A THREAD FOR COMPLAINING ABOUT THE LACK OF THE COMFORTS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE REBELLIOUS COLONIES

Hollow Chocolate Eggs
Tagless Teabags
Decent Marmalade

any chocolate that tastes good
non-sugary bread

hot chocolate made with milk not water

any chocolate that tastes good

suggestion: buy good chocolate

the point is you cant unless its imported

oh man the Twin Cities have a bunch of awesome hardcore chocolatier sort of shops, but i guess they aren't making the chocolate in house, so i dont know.

some of the non-sour milk stuff would be nice.

dude, they ARE making the chocolate in house, that's the amazing thing:

http://www.citypages.com/2007-12-19/restaurants/the-smallest-chocolate-factory-in-the-world/

you're in america, get over it

i think ghiradelli is made in the u.s.?

you're in america, get over it

tho i gotta say i'm sure Ed probably wants to cry when he drinks our shitty american tea--i feel for you Ed

have a taco and get over it

*cough*
http://www.greenandblacks.com/us/home.html

think about if you lived in england for a year or two with no access to decent pizza--instead yr confronted with corn pizza, prawn pizza, bangers and mash pizza, etc. you'd be begging yr usa friends to fedex you some papa johns

if i went to paris and complained about how i couldn't get jimmy dean sausage sandwiches or whatever i would be considered a grade A american douchebag
xpost

think about if you lived in england for a year or two with no access to decent pizza--instead yr confronted with corn pizza, prawn pizza, bangers and mash pizza, etc. you'd be begging yr usa friends to fedex you some papa johns

― Mr. Que, Monday, April 13, 2009 12:40 PM (13 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nah i'd eat chocolate and marmalade instead because apparently they're fucking mindblowing

ah hahaha true

oh man, if I ever I start pining for Papa John's I will know that I am in a very bad way

The Five Stages of Culture Shock

Culture shock is divided into five stages. Each stage can be long standing or appear only under certain conditions. It is important to realize that culture shock is a perfectly normal condition which affects persons differently, just as grief, shock and other pressures in life. Some people show stronger reactions than others and not all experience all the five stages of culture shock. Some people do not progress through to the final stage.

The first stage is often called the "honeymoon stage". It is characterized by tension and expectations. While it is going on, people enjoy the excitement that arises from being in a new place where everything is interesting. Some people never leave this initial stage of the excitement that goes along with being abroad. They are constantly experiencing a mild ecstasy and behave like eternal tourists: travel to new and interesting places, make friends only with their fellow countrymen and retain their old way of living. For most people however, the honeymoon passes by and they enter into the second and most difficult stage of the culture shock.

The second stage is the actual shock. It can be characterized with loss of courage and general discomfort. Changes in character occur, depression, lack of self-confidence and irritation, people become more vulnerable and prone to crying, more worried about their health, suffer from headache, bad stomach and complaint about pain and allergy. Difficulties with concentration often occur and reduce the ability to learn a new language. These factors increase the anxiety and the stress. In this period, the self-awareness dissolves and people have trouble with solving simple problems. Conversations on this stage are about things that can not be bought, what you must get along without, and everything that the people in the new country do wrong (which means "differently").

This stage can be characterized with escape, because in this period you always think of returning to the old country. People tend to regard ones own culture as the only way to do the things. This attitude has been called "ethnocentrism". That is the belief that ones own culture, race and nation is the navel of the world. Individuals identify with their own group and its habits. All critical remarks are regarded as a provocation to the individual just as the group. "If you criticize me, you are criticizing my country, if you criticize my country, you are criticizing me." Therefore people often show hostile and aggressive resistance against the host country on the second stage of the culture shock. This hostility comes from natural difficulties that a family or individuals run into in the adjustment process. "I feel terrible in the new country, there must be something terribly wrong here"!!! There are problems in school, difficulties with language, trouble with lodging and employment as well as the fact that the people in the host country just don't care about these problems or don't seem to understand them.

