Only in Asia Experiences....

I saw this post on the excellent Seoul Life blog and really enjoyed it. First, it has to be great to have a boss who advises you to go home and have a few shots of whiskey as a cure for a cold. That's much better than the traditional Chinese solution, ginger boiled in sugar water (or the more modern version, ginger boiled in Coke).

Now perhaps I've been out in the suburbs for too long (like this guy), but the kind of strange moments that Seoul Life describes (even beyond the whiskey cure) just don't seem to happen in the United States. Weird conversations with strangers, headache inducing annoyances, and insane traffic jams are just shrugged off as part of the experience.

Beyond that, despite the stereotypes of Asian drinking in the US, there is definitely a unique and important drinking culture in Asia. In Korea and China, alcoholism is definitely a societal problem that, too often, is ignored. In these countries (in the Chinese case, its mainly in Dongbei), drinking is a test of one's manhood and a sense of personal pride. I remember that during my days as a law student, a Korean LLM classmate's biography on his law firm's webpage included that he was "pound for pound the top drinker in the country." Hmm...why do I see that being discouraged in the US?

So is it just me? Do these things happen in the US too? Have any good stories of "Asia moments'? Do share!