Ice cream and France/America comparisons

A few weeks ago, while I was out on a day pass from the hospital, we stopped at a local ice cream place (which I just realized I can't link to if I want to maintain my thin veneer of anonymity). At this point I had been rapidly losing weight and had just been put back on a normal diet, so I decided to gorge myself on ice cream because I love it. It might be my favorite food, and if you look at Leesa's blogs, you'll see that I've eaten ice cream all over Europe, so I have a strong base for comparison of flavor, texture, and of course the amount of ice cream they give you.

I ordered a medium cup, so two scoops of ice cream. Not anything excessive, right? Well, I had forgotten how big American serving sizes are! I was handed a massive mountain of creamy goodness. I don't think this size exists in Europe, unless you can find XXL ice cream sizes there somewhere. Not only was this thing enormous, it also cost a mere $3.50. Dollars! $3.50! A medium anywhere in Europe will set you back an average of 4 euros, or $6. Not to mention the fact that it will be much, much smaller, approximately what we would consider junior size. This ice cream was so big that I had trouble finishing it. I know people say the serving size difference between the US and France is part of why we are all so fat, but I have to say I don't really think it's a bad thing. We get so much more bang for our buck here! I would much rather eat an enormous thing of ice cream that I find well priced than a tiny little thing for a lousy 5 euros.

Of course I don't have pictures. I'll just have to go back and get another one to prove how different the ice cream sizes are. The ice cream was of course delicious, but I think should have been stored at a less cold temperature because it was very hard. You don't want to have to chip away at your ice cream for ten minutes until it melts to the desirable consistency.

Another comparison: ease of getting things done. A few days ago an alert popped up on our TV, something about the switch to digital and that we need to get some equipment from Comcast to preserve our service. I don't really know what the deal is because we have new digital capable TVs and I don't know what the problem is. Anyway, the boxes we have to hook up to the TV arrived today. My parents set them up after dinner tonight, and they kept griping about how annoying it was that the boxes wouldn't just start working on their own once they had been hooked up, that they would have to call Comcast to activate them.

I burst out laughing.

I couldn't help it! How easy is this! We get these boxes that we hook up ourselves, then call Comcast, they push a button, and the problem is solved! Can you imagine how it would work in France? First you would have to call France Telecom to get the boxes sent. Then you'd have to call the guys from Neuf or Orange to come to your house to hook them up, but it would take a month to schedule it. Then they would tell you that France Telecom had sent you the wrong boxes, so you'd have to start all over from square one. You'd finally get Neuf to come attach and activate the boxes, but then your cable, internet, and phone would stop working. You'd call Neuf again, you'd have the same problems scheduling them, and it would take another month to get them to come out a second time. They might finally fix it, but chances are you would have some other problem crop up that might finally be resolved six months after you called France Telecom for the stupid boxes in the first place!

I really laughed at my parents tonight. They have no idea!