I had an interesting conversation last night with someone who has lived in this country a bit longer than I have and thought he had an interesting theory: he called the US the land of the hypocrisy as everything that is promoted (and usually defended quite fiercely) will also be undermined by doing the complete opposite. We were talking about the example of alcohol on the streets - not permitted and now even smoking in front of a restaurant is not permitted anymore - go hide and shame on you, smokers. But at the same time I have not smelled this much weed in my life as in this city. Everywhere you go, be it outside by the west side highway or in our building in some of the hallways- there's a pretty strong smell... Another example that I have been discussing with my flatmates is the attitude that working is so important and you get few vacation days. In fact I learned yesterday that there is a LAW stating that giving holidays is completely up to the company, so it's almost a generosity on their behalf if you get Christmas Day off. In fact one of my flatmates will not get Christmas off since her employers are Jewish. Now, if this was at a hospital or any other place where you need to make sure treatment can be provided - fair enough. But the sad part is that it is not about actually working but more about showing up. In fact it's probably going to be ok for her to come in in the morning and then as they see nothing is happening, leaving after a few hours. As people have few vacation days they actually end up shortening their days which certainly does not help productivity - any how hypocritical is that?
Also, everyone loves to stress how busy they are at work but at the same time you can tell many end up doing their online shopping, paying utility bills and engaging in private phone conversations. Have been observing this - not as much in my job as people are actually a little more relaxed about 'facetime' there but when observing people in shops and hearing from others about their work cultures - this country really seems to be governed by hypocrisy. Another example is the generation of HUGE amounts of garbage - I don't even want to know how much waste is produced in the city every day. Actually I do - so I just googled it (and I wasn't the first to do so) - wow- 37 million cubic feet a day- to make it more plastic - enough to fill the the entire Empire State Building. Check out this page - insane amounts of garbage. Having ordered for the first time from Seamless the other day (a really nice sit by the way where you can order from almost every restaurant in the city, pay online and get your delicious food delivered within 15-20 minutes), I know where all this comes from. It is crazy - they are delivering the food to your home but it comes with plastic cutlery, napkins, a couple of plastic boxes, individually for the rice, the sauce, the vegetables. Only from ordering one meal you'll be generating half a garbage bag full of waste. BUT and here comes the hypocrisy, there is a farmer's market in my street on weekends and they actually ask people to bring in their compost and show them how to recycle. Well, I guess you can also think about it as a first step - rather babystep. But even if you want to try to avoid generating this much waste, it's actually hard as you will be getting throw-away stuff everywhere. Whether it is your coffee cup at Starbucks or the take-out falafel lunch. At the same time there are some extreme examples as this one that one of my colleagues shared the other day. Or a bank that was advertising with 'going paperless' whereas I cannot even start to count the letters I have received from my health insurance, each of them stating 'this is not a bill', then what the hell is it for? I should check with them whether they allow you to go paperless. In short, whatever it is that the people in this country are practising to the extreme - there will be some extremely polar opposite that does not make sense.
The last example that I heard about was the fear of nudity - TV stations are not allowed to show any boobs or other 'sexually explicit content' but at the same time this country is the world's largest producer of porn and there is a huge industry making a fortune of it. Actually, gossip girl (very educational show by the way) has shown us a great example for that with Liz Hurley's character who pretended to be this integer journalist and then turned out to head an international pornography/prostitution business. The show is all about double-standards anyway. Yeah, I have been engaging in some sociological studies on American society for the past weeks when going through the past five seasons of this show - ok, I admit it was good fun too ;-) Anyway, enough wanna-be anthropological thoughts for today - better get to my halloween mask-making party - will take some pictures and share my thoughts on that too...
Also, everyone loves to stress how busy they are at work but at the same time you can tell many end up doing their online shopping, paying utility bills and engaging in private phone conversations. Have been observing this - not as much in my job as people are actually a little more relaxed about 'facetime' there but when observing people in shops and hearing from others about their work cultures - this country really seems to be governed by hypocrisy. Another example is the generation of HUGE amounts of garbage - I don't even want to know how much waste is produced in the city every day. Actually I do - so I just googled it (and I wasn't the first to do so) - wow- 37 million cubic feet a day- to make it more plastic - enough to fill the the entire Empire State Building. Check out this page - insane amounts of garbage. Having ordered for the first time from Seamless the other day (a really nice sit by the way where you can order from almost every restaurant in the city, pay online and get your delicious food delivered within 15-20 minutes), I know where all this comes from. It is crazy - they are delivering the food to your home but it comes with plastic cutlery, napkins, a couple of plastic boxes, individually for the rice, the sauce, the vegetables. Only from ordering one meal you'll be generating half a garbage bag full of waste. BUT and here comes the hypocrisy, there is a farmer's market in my street on weekends and they actually ask people to bring in their compost and show them how to recycle. Well, I guess you can also think about it as a first step - rather babystep. But even if you want to try to avoid generating this much waste, it's actually hard as you will be getting throw-away stuff everywhere. Whether it is your coffee cup at Starbucks or the take-out falafel lunch. At the same time there are some extreme examples as this one that one of my colleagues shared the other day. Or a bank that was advertising with 'going paperless' whereas I cannot even start to count the letters I have received from my health insurance, each of them stating 'this is not a bill', then what the hell is it for? I should check with them whether they allow you to go paperless. In short, whatever it is that the people in this country are practising to the extreme - there will be some extremely polar opposite that does not make sense.
The last example that I heard about was the fear of nudity - TV stations are not allowed to show any boobs or other 'sexually explicit content' but at the same time this country is the world's largest producer of porn and there is a huge industry making a fortune of it. Actually, gossip girl (very educational show by the way) has shown us a great example for that with Liz Hurley's character who pretended to be this integer journalist and then turned out to head an international pornography/prostitution business. The show is all about double-standards anyway. Yeah, I have been engaging in some sociological studies on American society for the past weeks when going through the past five seasons of this show - ok, I admit it was good fun too ;-) Anyway, enough wanna-be anthropological thoughts for today - better get to my halloween mask-making party - will take some pictures and share my thoughts on that too...
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