Confess your personal succumbing to an "Ugly American" stereotype

[Tommy_Carcetti]

I'll name two.

First, I think soccer is boring. I know it's good exercise for the kids, but as a spectator sport, I just think it stinks. Plus the clock counts up--what's the deal with that? And just to solidify my contempt for the sport, I will continue to call it "soccer" and not "football", as football conjures up, well, a much more interesting sport involving touchdowns and field goals. Of course, my all time favorite sport is baseball, which I find to be the most intriguing of all sports but many others accuse to be boring, so I guess I'm a bit vulnerable.

Second, I have no desire to see us convert to the metric system. Screw it. I know, it is infinitely more logical than the random system we have (Is there even a name for it? I know they use "English System" but even the Brits don't use it any more.) I don't know, I'm a fan of the idiosyncratic. Having everything in neat multiples of 10 just makes me feel like a robot. And I don't want to feel like a robot.

So what are your Ugly American failings?

[Heidi]

1. Okay. Here's mine.

I live five minutes from the Swiss/Italian border, but when I know I'm going to be in Italy for a day, I limit intake of liquids. I _refuse_ to use this kind of toilet and was absolutely shocked the first time I encountered one:

[CBHagman]

4. Here's a website Jane Brody mentioned months back.

If you read the Science Times every Tuesday, you may have caught the Jane Brody column on the trials and tribulations of people answering nature's call. Well, it turns out there is a website, The Bathroom Diaries, devoted to rating restrooms the world over.

http://www.thebathroomdiaries.com/

It sounds as though you could provide horror stories and/or use the search function to locate a decent facility.

[AllegroRondo]

6. I thought they only had those is Asia!

wow. I saw those all the time in Korea. Hated them. At least the mens' room usually had urinals also.

[Heidi]

7. The first time I encountered a toilet like that in Italy,

I was wearing _brand new_ black boots with a stiletto heel; I did not feel confident enough of my "ability" (or my balance) to risk soiling my boots and the hems of my jeans. :rofl:

[lost-in-nj]

8. How does one use that?????????

I have NEVER in my life seen anything like that .....

OMG

:shrug: :shrug:
and I guess of your elderly .... tough cookies???


lost

[Heidi]

10. I have no idea. I value my shoes and trousers too much to attempt it.

:scared:

[sarge43]

12. One straddles the hole and experiences cultural shock.

It's strictly for gentlemen needing to use Numbero Uno. (A good aim is useful, too)

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

13. atleast that one has toilet paper

my first encounter with one of those had an always running garden hose you were to clean yourself up with - and all indications were that men were just pissing against the wall leaving a pale yellow pool on the floor.

And about 5 minutes later I ordered a light lunch that came to like $45 just to use the resturants real toilet.

[Sultana]

23. .

:rofl:

:puke:

[huskerlaw]

14. ...

:wtf:

That defies logic...and physics...and common human decency.

[Heidi]

16. The truth is,

I was afraid I'd pee on my new boots and my 501s. But still . . .

[huskerlaw]

18. Well YEAH!

I don't blame you in the least. That's just wrong.

The weird thing is, it doesn't look any more economical than putting in a toilet, so...what's the point? It's still a ceramic fixture with plumbing, so put in a freakin' toilet while you're at it! Oy. ;)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

29. It's traditional throughout Asia and around the Mediterranean

You're supposed to straddle it and squat over it. If you don't have bad knees (as I didn't when I first went there), it's no problem.

Fortunately, Japan has taken note of the growing percentage of elderly in its country and now a lot of stalls have hand rails in them.

[Arugula Latte]

37. The use of those marks a country not used to obesity.

Can you imagine the uproar here if, say, stores put those in?

[huskerlaw]

39. Oh my...

imagine trying to use one of those if you were pregnant.

x(

[Zookeeper]

71. See my post # 70.

It's an adventure!

[Sultana]

22. Haha

that reminds me of back home. Our neighbors have a toilet sit and all, we just wowed by it.:D

[MrScorpio]

33. World's Greatest Toilets

Holland: Always clean!

