Friday, August 27, 2010

Many of the things that we find to be different here seem to revolve around grocery shopping, for instance:  Instead of listing the most commonly purchased items on the signs at the ends of the aisles, some of the stores here list things like plastic spoons or coffee filters, even though they're located on the same aisle as the paper towels and toilet paper, yet those things are not listed.  Just seems like people would buy paper towels and toilet paper a lot more often than plastic spoons or coffee filters. 

Then there's the weird sizing, like the fact that tissues are larger than paper towels, since the tissues measure 8"x12" and the paper towels are only 9"x9".   And even though I always hand the check-out clerks my cloth bags, they invariably ask me if I want plastic.  ???  Why would I give them a cloth bag if I wanted plastic?  And once when I gave the clerk 2 bags, since I bought a lot of heavy items and I was walking, she actually asked me what she should do with the second bag. 

And apparently restaurants are highly regulated, because they have some strange laws to follow.  I went to lunch with a friend, who ordered fish and chips, but she asked that they only bring her one piece of fish instead of two, because she could not eat both.  The waitress explained that by law, they could not do that, since 2 pieces of fish comes with the meal.  When I suggested the waitress give her a doggy bag for the extra piece, she explained that by law, that was not allowed.  She suggested that she could bring my friend a whole bunch of napkins and then she would turn her back and not watch if she chose to wrap the fish up and put it in her purse.  Strange.   On another occasion 5 of us had lunch at a local winery, and we ordered a tasting tray.  However, one of the foods on the tray had only 4 instead of 5 little sausage things, and when we asked if they could bring one more, so that everyone could have a taste, they said they would have to bring 4 more, and could not bring just 1, since 4 came with the tray. 

One thing that is very different here from the States, and that I think works very well, is that pedestrians do not have the right of way, and so the responsibility is on the walker, not the driver.  There is no such thing as jaywalking, so if you're walking and think you can make it across the street, you just go for it, and you would have no one to blame but yourself if you misjudged the traffic and got hit.  People cross the streets this way all the time and I've never seen it to be a problem.  You just have to watch the traffic and walk fast. 

Then there is the cell phone system, which leaves a bit to be desired, at least the customer service part.  I decided to check my bill on line one day, and I saw that the calls are charged at .30 per minute plus a .35 connection fee.  Then I noticed that the first call on the list was for 2 minutes, which should have amounted to a total of .95.  However, the charge was for $2.50, so I called and asked the customer service rep to explain the math to me, because it did not add up.  After a long pause he came back on the line and replied, "How about I give you 30 free minutes?"  I said that would be fine but I still wanted an answer to my question, and after another long pause he responded, "How about I give you 60 free minutes?"  At that point I just said O.K. and hung up, because I gave up.