[ExI] Abandon all services

[PJ Manney]

On Nov 9, 2007 3:57 PM, Jef Allbright <jef at jefallbright.net> wrote:
> Yes, exactly!  As I've mentioned to Amara offline, I experienced much
> greater culture shock upon returning to California after living in
> Japan, than I did moving to Japan in the first place.  (And I'm far
> from being a Japanese girl.)  My first several months back in
> California I was dismayed daily by the pervasive rudeness and
> disorganization.  But hey, dude, I got over it.

For me transitioning from New Zealand back to the US, it was the
enormous food portions!  I have never seen chips aka French Fries aka
frites in such profusion in my life, in quantities vast enough to
cover one's self with little fried potato sticks.  And Americans are
loud.  I cringe to think how I sounded Down Under.  And Americans are
really obsessed with materialism, but as aggressive marketing spreads
around the world, I'm seeing this elsewhere, too.  And I still miss
the old fashioned daily common sense of the Kiwis.  Nothing was a
problem (unless you worked for the government).  Everything was an
opportunity to figure out a mutually beneficial solution...  <sigh>

But the US has its own positive attributes and as I've also told Amara
offline, every place has its advantages and disadvantages at a
particular point in time and it's all about finding the place where
you, however subjectively, feel the pros outweigh the cons, at that
moment.

However, this begs an interesting question: do people in this group
feel they are more or less travelled than others in their demographic
population?  Does seeing 'the big picture' and thinking about the
future more than others mean we're more or less mobile or is there no
correlation and the idea is irrelevant?

PJ