The result is aggressiveness and discomfort because the people don't seem like foreigners at all. Therefore it is important to understand culture shock and what is going on in relations between people. It is important to consider carefully the conduct toward people suffering from culture shock. In the beginning, people are often well received, but when time passes and the novelty disappears, the attitude often turns into indifference or dislike which immigrants experience as hostility. Thus aggressive hostility can escalate on both sides. Instead of regarding the difficulties in a cultural context, people speak about these problems as if they were specially invented by the host country, in order to get the visitor into trouble. Under such circumstances, circulating stereotypes emerge, which can lead to collisions if people don't practice tolerance. "These Icelanders", or "these immigrants" are so and so.......!

The third stage of culture shock is characterized with one's plunging into new ways of living. With patience, it is possible to reach this stage by the end of the first year. Key aspects in a new culture are being learned and the earlier chaos and lack of direction seldom appears. Relations with the native population are initiated, such as neighbours and workmates or schoolmates. The vocabulary and pronunciation is being learned. Instead of standing outside and watching the culture with critical eyes, people plunge into the life of the new country.

The fourth stage is the final stage of the assimilation, characterized with full participation in the way of life in the new country. People seldom think of "them" and "us". They have assimilated to life, regarding both emotions and general activities and life just as easy as before moving.

The fifth stage: Long after people have moved back to the homeland, something unexpected happens. They experience the fifth stage of the culture shock. It is called a reverse culture shock or returning shock, and appears after the return home again. The homeland is not comfortable any more because people have been away from home for a long time and have become comfortable with customs and habits belonging to a new lifestyle. Much has changed and it takes some time to get used to way of life, gestures and symbols of one's own culture.

four and a half years and im still in stage 2. woo!

fwiw i know an A+++ pizza place

um obviously i'm being a dick here but my point is that although nostalgia is powerful, there are plenty of great things to eat in the u.s.a. that are hard to find elsewhere so i would suggest that you enjoy those things while you are here rather than complaining about the foods you can't get

(xpost) Can I get one with Thai Chicken on it?

fwiw CPK is not an A+++ pizza place, would choose Papa John's every single time over that shit

It's okay to complain about shitty Lipton tea and all its shitty little strung-up counterparts. Tagless tea bags are in British sections of the supermarkets that have British sections. Someone in the Twin Cities should go to Byerly's and buy the poor man some Yorkshire teabags, or Ed should visit Myers of Keswick in NYC, they have them too. Their pork pie and pasty counter looks like this:

http://www.myersofkeswick.com/Images/piefridge.jpg

OTOH am wanting various forms of Kraft "dinner" sent over to me from the rebellious colonies. Ideally the one where the cheese sauce before the milk and butter add is duck-blind ORANGE powder.

that's called mac and cheese

a beautiful american foodstuff

if i lived where sunny and ed lived id be complaining abt all the stuff i cant get too so really yr problems is u dont live in the part of america w/all the stuff fyi - which is not to criticize the part of america w/o all the stuff cause really by any reasonable standard weve gone a little overboard w/all the stuff having - and to be sure moving to another country is a pretty big deal pretty a big psychological shock - still where i live they have all this stuff youve mentioned so far - i mean if it was someone from france or japan complaining abt missing stuff id be a lot more sympathetic

n/a i really doubt anyone is hating on america here. i know personally theyd have to drag me out of here 90% dead to get me to go back to AUS. the chocolate still sucks and makes easter boring though.
fwiw US food and other things i would miss pretty quickly:
ranch dressing
fruit on the bottom yogurt
pretty much anything made in a diner
corn fritters
grits
riesens
twizzlers
A+++ breakfasts
chili
the weather channel
NFL
snow

yeah being in arkansas where there are no delis or bakeries (okay one but it sucks) is probably a huge factor

I have a box of ginuwine Kraft shells and cheese in the cupboard but the 'cheese' is made of gloop, not powdered blaze orange weirdness.

Pittsburgh must be very difficult for anything that's not beef, beer and potatoes.

