One of the key ways your life changes when you live abroad is that you discard old habits. Sometimes you do this deliberately as you change your priorities in light of differences in local values. Other times you do this out of necessity because your old habits are simply not as easily supported.
Here are 5 American habits I mostly discarded while living in Singapore.
TV
When we moved to Singapore in early 2011, Singapore was still airing Lost – season 4, Smallville – season 7, and Veronica Mars- season 2 for the first time. Shows were advertised as “For the First Time in Asia,” which meant they had concluded a few years earlier in the US. Additionally, streaming TV shows through Hulu and Netflix is blocked unless you use a cloaking device on your computer, which is shut off by the government as soon as it is detected. Invariably a family member changes a setting and reveals to the censors that the PC is in Singapore, resulting in lost access. There is no satellite TV permitted in Singapore. Having limited or delayed access to TV shows for 2.5 years made me much less interested in keeping up on TV shows. Upon return, I have picked this up again to some extent, but I mostly missed the phenomenon of shows like 24 and The Wire, and I watched Breaking Bad in one go.
Cheese
For the most part, Asians do not eat dairy. While I have never been a milk-drinker, I remember thinking at one time several years ago that everything was better the more cheese you put on it. That is definitely a habit I broke. I still like cheese, but not nearly as much of it. A little goes a long way. I actually can’t eat as much cheese as I used to without getting sick.
A good friend of ours in Singapore works for a European food company. One of her assignments was introducing cheese into China. While Chinese people living in large westernized cities like Beijing and Shanghai are familiar with cheese, she found that many in outlying cities don’t know much about it. She surveyed people asking how they thought cheese would be used. Some thought it would be good in coffee because after all, it’s milk-based. In general, Asians were less familiar with cheese and other dairy. At one of our business meetings, we had some triangular sandwiches provided. A Hong Kong colleague endearingly offered to serve me as we filled our plates, asking me if I wanted “ham with butter” (ham and cheese sandwich).
Potatoes
I had potatoes a few times in Singapore, but not like in the US. Potatoes and bread are to American cooking what rice and noodles are to Asian cooking. I think I took potatoes and bread for granted as an American. Now I find them fairly bland and not worth the calories and carbs. Potato chips, meh. Flavorless crispy carbs.
Buying stuff
This one is an unusual change, perhaps unique to us, given that Singapore is a huge shopping culture and currently the most expensive city on earth. There is a high end shopping mall attached to nearly every MRT (train) stop. People do just a handful of things for entertainment in Singapore: shop, go to the movies, eat, and drink. Our American “shopping” habit was not for Prada and Chanel, but rather for trolling the clearance racks at Target, trying on shoes at DSW, checking out the current items at Kohl’s or browsing and grazing our way through Costco. Since those types of “megastores” don’t exist in Singapore, we got out of the habit of just stopping by to look and ending up buying a bunch of things we didn’t know we needed. I am no longer tempted to browse the stores like I used to be. The whole idea sounds exhausting.
Driving short distances
With all the one-way streets, tight parking and traffic, it often took us less time to walk to nearby places than to drive there, including the nearby mall (about a kilometer) and even the emergency room (about half a kilometer). Even going downtown we found public transportation to be quicker than driving in many cases and far cheaper than parking. Since we don’t live in an area with great public transportation now that we are back in the US, we have to drive when we want to go somewhere, and I find that I just don’t want to go as often. I’m irritated by the time spent in transit, sitting in a car, waiting at stop lights.
As T.S. Eliot said: “The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
- How has travel changed you? How has it solidified your choices about your life? How has it challenged your thinking?
Discuss.
Serving a foreign mission, which is my only prolonged exposure to a foreign culture (other than a few visits to Utah), changed my views on American thinking in a lot of ways. I think I’ve probably fallen back into American habits, since I’ve been home for 25 years, but in some cases (as you noted with public transportation), the setup of my world almost forces it.
Italians walk almost everywhere and commercial zoning is nearly unheard of, so shopping for the day’s groceries is done in your own neighborhood and sometimes in your own apartment building. That makes food prep much more oriented to the fresh and home-cooked. In the US, doing that would involve either paying much higher prices at the local convenience store (where I couldn’t get meat, good produce, etc.), or making a daily trip to the large grocery, parking in the huge lot, and dealing with a big store for one day’s worth of food. Doing that every day would be exhausting and time-consuming, to say nothing of the ten-mile round trip to and from the store, so of course we buy a week’s worth of stuff at a go, and fill the freezer.
I do use public transportation, but in the case of my city, it’s heavily subsidized and not at all cost-effective in terms of actual cost per passenger mile. It works for me because everyone else’s taxes support it. And, it’s 7 miles to the commuter train station from my home. I use it because it reduces stress – if I made the 56-mile round trip to and from my office every day in Twin Cities traffic, I’d be considerably more unbalanced than I currently am. 🙂 Like most American metro areas, my area is set up for auto traffic and no one in my outer-ring suburb uses public transportation for anything other than a daily commute into downtown Minneapolis or St Paul. The option simply isn’t available. It would be about a 1-hour walk for me to get to the nearest small grocery/convenience store, 3.5 miles away from my home.
