American Dream ;-)

Hi everyone,

I don't know if you could guess I liked American traits...

This dates from very long ago when I realized American societal thingies* arrived in France after a one-decade delay. This was confirmed by a futurologist of my friends' who was periodically visiting the States to watch them and bring back oodles of gadgets; this way, he had good ideas of commercial trends in France beforehand.
I remember I asked a friend if she agreed with this and what was the delay according to her: she responded that yes and that in her opinion, the delay was more than 10 years (I got a bit upset).

In short, I like to keep a look on American events.

Some members will maybe laugh at me here as they knew this for long...

I already had adopted their annual newsletter which consists in writing a paper with the events of the past year in the family and send it to relatives and friends (printed) along with a beautiful photo of a year's key event gathering the whole family. The letter that I send is now appreciated by my French family.

Today, I received a hyperlink to a photo book on http://www.picaboo.com/.
I think it's a commercial site, at least for the printed objects. I don't want to advertize here but just to share something I noticed and like.
The album is composed of 100 pages with about 4-6 photos each, showing all of the events in the year: the birthdays, graduations, main celebrations and visits, especially when they were together, from children to grand parents. Each pict has a caption and this way, I get a long text of what occurred.
I found it very nice! I can see them all from 9,000 kilometers and get detailed news from my friends.
As we can see on their Web site, Picaboo also sells personalized calendars with birthdates, photos and events in the family. Isn't it nice for a present?


By the way, do you know what picaboo means?
It's not in the dictionary but prolly* Google can find it and provide you with explanations.
Difficult to know if you're not a native American or didn't live there.
Picaboo or pica (oh yes always a bit lazy) is the word that they pronuonce when they play with a baby appearing then hiding behind a wall, a tree, etc. Usually the baby is laughing loudly.


(*)
- "thingies" simply means things - it's a kind of word very commonly used in the US and Oz to add kinda* smile and casual tone... Aussies* love to add "y" or "ie" at the end of their words.
- "Prolly" is short for "probably". LOL
- "kinda" means "kind of".
- "Aussie" - sorry despite "ss", they pronounce OzI and it means Australian.

Muriel,

Do you have the impression that their way of life comes to France with a very long delay?

LOL I remember several years ago, I was a bit ridiculous!
I don't know if you have this appliance in Calais...
My friend was peeling the skin of fruits and put them in the sink. I thought she was about to block everything in the sink and get troubles... I carefully removed the skin to put it into the bin! LOL in fact she had a "disposer": you open the faucet to add water and turn on the disposer so that everything goes to the sewage. Wonder if it is that environment-friendly.
It didn't make the mistake a second time!
Australians have this too.

~~

A few other things I like too:
- the alarm system that I had in a hotel: 4 levels of brightness for the clock and the alarm itself which increased the sound volume beginning very quietly (just a vibrator) and louder and louder if I didn't stop it or snoozed it
- in California, the track reserved to cars with a number of passengers greater than 1... I never remember the name of this
- In Bellevue, WA, the traffic-lights become red for the cars and I waited my green: if I didn't push a button to say I wanted to cross I never had the green and when I crossed the street, I has a count down timer giving me about 15 seconds ie just the time to walk
- At my friends', there were several buttons on the switches to set the brightness plus the switch itself.
- I forgot what I liked in the shower.

Hi Muriel,

After a while, we get used to material comfort.
I remember my American teacher's mother was stressed not to have someone packing the bag at the superette (she just had 3 items).
My friend was disturbed not to have air conditioning in her room in May in Paris while the temperature was mild.

As for health care system, the US and France do have opposite ways.
Americans don't want anything from Washington: they hate paying money for something they cannot manage and prefer to care with their individual stuff.
On the opposite, the French think everything will come from the government.
Differents views that won't be change soon.
Pdt Obama described the French system as a marvel a few months ago... not he convinced his opponents

Fortunately we may not wear weapons.

Yes, economic crises easily come to Europe especially when American experts do their best to get this outcome and get the world to help (without knowing).

>when they recover we recover...
Not immediately! They're clever, expert to make other countries pay.

Hi Muriel,

Americans are very good... at selling useless products and build the market that goes with (I mean they also create needs).

I remember the first nylon stockings that were said hard-wearing!
Since then, no longer have we seen hard-wearing products! The law now forbids long warranty stuff!
What's more, goods are now nothing compared to services: when you buy an IT program, you just get a limited time service!

Hi everyone,

I made a mistake in a post above and would like to fix it :

gerardM a écrit:... By the way, do you know what picaboo means?
It's not in the dictionary but prolly* Google can find it and provide you with explanations.
Difficult to know if you're not a native American or didn't live there.
Picaboo or pica (oh yes always a bit lazy) is the word that they pronuonce when they play with a baby appearing then hiding behind a wall, a tree, etc. Usually the baby is laughing loudly.
...

I spole about this in another thread.

The true spelling is peekaboo or peekoo and it's well in my dictionary.

Had I better ears to recognize English songs (long "ee" vowel), I would have spelled correctly!