Caprichos #156

She asked
How is it being back in the US? What are you enjoying the most that you missed?

I answered
I missed small things... sweet tea; walking into a starbucks and listening to the cool music they play; bottles of starbucks vanilla frapuccino; central heating. Then more generally, the kind of stuff that makes things work smoothly: people responding to emails, people doing (and not postponing) their job and allowing you to do yours. What I did not miss was essentially the snow, and the bureaucratic problems that you may have in this country that make you run from one agency to the next at times with no hope of getting matters solved under silly, but serious, threats of contract cancellation. The good news is that eventually these issues get solved on this side of the Atlantic, while they hardly ever do on the other, but there they don't threaten you with cancellation* either :)

*pretty much summarizes the institutional differences across countries, no?

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Not necessarily stuff I missed but differences in general
- lower (in terms of height) toilets and the absence of bidets

- wider bath tubs

- beet sugar instead of cane (the last is much sweeter)

- larger portions at restaurants, huge water cups (for me it's a waste)

- wider roads

- driving automatic

- stronger water pressure

- profuse power plugs throughout the walls, always in pairs

- cloudless skies not coming around every day