Religion

This subject has become a bit of a thorn with me. While growing up with Christian beliefs and even attending a Catholic school for the majority of my education (my Mum is Catholic - albeit non-practising), religion has always been to me something personal and not to be forced upon people. It has been a topic - like politics, that I have never wanted to get into a discussion about in general conversation and was used to no one wanting to also discuss either. While there are countless Christian people living in NZ and Australia, I believe that only about 3% of them actually attend church on a regular basis. Its more like 40% in the USA and I would believe a far greater amount in Texas - or at least the South. Living here in Texas I find myself becoming more and more cynical with the baffling interpretations of the bible and the suffocating approach of having it shoved down your throat. Texas is regarded as being in the 'Bible Belt' region, "The term Bible Belt refers to States in the Deep South, plus Texas, where Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christianity is taken very seriously." You have to, therefore, expect that there are many dozens of churches in every city/county - which is fair enough but what gets me is some of the misguided beliefs that America (only) is God's own country and that Americans were specially selected to be the ONLY ones to be 'redeemed' - come 'The Day'. I read somewhere - "Baptist: The official Religion of Texas. If you ain't a Baptist, then you're goin' to hell."

Prayer sessions are imposed at the onset of school sporting events - much to the upset of the non-religious school parents who want this practice abolished and I believe there were even legal actions pending at one time. The selling of Religious styled book covers for school books have even been in competition with non-religious covers. Everyone preaches the goodness of God and love thy neighbour (and believe me, I'm not criticising that in the least) but the hypocrisy comes when they then turn around and condemn gays, reminding them - even in large church billboards - that 'they' will not be permitted go to heaven. The majority is quick to convict the still deemed innocent victims and to be all for the death penalty. The contradictions I continually hear are unbelievable and this is the least desirable quality I have found here - this attitude expands into race and cultural differences as well. My local paper reported one day that a church group of up to 175 people gathered every Wednesday night to view 'The Andy Griffith Show' on TV. They then sat and debated afterwards the beneficial morality that was portrayed all through the show. Now I enjoyed old Andy and Goober as much as anyone and it was good wholesome stuff but that was going to the extreme and maybe better time would have been spent in teaching their children (and themselves) not to discriminate and love thy brother (no matter what colour/race/preference they be). I read a page on a Californian living in Houston, who had raised similar comments to mine, so I don't feel that I am being unique in my thoughts. I'm just very thankful I was brought up in a time and in a country where there was more acceptance and respect for differences.

There are numerous TV. channels all religion orientated so if you are that way inclined, you can get your 'fix' for hours on end. I usually click past them pretty quickly but those I have lingered on, have given me a good chuckle - no 'higher' disrespect intended - but these Evangelists are unbelievably bad actors and I believe a lot end up being convicted of fraud and swindling their congregations. I have to say though, that through tragedies, the fervent beliefs within communities brought a unity I have not witnessed before and it is admirable - I just don't personally like having to live and breathe their interpretation of their beliefs.

Shopping

Walmart stores (commonly known as 'Wally World') employs pensioners to greet shoppers coming through the door and then to verify if necessary, receipts with goods being taken out of the store. There is always an abundance of staff all around their stores (I wish more were on the check-outs). I couldn't believe the age of some sales assistants around the various shops - some had to be in their 70's. Walmart also provides motorised scooters with baskets for those who were disabled or couldn't walk far, to be able to use free of charge in the store. I also noted with shops and buildings here, the Entry and Exit doors are all back-to-front with the automatics and manual doors open out not inwards.

Trying to find a decent deodorant - a non-aerosol brand, is impossible. Popular here are the stick or roll-on variety with only a few aerosols available. Tried as I did, the stick style wasn't my thing and I ended up getting a friend in Australia to post me up some bottles of Rexona non-aerosol. How little things make us happy. If you go searching online, you can find some agents willing to sell the product and post it to you but it was just as cheap, if not cheaper to have it posted from Australia and get some other goodies (like Tim Tams)included as well.