In Italy, a “small city” of 70,000 like Trapani in Sicily, my first mission city, can be walked across in half-an-hour or 45 minutes.
I got out of the habit of buying stuff, too, in part because my missionary budget was so limited, but in part because the options for casual shopping were not there. One shopped because one needed something, and (at least in Sicily 25 years ago) the ubiquitous display of goods encouraging less-than-necessary purchases common to American retailing was a lot less common except in real luxury goods.
Italians love cheese but they don’t get the American fascination with potatoes. Or drinking milk, or putting ice in everything. I no longer drink water with ice, or butter my bread. (I’ve gotten pretty picky about bread!) I used to be a big milk-drinker, and I found only one brand of milk, which came in those tetra-paks instead of fresh in the dairy case, that was drinkable without tasting like it had been scorched in the course of pasteurization. I used to buy it by the case.
I tend to be less convinced that America is the greatest place on Earth, because I’ve lived in another place and seen other people, and seen how they view us. The view in the mirror isn’t always pleasant. This would be a healthy thing for most Americans.
I broke a some British habits I guess – not sure what necessarily, but yes – not so many potatoes is one of them. That wasn’t only a result of my time spent in Japan though. When I was pregnant with the youngest I suddenly went off potatoes, and never really have been able to see them in quite the same way since. Baked potatoes were a staple when I was a child.
I was pretty in to public transport before I went over there, but it is so much better there. Also I’m more into cycling to places as well, and I walk a lot for grocery shopping. I don’t actually drive, so we picked our house accordingly when we moved. On good transport routes. Excellent cycle paths. Within 30 minute walk to 2 different supermarkets (which I don’t doubt are smaller than those in the US). 20 minute walk to the local library. I like it a lot. I miss the extent to which cyclists and pedestrians share the pavement in Japan though. Here, cyclists are supposed to stick to the road or dedicated cycle paths, and really some of the roads are too busy with too many parked cars.
NI, European milk is always UHT in my experience, which is a very different flavour, I don’t like it. Here in Britain it is pasteurised. I’ve never been to the US though, so couldn’t say how similar it would be to your milk. Japanese milk, also pasteurised does taste different, though quite pleasant.
I eat more rice than I used to, but I’m very fussy about the type of rice (so no American long grain). Mostly I like Thai rice. Not that keen on Japanese rice funnily, and I can’t eat as much rice as they do in Japan. So I vary it with pasta or noodles. The kids never tire of it though.
My husband can’t tolerate cows milk, so he and one of the children use goats milk, which I can’t abide. Also the eldest doesn’t eat wheat, so cooking pasta meals involves more saucepans than I’d like, and don’t eat as many noodles as I’d like either.
My Japanese father-in-law got a taste for cheese. He worked abroad in the US, UK and Saudi for large parts of his working life. So whenever we or my husband go over, the one thing we always have to take is lots of British cheese. My husband can only eat goat or sheep cheese though, the best of which tends to be French or Spanish.
My daughter’s favourite snacks are chewy pieces of seaweed, and little whole fishes that she crunches up. Very Japanese, and not at all British. My son likes dried fish, which is really stinky!
The brief time I spent in France I got to love croissant. The quantities of meet served in Germany were nearly enough to send me vegetarian though, and I didn’t get a taste for gherkins. Nice cakes, but I already loved cake anyway.
Ah, the UHT thing would explain the burned taste and the shelf life. I think I only saw fresh, pastuerized milk, “American-style,” once or twice in Bari, the largest and most modern city I served in. (The north of Italy may have been very different; I served in the South and mostly in Sicily. The last 25 years have probably changed things, too.)
My experiences are similar to NI having also served in the Italy Catania Mission 1980 – 82. Palermo, Foggia, Siracusa, Messina, Trapani, and Catania.
I broke a habit of sarcasm on my mission in Germany–it’s not a big part of their sense of humor so they kind of have a blind spot for it. It was actually kind of a tricky adjustment coming back to the US.
Also, it was an easy habit to re-acquire.
Kullervo: I had the same problem in Singapore. Because Asian languages use tone to change the meanings of individual words, not collective words in sentences as we do in English, sarcasm was not understood. People would take your words literally rather than understanding that you meant the opposite. I can’t say it broke me of the habit of sarcasm, but it did result in lots of funny misunderstandings.
American habits I didn’t acquire because was an American living outside the US (England and South America) as a kid:
1. peanut butter desserts, peanut butter and chocolate
2. artificial cherry flavor
3. Saturday morning cartoons
4. Easter dresses (regular Mormons didn’t do that in England)
5. Wearing bright colors (like the English, I’m all about the black and gray)
6. Thinking “healthy tan” is healthy and something to strive for
I think the one thing that I remember about traveling as much as I did outside the US was how silly Americans can look when looking back at the US. The obsession with celebrity, the politicizing of everything, appearance of conservationism about sex while promoting it at just about every turn are just a few things I noticed. Europeans, in particular, have a much more nonchalant attitude about a number of things that Americans just obsess over.
