In my ongoing series about life in the States and how it differs from previous countries I lived in, I have recently pondered about how life here has changed me (temporary or permanently remains to be seen) and a couple of points came to mind.

There is an ongoing debate on how Europeans do work hard (occasionally) but often stop to smell the roses along the way vs. Americans who are too focused to waste time on such things in their quest for consumerism. Of course, this is generalization and even within Europe people make jokes about other less efficient countries who do not but, oh say, drink wine and go on strikes…the point ultimately being that one side sees their way being superior to the other’s.

From my observations though, this does ring a bell in many aspects. A simple thing like vacation, when living in Sweden for instance I had 5 weeks vacation each year and during yearly reviews I (like others) would negotiate for additional vacation days or weeks rather than focus on salary (maybe because after certain level you pay 55%  income tax anyways); here in the States two weeks is the standard with more generous companies giving three.

At work here in the States, most people are not interested in your life, or to get to know you on a personal level, not necessarily because they don’t care (although that is the case many times) but because there is just no time to waste on those things. Or maybe this is just limited to the tech industry here? Anyways outside of my non-work friends, the concept of having lunch, coffee or phone chat for the sake of getting to know someone is rare here so unless there is a (work related) purpose to it what you will see is an initial small talk (usually short and somewhat awkward/abrupt) followed by getting to the point/topic at hand.

And in Rome you do as Romans, so I have realized I am doing just that, i.e. either avoid small talk altogether and go to the point from the start ( to avoid the whole awkwardness) or simply avoid talking to people about life outside of work even if I am interested so that they don’t feel like their time is being wasted or ask me politely “what’s up?” to stop the non-work related talk.

Maybe it’s the cultural in this fast paced industry where effeciency and results (followed by performance- and midyear reviews) is all that matters and there is just no room for much else  as there is not enough time in a day. Either way, I like to get to know people beyond their professional capabilities, so I have started swiming upstream, let’s see if I can make it last.

Time for some reflection again. Some of the topics I want to note down today may be random, but I have been reminded of them several times. In no particular order:

• Return Policy – Certainly this comes as no news that the return policy in U.S. puts all other countries to shame. I am not going to discuss at what cost this comes at, but it certainly makes life a bit easier with the return policy of stores such as Costco, Nordstrom and so on where you can return things even years after you have purchased the good and they won’t even ask you why. Try returning something in Europe and you are lucky if they don’t throw you out of the store.
• Availability and Abundance – Which brings me to availability and abundance of it. I have touched on this subject in another post, but the point I have to make here is that I cannot think of anywhere else in the world where (almost) anything is so accessible for purchase. You can walk into a store and buy anything from a Jacuzzi, pool table, mini tractor, or even a small & easy to assemble mini cabin!. And I am not talking about going to specialized stores to get these items. Go to your closest Costco and pick one up! Next after that, most of the well known (clothing) brands that are considered more on the exclusive (and expensive) side elsewhere in the world such as Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss and so on can be found in piles here in the States which also is a bit puzzling. I guess this works well with the commercial philosophy of U.S. which probably goes something in lines with: ‘People should be able to buy anything they want anytime they want as much as they want and we don’t care how much garbage it will produce, though we can compromise on the quality so the prices are not too high. If we don’t compromise on quality we will charge the customer three arms and five legs to let them understand it is quality stuff they are buying.’
• Junk (paper) Mail – I am still puzzled by how financial institutions (as well as other companies) are so persistent in bombarding your house’s mailbox with offerings printed on thick glossy papers. During the course of last month alone I have had 4 offerings to become an American Express customer and I already have had two cards with them for over a year! (one personal and one for work). Makes me wonder how they run their operations. Actually I have come to realize a big share of the corporate world here who make very good profits and are well known are not running smoothly because they run a lean and efficient business model. They just have reached a stage where they make so much money that they can cover their inefficiencies and still look like they are running a smooth operation.

It has been a long while since I posted anything on my observations in my new home land, US of A. The last two posts came almost a year ago and it is long overdo for new observations.

Let’s start with the summer time activities. Having lived my first summer in the northwest, I have come to learn more about what is close to American hearts when it comes to summer and I can say BBQ-ing is probably most popular. People here love their bbq and not to be excluded we got one too. Now, being a Persian, my research was a little more demanding on what BBQ grill is considered good since we would be BBq-ing more than just burgers, ribs, steaks and hot dogs. We love our kebab and in order to be able to make good kebab, your BBQ grill has to be FKA (Food and Kebab Administration) certified. Next after the kebab comes the real test, i.e. how good of chef you are is based on how good your burgers are. The funny part here is that all men think they have their own little secret receipe that makes their burgers just the best burger in town and as in Rome you do as Romans, I have come to find myself included in this ever-ongoing competition. So far though I am still considered the rookie and have a long way to go and much to prove.

Next is all the summer fairs and festivals. Granted that these events are not specific to US, but what is different is the size of these things. Take for instance the sea fair here. Over the course of a weekend, you have TONS of hydro plane races and shows, you have the blue angels (6 F-16 fighter planes) do two air shows and a numerous number of other events that I am not even aware of. I enjoyed this very much since I have never really experienced a sea fair of this magnitude and like I said it is not what is done a lot of the times, it is how it’s done that makes it so different.

