Got back from 10+ days in the States, most of it in Seattle where my baby sister is on maternity leave with her baby girl. It was nice being in the States on my own for a change (though I missed my girls terribly from day 1) - and it left me loads of time to contemplate life in the US and how things have changed or not so changed over the years.
One thing that caught my eye right away was on a restaurant menu. I'm used to asterisks next to menu items denoting things like, spicy, vegetarian, peanut-based, etc. But this time I noticed that every single asterisk referred to a dour sentence at the bottom, saying "Raw or undercooked food ingredients may cause food-borne illnesses".
Huh. At first I thought it was that particular restaurant being overly cautious. But there the sentence was, at every single restaurant that we went to. I guess it is a state-mandated disclaimer and the restaurants just want to cover their a**es. I do think this is somewhat over the top, though it does not come close to my favorite disclaimer of all times: "This shinguard does not protect the parts of the body that it does not cover". God bless America.
The other thing that was interesting was all this talk about the swine flu, which was just hitting its hysterics peak. But what interested me the most was that every day less and less people on TV were saying "swine" flu and were switching to "H1N1" flu - because of all the lobbying from the pork industry. The anchormen and women also said over and over, "Eating pork does not cause the flu". I found it funny that they thought it necessary to remind Americans of this fact repeatedly - but then again, 6 out of 10 Americans still do not believe in evolution, so I suppose it cannot hurt to be badgering the fact.
Anyway, back home now and back to life as we know it...
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