... or nightmare
It has been 3 weeks since I left the US, land of comfort and luxury. It feels already a lifetime ago. Nevertheless, I promised I would give some of my personal insights into this country and its inhabitants, or how I experienced my first non-holiday-pretty-long-stay in the land of lost souls (just in case you were thinking I was going to write all sorts of positive banter about it).
Let us begin with my second entry into the land of promise and prosperity, after I’d been in Europe for a month. I was sad about leaving Europe. Even losing touch with the damned soil (asphalt) of Frankfurt Airport felt like leaving home. Touch-down onto American soil (asphalt) was accompanied by some stomach-turning turbulence again, so that my 2 German neighbours in the row had to unclench me from my seat when we were to disembark. The US welcomed us with inspiring Disney-themed music and life-size posters about happy people living in their happy place, also known as the US of A. Because we were being filmed and scrutinized by border control fanatics, I decided to leave my sarcastic smirks for later. When it was my turn to plea entrance to the land of fame and fortune, I had to answer why I was visiting the US for so long. Perhaps I should have said “because I love your country”. Instead I answered half-truthfully that I was staying with friends. Note to self: next time arrange the visiting-scientist visa well in advance. I was send onwards, and the next official asked me the same question, and also how much money I was carrying. Apparently the answer (staying with friends, around $200 in various currencies) wasn’t good enough, because I had to go to official #3, who asked, predictably, why I was staying so long. How much money was I carrying. What was in my bag. Do you work for a governmental institution in the US? Rather pissed off by now I replied “I work in NEW ZEALAND, for a CROWN RESEARCH INSTITUTE. I VISIT FRIENDS in the US. I have 100 EUROS, 15 KRONARS, 30 US DOLLARS and 12,60 KIWI DOLLARS”. Not to be put off, he wanted to know how many credit cards I was carrying. And then have a look at the contents of my bag. Lucky for me it was late in his shift and upon realizing I had one of those darn opens-at-the-top-only-backpacks stuffed to the brim with dirty clothes, he told me to forget it. Finally free to enter the well guarded nation where only God himself runs crown research institutes, but not really thrilled to be back. Why pretend everything is so great in your country, and then be so obnoxious about letting people have their 4 weeks’ share of it?!
Before we proceed: I know no country is perfect and everybody is always complaining about their government or certain politicians or specific decisions. But in the US the difference between what is actually going on, and how people perceive their country is just so … odd. Let me put down a few quotes from intelligent people I met over the last months in the States.
“This is the best country in the world. Oh I know we don’t have healthcare, but you know, it’s still really great!”
A country with no healthcare system is only great so long as you’re healthy.
“Oh, ok, so those people in Texas and everything, they’re not really Americans. They should just have their own country. We’re not like them”.
I find people in the apparently “normal” Michigan pretty hard to understand already.
“Europe is great and all that, but here in the US I am free! I can do what I want! I couldn’t do that in Europe”
Seems to me I could always do what I wanted in Europe, with the benefit of falling ill and having healthcare insurance, losing my job and having unemployment insurance, working in another country without having to apply for a visa. The first, second and third time I ever had someone officially tell me where, how and why to put out the garbage bins was in Ann Arbor.
“This country is so great! We have the lakes, the mountains, the rivers, everything!”
There are more countries/continents on this globe that have all of those.
“At least we Americans work really hard”
Working hard does not necessarily equal working efficient. Working hard and then having a stroke at 55, without being able to pay for healthcare, where does that leave you? How free does that feel to you?
Also I was fortunate enough, if that is the appropriate word, to see some of the Republicans that are competing for presidential elections next year on tv. I know you should not believe a thing that you see on tv, and I wish it is true in this case. You can say all you want about the Dutch, German or Kiwi heads of state, but at least they look human and not made out of plastic.
Because the plastic party was washing over the country with such idiotic statements, the programs on the public radio, otherwise a good source of information and entertainment in the lab, became unbearable. It was shortly before the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 that we tuned in to other radio stations, preferring country music over nationalistic statements. Although … I generally LOVE country music (as we will see in my (short) list of positive aspects of America), but it is really only a fraction less nationalistic than the 9/11 lingo.
