primitive can hardly go into a convenience store without a slight Indian accent

[BattleHymn]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018670465

Sat Sep 27, 2014, 12:34 PM
Star Member Tobin S. (6,837 posts)

Times when ethnocentrism got the better of me.

Some time ago, I called customer service for a computer I had just bought. I was having some trouble with it. The call center was located in India. The person I was talking to had a heavy accent and I was having a hard time understanding what she was saying. At one point I said, "Can I speak to someone whose first language is English?" Little did I know at the time that the first language of most people in India is English. 

I drive a truck for a living and I run the same route every day. There is this convenience store on the route that I stop in sometimes. The place was bought by an Indian man a little while back. The store didn't seem right to me after that. The place seemed like it was too hot. The soft drinks didn't seem as cold. The food at the deli didn't seem as fresh. I thought the bathroom was dirtier. I developed a poor image of the new owner.

One day I was at the store and a woman in front of me was buying a pouch of tobacco and some cigarette tubes. She was just over a dollar short. She had no more money. The Indian man motioned to her to give him what she had and said that would be alright. Suddenly, everything in the store seemed fine.

Sat Sep 27, 2014, 01:58 PM
lunatica (29,994 posts)
1. When I moved to the US

I grew up mostly in Mexico City and I moved to the US when I was in my mid twenties. The feeling I had at first was that things were too clean, too plastic and that everything looked and felt fake. The way houses are made here seemed very odd and flimsy. The walls are hollow! In Mexico they,re made of solid cement, or brick or stone. There, when you wrap your knuckles on the walls there's no hollow sound and if you punch the walls you'll break your knuckles. Here you'll create a hole that has to be fixed.

Everything seemed like it was from a theater set where it looks real but it's only two dimensional. It's like linoleum floors that only look like tile or wood or whatever. It doesn't sound right nor does it feel right when you walk on them with hard heeled shoes.

It all seems pretty normal now because I've gotten used to it, but always in the back of my mind is the thought that the walls are hollow and the floors are made of fake materials. It makes me feel like I'm always on a movie set and if I look more closely I will see and feel and hear the fakeness.

It's a strange bias, I know.

[Chris_]

In Mexico they,re made of solid cement, or brick or stone.

We have mastered building materials other than dirt.

[BattleHymn]

We have mastered building materials other than dirt.

Only a DUmbass can look at a mud hut and see that as an improvement over drywall and other modern building materials.

[Chris_]

If Mexico is so awesome, why are they all trying to come over here?

[JohnnyReb]

If Mexico is so awesome, why are they all trying to come over here?

They can't afford the solidly built homes back there.

[Delmar]

In Mexico they,re made of solid cement, or brick or stone. There, when you wrap your knuckles on the walls there's no hollow sound and if you punch the walls you'll break your knuckles. Here you'll create a hole that has to be fixed.

Yes, in Mexico they build the walls solid enough that your neighbor can't chop though them with an axe after you've left for the day.  They also stick broken beer bottles in the cement cap on the tops of the walls that surround the houses to keep people from climbing over.

[freedumb2003b]

It all seems pretty normal now because I've gotten used to it, but always in the back of my mind is the thought that the walls are hollow and the floors are made of fake materials. It makes me feel like I'm always on a movie set and if I look more closely I will see and feel and hear the fakeness.

Ahem.

I grew up in L.A. and encountered the Newhall Quake, the Whittier Narrows Quake, the Malibu Quake, Pasadena Quake, Northridge Quake (3 miles from the epicenter).

The building style of the USA (and L.A.) makes sense for a seismic zone -- 2X4+sheetrock bends but rarely breaks.  Concrete shatters in an earthquake, which is why so many died in the last Mexico City quake and more will die in the next one.  They didn't change a thing.  L.A. does a lot of things wrong but when it comes to building codes and enforcement they do that right.  They reinforced EVERY freeway post in the Metro area and checked EVERY building.

[GOBUCKS]

Concrete shatters in an earthquake, which is why so many died in the last Mexico City quake and more will die in the next one.  They didn't change a thing.

That cannot be right.

Nutcase nadin has taught us for years that everything is far superior in mexico, especially preparation for natural disasters

[franksolich]

That cannot be right.

Nutcase nadin has taught us for years that everything is far superior in mexico, especially preparation for natural disasters

Speaking of.....does anybody know what's up with nadin?

Is she okay?

<<<still confident she'll be back on Skins's island sometime.

