Things you wanted to know but were afraid to ask! FOOD!

snowcrab

Europeans are a little less uptight about that sort of stuff. I remember how shocked I was the first time I saw a European woman strip buck naked and walk into the public showers to wash the pool chlorine out of her hair and off her skin at a local swimming pool. Canadian girls always kept their swim suits on for the shower and then retired to curtained cubicles to struggle out of their wet suits, towel off and put their street clothes back on. And these were always women only changing rooms. People can create some very strange rules for themselves.

mdchachi

> But I watch American TV programs every now and then and am just sickened by the cruelty and coarseness I see.
> That's why I say, don't take the west for your benchmark of civilization-things are devoving pretty fast around here.

Perhaps you might also consider not using American TV as a benchmark for American life. I don't think you'd find life in a comparable city in America so much different than your life in Canada.


I don't think handwashing in public is something that most westerners would find odd. It's something we all do when necessary (such as in a campground). And certain meals come with a finger bowl or wet tissue for washing your hands at the table.

> Finally, there IS no such thing as a Japanese tea ceremony in reality...

Shhh, don't tell this to all the Japanese enrolled in Japanese tea ceremony schools!

rangss

Quote withdrawn with all humility

__________________
...and I took the road less travelled.

snowcrab

hi mdchachi

Seriously off topic,
but I'm not so sure about your remark:

"I don't think you'd find life in a comparable city in America so much different than your life in Canada."

Our little newspaper hosted a convention of people from 53 North American street newspapers one year. Some were from much larger cities granted, but some were also from more modest sized places also. As part of the events we took them on a tour of our inner city to show what street life was like in our town and they laughed at us and said

"you guys have no idea what a slum looks like!"

and the proceeded to tell us some rather graphic stories and show us some pictures of their home towns. India may have a reputation for great poverty, and civic infrastucture decay but America seems to be doing a pretty good job of competing with them in the matter of urban blight. Suprising more Indians don't know about this.

Probably not enough street people get over there to tell them.

rangss

I read it in John Grisham's The Street Lawyer...that Washington DC has the largest no of homeless people in America. I thought Grisham was merely making it up or exaggerating it to suit his novel.

Are you counting the trailer parks in your definition for street people?

snowcrab

Hi Rangss

I'm sure some trailer parks can be pretty gross, but we have some very nicely maintained ones here where the people have relatively low incomes but still manage fairly decent lives, so I am sure there are many like that down south also. I hesitatate to lable anything that exclusively.

I'm thinking more of the people who live in cheap old hotels in the inner city, build cardboard shanties under bridges,camp in parks or on heatgrates in the sidewalk, and live in multi apartment block projects-that sort of stuff. In Canada a lot of that is very hidden because a lot of it is out on the "Rez". I'm including a quote from an aboriginal friend of mine about what life is like on the Rez. You've got to also factor in those very looonnng -40 below nights as well on this part of the continent.

"To get to the heart of the reality of Rez life? A meteor strike wouldn't even do it unfortunately. The reality of Rez life is something that sexual assualts on a massive scale, children committing suicide en mass, people getting tossed into the snowbank to die, and murders don't even get a blink of an eye in the mainstream, at least not often.

I was up in Davis Inlet a number of years ago, after the time of the glue-sniffing tragedy that shocked Canada (for a week). Guess what, little kids were coming to the nun's door with one hand out for a cookie and the other holding a bag of gas, and these kids were 5 and 6 years old. Then they were off to the top of the mountain where at 4am you could still hear them howling with hallucinations. Was back up there in 2003, when they had moved most of the community to Shango Bay (Natuashish). Spoke with the former Chief who I know well about how things are now. Her statement was "it's changed. Not for the good. They're off the gas and onto the pot and other things now. They graduated when the workers for the new community came up."

In my indiocy, I asked her how a kid from formerly Davis Inlet pays for these drugs that the workers were sneaking up (in Goose bay there is no security if you are going north). She looked at me and said "how do you think..they're men, and they're lonely, and they work up here for months at a time." Yet, this never made the press, never made the news, and Davis Inlet has been all but forgotten again by the rest of Canada. Not because we forgot, because we WANTED to forget."

Digital Drifter

While the the thread is getting seriously off-topic, allow me to state some piece of info relevant to the previous posts.

Most states and counties now have laws against panhandling AKA begging, hitchhiking and the sort of drifting which people suddenly feel the urge to do. It kind of saddens me, that people would enact laws *against* people who sleep in park benches and bus shelters. Suddenly all the benches are metal strips on which you can rest, say for half hour before you start feeling uncomfortable, bus shelters are open in a way to provide temporary shelter but not as a residence for a homeless man.

That design must have taken ages to perfect, for sure.

Please, I'm *not* for begging et al., all I ask is the attitude of *not* kicking the guy who's already down in life.

More importantly, here in India, in the name of avant garde & modernisation, railways stations, bus shelters are all too efficient in making life uncomfortable for homeless people.

I know my government is not doing anything for them but why, in the name of whatever nonsense people believe in, do they do this? What kind of compassion & belief system is that? that meanness, the pettiness, in prettifying an inanimate object versus just a little attention in sorting out a modicum of humanity into a defenceless person.

I'm representative of the government, in a way, and I'm responsible as much as the person who's down & out in the corner.

OK, I think I forgot to take my my meds; sorry and I shall get back in to the Matrix, pronto.

snowcrab

I think the thread started to broaden out into all sorts of customs and attitudes that are different, not just eating practices. The remark that seems to have stuck in everbodies craw is the advice about not taking what is happening in the west as the "benchmark of civilization".

I'm sorry to hear that India is also proceeding with the criminalization of the poor. What I observed there during my visit, was despite wide extremes of wealth and privilege, a kinder and more humane attitude towards the poor by ordinary working people. There is a famous quote by someone, I forget the attribution, maybe Kennedy, the substance of which is, that a country's degree of civilization can be measured by the care they are willing to extend to the most vulnerable people in that society. To a destitute person this also includes attitude, not just coin. By this criterion my personal observation was that India seemed to be a more humane place than the west. It may be changing.

Nick-H

D-D; Well said! I hate the fact hat my country became so mean under a certain femail prime-minister.

__________________
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IndiaMike Mod Team (The Grumpy One)

Digital Drifter

you were forewarned! Remember the cries of

'Thatcher,thatcher, milk snatcher'?

If she could take food out of the mouth of babes, imagine....no need, she DID.

It seems a habit of all countries to elect leaders who're counterproductive to their own welfare, as if it's a private dare of the people to challenge the leaders to do their worst.

Which they promptly do! :-)