[KitchenWitch]

34. One word - DEPENDS

I am sorry, I am disabled (artificial hip). It would be physically impossible for me to hold a squat for the amount of time needed to lighten the lily.

[RainDog]

40. They have those at the Vatican!!

no joke. I was shocked.

just to say, btw, that my ex in laws had good teeth, took showers or baths every day, never smelled funky, my s-i-l's didn't have hairy pits, and my ex used to play soccer (in the U.S. just-for-fun leagues) and I loved to watch those matches. maybe cause I had a stake in a team.

I hate that you have to pay to go to the toilet. Germany has these steel bullet looking port-a-potties on street corners and you can't get into them w/o coins. some places make you use coins for the stalls, or you have to tip the woman who "hosts" the toilet.

[greatauntoftriplets]

44. I had a serious....

:wtf: moment when I encountered one of those in Italy years ago on my first trip there. Then I went to Asia. Happily, none of my hotel rooms in Asia had those.

[JI7]

48. squat toilets creep me out, even if they are clean, but i didn't think italy

would have those. i thought it was more of an asian thing.

the first time i saw them was in Singapore and it creeped me out. it was clean but still UGHHHHHHHHHH. then in india . i just hate them, i hate looking at them.

[Heidi]

53. I don't know how prevalent they are in Italy, but I'm not the only one who has seen them

and refused to use them. The first one I saw was in a very nice restaurant/tavern across the piazza from my dentist's office. Had I known that the establishment's facilities were "squat toilets," I wouldn't have had a beer there to begin with. x(

[Der Blaue Engel]

55. Avoid Russia

:scared:
I lived there for a month in 2006, and I felt like holding it the whole time and just saving it up for when I landed back at JFK. :rofl:

It wasn't so much the crouching toilets (I actually didn't encounter that many of those) as the total lack of toilet paper and soap (or, when it was available, the...unfriendliness*...of the toilet paper).

Then there were the little "shit shelf" toilets. (Dear god, WHY?)

I also encountered the crouching toilets (hidden dragon?? heh) in Singapore, but they were generally in just one or two stalls in a restroom and the rest of the stalls would have Western toilets. They say, however, that it's a more natural position for women, and helps maintain a strong PC muscle. :)

*A funny story about Russian toilet paper that requires a long explanation (and is probably funny only to me): There was a brand of toilet paper called "Myakiznak" which is actually a character in the Cyrillic alphabet referred to as the "soft sign," indicating a soft pronunciation of the preceding consonant. There is also a "hard sign" in Russian, called the "tvordiznak." When I saw an ad for Myakiznak toilet paper on the metro and realized what the name was, I turned to my roommate and said, "Thank God for Myakiznak. Otherwise we'd still be using that awful Soviet Tvordiznak." ;)

[Withywindle]

56. They have those things in Italy too?

I saw them everywhere in Malaysia. :scared:

The thing that amazed me is that there are all these Muslim women who wear these long, elegant, flowy things (NOT like a burqa or chador...very pretty clothes, in nice colors, and they don't usually cover their faces. Think loose pants and tunics and long skirts draped with scarves) and I don't think I ever saw a single wet hem. I have NO idea how they did it.

(1) I came away thinking. The East: 2 (food, philosophy/religion) The West: 1 (toilets)


(2) OK, and Mom and I ate at a KFC in Kuala Lumpur once. It was late and we were starving. It was awful. They don't get Western fast food at all.

(3) I think the Brazilian insistence on heating the milk before you put it in your coffee is gross. It gets that nasty skin on top. ICK. And it's too damn hot there to drink it that way.

(4) I didn't cover up enough on the beach in Malaysia, and I cover up too much on the beach in Brazil.

(5) I once almost deliberately caused a nasty accident on the Autobahn when I was hitching and an Italian truck driver tried to grope me.

[Zookeeper]

70. That's clean, shiny and modern compared to the one...

I encountered in a Paris Bistro...when I was pregnant...and wearing a maternity jumpsuit.

