What's your country like?
- Thread starter Loppan Torkel
- Start date
Loppan Torkel
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Didn't think it was that far ago, but it will do.Any changes?
Still fine in Sweden, but now with incompetent government and a bleaker prognosis. How's New Zeeland?
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
You know what's awful? Right wing governments
Hmmm old necro'ed thread. Anyway, if we're going to revive it:
I live in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Cons:
Service standards are truly awful. Restaurants that don't have half the stuff on the menu and how you have to really work to get attention before anyone looks at you. Sometimes at shops you have to stand around looking for the owner. I seriously wonder if they just don't care about making money at all.
Hotels that only have one working electrical outlet in the whole room.
Checkpoints usually aren't a problem except when they create a huge traffic bottleneck. Fortunately this isn't usually such a bad problem.
The foul smelling beans that are boiled on the street and in the bazaar. They smell like sweaty socks.
The way people think it's acceptable to make unsolicited comments about your weight and appearance.
You can go to another city and the dialect is completely different and you will have considerable difficulty understanding and being understood by most people.
People think drinking alcohol is unacceptable but there's nothing wrong with ripping you off.
Pros:
Taxis are very cheap.
People are very friendly and welcoming towards westerners, sometimes overwhelmingly so. Unfortunately people can be prejudiced towards people from 3rd world countries like India and Ethiopia.
Many people still wear traditional clothing as everyday wear.
The mountains are beautiful.
There's a very active street life compared to America where people just go around in cars all the time for the most part.
I stayed in Costa Rica for about 6 months and it's a beautiful country and most people are very kind and welcoming but the crime was really bad. I was fortunate that nothing happened to me but I felt like I had to always look over my shoulder.
I live in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Cons:
Service standards are truly awful. Restaurants that don't have half the stuff on the menu and how you have to really work to get attention before anyone looks at you. Sometimes at shops you have to stand around looking for the owner. I seriously wonder if they just don't care about making money at all.
Hotels that only have one working electrical outlet in the whole room.
Checkpoints usually aren't a problem except when they create a huge traffic bottleneck. Fortunately this isn't usually such a bad problem.
The foul smelling beans that are boiled on the street and in the bazaar. They smell like sweaty socks.
The way people think it's acceptable to make unsolicited comments about your weight and appearance.
You can go to another city and the dialect is completely different and you will have considerable difficulty understanding and being understood by most people.
People think drinking alcohol is unacceptable but there's nothing wrong with ripping you off.
Pros:
Taxis are very cheap.
People are very friendly and welcoming towards westerners, sometimes overwhelmingly so. Unfortunately people can be prejudiced towards people from 3rd world countries like India and Ethiopia.
Many people still wear traditional clothing as everyday wear.
The mountains are beautiful.
There's a very active street life compared to America where people just go around in cars all the time for the most part.
I stayed in Costa Rica for about 6 months and it's a beautiful country and most people are very kind and welcoming but the crime was really bad. I was fortunate that nothing happened to me but I felt like I had to always look over my shoulder.
hangman
almost-scientist
Texas:
Pros:
Cons:
Louisiana:
Pros:
Cons:
Yikes, how's the war affecting you?
It's like that in Morocco too, but I actually find the bluntness refreshing compared to all the passive-aggression that goes on around here.
Pros:
- Austin
- Tex-Mes food
- Scenic hills
- Bands actually come here (most bands skip most of the south)
- Pretty skylines in Houston and Dallas
Cons:
- People seem friendly but are phony as hell.
- Politics, religion, and sports have all merged into one.
- Houstonians who buy gigantic trucks to drive to their job 1.5 hours away.
- Racism
- High inequality
- Occasional hurricanes
- Urban sprawl
- The majority of white people here are conservative to the point of psychosis.
- General idiocy
- People talk annoyingly slow.
Louisiana:
Pros:
- Very culturally and ethnically diverse
- Cajun food
- Scenic swamps
- New Orleans
- Mardi Gras
- Festival Internationale
- Not QUITE as conservative as you might expect.
Cons:
- North Louisiana
- Hurricanes
- Rampant poverty
- Education system sucks (not as much lately, but the budget cuts will fix that!)
- Cartoonishly corrupt government
- Bobby Jindal
- Oil corporations
- Mosquitos
- Hardly any good beaches
- High murder rate
Yikes, how's the war affecting you?
It's like that in Morocco too, but I actually find the bluntness refreshing compared to all the passive-aggression that goes on around here.