These are all pretty skewed observations in a scientific sense, and they don’t put to words exactly why I dislike the US so much. After all it remains a personal sentiment, fired up by the way they drive, the way they treat cyclists, the way they treat “freedom”, and especially how inwardly centered they are. There would be these lengthy discussions on the radio about rising fuel prices or, once again, healthcare, going on and on and on and apparently coming to no real conclusion, and I would be cringing and cringing until finally someone on the panel would mention “of course, in Europe fuel prices are much much higher than here, and they have healthcare”, and I would yell through the lab “YES! YES! INDEED! TAKE THAT BL**DY AMERICANS!”.
Scientifically some still regard the US as “the best of the best”. Yet, when I see their college-university system, where you can get yourself a degree with a bit of sports and attending some introductory classes that most Europeans have in highschool, and how PhD’s have to go through all sorts of classes and loopholes and tests whereas in Europe you are expected to do serious research right away, I am not so sure. Someone showed me a statistic that when taking in to account population numbers, the US actually performs pretty poorly, as in a few really good scientists among a lot of very stupid people, compared to other countries where more people are smart on average (I know I am supposed to cite the source here, but don’t have it. This is not a pure science blog, ok). As mentioned before on this blog, I don’t see any good reason to work in the US, and although I highly respect people who can stand the constant strain of being surrounded by Americans, even the smart and nice ones, I don’t think I would prefer someone in a job interview who has American believes and work-ethics…
To conclude this rant: I saw one tv commercial that really to me was the absolute bottom of awfulness of the US, but also explained a lot. It was about credit card interest rates, and how with most credit card companies you pay very high interest rates, whereas with this specific company, that would obviously not be the case. They gave some examples of how much interest you pay with other companies over 10.000$ credit or 60.000$ credit or … and so on. All the while screaming at us, the watchers: “You pay TOO MUCH! It is UNFAIR! This is YOUR MONEY!”. And so I started screaming to the tv “NOOOO! You LEND money on these credit cards! It is NOT YOURS! You should NOT LEND SO MUCH MONEY!”. How on earth can a nation that believes you own $100.000 on a credit card (CREDIT people, CREDIT) ever function???
To end positively, there are some things that are good in the US. Of course not everybody is awful, in fact most people are really friendly. I mentioned it before: country music. Love it. Furthermore: Wide open spaces – the promise in the air that you can be all you want to be. It is still there, but you must be a very hardcore romantic to actually believe in it.
And finally: the dirty chai (after all, only the Americans lack enough common sense to mess up both the coffee and the tea culture in one drink).
It has been 3 weeks since I left the US, land of comfort and luxury. It feels already a lifetime ago. Nevertheless, I promised I would give some of my personal insights into this country and its inhabitants, or how I experienced my first non-holiday-pretty-long-stay in the land of lost souls (just in case you were thinking I was going to write all sorts of positive banter about it).
Let us begin with my second entry into the land of promise and prosperity, after I’d been in Europe for a month. I was sad about leaving Europe. Even losing touch with the damned soil (asphalt) of Frankfurt Airport felt like leaving home. Touch-down onto American soil (asphalt) was accompanied by some stomach-turning turbulence again, so that my 2 German neighbours in the row had to unclench me from my seat when we were to disembark. The US welcomed us with inspiring Disney-themed music and life-size posters about happy people living in their happy place, also known as the US of A. Because we were being filmed and scrutinized by border control fanatics, I decided to leave my sarcastic smirks for later. When it was my turn to plea entrance to the land of fame and fortune, I had to answer why I was visiting the US for so long. Perhaps I should have said “because I love your country”. Instead I answered half-truthfully that I was staying with friends. Note to self: next time arrange the visiting-scientist visa well in advance. I was send onwards, and the next official asked me the same question, and also how much money I was carrying. Apparently the answer (staying with friends, around $200 in various currencies) wasn’t good enough, because I had to go to official #3, who asked, predictably, why I was staying so long. How much money was I carrying. What was in my bag. Do you work for a governmental institution in the US? Rather pissed off by now I replied “I work in NEW ZEALAND, for a CROWN RESEARCH INSTITUTE. I VISIT FRIENDS in the US. I have 100 EUROS, 15 KRONARS, 30 US DOLLARS and 12,60 KIWI DOLLARS”. Not to be put off, he wanted to know how many credit cards I was carrying. And then have a look at the contents of my bag. Lucky for me it was late in his shift and upon realizing I had one of those darn opens-at-the-top-only-backpacks stuffed to the brim with dirty clothes, he told me to forget it. Finally free to enter the well guarded nation where only God himself runs crown research institutes, but not really thrilled to be back. Why pretend everything is so great in your country, and then be so obnoxious about letting people have their 4 weeks’ share of it?!
