What's a skill that's taken for granted where you live, but is often missing in people moving there from abroad?
What's a skill that's taken for granted where you live, but is often missing in people moving there from abroad?
I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it's pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that'd be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can't ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning "swimming" made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
In the dry SW US the answer is drink water when it’s 100F or worse 115F+. Having a half liter of water from the hotel for the half day mountain hike, or pounding a half gallon of ice water and throwing up five minutes later. Your body doesn’t tell you when you should drink, it tells you when you are already behind on drinking.
Dealing with winter. I live in the rural upper Midwest, where winter can hit -20 with whiteout blizzards, week-long power outages, and car-burying snowdrifts. I've seen too many people move here from warmer places and think "I guess I'll buy a warmer coat and a snow shovel", rather than "I should have a backup generator, a backup heat source, a few barrels of spare fuel, a month's worth of stockpiled food, and at least two different pieces of heavy snow-moving machinery tested to be in good working order".
I guess here in Korea it's eating with chopsticks. In Sweden it was Swimming (especially for my Indian work mates). In Germany it was opening a beer bottle with anything you just happened to have in your hand at that time. In Poland I'm not sure, but probably making those elaborate sandwiches for parties.
If the country is big enough (aka Canada) these differences can be between provinces. People from Ontario can't ride bulls, but every kid in Alberta can. Newfoundlanders can fish but Manitobans are afraid of water. In British Columbia you are taught how to roll marijuana cigarette in high school but in Nova Scotia scotch is the bag lunch drink of choice.
Southern Georgia, USA.
This is more of a regional rationalization about occasional weather hazards. Here in coastal Georgia, we get snow from time to time, about a half an inch to two inches once every three to five years. There's a lot of people from colder climates that move here for work or retirement; they hear "a possible light dusting of snow" on the news or from a weather app and think that means nothing. Where they're from it's just normal, happens every year and there's often more. They'll even laugh at us for shutting down the schools and staying home from work for freezing rain. Here's the thing: no one here knows how to drive in snow and will likely only see black ice a dozen times in their lifetime. Further, we have no salt/sand trucks, we have no plows, we have zero civic infrastructure to meant to deal with our very occasional ice storm or light snow. It happens so infrequently that there's no way to justify spending taxpayers' money to prepare in that way for those kinds of situations. So we shut down the schools and most businesses for a day or so and everyone mostly stays home. We're not necessarily unprepared for winter weather, we just prepare in a different way that makes sense for the situation.
Just misunderstanding social cues. Where I live (Spain), there's a script you're supposed to follow for certain things and newcomers, understandably, don't understand the script. One famous example is buying new clothes. They all look great on. The idea here is that the poor person spent their hard-earned money on the new clothes. Damned right they look great on! Another would be birthdays celebrated in public venues. Perhaps someone you know is celebrating their birthday in a public venue and you had no idea they were celebrating their birthday on that day. You walk up to them and wish them a happy birthday, BUT you were not invited to this celebration. Since you weren't invited you did not come prepared with a present for the birthday person. The safe thing to do is to ignore, socialize with the people you came with, and make like that person isn't even there until they approach YOU. When and if they approach you, you make pretend you're all distracted and you have to be like, "Ahhh! I didn't see you! What's up?" The reason: that person is buying all the invitees the drinks and food. In exchange, the invitees have brought presents. It's a very nuanced and weird situation all of us have encountered. We err on the fear of not having brought a present because we had no idea because we were not invited.
Cutlery.
Growing up everyone around me could use a knife and fork, whereas chopsticks were something most people couldn't use or only used badly. It never occurred to me that the opposite might be true until I shared a meal with some co-workers from mainland China and saw how clumsily they used our utensils.
It wasn't until that point that I appreciated the amount of dexterity and finesse that goes into using cutlery well, and that I took it for granted because it's something learned in childhood.If you aren't from south / southeast Asia you'll struggle with our traffic. Our roads are a stream of everything from cycles to busses with no dedicated lanes. If you want to cross the road and can't find a zebra-crossing you gang up with other pedestrians, hold up traffic by shouting and waving, and cross.
Understanding languages you don't know - every city will have people speaking three or more languages, so you need to understand what someone is saying even if you don't speak their language. Broken English with gesturing is a lingua franca.
How to stay safe in the wilderness. We get too many people that aren't from around here that think you can do a hike late in the afternoon wearing sandals and only bringing a water bottle. People don't realize that the wilderness is a dangerous place if you aren't prepared. Weather can change rapidly and you need proper clothing and footwear to account for it. Make sure you have enough time for the hike and bring the essentials just in case something happens and you need to spend a night outdoors.
Pronouncing local place names. Lots of scattered areas here with place names that are spelled like other places names (for example we got a town called Egypt, a town called Binghamton, etc.) except that they're all pronounced differently. For example, we have a town called Leicester, named after the actual Leicester, and locals tend to raise an eyebrow when someone asks "how do you get to lester" (that would be the normal way to pronounce it)?
"Who's Lester? Is he the new guy in town?"
"What? No, the town."
"That's Leesester, not Lester."
"I'm sorry, wut?"
I of course just add to the confusion if I'm the one to break the news, as I have a Kiwi accent, which is atypical around here. So it becomes a "what do you know" kind of interaction.
Hiking and basic wilderness knowledge.