[FlippyDoo]

Speaking of.....does anybody know what's up with nadin?

Is she okay?

<<<still confident she'll be back on Skins's island sometime.

She's apparently been busy making things easy to understand, saving some quid, and feeling what might be sausage.

Nadin Brzezinski
September 18 at 12:29am · San Diego, CA · Edited ·
Notes done on policy article notes, Now how to make it easy to understand for most readers... outline usually helps. Suffice it to say, this is a responsible use of your and my tax dollars and if successful, well it will help many youth, and in the long run, save us some quid.
That said, I am reminded that if government is doing something wrong, everybody and their sister will have HEADLINE STORIES, but things like this... no, not really. Yes, from time to time (more often than we'd like to believe) government does something right.

Nadin Brzezinski
September 17 at 10:09pm · San Diego, CA ·
Well, now that all the "easy stories" are done... on to the policy one from the Board yesterday. I feel that it might be sausage, but it is far more important than chasing over who crashed, and the kitties that jumped onto a tree. Policy is what determines how we live as a society, so yes, I think it maters and actually far more than some of the things covered by local media.
Of course, there are times that the background story is there in all it's glory (ahem climate change today, fires, sudden storms, and drought oh my, as predicted by the science.) but nope, those words will not cross through them lips.

[Ptarmigan]

Speaking of.....does anybody know what's up with nadin?

Is she okay?

<<<still confident she'll be back on Skins's island sometime.

Nadin appears to have return to DU in the past couple of weeks. Probably from one of her borderline personality disorder meltodwn from feeling rejected at DU.

[FlippyDoo]

Nadin appears to have return to DU in the past couple of weeks. Probably from one of her borderline personality disorder meltodwn from feeling rejected at DU.

Got a link? I don't see where she's been around DU since the sad goodbye.

[GOBUCKS]

Speaking of.....does anybody know what's up with nadin?

I think she may still be in deep contextual research.

We are also working on a piece that will take even longer, involving a local member of a tribe.
For the moment we are deep in contextual research on that one.

Estamos trabajando en una pieza que va a tomar todavía mas, que incluye a una persona local de una de las tribus. Por el momento estamos en la investigación de contexto histórico.

It's been a month now, and I know a lot of people check for that tribe story every day.
It's gonna be a blockbuster.

(Edited to add mexican translation.)

[freedumb2003b]

I think she may still be in deep contextual research.

It's been a month now, and I know a lot of people check for that tribe story every day.
It's gonna be a blockbuster.

(Edited to add mexican translation.)

Is the Spanish from bablefish? -- because i don't think it says what you think it says...

[GOBUCKS]

Is the Spanish from bablefish? -- because i don't think it says what you think it says...

Pasted straight out of the crazy dwarf's blog, so I know it's right.

http://reportingsandiego.com/2014/08/27/appeal-for-donationspeticion-a-donativos/

[Ptarmigan]

Got a link? I don't see where she's been around DU since the sad goodbye.

From your previous post.

Nadin Brzezinski
September 18 at 12:29am · San Diego, CA · Edited ·
Notes done on policy article notes, Now how to make it easy to understand for most readers... outline usually helps. Suffice it to say, this is a responsible use of your and my tax dollars and if successful, well it will help many youth, and in the long run, save us some quid.
That said, I am reminded that if government is doing something wrong, everybody and their sister will have HEADLINE STORIES, but things like this... no, not really. Yes, from time to time (more often than we'd like to believe) government does something right.

Nadin Brzezinski
September 17 at 10:09pm · San Diego, CA ·
Well, now that all the "easy stories" are done... on to the policy one from the Board yesterday. I feel that it might be sausage, but it is far more important than chasing over who crashed, and the kitties that jumped onto a tree. Policy is what determines how we live as a society, so yes, I think it maters and actually far more than some of the things covered by local media.
Of course, there are times that the background story is there in all it's glory (ahem climate change today, fires, sudden storms, and drought oh my, as predicted by the science.) but nope, those words will not cross through them lips.

[GOBUCKS]

Those are Facebook posts.

They're as nutty as her DUmp items, but no one is allowed to challenge her on Facebook.

It's like watching a great fighter shadowboxing.

She will be back.

She left because of the DUmp's latest Jew-hating frenzy, but that was several frenzies ago.

We've gone from the Jew-hating frenzy to the Ferguson frenzy to the Ray Rice frenzy, and now have no full-blown frenzy underway.

It seems like a perfect time for her return.