As I'm sitting in London, basking in the warmth of pies that actually have meat in them, shit weather, catching up with old friends and watching the BBC news, this seems like a good time to reflect on what we've learned so far about the US. If I were to score the country like a high school student, the report card would be somewhat mixed: while the US scores well on some things, it continues to linger at the bottom of the class in many subjects.
My first impression of the beer in the US has very much been confirmed - the craft beers found in the US are truly delicious and I've made a far more comprehensive study of these now. It is not unusual to find a bar that has at least 15 excellent beers on tap, with many more available in bottle. Coming back to the UK has been a bit of a shock, with many bars not going beyond offering a few dodgy European imports and (if you're lucky) Guinness and a couple of cask ales.
However, there are definitely some green shoots visible - Scottish supermarkets are starting to offer some craft beers (in the name of science, I sampled widely) and we found one bar in Edinburgh, The Hanging bat, which offered a selection of 16 craft beers in keg, and another half dozen or so from the cask. Most of the beers were sourced from within the UK and were just as good as anything I've found in the US; there must be other similar bars around the UK. So, while craft beer explosion that happened in the US has yet to come here, I don't think it's far away...
Another first impression that I've confirmed is that the baseline quality of food in the US is higher - pub grub almost always comes with some nice side salads or steamed veg, while the definition of a salad back home ("la salade anglaise", as I like to call it) still consists of a sad, naked mix of lettuce, cucumber and tomato. Excellent food does exist here at home, but in general you have to pay more for the equivalent quality. The one exception to this is ethnic food - Indian and Chinese food in the US is simply bland and terrible. I'm not sure if this is because the food is adjusted to the American palate or because they've just not had the same level of immigration? If I had a restaurant like Kismot in Edinburgh (amazing Indian / Bangledeshi deliciousness) or Banana Leaf in Glasgow (tiny little hole-in-the-wall doing the best South Indian food I've come across), then living in the US would be much more tolerable. We've only really sampled DC so perhaps other parts of the US does better, and Ethiopian and Latin-American food can be very good in DC.
While the superficial things like food and drink make living in the US good fun, when you consider: quality of life in terms of holiday / parental leave, primitive provision of socialised medicine and the American dream, which states you can have anything you want if you work hard enough but if you're poor it's your own fault for not trying hard enough; these things show that the US still has a lot of growing-up to do before it can really be considered a proper country. A fact I would like to repeat here is that only four countries in the world have no statutory paid maternal leave: Papua New Guinea, Liberia, Swaziland and the USA. When the "land of the free" is lagging behind Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Cuba and the rest of the world, you know something has to be fixed.
More poignantly, the recent US government shutdown demonstrates that the political system has basically ground to a halt and is making the country ungovernable. However, the prolonged madness of the shutdown has at least highlighted how bat-shit crazy the Tea Party wing of the Republican party actually is. Hopefully there is enough anger in the country to force some sort of political change although I can't imagine what shape this change would take.
The thing that is most confusing about the US is that I meet huge numbers of people who would agree with most of the last two paragraphs - many Americans are actually very reasonable, intelligent people who believe that the government should do more to help the poor and sick, and that the US should engage positively with the rest of the world. But the design of the US political system is such that a small minority of nutters can bring the whole thing tumbling down. If everyone plays by the rules, the US system should force compromise and produce better legislation. This fails when someone throws their toys out of the pram.
It is fascinating, if nothing else. We're just over halfway through our American adventure now: we initially planned to come for two years, but science is going surprisingly well so we'll stick around a bit longer. My complaints may make the US seem like a terrible place at times, but it is very easy to live there, even without a car or a decent credit rating. One thing that the US does do much better than the UK and parts of Europe (and, sadly, also Canada now, but that is another story) is that it still invests heavily in its science and even though grant approval rates are at an all-time low, the system it at least relatively transparent and the playing field is fairly level.
Whilst the US is a very good place to do science, is that enough to make us consider staying there long term? In a word: no. Although we're enjoying our time there and are grateful for the opportunity to do our science there, the US is just not home. As individuals, it's easy to live there but as left-wing, environmentally-aware, socialist hippies, we don't really belong in the US. It would also be nice to live in a country where at least one of us does not need a visa..! It's looking increasingly like we belong in Europe, especially now that Stephen Harper (evil conservative Prime Minister) is working his hardest to undo everything that makes Canada good. But that will need a long rant into itself, so will have to wait for another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment