Culture Shock

The warning labels on cigarettes here are [theKid] amazing [/the Kid] The ones at home are these little wussy "The Surgeon General warns that smoking can be hazardous to your health." Feh. The ones here read, in big black letters that take up three-quarters of the pack, "Smoking Kills." or "Smoking can cause impotence." or "Smoking harms you and others around you." Or my personal favorite, "Smoking will cause you to die a slow and painful death." Dude! How come we don't have these here?

So far, Aberdeen holds the record for the most public vomiting in the list of places I've been, but let me tell you it's a hotly contested title. There must be some country-wide directive that states that all city streets must have a minimum of two people having been sick on them, unless it's Friday night, in which case the minimum rises to four. And there's another contingent of people charged with going out on Saturday nights to drop bags of french fries on the sidewalks and throw beer cans in fountains. It's a very effcient system; I haven't seen it fail yet.

People who work in shops and people who buy from shops seem to treat each other with a kind of weary contempt, so when I say please and thank you to clerks and ask how they are it startles the hell out of them. Most of them seem alarmingly grateful to be treated like human beings, which is kind of sad. Some of them are so startled it's frightening.