2.11.10

notes on western society

i've been living in a developing country for a year. after a while, i stopped noticing and just got used to things. now that i've been thrust back in to a western society--first in to austria, now in to switzerland--i've been noticing some differences between full development and developing, east and west, dirty and clean.

time.
in thailand, "on time" is whenever something happens. the train is scheduled to leave at 8 pm, so if it leaves by 8:30 pm, that's pretty good. there's only one bell to both end one class and begin the next, so if the kids show up about ten minutes after said bell, they're on time. if an event starts at 6 pm, you can go ahead and show up around 7 pm and it's all good. if we're on a tour and everyone wants to stop and take pictures, which makes the bus late to the next destination, then fine, let the bus be late. it's not a big deal. time is just a suggestion in thailand/se asia.

not in europe. we went on the sound of music tour in salzburg (I KNOW!) and when the tour guide said the bus would be leaving at one, the bus left precisely at one. right now, i know exactly what time i'll be boarding my train on the 5th from lucerne to interlaken, interlaken to zweissman, and zweissman to montreux, down to the minute. i also know exactly when i'll be boarding the train from geneva to marseille and marseille to paris on the 8th. THAT'S ONE WEEK AWAY. do you know how foreign a concept this is to me, a person who became way more thai than she realized?

waiting for lights at crosswalks.
do you know how much time i waste waiting for the stupid little standing guy to turn in to a walking guy? why don't we all just use our brains and eyes, look both ways, and decide for ourselves if it's time to cross? why do we all stand like morons at a corner where there are clearly NO cars in any direction? just go.

coldness.
how hard is it to smile?

fitting in.
people speak to me in the native tongue first. i have to be the one who corrects them. nobody has asked to take a picture with me in a week. nobody stares openly because i'm white. i love this.

cleanliness.
when you pay for the bathrooms here, sometimes the woman who maintains them wipes the toilet seat between users. i've used hand soap every day. in india, i ate dinner off a sandy mat on a beach that was pretty damn close to being a trash can.