1. The lack of movement and urgency for emergency vehicles. - This is something that I have seen so many times and I am still baffled by. Whether its an ambulance, police patrol car, or a firetruck (though you don't see them here that often), traffic refuses to budge. They will have their lights on full, sirens blaring and trying to move through the jam of cars yet no one seems to care or go to any real effort to move out of the way for them. The only conclusion I've come to over this is that they don't value the importance of emergencies here...
2. Customer service (or its absence...) - This is actually a pretty common thing but the worst (or best, depending on how you look at it) occurs at the supermarkets. Despite having a million checkouts, they refuse to open an appropriate number for how many customers there are and often have two or three open with huge queues behind each one. You would think that the people working would be going super fast trying to get through everyone and shorten the time people had to wait. You would think. But really? Nope. Just the other day I was at a supermarket and despite heaps of people there, there were only about 3 checkouts open. With huge queues for each one, I joined the closest and waited. When there were only two more people before me, the previous person packed up their groceries, while the assistant waited for them to leave. However, the person finished and left and the assistant casually reached into their pocket got on their cellphone and started texting! People in the line sighed and exasperated but no one said anything. Making people wait is not an issue here obviously.
3. Offering your place to someone older/pregnant/handicap. - There is pretty much no code of conduct on the metro. Like, at all. Its first in first served, full stop. I have often been on the metro and (while standing myself), an older person has got on and, despite all the people occupying seats being young, youthful men and women, no one stands up or offers their seat. Sometimes the old person will walk down the carriage to an empty seat, getting swung this way and that along the way with disgruntled looks and sounds as they nudge people along the way. I have also witnessed a lady with seemingly more children than Octo-Mum trying to usher them all onto the metro and then hold onto as many as possible while also managing a pram and the two strapped onto her front over her pregnant belly. People simply stared at her (perhaps thinking about how best to suggest birth control options) rather than offer her a place to rest her undoubtedly weary feet.
4. There are basically no bike rules. - So after having two close calls today (amusingly, the first was by a car going backwards, the second from a street cleaner) I realised that you can pretty much do anything on a bike and go anywhere and people may give you a bit of a weird look but won't question it. Helmets aren't necessary. In fact, wearing one will cause more confusion than not. Bikes can go on roads, footpaths, pedestrian paths, bus lanes, taxi and emergency service reserved lanes and on both the left and the right side of the road. The majority of this I have found out by doing them and I now consider myself quite a master at doing things that in most normal places would get you into quite a bit of trouble. At first, I felt reckless but was just following the crowd but after doing these manoeuvres right in front of a trio of cop cars and having no second glances (the proximity to the cop cars was not intentional FYI) I realise that bikes are pretty much invisible (and invincible) devices here. I've just got to remember not to apply this too literally to my biking.
To be continued....
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