The other major thing was gaining an obsession FOR cheese. Having visited France almost 4 dozen time in 30 years, I was introduced to cheeses not Cheddar, Swiss or American. it has been glorious, if not fattening. I can now eat many of the most stinkiest cheeses and love it. My colleagues, however, always told me how much better it would have been with wine. Oh, well.
I’ve also fallen in love with the many different cultures I have been exposed to over the years.
I had a series of roommates from Asia before I moved in with you…they all hated cheese, except for pizza. Twenty five years later, my asian exchange students are more accustomed to it. Although, the Chinese girls (from Xian) only liked it on pizza as well, and only if it wasnt too cheesy.
Its interesting that Singapire is so expensive now. I had a friend in AZ before I moved to Utah whose father worked in Indonesia. She loved stopping in Singapore to shop because it was inexpensive.
Great post. I’m British, but spent a year living in France. To this day if there was a local bakers I would by my bread fresh daily, but I would also be fat because I’d be unable to resist the patisserie.Also, nothing is wasted in a French family kitchen, they know how to make a leftover sing for it’s supper. I never ate anything that was less than transforming.
I love the way the French family meal is non-negotiable. If a young person is going out, they expect to eat with their family from 8pm to 10pm, then they go out. I’ve often wondered how a church life fits in with that cultural norm.OTOH, affairs were accepted and even expected as part of the course of married life, so I’m hoping the church helps with that a little.
I never connected with my own culture quite the same again, and very much consider myself a european, cafe culture has been embraced here and the food culture is so much better than it used to be. I love the view that one gets from another culture of one’s own.
My son will be travelling throughout Europe this summer and I very much look forward to his new views of the world. He has already gained a new aesthetic from frequent visits to Spain which has taught him how we can value the little that we have, and to enjoy the simple things in life without having a lot of material comfort, and the value of living in community.We are so lucky to have so many very varied cultures on our doorstep.
IDIAT – Ciao, paisano; Trapani, Bari, SIracusa (opened Floridia), Catania, Agrigento, Matera, Bitonto, Mistretta
One other thing I picked up in Singapore is using a decisive sentence structure. In English, we go up to a food vendor and we try to have a full on conversation about the food: what’s in it, should we get this or that, what do they recommend. In Singapore, the kind of reply that gets is “want, not want?” Two choices, presented clearly. I find myself cutting down to the chit chat and asking people these decisive questions in a variety of situations. Saves a lot of time.
Michelle: About the expensiveness of Singapore, I found a dress in the Zara in the Hong Kong airport, but I had just checked out already, and there was now a line of 8 people so I figured I’d just get it when I got home to Singapore the next day. The dress was twice as expensive in Singapore as it was in the HKG airport. Twice. Same dress. Same size, except in Singapore I got the added bonus of salespeople telling me I’m too big, lah.
I didn’t realize that Easter dresses were a Mormon thing anyplace, huh.
Is anyone going to talk about the USAmerican assumption that you can put toilet paper down the toilet, which is not true in many other countries of the world? And in other countries, they expect some kind of wet cleansing available after toileting. I remember flying from Jakarta to Taiwan, and the women complaining that the restrooms in Taiwan were cheap American-style, with no wand or spray or mandi available, leaving them feeling dirty.
I lived in Germany for three years and Brasil for a semester. The differences in perception of time and personal space were profound. In Germany, everything ran promptly on time, and I never saw anyone hugging at church. Even in a theater, if they have to pass in front of you to get to a seat, they were very careful not to touch. Whereas in Brasil, I had to learn to hug and do the air kiss thing at the start of every church meeting, or if I saw any other sisters out in town. And we would arrive at events, only to wait, and ask 20 minuts later when it should start. They told us the advertized time, hardly noting that it had passed. We learned to chill. And I guess the USAmerican way is halfway between those two extremes.
The decisiveness of Singapore might not play well in Brasil. I had been told in class that one should not say yes or no, but politely weasel it with “Acho que sim” or no. But it didn’t really click until someone asked me if I wanted a second serving of something, I said a simple no, and she looked like she had been slapped across the face. So i earned to weasel.
In Brasil, microwave ovens weren’t common because the electrical system was constantly browning and spiking, destroying a lot of small appliances. But they use pressure cookers to good effect, and I bought one when I returned home. Great for making tender meat out of cheaper cuts, and cooking food-storage dried beans.
Taiwan blew me away at the way they recycle everything everywhere, have effective mass transit, require a foreign language in middle school, and use every bit of space for food production (gardening in highway medians, drying rice on a tennis court that isn’t being used during the day, etc.)
I’ve traveled some. Enough that I’m not excited by it anymore.
My military experience in Viet Nam and Germany taught me to value freedom. I fear American is slowing losing freedom, giving it up an inch at a time. This shouldn’t be a surprise to those who value the Book of Mormon. It clearly teaches that America will eventually reject God and thereby lose His guiding and preserving blessings and this will result in bondage.