Parking spots for the disabled is well covered and there is no shortage of people needing to use them. You still find the odd inconsiderate driver who parks in these spaces just to save themselves a few extra steps and there never seems to be anyone around to catch and fine them unfortunately. At our local shopping mall, there are even special spots with signs for 'pregnant and new mothers' to park to avoid any long waddle walks. They are right next to the disabled. It is the first time I have seen these considerations. The only place I have seen 'to pay' parking is downtown in vacant lots which have been turned into carparks with attendants, high rise carparks and of course hospital facilities. Local parking is free.

If you live in a smaller city outside of a major city then it can get confusing when Americans speak of 'downtown'. This I tend to believe is 'downtown' in the nearest major city, however it can mean 'downtown' in your own little city/town which in our case is a bit of a joke because if you blink you miss where it is at. We tend to say 'go into the city' or 'go into town'. There can be an area within the city that refers to 'downtown' - not the overall. So that puts a different spin on it again. There are a lot more pawn shops here than I have seen back home. I think this has evolved from the huge amount of credit card debt incurred here. I had a lot of problems being approved for a credit card when I first arrived with no credit history here. No one was prepared to check on overseas banks nor take letters of reference from my other credit card company's. It was annoying especially when there were two incidents in the news whereby a dog was granted a credit card, as was a six year old girl. Maybe 'aliens' are just too risky.

- Grocery Shopping

Some of the large grocery chains in certain areas stay open for 24 hours. Mostly they have a good variety to choose with reasonable deli's and baked breads. Finding particular spices other than the basics (other than Mexican of course) is sometimes difficult especially for Chinese/Thai and Indian cooking. We have to make trips up to Richardson to the predominantly Asian areas to find their grocery stores and then stock up. In Addison there is a large Hong Kong Grocery store which reminds me being back in Hong Kong. I miss not seeing all those products regularly and I tend to be like a kid in a candy shop whe I go there. They also have a hot section of Thai curry puffs and dumplings etc. Forget about finding mixed spice in the States. Maybe the nearest thing is apple pie spice. Coriander is Cilantro here although I did find ground coriander after 3 years.

Some grocery chains offer a discount card which you can use to obtain quite a substantial savings (supposedly) on some products. Kroger always have sample food trays, one of ham/turkey and cheese and another usually of some type of cake or small donut. These have been my nibbles (usually lunch) when I was in the store at that time. Sam's, which is a mix of grocery and other goods also have wonderful sample trays if you should be there around lunch time. They usually have a few more exotic choices. They offer a tyre service as well - buy them and have them installed with a lifetime warranty. Just be wary about leaving your entire bunch of keys with them - they lost ours, had to drive us home to get the spare truck key (fortunately I had another set of house keys), then we made them rekey our house and car and truck - all keys that were on the bunch and were lost. It was a costly error on their part and we were certainly not impressed.

Weights are of course by the pound and while I often think I am getting a good deal, if you convert the weight into kilo's, it isn't necessarily such a good price. Generally I find prices higher (when I convert the price back to NZ$ or AUD$). A lot of apples are imported from New Zealand mainly, which makes you wonder what is happening to their own produce. It is always good to see some home-grown (NZ) products making their way into the fruit section.

Meat completely loses me, not that I was good at knowing the different cuts before but some cuts named differently  in a lot of cases. Sausages just are not the same, they just seem too processed and nothing like the good old 'snags' I am used to. Hot links (George Forman's) are not too bad but I pretty much have just stopped eating sausages altogether. Lamb is usually difficult to find but occasionally someone stocks it, however talking to the Meat Section staff, they say they often have to throw out their lamb as it just isn't popular. I think half the problem is that no one knows how to cook it properly. I have managed to find mint sauce to go with our lamb when we were able to buy it. Steak, hot dogs and ribs are very much the favourites here (cooked ribs are really heavy on the sauce). Chicken of course is too, but mostly of the fried variety. At the State Fair the big meat favourite is Turkey Legs which come in good old Big Texas style and are quite a handful.

