯

http://the-red-thread.net/steppe-scone.jpg

can you get Ethiopian food in the UK/australia/nz/wherever? this is u+k

yeah you can get most anything in the main cities of australia. countryish towns - chinese and mcdonalds

oddly few and far between in australia - mexican restaurants

Yeah Australian mexican food is not great, or at least it wasn't when I lived there, compared to the stuff I can get here in Bay Area/Sac. Then again, I didn't have any knowledge of 'real' mexican food...nachos grande was about the extent of my understanding and it was juuuussst fine for me.

Honestly, I find that the international fare over here in the US pales compared to what was on offer in Melbourne. (Lol now in Colac the Chinese/McDonalds is spot on. Though add KFC).

Once I moved out of home and was living in Melbourne I got so used to being able to eat load of good cheap Indian/ Malaysian/ Indonesian/ Thai/ Vietnamese/ Greek/ Italian/

The stuff on offer, especially in the Indian & Greek departments just do not measure up at all. But that's got a lot to do with living in Sac/working in Folsom, which is watered-down suburbia compared to what's on offer in SF/Oakland. But yeah, I resent paying $10 for bad Indian...and the Greek place I ate at should have been a warning sign right off the bat bc NO greek ppl in attendance at all.

Yeah, the US has some serious dead spots, though I'd assume that SF must have one of the largest varieties of ethnic restaurants in the States.

Good Indian has always been a bit hard to come by (at least on the West coast) cause not many Indians compared with UK, etc. Most of the decent places I remember are very expensive. I think that's starting to change now. I'd guess there's some good cheap Indian in the Bay area if you know where to look. As far as Malaysian, maybe it has to do with the fact that there are relatively few Malaysian immigrants compared to those with other SE Asian backgrounds. Thai and Vietnamese food is insanely cheap, good and abundant in PDX, LA, SEA...

Not many Greeks on the West coast, relatively speaking (or Italians for that matter). Try Detroit, NYC, Chicago. PDX has a bit of a Greek business/restaurant community along Burnside street.

Yeah, I've lived all my life in Seattle and Portland and afaik never met a Malaysian.

many x-posts to Dan - Penang, right? It was driving me nuts earlier that I couldn't think of the name.

YES

loved that place so much, too bad I was totally broke and therefore couldn't eat there every day while it was still around

I think Sacramento needs to work on their immigrant visa program: specifically target restaurant proprietors in Greece, Malaysia, and India. FREE TRAVEL TO THE US IF YOU DEVOTE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE TO MAKING ME YOUR YUMMY FOOD

Also xposts: will never be able to abide expensive Indian food. And the $$$ indian food = tiny servings. Like, *a* helping of curry. No. For that price I want 9 helpings and I should be able to take all the leftovers home and feast on them for at least 2 more days, lunch AND dinner.

Btw there's an excellent, cheap Lebanese restaurant with huge servings down the street from me. I f/w this restaurant.

Seems like I remember there being a Basque restaurant somewhere up I-5 from you...in Williams, maybe? xp

the Greek place I ate at should have been a warning sign right off the bat bc NO greek ppl in attendance at all.

This has made me realise that I judge whether a Chinese place might be good or not by how many Chinese people are eating at it, but if I did that at Indian restaurants I wd be out of luck, as the clientele is generally 100% white (at least round here)

which has nothing to do with anything, I'd just never thought about it before

anyway I think I already groused abt Oxford's burrito place itt, now I will promise to myself to have a sit-down meal in the Malaysian place next door some time (had takeaway once but ordered sth deliberately simple and mild as it was lunchtime and I was heading back to the office)

There aren't many problems a bowl of laksa won't ameliorate.

can you get Ethiopian food in the UK/australia/nz/wherever? this is u+k

― The Reverend, Tuesday, 28 September 2010 19:03 (Yesterday)

there are ethiopian and eritrean (iirc) restaurants near me

there are probably ethiopian restaurants in all major cities cuz of the diaspora (same w/ however many other national cuisines)

this american way of determining culinary quality (ie concentration of esoteric foreign foodstuffs/restaurants ) shouldn't be extended too far beyond america

i'm sure there are regions of italy which would fail badly using that schematic but nonetheless have better food than any similar region in usa/england

Vegemitegrrrl, there some good Greek places in Sac: Opa Opa, Petra - newish place on 16th and L, and Greek Village Inn on Howe and University is even better but kinda $$$. Do you live downown?

the point I'm getting at is that USA folks like our food culture, a fairly diverse food culture. When we live abroad, we miss that. I'd probably miss that after six months anywhere provincial, even Italy.

xpost Thanks Whitey! I have passed by Opa Opa but it looked v fast-foody/terrifying to me. But hey, if it's good then I will hit them up for SURE. Greek Village Inn I was told about, but the $$$ seemed like a deterrent. Worth the dough?

Off the food topic for a mo: I remembered what else I like about the USA...the magical invention called the whole house fan!
We have one and I like it very much indeed. Especially when the nights cool

Is that the same as an attic fan?

Maybe?

It's like a giant fan in the ceiling and you turn it on and open the windows and it sucks all the cold air from outside into your house.

Note: it is a bad idea to turn said fan on when the barbecue is going. Especially if your husband has cranked up the barbecue to clean the grill racks. house fills with smoke, alarms go off, bad scene all round.

the point I'm getting at is that USA folks like our food culture, a fairly diverse food culture. When we live abroad, we miss that. I'd probably miss that after six months anywhere provincial, even Italy.

― Mr. Shirts, Wednesday, 29 September 2010 22:57 (26 minutes ago)

do ppl in exurban oklahoma tend to like a 'diverse food culture'?

nytimes says abt scones - 'They’re not dissimilar to buttermilk biscuits' !!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/dining/13mini.html?_r=1

RONG.

lol. one day i will get to try them for myself

I made them here and honestly, they taste better at home. Esp when made exclusively by Australian grandmas at bring-a-plate luncheons/suppers etc. :D