At 6pm everyday (and in the morning at some point) the national anthem plays over a loud speaker all over the city and everyone stops what they are doing, hands by sides and looks straight ahead until the music stops. The cars used to stop too, but that's not the case anymore. And the younger people don't really stop all of the time either actually.
But tonight I happened to be at the market that I've been talking about here when the 6pm anthem played. It's a busy place and there is a lot of noise all the time, but when the music started everyone stopped. I followed along, hands by sides looking straight ahead...10 seconds go by, the music stops and as if the pause button went to play everyone started to move again. The woman next to me turned and gave a smile my way. I read it as "yup, we really do this everyday."
