Re: Question for those who live in the US
I can't speak on new york taxies, but two things I will say are firstly new york is stupidly crowded, and secondly, tjt is absolutely correct with everyone being in a massive hurry and not having time to even take care where they're going. Indeed on one occasion my lady's sister noticed someone had dropped her handbag, picked it up and handed it back and got the comment "Your a tourist aren't you, someone from New York wouldn't do that"
Apparently crime is pretty extreme including pickpocketing, but equally people in pencilvania (like people more often than not in America I believe), have a habbit of making rather quick snap judgements on things and saying "This is bad!" without much information, ---- the several people who have questioned me about the "War zones" in London where "police are afraid to go because of muslims" or assume that virtually every plane has terrorists on are rather freaky to say the least. So, whether the crime reputation about New York is as extreme as people make it I don't know, still I did make sure to leave my Iphone at home and take my wallet in a zipped bag while visiting.
As to cultural bubbles, oddly enough it seems the Us in general is one huge! cultural bubble, or at least people have very set paradigms and ways of looking at the world and don't really acknolidge things outside it. Whether this is seating guide dogs at the back of a theatre because "it's best for disabled people" bringing a blind person a wheel chair, asking an English person "what is your socker team" as a first question because it's naturally assumed that all men are into sports and all English people are into football, assuming that countries without guns are full of criminals, even assuming in extreme cases that catholics aren't christians, or that a political debate can be solved by shouting loudly about abortion, inde ed the way my lady's parent's entire political spectrum runs basically as "Democrats support abortion democrats bad!" is rather worrying. I also confess I find the religious furver out here a bit trying, for example when a person starts choking and the bfirst response is not "shal we get some water" or "do you need a tissue or a pat on the back or a decongestant" but "shal I prey for you!"
Not that I'm against prayer, but good grief! whatever happened to "the lord helps those who help themselves" or just plane common sense.
All that being said, I can say in pencilvania at least I've found people far more ready to open conversations, and found my skills at talking actually in demand. People also do have a generalized curtacy, or at least they do outside of new york city from what I've gathered, though at large social gatherings basically my lady and I have pretty much still ended up sitting in a c
orner holding hands and waiting for someone to get over the "weerd blind people!" syndrome, ---- which they do, and I will say generally more quickly than in the Uk, although I think if we lived here full time we would have problems finding something social to actually do given that neither of us is interested in the majority of activities that revolve around church, hunting or child care and neither of us feels the pressing need to work in a fairly uninteresting call center or the like and "socialize" aka just hang around with random people, which pretty much takes up most of the social spectrum of a lot of people I've run into here who are older than thirty.
Then again how much this is related to America specifically and how much related to the fact that basically if your over 30 and are not either obsessed with your work or your progeny your something of a social odity anyway, (disability just makes that situation more extreme), I'm not sure.
I will say this is one reason I am so! extremely relieved to now be living full time with my best friend, ---- aka my wife.
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