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I recently posted an article about discontinued snack foods, and many of our readers pointed out that some of the foods were still available in other countries. As it turns out, fast food companies operate in a similar manner, offering local favorites to other countries that they would never consider selling in America. Here are a few American fast food establishments and the dishes they don’t offer in America.
In Canada, poutine, fries covered in cheese curds and gravy, is offered at almost every fast food restaurant, but BK offers their own varieties that fit in with the rest of their food –most notably, the Angry Poutine with fried onions and peppers on top.
In Puerto Rico, mallorcas, sweet pastry buns, are a popular breakfast treat and Burger King takes full advantage of the popularity of these buns by offering the King Mallorca, filled with ham, eggs and three different cheeses. If you want something even more filling, you might want to try their Enormous Omelet, which isn’t an omelet at all, but actually one of the restaurant’s long hamburger buns filled with a hamburger patty, two eggs, bacon and cheese. Later in the day, you can always snack on some King Wings, which are buffalo wings marinated in honey –why aren’t these sold in America yet?
In many countries, including the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Colombia and Mexico, you can enjoy the deliciously fatty Cheesy Whopper, which features a deep fried disc of cheese on top of a standard Whopper.
Personally, I want to try the Hawaiian BK Chicken available in New Zealand, which is like all the other chicken sandwiches Burger King sells, only it features bacon and pineapple. Sign me up!
The variety of KFC’s international menus is simply astounding, as the American version exclusively limits itself to fried chicken and a few sides, while the international franchises seem to have no limits on what they serve. On the more standard side, there is the Fillet Tower Burger, which is available throughout Europe and other locations, which is essentially just a chicken sandwich topped with a hashbrown. On the other end of the spectrum is the menu from Thailand, which features stir fries, a tuna and corn salad, fish fingers (like chicken fingers, but fish) and a donut filled with shrimp meat. China offers a similarly strange menu compared to the standard KFC fare, as it includes corn salad, beef wraps, red bean porridge, shrimp burgers and an egg and vegetable soup.
more …
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, people in countries all over the world showed sympathy, solidarity, and support for the US as we mourned those we lost. Mental_floss has a roundup of the international reactions to the events. Here’s a small sample:
In London, the Star Spangled Banner played during the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, while traffic came to a standstill in The Mall nearby.
In Beijing, tens of thousands of people visited the U.S. Embassy, leaving flowers, cards, funeral wreaths and hand-written notes of condolence on the sidewalk out front.
In Moscow, women who spoke no English and had never been to the U.S. were captured on film sobbing in front of a makeshift tribute on a sidewalk, and every single church and monastery in Romania held a memorial prayer.
In France, a well-known newspaper, Le Monde, ran a headline reading, “We Are All Americans.”
In the Middle East, both the Israeli president and the Palestinian leader condemned the attacks, and made a show of donating blood.
Read the rest in a post by Haley Sweetland Edwards. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Thomas Ormston)
New York University has advice for international students in dealing with US Americans. A handy guide is posted on their website.
Americans generally believe the ideal person is self-reliant. Most Americans see themselves as separate individuals, not as representatives of a family, community or other group. They dislike being dependent on other people, or having others depend on them. Some people define this trait as selfishness. Others see it as a healthy freedom from the constraints of family or social class.
How is this value manifested into behavior? In individualist cultures, such as the U.S., it is assumed that people need to be alone some of the time and prefer to take care of problems by themselves. Another expectation is that people are ready to “do business” very soon after meeting, without much time spent on preliminary conversation. Also people act competitively, are proud of their accomplishments and expect others to be proud of their own accomplishments.
Reading this makes the USA seem like a strange, exotic culture. Which I suppose it is if you weren’t born and raised here. Link -via Breakfast Links
Buttered popcorn and Raisinettes are standard fare in U.S. movie theaters. In cities you can get nachos and pizza slices. But what do people in other countries munch on while watching previews of coming attractions? Several countries enjoy fish-based snacks. In India, potato dishes are common at the movies.
For Bollywood fans, Indian fare like samosas (potato-stuffed pastries), chaat (fried dough with potato, bread or chickpeas and tangy spices with yogurt garnish) and vada (a spiced potato sandwich) are the movie snacks of choice. Psst: You can also get them at cinemas in the U.S., like Columbia Park Stadium 12 in North Bergen, New Jersey.
Read about ten types of international treats at Woman’s Day. Link -via the Presurfer
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The Swedish Bed has a collection of Star Wars knockoffs, television ads, music videos, and parodies made in India, Brazil, Turkey, Japan, China, France, and the Middle East. Link -via Buzzfeed
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Blockbuster movies are often released in several nations at once, and we are used to selecting from several languages on DVDs by now. How much work goes into making other languages work in film? Slate explains how they do it.
The foreign actors’ voices have to match the age, texture, and comedic sense of the original. For a big celebrity such as Johnny Depp or Jim Carrey, a single actor in each country will dub all of the star’s films. Koichi Yamadera, for instance, is the official Jim Carrey of Japan. Studios also sometimes employ local celebrities, like when Disney hired the French singer Charles Aznavour to do the voice of Ed Asner’s protagonist in the movie Up. On rare occasions, the original actor will do the dubbing himself. Viggo Mortensen speaks Spanish, so he did a Spanish dub for Hidalgo. For the Castilian dub of G-Force, Penélope Cruz was unavailable, so her sister, Monica Cruz, got the job instead.
The mechanics of the process are also explained, as well as tricks some voice actors use to tweak their performance. Link
Today (April 4th) is International Pillow Fight Day; and from Amsterdam to Kuala Lampur, more than 70 cities around the world (including NYC and Moscow) have scheduled a place and time for an old-fashioned pillow fight.
It sounds like a lot of fun and for sure it is a way of getting rid of some anger issues without doing any harm!
Check some pictures and videos from previous city pillow fights and see if there is one scheduled in your city.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by scbr.
