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As an Australian who visited America (for two weeks) just a few months ago I am clearly the ultimate provider of opinions. American free-to-air TV is insane. It's not just all the cop shows, judge shows and BREAKING NEWS: EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE FOREVER. It's also the prescription drug ads running constantly, which is illegal in Australia. I felt like I'd stumbled into a goddamn dystopian nightmare vision of the future. Also you don't use 'chemists' as a word for 'pharmacy' and I confused people looking for painkillers, 2/10. The healthcare system is terrifying. I can go to a doctor for free any time I want down here and pick up almost any medication I need for $5-$20 just on medicare, which I'm automatically eligible for as an Australian citizen with no costs - I don't have private insurance. Hearing about people paying hundreds just to get looked at? Turning down basic treatment because of debt fears? It's insane. American cars are loving ginormous. We have a large SUV by Australian standards, and it might as well have been a dwarf in comparison to the average car on the road. Why is everyone driving monster trucks? The chorus of singers walking through the subway carriages in New York startled me, but it was neat (even if I can imagine it'd be annoying for natives). Our buskers aren't allowed on trains/etc. Everyone was very nice to me, even the cities with bad reputations. I resorted to grabbing strangers on the New York subway and demanding directions when I got lost and I got help, and when I lost my phone in Chicago I panicked and accosted a complete stranger due to his being bearded (long story) and got handed his phone and a small group of people trying to make helpful suggestions. Note: I am a white girl with a 'cute' foreign accent, this very likely does not apply to all foreigners. However, there was also a lot of condescension and ignorance. People not knowing that yes, we did in fact have the following: fast food, tall buildings, cities... I swear to god, half the people thought I lived on a ranch in the outback. When I accidentally stumbled into politics with a couple before a concert, I got told it's nice that Australia is neutral and un-involved in all the crazy world politics... telling them we were in Iraq as American allies, and have other issues, was a wee bit a w k w a r d. Also telling me my accent is cute. All the time. Over and over. And how cute it is. And how cute I pronounce those words. Also very pushy about being THE BEST COUNTRY and having THE BEST [insert everything here I heard about] and getting asked a lot that didn't I think America was GREAT?! American police are insanely intimidating. I have no issues passing by the ones over here in the city, they're chill, even when I've been involved in protests/drama. American police looked ready to loving cut you 24/7 and it creeped me out. Other things that were uncomfortable: Guns. Jesus, the gun fetish.
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Mar 6, 2017 03:12
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It's not actually a competition, where only the winner is righteous enough to be allowed to criticise other nations. Honestly it IS a bit annoying that a bunch of Americans have suddenly become experts on Australia's hosed up refugee policies simply to dismiss anything we say as illegitimate, even though we're often screwed by American politics. Or 19th century Europe in this case.
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Mar 6, 2017 21:05
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ETA: eh fair enough not to continue the slap fight
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Mar 7, 2017 03:12
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Captain Monkey posted:So your argument is that America is more important (impactful?) than, say, England? So the policies of our officials (who are as much under our control as your officials are under yours) reflect more strongly on us? On a world-wide scale, yes! If the Australian dollar disappeared today, America wouldn't feel it much. But the American dollar is probably the most widely used currency in the world and it's the one everyone pegs their dollar to. Anything happens to the greenback - say, insane politics and a debt ceiling - and we all burn. The civil war in Somali is tragic and terrible, but we're not all automatically dragged into it or have to deal with massive political consequences from it. If America goes to war, allies are dragged in or have to deal with political fallout from refusing, and it completely changes the geopolitical landscape of that region and the world. I don't know how to put it in a sufficiently simple yet terrible metaphor.
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Mar 14, 2017 23:47
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Captain Monkey posted:I understand that. I'm asking how its relevant to your perception of individual Americans. We have as much control over our President/Congress as you do over your governmental agencies (potentially less, at least once now the person with less votes has won the presidency because of the oddly designed system) when they do dumb things, which is to say weirdly little despite our governmental system. You don't hold that double standard for any other country, really. Even Russia and China, which have arguably similar effects on the global economy and everything don't color your perceptions of Russian and Chinese people the same way American foreign policy does. Well, I can't say much for Russia since we're about as far as you can get, but it does colour the average Australian's perception of China. Hooo boy should you see our news sometime when it comes to China, esp. foreign property developers and head honchos. But there's plenty of assumptions and stereotypes made about why the average Chinese person comes here, the policies they must support, their attitudes etc. Based on the politics of their home country. American TV just doesn't exactly go into 'The average Australian's thought on China,' and there isn't a thread on it in A/T or I imagine you'd get similar responses.
