Maniacal
the green Napoleon
You can't, because so many of the condos are owned by foreign investors and not actually being lived in by anyone. Same problem in Vancouver too....
Do you like where you live?
- Thread starter amadeus
- Start date
You can't, because so many of the condos are owned by foreign investors and not actually being lived in by anyone. Same problem in Vancouver too....
You can't claim that after you banned minarets.
ParadigmShifter
Random Nonsense Generator
Not really. There's too many people here who think owning an iPod touch is cool.
amadeus
Bishop of Bio-Dome
Well, as some of you may already know, I do not like where I live. My short-term objective is to get out, and my long-term objective is to stay out.
First, I live in a small town about an hour outside of Minneapolis. It's a major hassle as it makes meeting friends and socializing in general very expensive. The town also has a disproportionately high poor white trash population; meth busts are common. Crime is actually pretty bad in town too, with lots of break-ins to cars and burglaries. Utility rates are higher here than in Minneapolis because of the town's massive debts. The town also sucks at snow removal, so driving around town is like Russian roulette with cars.
The greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area isn't much better. Downtown, save for the skyway network that is only open for a few hours on weekdays, is boring. Downtown St. Paul isn't much better, save for better parking and less crime. Traffic congestion is terrible and the proposed "solutions" by our metro overlords always result in more roads getting torn up.
The "positives" that people point out aren't really positive at all. Bike trails, for one. Do you know how cold it is in this city? Who in their right mind would want to ride a bicycle here? Also, cyclists are nuisances on city streets because they don't obey traffic laws; the entitlement mentality is rampant in smug bicycle-riding Minneapolitans.
Lots of theater and art? Couldn't care less. I got roped into going to some ridiculous art performance thing a few years ago. It cost $20 and we had to sit there for nearly an hour before this woman came out and started making these horrible screeching noises on some instrument. The one silver lining from that story is that I was never invited to another one again.
Good shopping? Maybe 20 years ago. All the malls and shopping areas have gone downhill since. That applies to downtown, too; there used to be a lot more down there years ago, but they've all been converted to offices since then.
No Japanese grocery store. Some other major metro areas don't have them either, but at least those areas are within driving distance of other areas. I knew a couple of people that made a trip to Chicago, a six-hour drive, just to go to the Mitsuwa grocery store.
Kiplinger's had a good line about Minneapolis: "Minneapolis is progressive and hip, but with a Midwestern sensibility." That's right. Do you know what that means? Taxes. While the taxes are bad enough on their own, the "Midwestern sensibility" is really paternalistic Puritanism. Don't expect to buy alcohol on Sundays, and don't expect to find it in grocery stores. For places that do have alcohol sales, you have to go in and out separate doors. Politics in Minnesota is backwards too: the DFL (local Democratic Party) does everything in its power to try and make Minnesota the highest-taxed state in the country, and the GOP offers only token resistance and is content to be the party of complaining about abortion and not enough people going to church.
Lastly, Minnesota is cold. It's cold for six months out of the year. When it isn't cold, it's humid and mosquito-riddled. It isn't just cold, though, it's bitter cold. It's lose-a-toe-to-hypothermia cold.
Whew! That was a lot.
Maybe Perfection will have some positive things to say.
First, I live in a small town about an hour outside of Minneapolis. It's a major hassle as it makes meeting friends and socializing in general very expensive. The town also has a disproportionately high poor white trash population; meth busts are common. Crime is actually pretty bad in town too, with lots of break-ins to cars and burglaries. Utility rates are higher here than in Minneapolis because of the town's massive debts. The town also sucks at snow removal, so driving around town is like Russian roulette with cars.
The greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area isn't much better. Downtown, save for the skyway network that is only open for a few hours on weekdays, is boring. Downtown St. Paul isn't much better, save for better parking and less crime. Traffic congestion is terrible and the proposed "solutions" by our metro overlords always result in more roads getting torn up.
The "positives" that people point out aren't really positive at all. Bike trails, for one. Do you know how cold it is in this city? Who in their right mind would want to ride a bicycle here? Also, cyclists are nuisances on city streets because they don't obey traffic laws; the entitlement mentality is rampant in smug bicycle-riding Minneapolitans.
Lots of theater and art? Couldn't care less. I got roped into going to some ridiculous art performance thing a few years ago. It cost $20 and we had to sit there for nearly an hour before this woman came out and started making these horrible screeching noises on some instrument. The one silver lining from that story is that I was never invited to another one again.
Good shopping? Maybe 20 years ago. All the malls and shopping areas have gone downhill since. That applies to downtown, too; there used to be a lot more down there years ago, but they've all been converted to offices since then.
No Japanese grocery store. Some other major metro areas don't have them either, but at least those areas are within driving distance of other areas. I knew a couple of people that made a trip to Chicago, a six-hour drive, just to go to the Mitsuwa grocery store.
