I've visited the not-quite-howling wilderness, and I liked it. I spent a week with my friend's family in The Boonies, India. No reliable internet, his back yard looking out on a river, well water, goats, cows, rice paddies. Once I got over my internet withdrawal, it was really relaxing and I would've liked to stay longer.

It's the middle ground of suburbia that drives me up the wall. Too many people to be wild, and too little to do to be interesting. Nothing to look at but houses for miles around, with only the occasional drive-in McDonalds and Walmart to break it up.

Sounds like where I grew up, only with cattle and and emus instead of rice patties. :)

Here's one that's a little abstract. The concept of "cultural diversity" does not translate very well over here. I think that anybody who grew up in a Western country would think that "cultural diversity" means the mix of ethnic and racial groups in a region and would bring to mind related concepts like tolerance and discrimination.

When I put the term "cultural diversity" into a questionnaire and tested it on Hong Kong Cantonese speakers, they thought I was talking about the variety of cultural offerings in the city, like theatre shows and musical performances and museums and French food and Japanese fashion and ukulele lessons and comic book fairs. The word "culture" calls up very different connotations in people's minds.

I know what a toque is. But I think I learned it through cultural osmosis from viewing Canadian humor (The Red Green Show, Bob and Doug McKenzie, Canadian Bacon).

I have a friend who married a Canadian girl. There was one time where the subject of ending sentences with "eh" came up. She insisted vehemently that she did not do that. Not 15 seconds later, she did exactly that, and we all called her on it. Simultaneously. She hung her head and said, "Okay, yeah, I guess I do that sometimes."

I grew up in Utah, but despite the ski resorts and the huge expanses of open wilderness around here, I've never considered myself outdoorsy. It's probably because I grew up being fascinated with computers, so I ended up spending a lot of time indoors. I don't hate camping, but it's not an activity I would typically choose of my own volition. I've been to New York a couple of times, and while it didn't bother me, I wouldn't really want to live there, either.

My wife is from New York and misses it, but she does like Utah. She also hates camping. A bumper sticker I saw once really captures her attitude about it: "My idea of camping is when room service is late."

I enjoy camping so long as I actively have something to do. I have a very active mind that needs constant stimulation when I'm awake. The moment I run out of things to do I start going stir crazy. Thus the reason why I actually don't like beach vacations - I don't like being out on the sun and I get bored as hell just sitting on a beach, which the rest of my family does. I have to be surfing, scuba-diving... doing something active with my time, or I end up just lazing about the hotel reading.

The people you go with are also a large influence as to whether camping is enjoyable. That said, by the end of a week or so at max I'm pretty well done with camping.

Also had a new geographical realization, not sure if it's particular to the Midwest.

I was putting away items (I'm currently part owner of a gaming/mini's store and often work there during the evenings) with another employee.

He isn't local to the area, and when I told him that the items were ready to be "put up on the shelves" he wondered aloud to himself why it's "put up" here and not "put away", especially given that the items that we were stocking were low to the ground.

...

How does a family live in such a small space? Where would you keep all your stuff? Is that even enough space for two bedrooms?

but "put away" would be the same as "take down" surely?


In North Queensland (I live in South Queensland) they have a habit of saying "[h]ey" (silent h) at the end of sentences. It is quite different from the Canadian "eh"

1. Bunk beds.
2. Very cleverly designed furniture. Or you just live surrounded by plastic storage bins. Or you have less stuff. Or you rent a storage unit somewhere.
3. Yes. Bedrooms just big enough for a bed, and perhaps a wardrobe, and about 1 foot of space to get out the door.

The poor have it even worse - some families are forced to share 200 square feet or less.

...I would not like to live in such a city. I like having enough space in my bedroom for a desk, and a chair, and my bookcases. And my books.

--------------

As far as geographical realisations go, some time back I was a little surprised to find that apparently tourists who visit South Africa are unaware of what a robot is, or at least unaware of it by that name, which leads to all sorts of misunderstandings when they're being given directions to somewhere. I mean, telling someone to turn "at the robot" is a fairly common part of almost any list of directions to anywhere. Here, it's just an accepted part of the English language.

(I should perhaps also mention that 'robot' in the above paragraph is used as a synonym for 'traffic lights')

Of course, there are certain differences between English as spoken here and English as spoken elsewhere; a number of words have been swiped from Afrikaans in the local lexicon (such as lekker, or stoep). But I didn't expect that 'robot' would be one of the differences; mainly because it's not a loanword taken from Afrikaans, or Zulu, or anywhere else; it's another English word that's just had an additional definition tacked on. And a definition that's not geographically unique, either.

If someone said 'turn at the robot', I'd be looking for some sort of statue of a robot or something...

When traffic lights were first installed in South Africa, they were referred to as "robot policemen". So as what usually happens, over time things get shortened.

Not sure if it's good or bad that they didn't shorten it to "robocop"...

You would be neither the first nor the only tourist to make that assumption.



'robot' is fewer syllables, that's probably why...

I want this so badly!
Where else is this definition used or am I misunderstanding what you meant?

I didn't mean that the definition was non-unique. I meant that the traffic lights are non-unique. People in other parts of the world have robots and don't call them robots.

This is weird.

It's a bit like discovering that, over most of the planet, people don't call pizza pizza.

Here we call them 'stoplights', because they're lights that make us stop.