Lessons in the US of A

Recently I made the mistake of living in the US of A, the paramount capitalist hell of the modern world. As a consequence, I had to relearn some facts, because everything works different here.

August 2023: Moving in

The good

  • They put free pads and tampons even in the men's bathroom
  • I can ride the bus for free with my student card
  • By custom I should greet the bus driver, who will greet back
  • Food comes in absolutely gigantic portions
  • Central campus is much more walkable than I thought
  • A French press is very easy to use and much cheaper than a coffee machine
  • To request a stop on a bus you just pull the rope-y thing
  • You can take all the time you need to get off the bus. No pressure to stand up in advance.
  • Pedestrians have absolute right of way, I hypothesize you could even cross the street blindfolded and not get hit by a car

The bad

  • Power outages happen every year and somehow people are okay with it and do nothing to improve the infrastructure
  • Toilet paper comes in single ply by default
  • Apartments don't have ceiling lights and rely on floor lamps. There is a dedicated outlet wired to a light switch which I found by poking with a multimeter
  • Everything in the supermarket seems reasonably priced as long as you don't convert it to your home currency
  • The washing machine isn't working??
  • Power failure?? In IKEA???
  • The carpet makes my desk jiggly
  • Drinks are most often cold, even chilled. Even chocolate.
  • Internet failure?? In a university???

The neither

  • Kroger closes at 10 pm
  • The cord to a power strip is very, very thicc
  • My apartment has a coaxial port for internet which I've never seen in my life
  • Michigan law does not require you to have a front license plate

September 2023: Settling down

The good

  • They hand out free shirts and swag at the pride event
  • Drag shows, fully unhinged
  • I can just get a Kroger card? Like for free?
  • I found Three Cheers posters on sale
  • tfw fresh clothes from a dryer. hmmm
  • Internet is super fast
  • There are no stray animals here (with the side effect that I have not seen a single cat on this land)
  • One month in and I've seen three people in band merch T-Shirt of quality taste
  • None of the instructors read from the slides; they really go to great lengths explaining stuff

The bad

  • Ann Arbor buses just… stop operating at 20:00 on Sunday?? (Update: this might have been related to labor day)
  • One bus per hour?? Unimaginable in Shanghai
  • I got charged $3 just for inserting my bank card into another bank's ATM
  • $15 tax on a bass. $50 tax on a laptop.
  • Campus ethernet broke and so did teaching infrastructure, e.g. autograders
  • Huge thanks to the Amazon driver who attempted to deliver my package on a Sunday morning at 6:50 AM. Why would Amazon send a worker to deliver my package this early
  • Oh so Xfinity broke too? What the fuck is wrong with American infrastructure

The neither

  • My textbook is "loose leaf", which means a pile of pages I have bind myself. Pro: I can carry only the chapters I want. Con: I have to use zipties as a dirty hack before my binder arrives