Kiplinger's had a good line about Minneapolis: "Minneapolis is progressive and hip, but with a Midwestern sensibility." That's right. Do you know what that means? Taxes. While the taxes are bad enough on their own, the "Midwestern sensibility" is really paternalistic Puritanism. Don't expect to buy alcohol on Sundays, and don't expect to find it in grocery stores. For places that do have alcohol sales, you have to go in and out separate doors. Politics in Minnesota is backwards too: the DFL (local Democratic Party) does everything in its power to try and make Minnesota the highest-taxed state in the country, and the GOP offers only token resistance and is content to be the party of complaining about abortion and not enough people going to church.
Lastly, Minnesota is cold. It's cold for six months out of the year. When it isn't cold, it's humid and mosquito-riddled. It isn't just cold, though, it's bitter cold. It's lose-a-toe-to-hypothermia cold.
Whew! That was a lot.
Maybe Perfection will have some positive things to say.
I didn't ban them because I'm not Swiss so I had no say in the matter. Just because the locals may have got 1 thing wrong (debatable) doesn't mean that they have got all things wrong.
How many things has your political system got wrong recently? Didn't your last state governor just get sent up the river for gross corruption?
Many, which is why I wouldn't characterize it as sane, nor any country in the world as sane.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Wait, what do they gain from that?
I said Switzerland was the most sane country I've come across. Note that this is a relative measure, not an absolute measure. I'm saying that it is more sane than other countries. I'm not saying that it is perfect - just better than anywhere else.
ParadigmShifter
Random Nonsense Generator
Right....
Right....
upholding a noble tradition guarding a reprehensible institution. how very Swiss.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
You won't be laughing once they shove a SIG SG 550 in your face.
ParadigmShifter
Random Nonsense Generator
I thought they only had Swiss Army knives.
Pardon my ignorance, but I have no idea what you are talking about?
Renner
Warlord
It seems Eastlink is available in my area now, I'll probably wait an see if the fibreop thing pans out though. I knew some people who had Eastlink and I would regularly have nearly half their ping to most servers, although that was a while ago now.
Ah ok, I see what you're getting at.
In my opinion, with the whole minaret thing, it seems as though the entirety of Switzerland has gone to the nutter bin, but I digress.
The Alps are pretty though.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Their service rifle? Just a light-hearted response to ParadigmShifter thinking the Swiss Guard are ridiculous.
Exactly. Those Swiss Army knives have everything. I think it's the right-most tool.
I met some Swiss people who couldn't stop complaining about how expensive it was though. So fine for you, not so much for ordinary folk....
The minaret thing is truly a storm in a tea cup as the British would say. Can you imagine a place where the local community decides how much tax we will pay; where the politicians are essentially powerless; a state that lives by its' brains rather than its' brawn; a place that doesn't tell other states how to do things. As close to paradise as currently exists on this planet. And we get beautiful scenery as a bonus.
It's nowhere near as expensive as it was when we first arrived 12 years ago. And salaries are considerably higher than in our neighbour countries. A check out chick at the local supermarket earns something like $40,000 a year.
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Living in an apartment in downtown Ottawa right now (just one street off Banks), and loving it. Ottawa's just the perfect balance (for me) between small town and big city (everything is reachable easily, but it still has a wide variety of services and shops so that "everything" actually include most of everything). It's also the right balance of English and French for me - I like English, but I'd miss French being too far away from it (as I learned when I visited, f.e., the States).
As for Ottawa's reputation for boringness, it's right the sort of boringness I,m right at home in. I'm not a party animal, but I love cafés and things like that., and Ottawa is much better at the later than the former.
It's also one of the more active NaNoWriMo regions in the world (48th out of several hundreds worldwide, 3rd in Canada - and in both cases most of the competition comes from cities that have twice or more the size of Ottawa), so that's pretty cool.
My apartment's also actually pretty nice. A bit small at first sight, but now that we've arranged it (I'm sharing with two friends) it's actually pretty nice. The internet's on the slower end, but that's what you get for living in Canada and preferring unlimited bandwidth to unlimited upload speed.
As for Ottawa's reputation for boringness, it's right the sort of boringness I,m right at home in. I'm not a party animal, but I love cafés and things like that., and Ottawa is much better at the later than the former.
It's also one of the more active NaNoWriMo regions in the world (48th out of several hundreds worldwide, 3rd in Canada - and in both cases most of the competition comes from cities that have twice or more the size of Ottawa), so that's pretty cool.
My apartment's also actually pretty nice. A bit small at first sight, but now that we've arranged it (I'm sharing with two friends) it's actually pretty nice. The internet's on the slower end, but that's what you get for living in Canada and preferring unlimited bandwidth to unlimited upload speed.
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