There was some D list celebrity that got big in a different field outside of TV but then miraculously had 34 felony charges amount to less than a slap on the wrist.

My grandmother sadly had to enter a TB sanitarium when she still had a handful of children at home. A couple of older sibs moved back home to help raise them. Eventually my grandfather started seeing another (married) woman in their small rural community. (My mother always said that once her mom learned of the affair, "she just gave up" and died at the sanitarium. This was about 3 years before the advent of antibiotics that might have cured her.)

So now grandfather was widowed, his youngest two kids moved to town to finish out high school by themselves, and the Other Woman had a baby that was putatively her (still) husband's child. I don't remember if her husband died or they divorced, but by the time I came along, my grandfather was married to the Other Woman, and had been for decades.

He was the patriarch of our very large family, the only grandparent I ever knew, though surely he couldn't have picked me out of a lineup, along with his dozens of other grandchildren. Anyway, this side of the family was fun, gregarious, beer drinking, Catholic church attending, poker players. Once during a pretty lubricated family get-together, the Affair Baby, now a grown woman, said something like: "I just don't know where I belong in this family" (because supposedly she was no blood kin to any of us). My lovely Drunk Uncle Nick said: "Well hell, you're our SISTER!" I was about 12. I swear the windows rattled from the seismic release of emotions over what was finally acknowledged.

When I was 5 my dad one day took me with him to visit a guy about buying a wagon. While they were talking I went into the backyard to play with the guys grandson. My Dad forgot I was with him and just left. He came back 25 minutes later and that was the very last time my Mom let my Dad take me anywhere until I was old enough to call home. The biggest plot twist is I'm now married to the grandson. But yeah my Dad hates if anyone brings up I got left so we don't.

In Singapore, people love Durian.

Now, let me be clear, there are only two teams in this, either you love it, or you don’t. But most Singaporeans I know love this. Heck we even have a building designed to look like this.

But take this fruit outside of South East Asia? God have mercy on you, as the wrath of everyone staring daggers at you. Not just for the looks (I mean, what’s up with that guy carrying this weird green spiky ball everywhere), but also the smell. Oh god that smell, it’s like something large died inside that bag, a smell so bad that if your nose could, it would vacate its position on your face and run screaming in the opposite direction of this pungent fruit.

The smell is so infamous , even the countries which love it bans its presence on public transport. But anyway, I digress. Most foreigners who come here would give a strange look to you if you started eating this fruit in front of them. But hey, their loss right?

During a foreign trip, I had a colleague, a US national, who took me around his city.

We were at a food counter and I was paying for the food items, when a penny dropped from my wallet. Being a religious person, I immediately took it up, touched it on my forehead and put it back.

Then, the mocking begins -

Him, with wierd smile - I have seen this before, why do you guys do that?

Me - We consider that money is God, infact a Goddess, and letting it fell down was a disrespect to it. While touching it on my forehead, I asked for a forgiveness.

Him, condescendingly - If money is God, can I worship it to get more of it? Will I get Indian money or US dollars?

Me - Yes, by worshipping God of work, that is by working more, you will get more money. You see that we have Gods for everything.

Him, trying to act smarter - Then what is a purpose of money God?

Me - Not only for money, but we have Gods for all animals and objects around us. That makes us respect every being and thing around us, and in turn we become a better person.

I mockingly continued….

And after becoming a better person, we go on to become CXO's of all the major US mnc's.

He was lost on words, probably trying to come up with a more wittier answer, but gave up after few seconds.

Probably, our religious activities are weird for rest of the world.

Let’s say you got invited to a Mongolian herder’s family. You arrive and meet the hosts and see a sheep outside. You play with it, take pictures and go inside the ger. While inside, the hosts prepare milk tea and some dry curds. After a while you go outside and see this: The cute sheep that was tied to outside the ger was your lunch. It was killed in your honor and you are about to eat it…. I have seen many times the shocked expression on the faces of the foreigners when they see that….

Denmark here.

When celebrating a birthday, we will carelessly decorate everything around us with our national flag ("Dannebrog"). The food, the cake, the gifts, the house, the dog. Everything. My last birthday, I was woken in bed by my daughter, singing, laughing and waving the national flag in my face. I loved it.

Ask any Dane. Flags equals birthday.

Birthday cakes decorated with our national flag, "Dannebrog".

I have no clue why we do it. It's not a nationalist thing. People across the political spectrum, from far far right to far far left, will do it. I guess we just like the colors, maybe.

But it gets weirder. In other contexts, the presence of even a single national flag will cause heated arguments. A few years back, politicians of our national parliament ("Folketinget") went nuts about the sudden presence of a (albeit pretty large) national flag inside the parliament chamber. A blatant symbol of nationalism and an outrage, some parties argued. Other parties thought it looked pretty neat. A large national conservative party even adopted the flag as their logo, much to the dismay of others.

But during birthdays, each and every Dane agrees that flags are a thing. Preferably a lot of them.

