Adrianna Tan
I truly believe Americans shouldn’t give advice to most people who live elsewhere
The answer to ‘I live in a big non-US city and I don’t make enough money’ isn’t ’move to another one’
Many countries don’t have economically equivalent second, third or other cities m
The answer to ‘how do I save money’ isn’t ‘cancel Netflix and borrow DVDs from the library’
Many countries don’t have public libraries with those things
Adrianna Tan
No one means any harm but I think it’s hard for me to understand USdefaultism since I’m originally from a small country
It’s like many aren’t even aware of some basic different ways in which people or the world works
Adrianna Tan
I used to call this the Walgreens test
Do you know that most other countries don’t, in fact, have a shop named Walgreens?
Adrianna Tan
This toot prompted by Americans telling someone in Athens, Greece, that he should just move to a cheaper city
Well sure Jan
Adrianna Tan
Or ‘just get a higher paying job’
Oh wow why hasn’t anyone thought of that
RealGene ☣️
@skinnylatte
For quite a while, Walgreens owned a big chunk of Boots, the Walgreens of the UK…
Adrianna Tan
One time I was in Reno and someone asked me if 100 Philippine pesos were the same as 100 USD
I stared at him like he had two heads
He lent $100 to someone at a casino and that person gave him 100 pesos and he had no idea that money had different values
Tyrone Slothrop
@skinnylatte this reminds me:
when I went to high school in Minnesota on an exchange program, one of the students there asked me if I had come over from Germany by car
Adrianna Tan
@slothrop !!!!!!
Adrianna Tan
i've been wondering for some time why i don't see any FOREX money exchange counters or shops in the US
(there's one... in chinatown. that's it)
i felt like most other places, they're everywhere. it's hard to miss. you get to learn the EUR / RMB / JPY exchange rate whether or not you want to, walking through the tourist areas of london or paris or bangkok
... it's just hit me that of course there aren't any. the USD is (at the moment) the reserve currency.
(US people who do travel tend to also just withdraw directly while abroad. there are so many US bank products that offer free international ATM withdrawals)
Adrianna Tan
also, in many other parts of the world
you go to a bar or restaurant or cafe and
if there's a tv on, there's news about the world
(in china, this happened. in the middle east, this happened.)
most parts of the US i do NOT hear about the rest of the world unless i go out in search of it.
it's just sports (that no one else) plays
Adrianna Tan
@joannaholman before this admin
I used to say
You could be hundreds of miles deep into a national park
And there’s always fresh toilet and sufficient paper in the campground toilets
Joanna Holman
@skinnylatte my favourite Americans being clueless is ones who stopped us while hiking in the Grampians to ask if there was a shop at the top of the mountain which had no road access. They’d brought no water with them on the several hour hike because they’d assumed there’d be shops along the way
Adrianna Tan
@avimort @ewen must be the same people who come to california and expect to do LA, SF, Yosemite and Disneyland in 5 days
Marion
@ewen @skinnylatte My University Dept in Melbourne Australia had a couple visiting from the USA about 15 years ago, who had plans to rent a car for the weekend and visit Uluru. They expected to be able to leave Melbourne on Saturday morning and be back by Sunday night!
Ewen Bell 📸
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