Thanksgiving in the US

          Where I come from, there are a variety of ethnic subcultures that practice many various rituals for different cultural celebrations each year. Often times, I am lucky to be able to witness and participate in those special occasions, due to the diverse range of friends I have.

            In the last four years since I have lived in the states, there is one occasion that is celebrated every year on the 27^th of November. Thanksgiving is one of the events filled with rituals and topped off with new memories every year. I had the pleasure of joining one of my teammates and her family for this wonderful holiday almost every year since I moved here.

            My teammate, Ellie and I would leave Bozeman on a Wednesday afternoon and drive for about two and a half hours get to her hometown, Great Falls. On Wednesday evenings of Thanksgiving week, the family would normally go to dinner at a popular local restaurant. This is followed by the latest movie out in the theaters. Sometimes, the kids would go to a different movie than the parents.

            The real fun begins the next morning. The whole family gets up at 7 in the morning for their annual and ritual ‘Burn the Bird’ run. Long distance running is probably my least favorite thing to do. But since it was a ritual for the family and the community of Great Falls, I had no choice but to experience it (only for my first year). Ellie’s mother usually does not do the run either. Instead, she stays home and begins preparations for the big meal that evening and I often stay back to help her in the kitchen.

            Every year, Ellie’s mother hand-makes a beautiful centerpiece with fresh flowers, for the dining table to honor the special occasion. When Ellie’s father comes home from the run, it is a ritual to turn on the football channel, where he watches his favorite team, the Steelers. He is so passionate about his team that he pulls out all his Steelers’ gears, which include towels, handkerchiefs, hats, etc., creating a shrine in hopes that his team will win.

            Ellie’s father is also always the person in-charge of taking out the turkey from the oven, and making sure the bird is cooked all the way through. Then, he carves the turkey for serving on a silver platter. As we all sit down with our plates filled with food, we joined hands to say grace before finally stuffing our faces.

            After the very fulfilling meal, the young adults and I prepare for the madness of Black Friday shopping by looking at all the catalogs, and circling down every item we could possibly want to get, for when the stores open at 2 a.m. Nowadays, Black Friday shopping starts as early as Thursday night—breaking the normal tradition and ritual. Stores are not even as chaotic and packed anymore these days, because everyone does their shopping early. I did, however, get to experience the true Black Friday shopping madness, on my first Thanksgiving in Great Falls, with the extremely long lines outside Target and the long waiting hours.

            I consider myself quite lucky to have observed and experienced Thanksgiving the way Ellie and her family does it, the true traditional American way.  

Food Photographers

If you didn't post it, did you actually eat it? Our culture today: We want the world to know that we actually DO eat. What we don't realize is, our food is getting colder by the second as we pick and adjust our filters and angles to take a picture. Honestly, our food probably taste better, if not just as good, if we didn't take a picture of it. I call this, a "foreign concept" for most of us. 

I take A LOT of pictures. Even of food sometimes. But if pictures of food are all we post on Instagram, maybe we need to find a new hobby. I know for me, when I see pictures of amazing looking food, my favorite foods from home, that friends posted, I get really upset. I don't like amazing looking food being thrown in my face and not be able to taste it. "Stop living life for others and start living for yourself". All this is doing is make me hungry. 

We all know that this is a grand scheme to impress and prove to people that we frequently "enjoy" extravagantly, lavish foods. Or perhaps, maybe some foods are just as beautiful as art that we have to capture this moment, OMG I ATE THIS!

I think it's time we enjoy the food that we are spending our hard earned money on. 

Quantity Over Quality?

Consumers from where I am from, absolutely love things that are cheap (or free). As long as products are being sold at a low price, there would be no complaints. Sometimes, people are not able to differentiate between the actual high quality products and low quality products. A lot of people that I know or have met has this mentality that cheap and large portion are the "good stuff". They are never quite bothered about the taste. But of course, this is a developing country, where money is hard to earn, inflation cause prices of all goods to increase, and high government taxes. In order to save more money, they had to sacrifice their taste buds for a little bit of savings. Taste 0-survival 1.

Often when we see coffee shops that are crowded in town, we would wonder, ''What could possible be so good here that people are actually lining up to eat?'' I would ask around to find out the specialty of the location and to my discovery, there wasn't any specialty at all. The food from every food stall are just average or the same as other coffee shops in town. I decided to conduct my own observations on a number of crowded coffee shops around town. It turned out that people just have that mentality that if there's a crowd, the food must be "great". I came to a conclusion that people are only present where the crowds are as well.

