# Lessons in the US of A

Recently I made the mistake of living in the US of A, the paramount
capitalist hell of the modern world. As a consequence, I had to relearn
some facts, because everything works different here.

## August 2023: Moving in

### The good

- They put free pads and tampons even in the men's bathroom
- I can ride the bus for free with my student card
- By custom I should greet the bus driver, who will greet back
- Food comes in absolutely gigantic portions
- Central campus is much more walkable than I thought
- A French press is very easy to use and much cheaper than a coffee
  machine
- To request a stop on a bus you just pull the rope-y thing
- You can take all the time you need to get off the bus. No pressure to
  stand up in advance.
- Pedestrians have absolute right of way, I hypothesize you could even
  cross the street blindfolded and not get hit by a car

### The bad

- Power outages happen every year and somehow people are okay with it and
  do nothing to improve the infrastructure
- Toilet paper comes in single ply by default
- Apartments don't have ceiling lights and rely on floor lamps. There is
  a dedicated outlet wired to a light switch which I found by poking with
  a multimeter
- Everything in the supermarket seems reasonably priced as long as you
  don't convert it to your home currency
- The washing machine isn't working??
- Power failure?? In IKEA???
- The carpet makes my desk jiggly
- Drinks are most often cold, even chilled. Even chocolate.
- Internet failure?? In a university???

### The neither

- Kroger closes at 10 pm
- The cord to a power strip is very, _very_ thicc
- My apartment has a coaxial port for internet which I've never seen in my
  life
- Michigan law does not require you to have a front license plate

## September 2023: Settling down

### The good

- They hand out free shirts and swag at the pride event
- Drag shows, fully unhinged
- I can just _get_ a Kroger card? Like for free?
- I found Three Cheers posters on sale
- tfw fresh clothes from a dryer. hmmm
- Internet is super fast
- There are no stray animals here (with the side effect that I have not
  seen a single cat on this land)
- One month in and I've seen three people in band merch T-Shirt of quality
  taste
- None of the instructors read from the slides; they really go to great
  lengths explaining stuff

### The bad

- Ann Arbor buses just… stop operating at 20:00 on Sunday?? (Update: this
  might have been related to labor day)
- _One_ bus per hour?? Unimaginable in Shanghai
- I got charged $3 just for inserting my bank card into another bank's ATM
- $15 tax on a bass. $50 tax on a laptop.
- Campus ethernet broke and so did teaching infrastructure, e.g.
  autograders
- Huge thanks to the Amazon driver who attempted to deliver my package on
  a Sunday morning at 6:50 AM. Why would Amazon send a worker to deliver
  my package this early
- Oh so Xfinity broke too? What the fuck is wrong with American
  infrastructure

### The neither

- My textbook is "loose leaf", which means a pile of pages I have bind
  myself. Pro: I can carry only the chapters I want. Con: I have to use
  zipties as a dirty hack before my binder arrives