Reporting From America!

The auspicious date of 080808 was the date I arrived at the Land Of Hope & Dreams, America. A land for my hope to graduate with a degree in Biotechnology and for my dreams to become a scientist since I was small....ZzzZzzZzzz. I do not want to talk about my studies here in State College, PA as it won't be the first question my friends ask about America since they are more interested in knowing the "culture" there although America is considered a "new" country. Hence, here are some musings on the American way of life:

PERFECTLY NORMAL
America's a little bit like Singapore in terms of cleanliness & obedience towards the law except Singapore is freakishly clean and from one of those novelty t-shirts, a "fine" city. Here it's clean too but you can still see a couple of rubbish by the sidewalk people do use the pedestrian crossings & not blindly cross the road anywhere they like (oh, how I miss Malaysia!) but sometimes they would cross the street when there are no cars even when the "STOP" sign is flashing which is an abomination in Singapore. These examples make Americans pretty normal human beings: you bend the law but not break 'em.


HANDPHONES & NETWORK OPERATORS
Over here, you can't just buy a handphone per se; you have to buy it with a plan. So, if you decide to buy a phone and take up a plan with one of the network operators here (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon etc), your phone will bear the logo of that network operator. Sucks, huh? Feels like our phones are like tools of advertisements ("This phone is sponsored by T-Mobile"). However, the best bit is the phone plans whereby these network operators here epitomizes capitalism: maximum profit. I'm currently using an AT&T prepaid whereby the deal (Pay As You Go) is like this:

• $1.00 airtime/day if I call any AT&T number. If I don't, I don't need to pay the airtime fee.
• I get unlimited minutes if I call any AT&T number i.e. doesn't matter how long or short I still pay $1.00/day.
  
• Additional $0.10/minute if I call other network operators.
• Additional $0.15/text message.

Sounds like an honest, fair deal huh? The catch is even if someone from an AT&T number calls you and you answer it, you have to pay the $1.00 airtime fee reason being that you are using the service. Next, even if you receive a text message from any mobile operator users, you have to pay $0.15 for the same reason. So, if I send you a text message or vice versa both of us have to pay $0.15 each & the mobile operator is the one raking in all the profit! I'm not so sure about the postpaid (called contract over here) plan but most of my friends using it are complaining about the...


TAXES
The confusion over taxes, gratuity & tips is overbearing for a foreigner. If you decide to go out for lunch or dinner at a restaurant, be prepared to pay them tips. Once I had lunch at this Thai restaurant with five of my friends, we had to pay 18% gratuity which was about $14. FOURTEEN DOLLARS TIPS! No wonder the waitress was superbly kind to us. If you go shopping at Walmart you will also get taxed: 6% state tax (in this case Pennsylvania. State taxes differ by states) and dunno how many percent federal tax. Thus, my friends who opt to use the postpaid plan here will have to pay about $10-$15 taxes per month. No wonder this country is rich, people pay taxes for everything!


HOW'S IT GOING?
The culture of meeting & greeting people here is by asking

1. "What's up?"
2. "How are you?"
3. "How's it going?"

and the usual responses would be

1. "Good"
2. "Great"
3. "Excellent"

even if you don't mean it. They don't want to know how or what you are actually doing; as I said just now it's just a greeting. Besides that, people do also say "Have a nice day" or "Have a good night" when leaving and the usual response would be "You too". At first, I find it kind of fake but once I get used to it, it doesn't feel that awkward anymore and find it quite fun since it's a cultural thing like giving salam for Muslims and shaking hands for Malaysians.


CABLE TV
Our landlord "gifted" us free expanded basic cable television for the whole year so we get around 60 channels, which is more than we wished for. Nothing much to say other than I've been watching Family Guy on [adult swim] on weekday nights from 11pm till midnight. Eat my shorts, Homer Simpson!