Faux pas

One interesting phenomenon about moving to a new country is that I've no ingrained philosophy or wisdom on things like:

1. Which companies or franchises are evil corporations.
2. Identifying characteristics that might identify someone who may hurt me.
3. How to dress on certain occassions.
4. What to say, what not to say.
5. Whether every guy at my gym is hitting on me.

I hate big evil empires. When I lived in Chelsea I had the choice of a big Sainsbury's for grocery shopping or a tiny little Tesco. I assumed Sainsbury's was bigger but have recently discovered that Tesco is like Walmart with a world domination complex.

Suspicious individuals are easy for me to identify in the States. But pretty much everyone looks suspicious here. And those characteristics that I identify with people who will steal from me or punch me in the face are spread evenly through the population or don't exist at all. I think a lot of gang members here are actually pretty good dressers.

Nothing much to expand on for #s 3 and 4. #5 has the potential to be pretty comical. At first I was kind of intimidated at the gym -- lots of gigantic dudes. But the more I paid attention, the more I noticed that they often traveled in twos and wore fashionable spandex.

Oh I thought of another one:

6. How bad bad words are.

I think we see this a lot in the States with folks speaking English as a second language. Sometimes they'll say something and everyone is like 'holy cow that was really awful, and in this context especially'. I probably do the same here because I know generally what the curse words are, but I could also easily confuse one with a non-offensive version (like darn v damn) and I also don't know which ones are really bad and which ones are just kind of cool.