As for burgers though, so far and by far, In-N-Out burger joints in California are the best burgers I have tasted in this country. I am sure that won’t last long though as burgers is something this nation does not take lightly on.

Generally though, the biggest observation that I am reminded of on a daily basis is the abundance of everything here and how people just take is for granted, as if the resources on this planet can’t be exhausted. The amount of food I have seen being wasted as well other areas of waste is just mind blowing to me and I still cannot fathom it. Until the next report from this side of the pond – This is me reporting for all the fans out there.

I haven’t posted for a while as I was getting ready for the wedding. Now, I have been married around 10 days and I am absolutely *LOVING* the married life. It enriches life in a way that you think you can imagine but at the same time you won’t fully understand until you are there. In any case, it has been the most hectic, yet amazing last 2-3 weeks and only now the new life is returning to somewhat normal, which means it is time to start looking for jobs, getting social security number(SSN), getting a driver’s license and a number of other stuff that has to be done.

Let’s start with the driver’s license. I was kinda dreading the idea of having to study a thick book of rules with hard tests as I had to do back in Finland many years ago (or so it felt at least). Here, you walk in to the DMV (department of motor vehicles), get a small compendium of driving rules and study them while you wait in line, when it’s your turn 20 minutes later, you answer 20 questions on a computer screen and viola! All you need to is to do a small practical test and you have a driver’s license. What I have realized is also that without a SSN, or driver’s license you can’t do anything in this country.

Here is a small detail I enjoy as I discovered it the other night. Very late in at night as we were about to watch a movie, we had no ice cream or pop corn, nor had we remembered to buy cat food for our cat so the poor thing had gone hungry for two days, and I learned that most supermarkets are open 24/7 here. That is a nice service I must admit that I have missed out on all my life.

Moving on to the financial part of life, opening a bank account was a breeze since I could let my lovely wife be the primary and I get to tag along and share the account. This way noone cared who I was or what my SSN is. Getting a credit card on my name is a different story. Like everywhere else you need a job for that, but here is the difference; here in the states, the only way you build a good line of credit is to apply and get several credit cards, spend randomly on each of them and pay your bill on time. That is what is considered being able to manage finances here apparently, quite unusual I think…

And the never end saga of immigration continues. One thing that really frustrates me here is the amount of paperwork you have to submit for anything you wanna do. In regards to immigration procedures multiply the paperwork by five and for each round you have to submit whatever you submitted last plus another pile of new forms that have nothing but repetition of what you told them in the previous round.

Anyways, we still haven’t had gotten our pictures from the wedding, apparently it take 6 weeks for the photographer to edit them, but we are in no hurry. So far we haven’t even had a chance to open the wedding gifts yet. For now, we are just trying to the most important things out of the way so we can start looking for jobs and enjoy our time a little more and who knows, even plan a getaway.

Hopefully I will also be able to post on new gadgets and technical discoveries soon as I have been out of touch with my rss feeds for over a month.

It has been a very hectic three weeks and I have not had any chance to blog and most likely it will not happen too often for another few weeks. The reason for this being I am getting acquainted with my new home for time being, Seattle, WA, United States. On top of that a few other minor issues such as final wedding preparations, flat hunting, job searching and immigration paperwork do take a good chunk of my time each day. In other words, between deciding who should sit next to who at the wedding, looking on housingmap and Seattle Times.com, reading different job websites and studying the never ending requirements of INS for getting work visa and social security number and so on makes me lose sleep, but I enjoy it… I enjoy transitional periods, those 6-8 months when you move to another country when everything is up and down and you are trying to organize life to start it all over again.

This also has allowed me to be in a observation mode about my new home town and country. I guess coming from Israel I also have taken some things with me, like the fact that customer service here seems beyond excellent, but then again that is probably because sometimes in Israel I had to first apologize to the store keeper that I wanted to buy something from him, be grateful that he is not yelling at me for entering the store and interrupt his nap or phone conversation with his buddy. Never mind asking him questions about the things he sold. So I guess everything is relative.

Everything is big here, I knew that already based on my past visits as a guest, but now that I am here to stay I am able to see things with a slightly different eyes. The portions at the restaurants for one person could be eaten for three meals. In the parking spots I could fit two cars easily (by Israeli way of parking even three), fit one of a half my own size in a shirt I buy (that is my size).

Traffic and lines are really the big bummers here and I guess so is the price model on mobile plans and availability of cell phone models and features. Paying money for receiving calls is odd to this European guy and paying for receiving SMS is very strange, especially when you have no control over accepting or rejecting it, but nevertheless you have to pay.

The mandatory sir and ma’am is starting to bother me a little by now but hopefully I will be able to get over soon. Generally speaking though, I love Seattle so far, we have excellent weather, people are very friendly and diverse, the city is so green and clean and being close to water if of course added value.

All in all though, life is good and I am enjoying it. I look very much forward to the wedding and the months ahead as it will be filled with many changes and changes are good.

For now, This is me, reporting for .farshid sedghi. blog, wishing you all there a wonderful day.