Culture Notes

I didn't know that English had a subjunctive tense until I studied German in high school. There are things that I didn't know were part of my American culture or various subcultures (regional, faith, etc.) until I came here. These are just a few of the things I've noted:

• Pregnant women who work will work their jobs until they go into labor. (?!?) I've heard this from more than one source.
• To amuse or cheer a baby, one might knock repeatedly on a hard surface, or move one's hand from high up down into the baby's face. Who ever thought about soothing techniques being cultural?
• Babysitters are irrelevant. Children go with you almost everywhere, and if you have a housemaid, often times the children go and the housemaid goes.
• Half the country works in a different city from where they live. Maybe this is an exaggeration, maybe not. It is very common for men—especially army men—to be stationed in a different city from where they work. This creates a culture of wives and children who see their husbands/fathers only on the weekends, and it impacts weekend traffic patterns, too! It is also more common than I would have imagined for single girls to have jobs in cities apart from their families. Many of these employers provide housing for the girls, and they, too, only go home on weekends.
• Half the men in the country are in the army. Or so it seems. A friend verified that defense spending here is a major part of the national budget. Defense spending? In a peaceful country that no one has any motive to attack? Well, to disarm potential internal political opposition, you hire them. Worked for Barack and Hillary. Works for here!
• Hospitals and clinics here provide housing for their employees. I visited the flat of some of my clinic girlfriends—five girls in one bedroom with one bathroom on the top floor. The doctors lived in nicer flats one floor down.
• Colleges provide regular inter-city buses to transport their students—at least female students—home each weekend.
• If you eat something sweet, you should drink bitter coffee to offset the sugar effect.
• Move over, Car Tarts. To improve your car's smell, what you need is a mini incense burner. Perfectly logical.
• I've not yet seen a smoke detector in a house. Pretty sure they would ruin the ambience of the incense.
• Robes and floral hats are masculine.
• There are special turbans that are dressier than the regular hat. So now when I see someone wearing one, I realize that it's as if he's wearing a tie.
• You can sorta tell where a guy is from based on how he wears his hat (like, how it's pinched).
• A guy is stylin' if his hair curls out a little in the back below where his hat sits.
• You can usually tell if a girl is from the capital city by . . . well, you can just tell. It's probably the stylish cut of the dress, the increased makeup and jewelry.
• There are scadoodles of children here. The stats say that the birth rate isn't that much higher than in America (2.8-something vs. 2.06), but the ranking is the difference between—um, somewhere in the 50s or 60s and #122. Maybe it's just that I frequently drive past hordes of them as they are getting out of school. And trust me, they are all cute.
• In some households, only dads discipline.
• In some households, only dads grocery shop.
• The policeman will never stop you for speeding. That's what traffic cameras are for.
• Widespread seat belt and motorbike helmet use are a thing of the future.
• The friend's brother who hears that I drive a Civic will still ask me the size of the engine . . . and he will still have a better guess on the answer than I do.