Sideswipe: November 9: Santa is here

Sideswipe - ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz·NZ Herald·

8 Nov, 2017 04:00 PM2 mins to read

Christmas comes early in Kingsland.

Common misconceptions about your country

1. My dad went to Kazakhstan from USA and they made him a bunch of meals with hot dogs: hot dogs for breakfast with oatmeal, hot dogs with potatoes for lunch, just always hot dogs. Turns out that the people of Kazakhstan believe that Americans eat hot dogs almost exclusively.

2. A Spanish acquaintance thought all of England came to a halt at 5pm every day so we could have afternoon tea.

3. In Turkey some dude was like: "Ah yes. Denmark. The capital of IKEA."

4. A friend in college who was here on an exchange programme absolutely lost his s*** when he saw those red solo cups at a party we were at. He could not believe they were real and not just "in the American movies".

He took like 20 selfies with them.

5. That women don't shave, shower or wear deodorant. I don't know where that came from. Most French women take really good care of themselves and can spend a fortune on hygiene/beauty products. (A few decades ago, France had relatively low sales of soap compared with Britain. The British assumed it was because the French don't wash, when actually it was because they were buying shower gel instead, which took a bit longer to catch on in Britain). (Via Reddit)

Near enough ...

"This was at the end of my road in Grey Lynn this morning," writes Phil McConchie. "How does a sign like this get all the way from conception to design, procurement, manufacture, delivery and deployment without it being noticed?"

Bum surgery fails to crack top 5

In 2016, there were 4251 people in the US who felt their bum needed a lift, and another 2999 got butt implants, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons' 2016 Report. According to the professional organisation, while cosmetic bum surgery may be increasingly popular, it still hasn't cracked the top five of cosmetic surgical procedures, which are breast augmentation, liposuction, nose reshaping, eyelid surgery, and facelift, in that order. (Source: Mental Floss)