Finding good traditional Tea here is pretty hard because Americans of course, are big coffee drinkers and the iced tea, which is a big time favourite, really just isn't the same. Initially I was buying Twinnings Breakfast teabags - 25 bags for US$3.97 which is pretty expensive. I went to Dilmah's website to ask if they distributed here and got an email back saying they had just joined forces with a company here and the tea would soon be available. Shortly after, on a visit to our supermarket, I got all excited. We found a big bin all of small 10 tea bag packets (you know the little sample type packets) of Dilmah tea in all different types at 10c per packet. We went a little crazy and fished around in the bin finding the breakfast tea, Ceylon tea, afternoon tea and Irish tea. We ended up with 50 packets. It was so funny but the whole lot, which amounted to 500 tea bags, only cost $4.00 compared to 25 Twinnings I was buying before. They were all foil wrapped so could keep. It took me about 18 months or so to go through them all and then it was back to buying the Twinnings. Dilmah tea has never appeared again - just wasn't popular I guess. Americans drink Liptons...ugh! There is something really different about this tea.

Seafood sauce is quite different. It is a red colour and very much a strong tomato flavour - I don't like it at all. Thousand Island dressing is about the nearest thing to what I was used to. Cole Slaw dressing is often difficult to buy in the large bottle despite being able to buy bags of coleslaw. There is however quite a choice available on dressings, especially Ranch, and even some in a 'lite' or 'non-fat' variety although not many. If you buy made-up potato or macaroni salads they seem to make them with more mayonnaise in them than anything else. First taste was good, then later you felt sick from not being used to it all. We made our own after that.

Speech and Pronounciation

This always proves an interesting topic and there is usually an underlying rivalry as to who's version of pronunciation is correct. The 'H' in some words is not pronounced - as with Herbs becoming 'erbs although my argument is that Hughy is not 'ewe-y'. Pecans (pee cans) are Pi-carns, bouys (boys) are boo-ee's. Schedule is 'sked-ule'. Nissan (car) is 'Nee-Sarn'. Vehicle is 'vee-hick-al'. Alunimium is an interesting one (ours being al-loo-min-e-um, and theirs being ah-loo-minum). Don't crack up as I did when I saw an advertisement on T.V. for a 'rescue router'… if you're an Aussie or kiwi you will understand the humour in this - if you're not.. then I will keep you guessing. As for calling someone a 'dag'.. be careful to explain that its actually a term of endearment - meaning 'you are so funny' - and not the correct dictionary term which states the bits of fur around a sheep's bum which is matted with brown stuff. Also saying your knackered.. we actually mean we are tired - but here you could be taken for a nymphomaniac who's over exerted her/himself.

If you're not in a work environment then the difference in spelling isn't so much a problem… just remember to date your cheques (checks) back-to-front (month first, then day) or play it safe and write the date out in full. Otherwise some of the spelling differences are : Tyre - tire, cheque - check, colour - color, recognise - recognize (and many other 's' which now become 'z'), traveller - traveler , jewellery - jewelry, liveable - livable, behaviour - behavior.

I find I definitely catch attention as soon as I open my mouth here. While usually I can adapt to an American or English accent very quickly if I'm around it, here I have made a conscious effort to retain my own accent (mixed as it is) and avoid the Texas drawl. All comments on my accent have been nice so far although I'm usually taken for being English first, Australian second and on occasion even a Canadian. No first guesses as to being a Kiwi of course, but then I don't sound like your normal 'fush & chups' kiwi either. My accent is now mixed after years of living away and moving around. Still, if I say New Zealand, people are not too sure where exactly that is - maybe up near England? If I say near Australia then most have a reasonable clue that it is in the southern hemisphere somewhere. However one neighbour who had actually served with the navy in Japan and therefore had travelled outside of the US, thought NZ was up near Norway. A 19 yrs old I came across in a shop said that she had heard NZ was 'free' - as in, No laws.. hmmm... education here seems to leave a lot to be desired and is a whole different topic. Either way they like the accent and of course it's much quieter than your average Texan's.

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