I live in the Mojave Desert. Simple stuff like knowing not to cut through bushes, wearing proper shoes, avoiding feral dogs, and always having something to defend yourself with when walking in the desert aren't common among a lot of people who aren't originally from here.
Male being good at talking and flirting with girls. Where I grew up (south of Italy) you have to be able to know what to do as a young heterosexual man, otherwise girls would completely ignore you. When I was young, italian girls expected "work" from boys, a lot of work. You could not throw money or take shortcuts (I don't know if it is still valid).
When I moved to north of Europe, in 3 different countries, I realized that for north european guys existing was enough to get many girls. It was so easy, girls flirt with you, they literally go after boys. You could do nothing and a girl would start flirting with you. And being decent at talking with girls meant that any average Italian guy abroad was a Don Giovanni.
I always think it’s weird when I run into people that can’t whistle or make a horn sound blowing a blade of grass. I’m not even talking like those ear-piercing 2-fingers-in-mouth whistles, just regular Andy Griffith style.
Definitely understand there are many whistling taboos(as there should be, Russia) and some bored rural-ness that factor in.
In my immediate surroundings: small-scale farming. The old folks all know how to run a few goats and sheep, will have a few pigs and chickens, a vegetable garden, some fruit and olive trees, grapes, small fields. Once you figure it out you can feed yourself comfortably, but it's a steep learning curve if you didn't grow up with it. Quite a few foreigners who move in because they dream of self-sufficiency overload themselves with new stuff and become overwhelmed. I still can't compete with my neighbors at gardening after 20 years but I'm getting the hang of it.
Walking on a slippery surface. In Scandinavia all kids learn to walk on ice and snow, where you don't have a solid grip while walking. When people from tropical areas migrate here at an adult age they tend to have a hard time walking around at winter. This also affects the ability to learn skiing. I have seen a ski instructor giving up on a person, due to this.
Swimming. My brother in law is from India and he never learned how to swim due to him growing up in a place with only one extremely dirty river and no other lakes or swimming pools near his family. Apparently no one in his family can swim. He kinda can swim now but it still looks funny. A bit like I must have looked from the outside when I learned to swim - as a six years old. I always found this very odd because the dude is smart, hard working and has a degree but it took years and him becoming a dad to realize that swimming is something pretty much everyone can.
Seperating Litter, I guess. Many dont do it correctly anyways, but its worse in other countries.
Speaking English I guess. Not the best, but better than in former eastern countries. But yeah, fuck colonialism, so not really a great thing.
Riding the bike. Everyone should do it, and shocking to see many other countries struggle with that even more.
Skiing is pretty much a must where I live
how to harvest produce, my town is surrounded from farmland, so we learned how to harvest everything from tomatoes to maize, from lemons to turnips
Parallel parking. And overall parking in anything else than a US parking lot. People have no idea how to move their car around if it doesn’t go straight forward or backwards. I’ve even seen people failing simple K-Turns. I have both a French and US drivers license. Also manual transmission, but that’s less surprising.
I feel like Latin Americans in general take for granted that you're supposed to pull and push everything to make it work. Sometimes with clever but shitty and overspecific solutions for the problem, or shifting the goals to something more achievable. Some examples:
Three examples:
home oven
The top of the inner part of your oven is partially corroded, so the top heating element does not stay in place. If you leave it as is, it'll get in the way, burn you, and burn your food. And you don't have money for a new oven. You're reasonably sure that the heating element is coated with some elec-proof stuff.
So what do you do? You put a big nail across the hole caused by the corrosion, and hold the element to that nail with some wire. "Just temporarily". (Nothing is more permanent than temporary hacks.)
Linguistics, field work
Linguistics. You're making field work on phonetics. You need clear records of speakers speaking their variety, that means good mic + noiseless environment. And yet you're studying a variety mostly spoken by farmers, and the ones willing to help you out can't travel, so you'll need to record them from a cellphone in their farm, and your record will be filled with pigs oinking, birds chirping, and a rooster going "CRAAAA" nonstop.
The solution? ...screw phonology, your paper is now about syntax. It's far easier to detect by ear if the speaker used pronoun reduplication than if he used [ɾ], [ɹ] or [ɻ].
Chemistry, organic synthesis
You got a synthesis route demanding glacial acetic acid (HAc). Except that the HAc bottle is empty, requesting another will take a week because bureaucracy, and oxidising ethanol to HAc through permanganate is bound to get someone screeching at you "YOU'RE WASTING OUR REAGENTS!!!".
Your solution? Run some quick maths on what's cheaper: 1) to distil supermarket vinegar, or 2) to use bleach to oxidise ethanol at some loss. Then you do it.
Swimming. Here, kids have to take mandatory swimming courses at school. I have quite a few eastern european friends, and they all tell me, that swimming is something that people learn if they want to and if they can afford it, but it's not learly an universal skill in their countries.
Most people who drown here are actually immigrants, who see everyone swimming and think that it can't be that hard...
Being able to recognize poison ivy. Growing up in a forest, it was one of many basic automatic skills learned in childhood, and I see and avoid it without much thought. I've had to prevent many friends from other regions or countries from causing themselves serious harm by ignorance of poison ivy, though.
I grew up in the US northeast. The general lack of knowing how to dress warm everywhere else is pretty surprising, so I guess that's the skill I'd pick.
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