To that end, and keeping in mind a comment from one of the earliest conversations I had here (paraphrasing: "Walking around Walgreens is disconcerting, because you have all the same brands and logotypes but with different names, but I'm going to stop this thread of conversation right there because otherwise it will devolve into us saying words at each other and smiling weakly at how our two languages and accents differ" - self-awareness and meta-textual humour within a parenthetical, the Jack Jackson story), I humbly present: America - what's the same and what's different?
The Same
The Internet - this may seem like a weird statement, but it's reassuringly true. Modulo a few difficulties convincing the Google Play Store that I do now inhabit the Land of the Free, almost everything "just works". This is particularly comforting given the kerfuffle involved in transferring all other forms of communication (mailing address and phone number).
TV - having recently committed to catching up on Game of Thrones, it's been pleasantly universal to be able to talk about it with friends on both sides of the Atlantic.
Public Transport - it...actually exists? And is considerably better than I'd been led to believe. Apparently SF is egregiously good in that regard, but still - with an almost direct bus route between home and work, and cheap and ubiquitous Ubers and Uber-clones (debatable whether that's "public", but it's certainly "non-private" in the sense of "I don't own the means of transportation), I can see my driving license continuing to be a hazy possibility. Admittedly, the public transportation isn't quite so reliable or so densely-covering as in London (I've seen 3 buses in a row drive straight past crowded stops, and judging by online schedules they average about 5 minutes late), but still - good enough!
Sandwiches - turns out, people like sandwiches the world over. Who knew?
Fog - ok, so it's blazing sunshine 99% of the time, but Karl the Fog can rival anything out of Foggy London Towne.
Nerds - they're the same the world over. They still like stupid jokes and puns like "Does anyone speak Italian? // I think Italian people do", they still play intricate and complex games with cards or role-playing rules, and they're still some of the most welcoming and open-minded people around (note - I'm intentionally invoking the No True Scotsman here. Any dickhead who excludes someone based on perceived lack-of-geek-cred, gatekeeps their community from "outsiders", or makes anybody harmless feel unwelcome, can fuck right off, because I don't want to be associated with them).
No nearer to Abbie Modaff - despite this being the only relocation I was ever likely to make that would actually bring us closer together and be able to, y'know, visit (rather than continually posting goat/sheep videos and grammatical jokes to one another over the intarwebs), I managed to pick the furthest place in the country from her nest of intellectualism, meaning the crime-fighting duo of Sheeptits and Interrobang will continue to operate in an Internet-only capacity (actually, I just checked, and as the crow flies it's down from 3270 km to 2690. But still.)
Different
Prices - the prices, in general, are about the same, I guess (accounting for the fact that nobody even knows what a pound is worth these days, and the local-bubble of San-Francisco-prices-vs.-San-Francisco-salaries)? But what I'm referring to here is the baffling array of extras that get added on. Tax, and quasi-mandatory tip, and "bag charges" or some shit like like that - my second week here, I ordered a takeaway for "$18" that ended up costing over $25. I just don't get it. Do they enjoy not knowing how much they're going to spend?
Drinking - is not a thing here. I was at a "pub" quiz (pub in scare-quotes because, come on) in my first week where 5 people shared 2 pitchers of beer for 3 hours, and there was still some left over. I guess that's a good thing for my liver, waistline, and wallet? Which, talking of...
Credit - apparently it's a thing? As in, I've been advised multiple times to make purchases on my Credit Card because that builds up "a good credit history". I mean, I see how that works, I get it, but for it to be so important that it's among the first things that multiple people advise you to do when you enter the country...why is credit stronger than actually having money? Literally - I was talking to a guy the other night who said that he was denied a phone contract because his credit limit wouldn't cover the required deposit, even though he had more than enough to cover the deposit readily available through debit. Baffling.
Lamps - this probably sounds weird, but this is the thing that got to me the most. American lamps turn on/off in a weird way. You have to reach inside the lampshade, and twist a little knob (which I assume is some kind of skeuomorphic throwback?) - not once, but twice, so it's entirely possible that, if you don't know what you're doing, you'll twist it once, assume that's "not it", and keep searching for a button/switch elsewhere. What's wrong with an on/off switch on the power cable, 'murcins?
Electronic receipts - Stripe is big over here, and it's great. Register an email address to your account, and bam, done. No more paper receipts ever again. How frickin' great is that!
No InfoSec - ok, I realise this is now the fourth thing that relates to the process of exchanging-money-for-goods-or-services (fitting, here in the land of the nothing's-free), but it is SHOCKING how poor are the safeguards against identity theft and small-time financial fraud here. The first time someone swiped my card for a purchase and just handed it back - no pin entry, no signature, no nothing - it took me a good few seconds to realise that they were done. Even requesting a signature to authorise a payment is absolutely nuts - it's not like signatures can't be forged, and in any case the receipt is printed out before the tip (there it is again...) is negotiated, so that means the vendor is at liberty to charge you whatever they want (why can't they just claim that you gave a $200 tip?). And that's just in real life - in order to set up Venmo (a payments-app that's popular here), I had to provide my root online-banking credentials. No temporary access token, no OAuth, no restricted privileges - just "here's the keys to my digital kingdom, have fun!". I raised this with some natives, and was told this was perfectly normal. *Shudder*.