Pittsburgh is fucking awesome

its really only two rivers tho fyi

it's actually seven rivers fyi

HI DERE, you referring to a Cambridge pizza place? I'm talking about an SE London one

we have already heard about what you pass off as pizza in your country let us not dwell upon it here

like corn chowder and grapes on a biscuit with prawn cream cheese on the top = not a pizza

does sound pretty alluring tho

fwiw i don't think i missed anything except not shit tea and chocolate. the former i reluctantly purchased at $8 for 50 and the latter i had sent out to me.

and ur pizza rly not all that jj. sry.

i like US pizza way more but i still cant get with the whole one, two, three topping system.

i was not attacking UK pizza as a whole, i was attacking the strange pizza world in which LJ resides and occasionally reports back from where its all catfish and cherry blossom pesto style or whatever

how do they do pizza down under xp

The pizza I normally eat at this place is pretty straight-laced fwiw, unless "Roasted Garlic Chicken" is o_O on the Justenian Scale of WTF

like, I've only once ever had a salmon calzone

ahhh US vs UK food threads

upsidedown duh

xpost

louis you rep for prawn pizza all the time, don't lie

actually chicken on a pizza is cause for alarm most of the time but i will let this one slide

yeah i agree chicken on pizza is suspect

tbf i don't think britain can claim itself to be civilized until you can obtain humungous pizza slices at 4am for $4.

Check just about any city centre

j, theyre all "speciality" pizzas. you can still order only what you want but it isnt priced by number of toppings, only by size usually.

like, I've only once ever had a salmon calzone

wtf this is one time too many, is the thing

^^^this

oh man, if I ever I start pining for Papa John's I will know that I am in a very bad way

HI DERE is painfully OTM here.

id eat a salmon calzone whats the big deal - does it taste good - i will be the judge

it does not taste good tho

there are many wonderful, fantastic ways to prepare fish; I do not believe any of them involve putting the fish in dough and pouring marinara sauce over it

maybe w/ melted chocolate and camembert tho?

it all gets mixed up in your stomach anyway!

^^^my favourite food-related challop, hands-down

worth noting that the only place I see online that is obviously selling fish calzones is located on the border of Illinois and Iowa

and the #1 reason why you should be suggest kitchen banned xpost

it's ok dude you have the right to ask me not to cook for you, we're cool 'k

i would actually let you cook for me so then i could have fun yelling at you

the secret ingredient wd be emergency eyewash obv

what good is eyewash going to do for food poisoning

emergency sick bag

I'm starting to suspect that when LJ first heard of the concept of service a la russ, he got confused with Russ Abbot...

i think a gigantic worldwide ILX cookery FAP would reveal much about the character of this messageboard

Doubtless.

yeah, anyone who invites me out drinking and then says "SURPRISE cook me a meal" is getting kicked in the shins

the thing is, you don't miss this stuff till you can't get it. eg. i never brought anything food-wise with me to the US except lots of lollies (which were - lol - for ilxors but gotten eaten by me and the husband instead). didn't think i would really miss anything BUT lo and behold i did! lucky i have nice friends who delivered peanut butter, marmite, cadbury hot chocolate, creme eggs (DISTINCTLY different from fake hershey's 'cadbury' creme eggs) and jaffas.

It's true: sometimes cravings just haunt you until you feed them.

I can't imagine being pregnant in another country; I'm sure there would be something that I desperately wanted (The Only Thing That Would Do) that would be unavailable. Even traveling in the US proved tricky, as I recall... we went on a trip to Arizona and couldn't figure out where to get some nachos. And I REALLY wanted nachos...

(So what I'm saying is this: don't get knocked up unless you have a good stash of your favorite treats. Free advice for all of you!)

bread is still a big issue for me: i finally got new zealish pb and marmite, but can't find good bread @ the supermarket :( bread is the one thing you can't get yr friends to post you

Do you have a bread machine? (Obv. if not, you need to get one as a wedding present from one of your parents!)

(now I'm seriously curious about New Zealish bread, btw)

make yr own bread, ffs

also i am with the brits w/r/t decent, cheap tea. my mom has garbage bags (for real) of the shit under her bed and she is my dealer.

Maybe you could post a traditional New Zealish bread recipe for us, just1n3. (I'm going to use the bread machine for any bread because, srsly, you don't want to see what happens when we've tried to make it from scratch at our house.)

why do YOU make me bread, ffs??? xp