It didn't really occur to me until my daughter came of age and we started watching all sorts of non-danish TV-shows and cartoons together. Naturally, sometimes a character in one of these shows/movies/whatever will celebrate his or her birthday. "But daddy, where are all the flags?" she asked me. And she was absolutely right. I saw all sorts of decorations, silly hats, beautiful cakes, colorful flowers, balloons galore and candles - but no flags. Even in content from our immediate neighboring countries, Sweden, Norway and Germany. "They forgot the flags, love," I told her. "But dad, you can't celebrate a birthday without flags!" she almost yelled.

Well, not if you're from Denmark you can't.

Dowry

Fraudulent Saints

Making temples for celebrities

Cow in the middle of the road

Confusion between patriotism & nationalism

A flood in one part and a famine in another

Student suicides

Trains delayed by more than its running time

An angry anchor on prime time

Free internet but no free education

Mass production of engineers

Taking offence for no reason at all

Lack of political know-how

Capturing of poll booths

Arranged Marriages

Invisible law system for the rich

Vehicles on footpath

Elections 365*7 in some part of the country

Brain Drain

Misinterpretation of Feminism

Roadies

Politicians who never took sex education

Reservation system based on caste

Honour k**ling

Biased media

The list is long but at least we didn’t donate money to a girl so that she could become the youngest billionaire. We believe in corruption only!

As an American, something normal here, but (almost) nowhere else has to be The Imperial System.

So, while the majority of the civilized world is using simple, universal measurements based off of 10, us Americans (and Liberians) just use inches, feet, yards, and other things that don’t make sense and are outdated.

When watching the weather forecast, we Americans see the 32 Degrees Fahrenheit and are like “Yay snow!”

All while the Canadians up North (Or East for Alaska) will say, “32 is such a random number. What’s wrong with 0 Degrees Celsius? Well, Americans.”

There was a time that a $327 million space program designed to orbit Mars was destroyed just because the scientists were using because its altitude-control system used imperial units but its navigation software used metric units.

I feel bad for when people from other countries have to convert the Metric system to a far less optimal measurement system just because us Americans can be too stubborn to round to 10.

If the British invented the Imperial system, but later switched to the Metric system - why can’t we (Americans) do so too?

It’s just one of the myriad reasons other countries think we’re weird.

Iceland here:

If it’s 10degrees or hotter outside [50 degrees Fahrenheit, for Americans] we will go out in bikinis and sunbathe.

Almost every family owns at least one summer cabin that is frequently visited.

We say ‘good morning’ or ‘good evening’ to everyone we pass on the street, depending on the time of day.

We will often have long discussions (*hem* arguments) of what type of snow is snowing at the moment.

The first real day of summer was three days ago and almost everyone took a break from work to go and enjoy it (it was around 14 degrees or something).

It snows from August to June.

All the houses are built like fortresses so they can withstand the frequent earthquakes.

We await the next volcanic eruption with excitement.

Most of us watch football religiously.

Dried fish is a delicacy.

We loudly announce when we go to the toilet and ask if we have permission to do so.

Going on dates is a formal and a rare experience, not standard at all.

Blind dates is something that doesn’t happen.

In swimming pools we wash without clothes with everyone else of the same gender, no stalls.

We drink a lot of milk —it goes with everything.

We leave our babies outside in their prams -of cafes, our homes, in the garden, in our unlocked cars.

We love sauces; we probably have hundreds of different types, also ice cream shops normally have about six different sauces.

We will have barbecues in any weather.

We drink lots of alcohol: beer, wine, you name it.

It’s never cold inside our houses, ever.

We party until way after midnight —if you are camping and want to sleep, don’t camp next to Icelanders.

Believing in elves and trolls is normal and we have tons of stories that we’ve been told about them since we were young.

We have 13 Santa Clauses.

We have a Christmas Cat that, if you don’t get new clothes for christmas, will come and eat you (particularly children).

The christmas cat is owned by a pair of trolls called Grýla and Leppalúði. they are the Santa Clauses’ parents, who are also trolls.

Grýla kidnaps, cooks and eats misbehaving children.

We have a day dedicates to eating these delicious balls of air.

The water quality is 500% and so when we visit other countries we are dying because the water tastes so bad there.

We are taught from a young age that we should never ever ever step on the moss and if you do then u deserve to burn in hell (ok maybe not but that’s the idea).

Everyone hates Justin Bieber for that music video he did. (+We had to close down the park a part of it was shot in because the tourists were tearing up the moss.)

In winter we all wear the thickest coats you’ll see while still trying to stay fashionable and we all look giant.

Conjugation is a thing so a noun has 16 different variations of itself.

Tourism is the top industry of Iceland.

Ice cream is enjoyed whenever; in a snow storm or on a rare hot day; doesn’t matter.

I love having sex, I loved sleeping around when I was single, I am super sexually liberated and I have no shame about it.