Random weirdness US style #1

There are many many things that are just a little bit different over here. Tiny things. Barely relevant. But certainly enough for me to compose yet another list. Whooot!!

• In a restaurant, cafe, diner etc, straws come encased in paper. Every time you order a drink it is served with the straw on the side still wrapped or the straw is in your beverage with the tip of the paper still on the top of the straw.
• Lights switches switch the opposite way and the majority of power points don’t have an on/off switch
• The 2 out of 3 times that we have visited a beach we have had to pay to do so! One of the beaches was at Amityville and had a kids water park next to the beach. Mainly because the beach wasn’t really what I would call swim friendly. The whole thing was manned by staff. The second was at Ocean Beach and it had a new boardwalk (built since Hurricane Sandy) and was manned by lifeguards.
• Turn right on red light – if you are stopped at a red light and you are wanting to turn right, you are allowed to, ensuring there is no traffic coming, unless otherwise signed
• A slice of pizza is about the same size as a small pizza in Australia!
• A 5c piece is larger than a 10c piece.
• Flags – so many homes and businesses have the US flag adorning a window or pole that if there is a house or business that doesn’t have one, I’m instantly suspicious.
• Home Deepot (huge hardware store, more like Masters as it sells white goods too) – even though we’re Aussies, we keep saying Home Deepot instead of Home Depot.
• Maps can be a bitch – I really don’t know how we would have survived here without the Maps function on our iPhones. However, sometimes rather than just hitting ‘Start’ before you’ve actually had a look at the route, she likes to send you on quite the scenic journey. It’s a bit hard to explain without having to draw you a map but let’s just say that it cost me $16 in bridge tolls that went over large bodies of water when the destinations are both on the same land mass.
• Phone numbers are formatted differently ie. XXX XXX XXXX and it’s the same amount of numbers whether it’s a cell phone or a home phone. I still can’t tell what prefix indicates if it’s a cell or a home but I’m not sure it’s that important either. Master P memorised my cell number for me because I couldn’t make it stick in my brain.
• When you pay a Realtor to lease out your house, the TENANT PAYS THE COMMISSION. The topic of housing rentals deserves a whole post on it’s own really. Coming soon…
• “The speed limit is arbitrary” – whether you’re supposed to be going 30mph (about 48kph) or 70mph (about 113kph) no body (else) seems to pay the legally enforced limits much mind. This is a particular bug bear for Special K who can often be heard mumbling the word ‘arbitrary’ in his sleep.
• Coffee – I know, Aussies constantly roll their eyes when it comes to coffee in America. So aside from all of the usual commentary, I find it quite bizarre that you are often subjected to a serve your own style of coffee. It’s kind of like camp with an array of labelled jugs/urns to cover all types of coffee and milk and don’t even start me on the selection of sweeteners! I did have an hilarious experience at Starbucks the other day where a woman argued with the server for 5 minutes about the way she ordered her coffee. Something about froth on the side and whether it was a macchiatto or… geez I don’t even know what she was talking about but she was continuously pointing out that ‘This is how I order it 8 times a week in here’. I thought I might be the only one finding this somewhat hilarious and annoying at the same time but the chick behind me was equally bemused.
• Ikea – in Melbourne, after you’ve loaded up your trolley with purchases, gone through the register and then remember that you can’t take the trolley out to the car, it just does your head in. Not so in the great US of A. You can take your cart out to the car and if you need to put something on your roof and you don’t have racks, no problem, Ikea will supply you with cardboard and twine that serves just as well. Yep, I couldn’t make that up. I haven’t seen that in Aus.
• Lemonade ain’t lemonade – I knew this before I got here but it took me three times of receiving the equivalent of lemon cordial before I remembered to order Sprite/7Up rather than lemonade.
• Bed sizes – we have single, double, queen, king. They have twin, full, queen, king.
• Cheques – When we opened our US bank account, we received 4 cheque books. All for the one cheque account. We were perplexed. Can you even get a cheque book in Australia these days? And then I went to get our water connected and had to pay a $300 deposit in cash or cheque!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m thinking there may be a number of these posts.

Nic x