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The Times of India has a story about what an Indian university student thought were the most surprising aspects of his experience studying in the US.
Aniruddh Chaturvedi came from Mumbai to Carnegie Melon University in Pittsburgh, Penn., where he is majoring in computer science. This past summer he interned at a tech company in Silicon Valley.
It's interesting reading, some of which you might expect, about economic differences, supermarkets, obesity, etc. made his list of surprising things.
But Americans in general seem to come across to Aniruddh somewhat better than we come across to ourselves:
- Nobody talks about grades here.
- Everyone is highly private about their accomplishments and failures.
- Far from being competitive, Students were highly collaborative
- Strong ethics — everyone has a lot of integrity
- Girls are not very promiscuous, contrary to most Hollywood films
- Almost every single American has access to basic food, clothing, water and sanitation.
- Emphasis on physical fitness/being outdoorsy
His observations were not filled with the anti-American observations that Americans have come to expect from visitors, or that many of us see in our daily lives. He is not totally unaware of some less negative aspects, discrimination, waste of food, money, and prices. But by and large these aspects did not seem a major part of his impressions.
One wonders whether his naïveté will get bruised and he will come to his senses as his studies progress, or if the US is actually nowhere near as bad as many of us think it is.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @12:59AM
> In India:
While some of those are indeed true, you have fundamentally misunderstood his point. It isn't about the USA being the opposite of India in all those ways, it is about the USA being the opposite of the expectations and stereotypes that many people in India have regarding the USA.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday October 18 2014, @03:21AM
You have a point. Makes one wonder what values that media broadcasts about America.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday October 18 2014, @04:45AM
It's easy to find out. Turn on your TV, rent movies, go to the movie theater. Then visit McDonalds and Starbucks.
I'm an American living in Germany. My short list is what we're exporting -- at least to Germany. Which kind of makes sense. They don't read our books (except the ultra popular ones). They don't play sports or ride their bike the same way. (Not yet where I live at least.) We are communicating mostly through TV series and movies and the ads within them. The youngest generation is picking up on a lot of it too since they are most like Americans. The older generation has trouble with English, but English is easier for the younger generation. They have an appetite for American values.
That's actually a bit frightening to me. I hate seeing other cultures overrun by ours... especially when they pick up the negative traits. And I know we're trying to export it to more cultures too. There's a reason why Transformers 4 [youtube.com] and the new Robocop have scenes in China.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @07:12AM
> There's a reason why Transformers 4 and the new Robocop have scenes in China.
The average hollywood movie grosses more in overseas sales than they do in domestic sales. It isn't so much about those china-specific scenes (which nearly everyone in China can recognize as ham-fisted pandering) but in the dumbing down of the story-telling because cultural references and sophisticated dialog do not translate as easily as "boobs and bombs." Don't worry about the china-specific scenes, worry about the last 45-minutes of Transformers 4 being a plotless series of explosions and mayhem.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday October 18 2014, @12:54PM
Hollywood has ended storytelling and started with bombtelling spiced up with talking boobs in the pauses ;)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday October 18 2014, @02:17PM
You can also watch our news. Our own people who consume a heavy diet of Fox News (and their opponents) are totally F-ed up in the head as part of the process. Now imagine what a foreigner thinks after watching the same propaganda stream without any grounding at all. Likely the foreigners watch it and say "Better nuke it from orbit just to be sure" Or land airliners in our skyscrapers.
Much as at least in theory we can't export baby food tainted with melamine to Germany or where-ever, maybe we need slightly tighter regulation of exported propaganda so other countries don't think we're all batshit insane as opposed to merely our leadership. Before the freedumb of speech chants begin, I'm not talking about on our soil but exports to other countries, the existing bans on private interference in government international relations, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @05:13AM
so... not well.