I arrived back yesterday from the SPIE medical imaging conference in San Diego. America, or the little bit that I saw, is weird. The people eat too much, too oily and too sweet, the cars that they drive are too big, they have too many of them and the petrol is too cheap. Most of this is really not their own fault. For example, their public transport system really does not encourage a more reasonable attitude towards cars.
Other than that, the people really are very friendly and pleasant to chat with. What did piss me off though was the touch of arrogance every so often: At one stage a film critic (on the television) was explaining how, now that American films are becoming more popular overseas, they had to be dumbed down so that a foreign audience could also comprehend them. Well, I can’t really blame him either: He’s probably never been in Yurp to see how most of these dumb people speak at least three languages fluently and have a general level of education which is impressive to be quite honest. I speak as an almost-objective Sub-Saharan African.
I have to add that I’ve only seen a microscopic and non-representative fraction of the population, so you’re free to ignore absolutely everything that I’ve written, as always. :)