Chip-and-pin cards do exist - thus far, I've found precisely two places that accept them. Blergh.
Lamps - this probably sounds weird, but this is the thing that got to me the most. American lamps turn on/off in a weird way. You have to reach inside the lampshade, and twist a little knob (which I assume is some kind of skeuomorphic throwback?) - not once, but twice, so it's entirely possible that, if you don't know what you're doing, you'll twist it once, assume that's "not it", and keep searching for a button/switch elsewhere. What's wrong with an on/off switch on the power cable, 'murcins?
Electronic receipts - Stripe is big over here, and it's great. Register an email address to your account, and bam, done. No more paper receipts ever again. How frickin' great is that!
No InfoSec - ok, I realise this is now the fourth thing that relates to the process of exchanging-money-for-goods-or-services (fitting, here in the land of the nothing's-free), but it is SHOCKING how poor are the safeguards against identity theft and small-time financial fraud here. The first time someone swiped my card for a purchase and just handed it back - no pin entry, no signature, no nothing - it took me a good few seconds to realise that they were done. Even requesting a signature to authorise a payment is absolutely nuts - it's not like signatures can't be forged, and in any case the receipt is printed out before the tip (there it is again...) is negotiated, so that means the vendor is at liberty to charge you whatever they want (why can't they just claim that you gave a $200 tip?). And that's just in real life - in order to set up Venmo (a payments-app that's popular here), I had to provide my root online-banking credentials. No temporary access token, no OAuth, no restricted privileges - just "here's the keys to my digital kingdom, have fun!". I raised this with some natives, and was told this was perfectly normal. *Shudder*.
Chip-and-pin cards do exist - thus far, I've found precisely two places that accept them. Blergh.
Breakfast - it's well-known that they can't do a proper cooked breakfast. That's ok, they can do other things reasonably well - to quote from a great historical curiosity that was sent my way by Olivia (herself a great historical curiosity), "The British don’t know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don’t know how to make a good cup of tea. It’s an even swap". I do wish they'd stop using the wrong words, though - in my first week I was served a "Bacon, Egg, and Sausage Muffin" which, at best, included two half-approximations of what was promised (the egg and bacon were just barely deserving of the name - the sausage and muffin, unrecognizable).
Girls - are, for the most part, frankly stunning (judging by Tinder's promises and those I've seen on the street). Though I've had just as bad luck getting any to talk to me, so at least that's still reassuringly the same.
---------------
What have I been:
- doing: Exploring the city of San Francsico, and (still) wondering why we don't have citywide free WiFi yet. A few highlights: this, this, this, this, and this.
- reading, fiction: I ditched my re-read of The Lymond Chronicles a week into my American Odyssey for a re-read of Infinite Jest. It seems fitting, somehow. That said, I just took delivery of The Year Of The Black Rainbow (how has it taken me this long!), so I'm sure that'll get a going-over soon.
- reading, nonfiction: Gradually churning through Still Drinking, though the author's ill-concealed verysmartness is beginning to get a bit wearing.
- listening to: Selections from the various bands who I bought tickets to in a fit of claustrophobia in my second week. Plus Coheed, because always Coheed.
- watching: Game Of Thrones. I doubt anyone figured out that I'd turned off notifications on that post to avoid spoilers. I hope that coming clean here won't tempt them...
- playing: Pokemon Go, like the rest of the American and British twenty-something world. Though I've found time here and there for some playtesting of Fallen London for "the creepiest of my friends". On multiple recommendations (not least Vartan's), I tried Overwatch, which looked very pretty but was entirely unplayable on our terrible WiFi. Plus, I'm dangerously close to buying some Netrunner cards...
- building: The idea I was building with Laura J. hasn't moved progressed much since I moved here, but I have tinkered a bit with my idea for a pop culture graph (think a visual representation of Bacon Numbers), and today hacked up a Slack bot to reply in-channel with a picture of a Netrunner card if you post it in "[[double-square-brackets]]" (inspired by the Reddit MTG bot). Turns out Slack bots are pretty easy! Though it did make me nostalgic for Shadowrun, and the ludicrous effort I went into orchestrating fake conversations between NPCs on our Slack-version of JackPoint...
- thankful for: That people are people the world over; that, for the most part, people are good and kind and generous and welcoming; and that I have wonderful friends back home who I love dearly, and wonderful friends here who I have yet to meet.
No comments:
Post a Comment