[MountainLaurel]

74. It could be worse

A friend of mine was traveling by train from Thailand to Laos and had to defecate, badly. He had lived in Japan for a year and was used to the squat toilets by that point. However, on the train the toilet was a hole in the floor of the train. So, as he was standing there bare-assed over a hole, he could watch the ground go by at 70 mph.

[Aristus]

76. When I was in Saudi Arabia during (and after) the Gulf War, we used to see

those squat holes in the buildings we'd go into. Guys in my unit were put to work in a processed food distribution warehouse while waiting for our departure date. The warehouse had both throne toilets and squat holes. Never used a squat hole. I'd wait for an available stall with a throne rather than use the hole in the floor.

[Sultana]

80. Oh, another thing

If you have diarrhea, avoid that. :yoiks:

I remember ours had a much bigger hole and a flusher.

[Ellen Forradalom]

2. Two words: organ meats

:puke:

[sarge43]

3. Two words: Dental hygiene. n/t

[Heidi]

11. Please explain.

I've lived abroad for many years, and no one has complained about my dental hygiene. :shrug:

[sarge43]

15. That's it. I won't give up the American obsession with good dental

care. I lived in Europe for six years. There are some place where it's "please don't smile at me again. I can't handle it."

[JVS]

5. Soccer is boring!

[mitchum]

9. I am appalled by the pop culture consumerist mania of the Japanese

"Oh look, more more new shiny junk!"
Gawd, they make Americans seem discerning. And that really takes some doing.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

17. I have been everywhere with a runway

and I can honestly say that of all the places I have been in my thirty something years on this planet I really like the suburbs of Orange County the best. You could run down a list of the most exotic locations on earth and I would probably rather go to Disneyland.

[kwassa]

31. you and Richard Ramirez

you couldn't pay me to live behind the Orange Curtain.

[KitchenWitch]

35. Hey hey hey, we got some nice folks living here behind the Orange Curtain.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

42. right...

you are aware that "The O.C." is not real and that the John Birch Society hasn't been active in years right?

[kwassa]

60. "The O.C. " is not real????

I am crushed.

(I could make a bad pun about orange crush, but I would never stoop to something like that.)

Orange County, in my humble opinion, is a vast featureless suburb. Aside from the climate and the ocean, what is uniquely appealing about the area?

It is also a generally conservative area, is it not?

[formerrepuke]

19. The American concept of 'personal space' is unfamiliar to many foreigners..

..particularly while standing in a queue. That, and that dippy, boring, violent-mob-inciting game called soccer. I am personally quite pleased that soccer has both: (1)Never caught on in the US, and (2)Goes by a different name in this country, so as to differentiate it from a better, more challenging game.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

43. oh yeah,

at first I was convinced that all these Taiwanese women were comming on to me as they were getting super close immediately and since it seemed nobody liked to speak english too loudly they all were speaking in this same hushed tone that made it look like some proposition was being made.

[MrCoffee]

20. writing the date as DD/MM/YY instead of the proper MM/DD/YY format

[Reverend_Smitty]

21. I hate the metric system too

It would always screw me up in science class simply because I can't "think" in metric. I have a difficult time in visualizing what a liter looks like or how far a kilometer is and when you are unable to visualize a system of measurement it is useless IMHO.

I've warmed to soccer over the past few years. I used to hate it and couldn't understand how anyone could find a game appealing that quite often ends in a 0-0 tie after 90 minutes of play, but once I started working with soccer teams and attending games regularly I got more comfortable with the game. I don't think I would pay money to see a soccer match but I don't hate it any more

[GirlinContempt]

24. Switching takes about a generation

and would help the next wave of little scientists not be confused like that.
My parents still can't do some things in metric (temperature, some measurements, weights they always have to convert in their heads) but all of their five children know metric like they knew 'standard', so it isn't that hard :)

[NewJeffCT]

62. No, it's not hard

but, we were supposed to convert here by 1980 and we still haven't. Something else blocked by those brilliant conservatives that has hurt American businesses in the long-run.

[SacredCow]

25. Deodorant

I don't know this for an absolute fact, but I've heard that Euoropeans, in general, don't see much point in deodorant. And I've been on enough long flights next to some who, though very clean and neat looking, smelled just awful (and you know the smell of which I speak).