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Mar 15, 2017 02:18
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Captain Monkey posted:Cool, what is your opinion of an average Chinese citizen? Since you're from Australia yourself. I'd love to contrast it against your earlier post about the average American. I feel like I'm about to release The Discourse here. Let me preface by saying a lot of what I said about the average American came from actually visiting America, and I haven't been to China. My exposure to visiting Chinese citizens, not immigrants, was at my upper class university where you pay $$$$$$$ to be an international student and I didn't have that much contact in my classes. So it's less 'average' and more 'rich people in university.' Because of that, I don't have nearly as much experience and thus it's going to be a lot shorter. They're either very political or not political at all with no in-between. You'd get that guy in anthro 101 ~explaining the difference between barbarians and civilisation~ in terms of native Asian cultures (Yes, that happened, and oh boy you should have seen when a critique of communism happened..) or absolutely zero care. But even in the people without the politics, or who seem a little dismissive of China as polluted right now, there's still a strong level of "China is the centre of Asia, you are all weakly new civilisations who haven't invented anything." Which is similar to "It's all about AMERICA," and American patriotism, however with a different cultural emphasis on being ancient and powerful versus being a heavy-hitting modern ~we the best at everything~ Despite that, very Western brand-conscious and showy of new purchases. Unlike America, Chinese media hasn't saturated our... everything. We're not constantly flooded with Chinese movies, TV shows, etc. Only an inescapable American presence. And I suppose I assume anyone who transferred in and is a first year is going to be either a bit of a plagiarist or regurgitate course material when it comes to group work, since that happened a lot even when we were meant to be interpreting something. Now back to the game show: "Americans tell us what opinions we're allowed to have on America, and how they're wrong!"
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Mar 15, 2017 03:19
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I didn't mean to sound too salty, it's just this isn't anything unusual. I's amplified by the amount of countries responding because America has its mitts in everyone's businesses 24/7, but any thread asking this about any country with a large influence and some questionable foreign policy would get any least some similar feedback about its policies. It's actually abnormal not to. And it's pretty odd to act like it's the case because everyone's only talking about America... in the thread about our thoughts on America.
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Mar 15, 2017 08:36
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fantastic in plastic posted:What do non-Americans think of American food? If you've visited and eaten at non-chain restaurants or had home-cooked meals in America, what did you think? Most of the American food I ate tasted sweeter than I'm used to. Not in a particularly bad way, but even basic food items like bread were sweeter than I'm used to, as well as sauces, etc. I think my favourite meal out of all of them was Chicago's deep dish pizza, and I'm sad I can't find it over here. A thing I noted was that sushi trains and Japanese restaurants in general were a lot less common than they are where I live. My local small shopping centre has two Sushi places, the street I used to live on had three, etc. They're extremely popular over here, and not so much over there. I thought starbucks being everywhere was a joke. It's not a joke in New York. I literally navigated my way around with starbucks free wifi stops because there was always one or two on every drat street. Skoll posted:American culture and Hollywood has been cited a few times in this thread. Since our media is pretty world reaching, what do you non US goons think about American movies? What kind of impressions do you get from the ones that are centered in the US as opposed to taking place in international venues? 99% of Americans trying to do Australian accents ends terribly. I'm aware Pacific Rim wasn't meant to be a comedy, but the entire theatre was snorting with laughter every time the fake "Australian" actors spoke. Imagine... Gosh, imagine if a British person was pretending to be Texan by going 'Ya'll' while still speaking in a British accent. It was ridiculous. American movies tend to write out every other nation which isn't so bad in sci-fi movies, etc. But it gets a bit annoying when all the world wars suddenly ignore the fact that it wasn't 'America saves the day by itself. AMURICA!' Especially when the message bleeds over into the actual perception of history. I don't have much of an opinion of American movies centred in America, although I imagine I've absorbed lots of questionable pop culture stereotypes of places in it.
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Mar 16, 2017 03:14
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Ah!! That reminds me: Why the hell is almost every building in America using a revolving door? I swear, I went through more of them in a week than I have in my entire life.
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Mar 24, 2017 22:39
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Question for all you dirty foreigners: how aware are you of regional differences in the US? Like, I kinda know that Europe has certain stereotypes by region, like how Bavarians are a bunch of hillbilly morons or how people from Berlin are jelly donuts, Parisians are assholes, and the English are just godawful all-round, I'm probably off on some of these, but you get the picture. Alaska: Bears and wolves and sled dogs and snow. Florida: FLORIDA MAN. South: Everyone is a racist cowboy who drinks a lot of sweet tea. Hawaii: Surfing.
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Apr 11, 2017 08:38
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himurak posted:As a completely untraveled American I have a (probably) oddly weird question. Australian here. DST is a thing but these days the internet does it manually. I personally enjoy it because it's nice to be able to go to the beach or a park at 7pm and still have it be sunny. I used to work 9-5, which is a fairly average job. People who work weekends, overtime or holiday shifts get paid more.. although our government is trying to shred the weekend payment rate because us serfs don't need money in exchange for our weekends. I will say it surprised me to hear American friends I know had shifts on Easter Sunday because over here every single goddamn chain shuts down for the full day.
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Apr 18, 2017 06:30
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Teriyaki Koinku posted:You get weekend bonus pay? In many industries work on Saturday or Sunday will attract a premium on the ordinary hourly rate. Sunday work is usually paid at double the ordinary rate. However some workplace agreements have averaged out the weekday/weekend difference in rates. In some industries when working on the weekend the employee is entitled to extra paid work breaks. Except the government is trying to cut that out! But yes, I know people who get double on Sunday.
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Apr 20, 2017 03:05
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Teriyaki Koinku posted:I meant to ask more specifically if weekend pay applies to Australian service sector jobs. A bit of a blank space for me as I am no expert on the dark mechanics of wage and taxation, but I know some fast food, retail and hospitality people have special weekend pay because it's been all over the news lately that the government's slashing as much of it as they can get away with.
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Apr 20, 2017 14:17
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