How Football is Just as Important as Turkey on Thanksgiving

What seems to be a timeless American tradition is lounging around all day, stuff our faces with food and watch football until we pass out on Thanksgiving day.

But obviously, when we are done with that, it is a custom to start a game of football yourself; that is if we had enough relatives and cousins around to run a full game. What I have come to learn and witness through American television and real life living in the US, football is played anywhere from the backyard, to high school rivalry games, college classics, and most definitely, the NFL. It seems so difficult to escape the sport that makes this country so great. So why avoid and fight it?

I learned that the rich history of this special occasion is as old as the game itself, and that there is nothing else Americans would want to be doing on this great day. This game is in fact a ritual, customary, on Thanksgiving. So, embrace it!

Pumpkin Spice Pizza Cake - Epic Meal Time

In honors of the annual halloween special: the PSL (or Pumpkin Spice Latte), I hereby introduce you to an "Epic Meal Time", a recent video uploaded to YouTube. This is perhaps the most intricate, yet the most basic food concoctions I have seen this fall.

Behold the Pumpkin Spice Pizza Cake! It is exactly what it sounds like--all the joys of the fall season mashed together to bring you the deliciousness of a pizza. Basically, the geniuses who made this video decided to put pumpkin spice all over endless strips of bacon and stuffed them inside a 3D pizza. The same pumpkin spice was added and mixed into the pizza sauce and cheese.

This health hazard contains 63,984 calories and 4,175 grams of fat. HELLO CALORIES!! I think this is quite disgusting. Well, if you love pumpkin ANYTHING, like a lot of my friends, you'd probably want to take a small bite of this. Enjoy with caution.

#RamNut

So what's this new food mashup recently, called RamNut? I, for one love cooking and tasting new recipes, whether they're ready made recipes or I come up with a mixture of my own creativity and the already known recipes.

I've heard cronuts are very good. But, you can only find them in certain places like, New York city. And then there's the deep fried Snickers. But this latest culinary creation, RamNut, I am not too sure about.

What is this creation done by Culinary Bro-Brown, you might wonder? Ramen and donut. Ramen is is known to be traditionally Asian, and well donut; American. Charmingly abbreviated the term "ramnut". This definitely leans further on the "gross" scale than we would like.

Just like a regular donut, instead of using dough, it is replaced by compacted ramen noodles, which is then frosted and filled with your favorite flavored creme (jelly, Boston creme, orange creme, etc.). I am more disgusted by this very unexpected mashup than anything, but who knows--maybe it will taste amazing if I got a bite of of it. The chef was not joking around when he came up with this concoction. 

Types of Shoppers You Meet On Black Friday

Black Friday is one of the most popular rituals in America, where you queue out front of every major retail stores in town, and you wait for hours until they open and you jump as fast as you can to get at the shopping items at a very large discounted price.

"Online shopping is great, but Entrepreneur.com maintains that in-person sales are the best place to start", and until today, it is still the jumping point for retailers and consumers for decades.

However, we consumers often get too caught up in the insanity and our eyes get too big when we are shopping that we never realized the type of shopper we are or even the people we are with. Here are the top four shoppers you will notice and meet on Black Friday (and you better hope you are not one of them!)

1. The Clueless:
The shopper that never knows what is going on upon entering the store. Either standing in the way of others or just--well, in the way.

2. The Revolutionary:
The customer that gets really angry with certain retail stores that does not follow through with their advertisements. This customer already has a certain expectation going into Black Friday shopping, but just to be disappointed when demands are not met. The reality is, most ads on Black Friday are not trying to deceive you but more so because they are not completely clear.

3. The Menace:
The shopper that unfolds all the shirts, unboxes all the skillets and crock pots, and perhaps, takes an item but decides he/she did not want it in the first place, so leaves it somewhere else, where it does not belong. Basically, all the handwork the employees put in are just all undone.

4. The Line-Cutter:
This shopper considers him/herself to be too important to wait in line. This short-tempered shopper could easily find what they want to buy long before the holidays and save a lot of time and hassle. Don't you think this shopper would have expected those long lines and wait?