So perhaps it's an unfair stereotype and I'm just unlucky enough to have been seated next to the wrong people... But I'm not going to be giving up my right guard anytime soon...

[Sultana]

27. Also

hairy armpits :shrug:

[Heidi]

47. Also generally untrue, in my experience. (nt)

[Heidi]

46. Untrue, in my experience. (nt)

[Sultana]

26. You can hate football/soccer

but it's still the greatest sport in the world (when it's good, it's really good). :woohoo:

Cricket:boring:

[Reverend_Smitty]

28. I don't trust a sport that regularly takes tea breaks

snack time has no place in sport!

[kwassa]

30. Why can't everybody else just speak English?

We know it's the only language worth knowing, and, of course, we Americans speak it the best.

[Kutjara]

49. They do.

All you have to do is speak loudly enough and, sooner or later, they'll understand.

Occasionally, you can add an "o" or an "ay" to the end of English words to "foreignize" them, making them easier to understand by stubborn foreigners. "WHICH WAYO IS THE RESTROOMAY?"

[dropkickpa]

32. I'm fat

Nyah Nyah Neener thhhbbbpppttt!!

[Momgonepostal]

45. Hey, that's what I was going to say! nt

[Lisa]

36. this Canadian says -- the responses on this thread totally refute one big stereotype

... that Americans are slow-witted and do not understand irony. Clearly, you do. Thanks everybody for starting off the new year with a laugh!

[Arugula Latte]

38. I agree with you about soccer but I despise U.S. football.

So one dislike cancels out the other, right? :)

Hmmm. What else? I like to take long, warm showers, even though I keep telling myself I need to stop wasting so much water and energy. :(

[RainDog]

41. oh yeah - horse meat - brrrrrrrrr

[UrbScotty]

50. I'm fat (nt)

[nemo137]

51. I am loud and I swear a bunch.

I have a couple Swedish friends who look at me seriously askance because of my language.

[BlueIris]

52. I don't (and won't) carpool.

Carpooling sounds like a vile idea to me. (And no flames, please, this is a thread for confessions about personal ugliness.)

[harmonicon]

54. the Brits don't use metric!

I moved to England this year, and was horrified that I'd have to deal with metric (because I feel about, justly, the same as you), but found out that they really don't use it. I think they do temperature in degrees centigrade, but that's not quite the same. They're still all about pounds and ounces, though they're more weird about what people and people-sized things weigh - that's all done in "stones" (one stone is, I think, 14 pounds). Distance is always described in miles, and feet and inches are standard fare as well. I would say they use more metric than americans, but not much more.

As for a stereotype for myself... hmm... you should ask my English friends.... loving coffee? That just doesn't seem good enough.

I did have a friend from the US who lived in Canada for years. He was from Colorado originally, and when he moved to Canada he started wearing cowboy boots and bolo ties and carrying a knife either on his belt or in a boot. A few years after he moved back to the US he stopped - it just wasn't funny anymore since he wasn't playing in to American stereotypes.

[tjwmason]

58. We use a mixture.

Unfortunately most shopping has to be done in metric (except pints of milk and beer), road signs are legally required to be in imperial (though some local councils have short distances in metres rather than yards). We certainly use stones - the imperial system is all about "easy" measurements for real life, and the stone provides a useful weight above the pound.

Temperature is probably the oddest - we switch between the two. When it's cold we use centigrade so we can talk about it reaching 0 (never gets near 0 farenheit here); but when it's warm we suddenly switch so we can talk about temperatures reaching the 90s.

Schooling is all metric now, but there are still plenty of youngsters who use imperial measures in preference.

Oh, and welcome to England. :hi:

Whereabouts are you? I'm just outside London.

[harmonicon]

61. I live in Huddersfield (in West Yorkshire) n/t.

[NewJeffCT]

63. I like Americanized coffee

Not into espresso or latte or anything like that.

