Canoeing. I'm not an outdoorsy guy at all but everytime I see US tourists in a canoe they just spin in circles. It feels like Canadians are just born knowing.
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Parallel parking. And overall parking in anything else than a US parking lot. People have no idea how to move their car around if it doesn’t go straight forward or backwards. I’ve even seen people failing simple K-Turns. I have both a French and US drivers license. Also manual transmission, but that’s less surprising.
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It's cycling here as well in the Netherlands. Additionally in my circles: starting a campfire.
In Germany a lot of people reduced the amount of cycling they did once they had a driving license - now here in Finland a lot more adults keep using bikes, and also use it in Winter. Back in Germany I always was the odd one for cycling in the snow.
Starting a camp fire is something I'm teaching my kids just because I don't want them to burn my house down - being allowed to play with fire outside along with an explanation of which are the dangerous bits took the fascination out of all the fire starting equipment in the house.
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Swimming. It's sometimes dangerous for foreign children to see Dutch kids swim and try to join them.
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I feel like Latin Americans in general take for granted that you're supposed to pull and push everything to make it work. Sometimes with clever but shitty and overspecific solutions for the problem, or shifting the goals to something more achievable. Some examples:
Three examples:
home oven
The top of the inner part of your oven is partially corroded, so the top heating element does not stay in place. If you leave it as is, it'll get in the way, burn you, and burn your food. And you don't have money for a new oven. You're reasonably sure that the heating element is coated with some elec-proof stuff.
So what do you do? You put a big nail across the hole caused by the corrosion, and hold the element to that nail with some wire. "Just temporarily". (Nothing is more permanent than temporary hacks.)
Linguistics, field work
Linguistics. You're making field work on phonetics. You need clear records of speakers speaking their variety, that means good mic + noiseless environment. And yet you're studying a variety mostly spoken by farmers, and the ones willing to help you out can't travel, so you'll need to record them from a cellphone in their farm, and your record will be filled with pigs oinking, birds chirping, and a rooster going "CRAAAA" nonstop.
The solution? ...screw phonology, your paper is now about syntax. It's far easier to detect by ear if the speaker used pronoun reduplication than if he used [ɾ], [ɹ] or [ɻ].
Chemistry, organic synthesis
You got a synthesis route demanding glacial acetic acid (HAc). Except that the HAc bottle is empty, requesting another will take a week because bureaucracy, and oxidising ethanol to HAc through permanganate is bound to get someone screeching at you "YOU'RE WASTING OUR REAGENTS!!!".
Your solution? Run some quick maths on what's cheaper: 1) to distil supermarket vinegar, or 2) to use bleach to oxidise ethanol at some loss. Then you do it.
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Simple math like additions and subtractions. Giving change back seems like trigonometry for some. (Note, I actually do enjoy trigonometry. It’s so much easier to calculate angles with fractions of Pi than the random 180°)
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Swimming. Here, kids have to take mandatory swimming courses at school. I have quite a few eastern european friends, and they all tell me, that swimming is something that people learn if they want to and if they can afford it, but it's not learly an universal skill in their countries.
Most people who drown here are actually immigrants, who see everyone swimming and think that it can't be that hard...
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