I haven't seen a single attic or basement here in Australia.... We have a manhole in the ceiling, and a garage, rumpus room, laundry under the house. Hot water also comes from a hot water tank, heated by electricity rather than gas. All single taps in this place, too.

Haha, that reminds me – in Croatia there is a widespread belief that drinking warm or even tepid water will make you sick/vomit. It doesn't matter that liquid food and drinks like soup and tea are drunk warm or hot with no ill effects, if it's plain water, then it must be drunk cool.

Also, for women: washing your hair during your period is very dangerous. Nobody can specify why exactly is it harmful for the body, you're just not supposed to do it.

It's there in Syria as well, though I don't think it has a specific name. But you quickly learn, especially with people you know, to tell whether the person is really doesn't want to or not. In a more formal situation with strangers you could either just take it, say you'd rather have something else, like you did with tea/water, or come up with an excuse they can't get around (you've just been to the dentist and really can't eat anything).

And you don't like tea??? Do they add lots of sugar to it? That's another small weird thing in Syria: people often add tons of it. 3 teaspoons to a small cup are common, and 5 or 6 are not unheard of. It's rare that people drink tea without it, unless it's for a health reason.
If you're on a good enough terms with the person to be able to say "forget takaluf" then you probably don't need to.

In Thailand there are lots of oddities mostly from rural superstition (don't whistle on the door or the bad spirits will come, don't keep an infant high at night outside because they have an ability to see ghosts in the dark, blaa blaa blaa...), but one practical thing that gets me every time (I may have told this earlier):

Waving to come forward looks oddly to me like waving you to go backwards. When I want to show someone to come forward, I have my palm facing upwards and/or towards me, and make gestures with either my fingers or my whole arm to come towards me, as if pulling them towards me. But the Thai way is to keep the palm facing downwards/towards you, and make a motion which looks like waving fingers from up to down. To me that looks more like "Hush! Go away!".

Like a couple of years ago I was parking my car and there was some person helping with the parking and showing the place, he waved his hand that way, meaning I should come forward. I thought "Oh, I should go back now? Ok then, I'll reverse...", which I did. It took me awhile to realize he was waving me to drive forward.

That reminds me, I'm not even sure how Thais wave someone to go away. Ok, sometimes I see someone doing a quick down-up hand wave for a dog, as if brushing it away.

Also the practices in traffic, when you are waiting to get to a road with your car or cross a road as a pedestrian, someone blinking their lights does NOT mean they will let you pass and make room for you (like it would normally mean in e.g. Finland, I think). No, it means the exact opposite, that you should not try to come in front of them, or they will surely ram you.


Furthermore I don't like it how in Thailand headlights are kept off until it gets dark. I like the EU way more where headlights must always be on. Then it is far easier to tell even in daylight if some car is really moving towards you or just parked on the side of the road, and also when it is getting dark, some Thai people won't turn on the headlights until it is really pitch dark. Or if it is a heavy rain, some turn them on, some don't. There doesn't seem to be definite rules when they should be turned on, so it varies from person to person. Many apparently turn them on only if they need them to see ahead, not a second before that.

Also, many Thais seem to get angry if I keep my headlights on at day time (not the far lights, but only the near lights, so it isn't like they should be blinding them either).

Hence, I prefer the headlights are always on, then there wouldn't be such variance and guessing when to keep them on or off.

Here you don't have to turn on your headlights during the day in the daylight saving period (March-October), but they have to be on at all times in the off period (October-March), and you can easily get fined. Many people get confused or forgetful – at first you condition yourself to turn on the headlights as soon as you start your car, but then suddenly you don't have to do it anymore. I prefer to have them off duright the day because the electronics dim my dashboard display when the headlights are on.

Some people, however, have both the headlights and forward and rear fog lights on during the day. They seem to be oblivious to the fact that it irritates other people's eyes something fierce, especially if they're right behind them.

I think here all cars sold automatically enable near lights when you start the car, so being "forgetful" isn't good enough excuse here. :) In order to use far lights, you'll need to enable "night lights" though, which will also dim the speed meter a bit and light up other controls, as then it is expecting it is dark outside, and also inside the car.

Here that happens only if you enable the "night mode": dims the speedometer etc. a bit (because they might be too bright for your eyes at dark times), lights up some additional knobs on the dashboard (as otherwise you won't see them in the dark), and enable the ability to use far lights, other than just blinking them. In the day mode, you can merely blink the far lights (is the correct term "high beam"?), not use them continually.

Here fog lights may be used only in fog or very heavy rain. If you use them elsewhere (daytime or night time), you'll get fined.

In Spain, if women make mayonaise during their period, it will go bad as they make it. And if their feet are swept with a broom they will never get married.

We have this way of using our language in which it's not all that unusual to call your friend "son of a whore" in a friendly way and calling someone smart can be something bad (as in smartass, but without actually using a different word).

Spanish is possibly one of the most colourful languages to insult people or be generally rude. To the point where words like dick or asshole are something we think are cute when children say it. We shit on someone's whore of a mother, god, the sea or whatever we feel like in the heat of the moment.

English had the same thing as well, except they used the French tu/vous system, i.e. 2nd person plural instead of 3rd person singular. There was "thou" for addressing a single person you were familiar with, and "you" for addressing multiple people or a single one in a formal register. "Thou" was gradually phased out, and today in English there is only "you", that means every English-speaking person everywhere is formal and polite. Modern Quakers still use(d) "thou" to emphasize that we're all brothers in God or something like that, so there's no need for excessive formality. :)

Yeah, that could simply be interpreted as another sort of takaluf.

Hahaha...3 teaspoons of sugar is the usual minimum. But no, I'm just not a fan of tea, or coffee or soft drinks, or hard drinks, or non-fresh juice or cigarettes, etc. I'm an incredibly boring person that way :D. A friend yelled at me angrily when I bought coke zero so as to have something to drink when another friend was treating a group of us "What's the point of drinking that, it has no sugar, no caffeine, might as well just have gotten water!".

Thou hasn't been in regular use in a long time though ^^

Wait, 'city guard'? Is that part of the police, or the equivalent of a traffic warden or a bunch of dudes in plate-mail complaining that they once took an arrow to the knee :-D
I think it might be closest to 'etiquette' which, like a lot of flowery English, is a word we nicked off the French!

So much this. AFAIK there is no name for it but it definitely exists. The sheer amount of ''polite'' back and forth that goes on when someone visits is crazy. Then the awkwardness when you can't eat what you accepted for some reason. The worst experience for me is tea. People don't let it cool down. So they'll be watching you with the finger melting cup of tea in your hand and insist that you drink.
If you're visiting your grandmother, all hope is lost because she is like that either way and being a guest just makes her more insistent.

Also a driving practice : whenever someone does some asshole-like behavior on the road, people just drive by and give them a long leer instead of shouting them down (less common) or blowing the horn (also less common).

Also; motor-scooters for girls and motorbikes for boys. Anywhere else have that tradition?