[harmonicon]

64. same here

I like espresso too, but in the morning I want a hot cuppa joe, and you just can't get that in Europe. When I tell people in Europe that I prefer American coffee, they look at me like I'm nuts - as if I'd just said I prefer kick in the crotch to cuddling with kittens.

[NewJeffCT]

69. One of the few good moments

in the Godzilla movie with matthew broderick was when the french spy guys were in some van and one of them spat out his drink in disgust and said, "they call that coffee?" in his French accent, and his boss replied, "i call that america."

[crim son]

57. Lord, you provide me with an opportunity I never thought should arise.

But I remember seeing, somewhere, a character say, "But I'm too much of a lady to tell you..." I'd like to keep the friendships I have here, thanks.

[taterguy]

59. I like the taste of Budweiser

Shameful but true

[redqueen]

65. I have none I don't think... I think I was born in the wrong country.

And what you said about soccer is just wrong wrong wrong... U.S. style football is fucking BORING it is 60 minutes of action jam-packed into 180 minutes of mostly COMMERCIALS. So put that in your beautiful-sport-unappreciating pipe and smoke it!

x(

[NewJeffCT]

66. actually

american "football" has far less than 60 minutes of action packed into 3 hours & 15 minutes of game. For most of the game, the clock is running between plays. Then, the players huddle, line up and the QB calls some signals and then they start the action 30-40 seconds after the last tackle.

Most American football games have less than 10 minutes of actual "action" in them.

[redqueen]

68. See! That's what I'm sayin!

US-style Football... :boring:

[RainDog]

75. I agree! it is soooooooo boring

I like basketball, esp. college b.ball and.. gasp... SOCCER.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

77. Yes, except in American Football...

...the teams occasionally, you know, score.

[redqueen]

81. Oh pishaw!

It's very exciting stuff! Some of us can get off on not only the actual scoring, but also the attempts and the runs and the passes and everything else about it. It truly is the beautiful game, you know. :)

And besides, some of the scorelines in some very exciting premiership matches that I've recently watched are 7-4, 4-4... both in the last month I think, and there have been more than a few of those this season already. There are a lot of nil nil draws and games with low scores, but they can be just as exciting!

[Tommy_Carcetti]

82. Well I do like baseball....

Which some people think is the most boring sport ever, but I think constitutes a high art in athletics.

Too each his/her own, I guess.

[DS1]

67. I just blipped the horn at the crossing guard who was being a total ass about holding up traffic

to get his attention then flipped him off. Felt good, too.

[MountainLaurel]

72. Breakfast

I am unable to eat soft-scrambled eggs or barely warm bacon, which are the standards I encountered in New Zealand (and apparently are typical in Ireland, England, and Scotland as well). I need solid eggs and crispy bacon.

[DS1]

73. crispy bacon is shite

you can't even taste the goodness when it's brittle


Gotta go with NZ, UK, IE, and Scotland for this one

[greblc]

78. My failure to "MANSCAPE" !

[cabraverde]

79. I got drunk and beat up an emo kid

I was trying to hook up with this girl, then this emo kid started saying stupid stuff to me. So I beat him up; he was really skinny and weak, I go to the gym and am an athlete. I felt really bad about it because he really was just running his mouth, he did not deserve to be beat up.

But on the other hand I did get the girl, it did not last long but it was a fun few nights.

[Felix Mala]

83. Sorry to give you the bad news, but...

We've already switched to the metric system. They just figured out a way to do it without inconveniencing the delicate minds of the American people. First, all containers for manufacturing, import and export are now in metric. Every measurement made in engineering, medicine and scientific research is done in metric. Finally, every contract, every bid and every specification in dealing with the federal government is in metric. This includes all road projects, which means most states have followed suit so as not to have separate tables for different projects. Computers, tv's, cameras, cars - metric, metric metric. I don't know about legal documents, deeds, etc., but they'll probably be next.

[Quantess]

84. I get coffee to go, in a paper cup, no less.

I hurry down the street with my coffee, whether walking, or driving, or on public transportation.
I don't feel the obligation to sit down and savor the coffee-drinking-experience, as Europeans do.
Me and my caffeine have places to go and things to do!