Before we proceed: I know no country is perfect and everybody is always complaining about their government or certain politicians or specific decisions. But in the US the difference between what is actually going on, and how people perceive their country is just so … odd. Let me put down a few quotes from intelligent people I met over the last months in the States.
“This is the best country in the world. Oh I know we don’t have healthcare, but you know, it’s still really great!”
A country with no healthcare system is only great so long as you’re healthy.
“Oh, ok, so those people in Texas and everything, they’re not really Americans. They should just have their own country. We’re not like them”.
I find people in the apparently “normal” Michigan pretty hard to understand already.
“Europe is great and all that, but here in the US I am free! I can do what I want! I couldn’t do that in Europe”
Seems to me I could always do what I wanted in Europe, with the benefit of falling ill and having healthcare insurance, losing my job and having unemployment insurance, working in another country without having to apply for a visa. The first, second and third time I ever had someone officially tell me where, how and why to put out the garbage bins was in Ann Arbor.
“This country is so great! We have the lakes, the mountains, the rivers, everything!”
There are more countries/continents on this globe that have all of those.
“At least we Americans work really hard”
Working hard does not necessarily equal working efficient. Working hard and then having a stroke at 55, without being able to pay for healthcare, where does that leave you? How free does that feel to you?
Also I was fortunate enough, if that is the appropriate word, to see some of the Republicans that are competing for presidential elections next year on tv. I know you should not believe a thing that you see on tv, and I wish it is true in this case. You can say all you want about the Dutch, German or Kiwi heads of state, but at least they look human and not made out of plastic.
Because the plastic party was washing over the country with such idiotic statements, the programs on the public radio, otherwise a good source of information and entertainment in the lab, became unbearable. It was shortly before the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 that we tuned in to other radio stations, preferring country music over nationalistic statements. Although … I generally LOVE country music (as we will see in my (short) list of positive aspects of America), but it is really only a fraction less nationalistic than the 9/11 lingo.
These are all pretty skewed observations in a scientific sense, and they don’t put to words exactly why I dislike the US so much. After all it remains a personal sentiment, fired up by the way they drive, the way they treat cyclists, the way they treat “freedom”, and especially how inwardly centered they are. There would be these lengthy discussions on the radio about rising fuel prices or, once again, healthcare, going on and on and on and apparently coming to no real conclusion, and I would be cringing and cringing until finally someone on the panel would mention “of course, in Europe fuel prices are much much higher than here, and they have healthcare”, and I would yell through the lab “YES! YES! INDEED! TAKE THAT BL**DY AMERICANS!”.
Scientifically some still regard the US as “the best of the best”. Yet, when I see their college-university system, where you can get yourself a degree with a bit of sports and attending some introductory classes that most Europeans have in highschool, and how PhD’s have to go through all sorts of classes and loopholes and tests whereas in Europe you are expected to do serious research right away, I am not so sure. Someone showed me a statistic that when taking in to account population numbers, the US actually performs pretty poorly, as in a few really good scientists among a lot of very stupid people, compared to other countries where more people are smart on average (I know I am supposed to cite the source here, but don’t have it. This is not a pure science blog, ok). As mentioned before on this blog, I don’t see any good reason to work in the US, and although I highly respect people who can stand the constant strain of being surrounded by Americans, even the smart and nice ones, I don’t think I would prefer someone in a job interview who has American believes and work-ethics…
To conclude this rant: I saw one tv commercial that really to me was the absolute bottom of awfulness of the US, but also explained a lot. It was about credit card interest rates, and how with most credit card companies you pay very high interest rates, whereas with this specific company, that would obviously not be the case. They gave some examples of how much interest you pay with other companies over 10.000$ credit or 60.000$ credit or … and so on. All the while screaming at us, the watchers: “You pay TOO MUCH! It is UNFAIR! This is YOUR MONEY!”. And so I started screaming to the tv “NOOOO! You LEND money on these credit cards! It is NOT YOURS! You should NOT LEND SO MUCH MONEY!”. How on earth can a nation that believes you own $100.000 on a credit card (CREDIT people, CREDIT) ever function???
To end positively, there are some things that are good in the US. Of course not everybody is awful, in fact most people are really friendly. I mentioned it before: country music. Love it. Furthermore: Wide open spaces – the promise in the air that you can be all you want to be. It is still there, but you must be a very hardcore romantic to actually believe in it.
And finally: the dirty chai (after all, only the Americans lack enough common sense to mess up both the coffee and the tea culture in one drink).