American Ethic Subcultures

Ethnic subculture is a self-perpetuating group of consumers who share a common cultural or genetic ties, where both its members and others recognize it as a distinct category. African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans are the three most important ethnic/racial subcultures in the United States

Hispanics live in large, traditional, married-with-children families with lots of participation from grandparents. They’re moving to the suburbs, tend to be community oriented, and have high aspirations for their children’s.  By doing all this, they tried to create identity for themselves. These are different from the mainstream culture since families are closer and have a bigger impact on decisions. Especially the grandparents play a bigger role. Key issues to reach the Hispanic market are consumers’ degree of acculturation into mainstream American society and the recognition of important cultural differences among Hispanic subgroups.

African Americans comprise a significant racial subculture. The differences we do observe more likely are the result of differences in income, the relatively high concentration in African Americans, but these differences continue to diminish as African Americans move up the economic ladder. There are clearly some differences between blacks and whites in consumption priorities and market place behaviors that demand marketers’ attention. Companies tried to target African Americans different from the mainstream. One example is Procter & Gamble program “My Black is Beautiful” for African Americans after the company found after doing some research that these women think mainstream media does not represent them very well. There are several different companies that launch different campaigns to attract African Americans to their market and to set them apart of the mainstream.

Asian Americans are known from being the most affluent, best-educated, and most likely to hold technology jobs of any ethnic subculture. All this are non-consumption things that set them apart from the mainstream and express their values and lifestyles. Asian Americans are known for trying hard in school and always be updated with new technologies. Asian Americans are much more likely than average Americans (mainstream) to buy high-tech gadgets. This consumption characteristic help them express their lifestyles. Also, not only are Asian consumers the most frequent shoppers of all racial and ethnic groups, but they are also the most brand-conscious.  Almost 43% of them say they always look for a brand name when they shop (Solomon pg. 494). Also Asians are more concerned about keeping their appearances. More than a 26% say they buy what they think their neighbors would approve of. This is higher than any other subculture or the mainstream culture.

MSU Rituals

Many of our consumption activities-including holiday observances, grooming, and gift giving-are rituals. A ritual is a set o multiple, symbolic behaviors that occurs in a fixed sequence and is repeated periodically. Some Universities developed rituals over the years. I want to share with you some rituals at Montana State University.

The undie run is when students show their Bobcat pride by peeling down to their blue and gold bloomers to run a spirited lap around campus.

Another ritual is the Catapalooza which is a three day festival on Centennial Mall, the main walkway through campus, to welcome new and returning students to campus.

Hiking the”M” is one of the old rituals. The “M” has long been a symbol not only of Montana State University, but of the Bozeman community. The “M” is loved and cared for by the students, faculty, and staff of Montana State University.

Bobcat Fest is a celebration of graduating seniors on Main Street each April that features a live band, free food, and other giveaways.

  

Blue & Gold Fridays are just that. Every Friday, everyone wears Blue and Gold gear to show their school pride. Go CATS!

And last but not least, one of the most exciting rituals at MSU. Cat/Griz is one of the longest standing football rivalries in the country. Each November, the Cats go head to head with the Grizzlies of UM.

There are several more rituals at MSU, But this ones are the biggest ones that occur every year.

Gay Fans treated like Alcohol in World Cup, Qatar

Qatar will be hosting the 2022 World Cup and sports minister, Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali was "boisterous and blunt" about how great of a show he thinks his country would be able to display. When the question about how gay fans will enjoy the show was discussed, he was actually quite reserved.

"It's exactly like the alcohol question", he said.

Alcohol is heavily restricted in Qatar, but FIFA is in contracts with Budweiser. So, whether or not alcohol will be distributed during the 2022 World Cup, is still uncertain. The sports minister continued to say that in hotels and many areas, alcohol is available but also, the systems that people must respect. All rules and regulations set by FIFA will be followed and respected as the nation bids for 2022. He thinks that they can study those rules and lessen the impact on their people and tradition, and be creative on the ways in finding solutions.

With this message, Qatar's sports minister is implying that just like the case of selling alcohol, the nation hosting World Cup will be looking for creative methods to respect gay fans without seeming like they are accepted, because that would seem like the country is compromising their culture.

I think if they can study all these social issues, and be creative in having people come out to enjoy games without losing the essence of their culture, would make their country even stronger and keep succeeding. If Qatar is trying to avoid building this illusion that they accept all people, they definitely have succeeded.