Timsup2nothin
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- 46,737
I can't believe that people talking annoyingly slow made the cons list for Texas and didn't make it for Louisiana.
Perfection
The Great Head.
#1 
hangman
almost-scientist
They're nowhere near the same accents!
Cajuns usually speak pretty fast actually, with some dropped vowels and d's wind up sounding like rolled r's. We just slow it down for people who aren't used to it 
This is still very true, and even moreso now. We've had two federal elections since the beginning of this thread, both resulting in Stephen Harper keeping his job as Prime Minister. We're supposed to be having another federal election this coming October, unless Harper decides to have one sooner.
I didn't realize just how much regionalism there was until a recent story on CBC.ca in which a dismally inept freelancer wrote an article about the equinox/supermoon we just had, and stated that the next lunar eclipse would be viewable in Ontario and the Maritimes. Apparently it would not be viewable in Quebec, even though Quebec is between Ontario and the Maritime provinces.
Unless we're talking about whether or not niqabs should be allowed at citizenship ceremonies...
Honestly I'm not optimistic about Canada right now. For many reasons, but most of them have to do with Stephen Harper, who seems determined to compete with Brian Mulroney for the title of Most Corrupt Canadian Prime Minister.
Oh, and this spring that other people are having? There are still snowdrifts outside my window...
sophie
Break My Heart
Pros: It's great!
Cons: Shame about the no water thing though...
Cons: Shame about the no water thing though...
Tahuti
Writing Deity
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2005
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- 9,492
The Netherlands:
Pros
- Great cities (never have encountered a medium-sized city or larger I did not like at least a bit)
- House of Orange(!)
- Relatively sane drug laws
- Very compact, you could go to the most Southern part to the most Northern part and back within the same day, which I see as an advantage.
- A lot of water
- Our values - I'm kinda proud of Dutch directness, which seems to make us largely immune to buying into the passive-aggressiveness that is rather common in the US and elsewhere in Europe
Cons
- Muslim radicalism is becoming rather fashionable among Moroccans and Turks
- We have a very outspoken class of pseudointellectuals who do nothing else but copy each other's viewpoints, are being horribly PC and apparently get a lot of money for forcing their viewpoints into other people's throats
- A lot of water
- Most of our elected politicians are pawns to the US and international organisations
Pros
- Great cities (never have encountered a medium-sized city or larger I did not like at least a bit)
- House of Orange(!)
- Relatively sane drug laws
- Very compact, you could go to the most Southern part to the most Northern part and back within the same day, which I see as an advantage.
- A lot of water
- Our values - I'm kinda proud of Dutch directness, which seems to make us largely immune to buying into the passive-aggressiveness that is rather common in the US and elsewhere in Europe
Cons
- Muslim radicalism is becoming rather fashionable among Moroccans and Turks
- We have a very outspoken class of pseudointellectuals who do nothing else but copy each other's viewpoints, are being horribly PC and apparently get a lot of money for forcing their viewpoints into other people's throats
- A lot of water
- Most of our elected politicians are pawns to the US and international organisations
Wrymouth3
Emperor
I'll give Orlando since enough people around the world come here every year:
Pros:
-Growing city and jobs are plentiful. Seriously, every place is hiring like crazy around this area and a lot of the starting hourly and salary wages are very decent.
-Awesome diversity of restaurants
-Really really really cheap to live here
-Winters are truly awesome when you don't drop below 55 degrees
-No need for a car. What I mean by this is that the public transportation infrastructure is decent enough that you really don't need a vehicle if you aren't leaving the area. In an ideal world, I would think most people would not want to have the additional expense of a car and would rather decide on public transit.
Cons:
-It is Florida
-Weather is pretty unbearable in the summers when the humidity is near 100% and temperature gets near 100 Fahrenheit.
-Most tourists I've met are either unfriendly or so caught up in the whole tour aspect that it's really ridiculous. Example: A couple from out of state was fascinated that there is a university located in Orlando and pointed out to their children "Look at all the students who get to go to Disney and Universal everyday!" Tourons would be a proper word here.
-Racism continues to be a big problem around here.
Pros:
-Growing city and jobs are plentiful. Seriously, every place is hiring like crazy around this area and a lot of the starting hourly and salary wages are very decent.
-Awesome diversity of restaurants
-Really really really cheap to live here
-Winters are truly awesome when you don't drop below 55 degrees
-No need for a car. What I mean by this is that the public transportation infrastructure is decent enough that you really don't need a vehicle if you aren't leaving the area. In an ideal world, I would think most people would not want to have the additional expense of a car and would rather decide on public transit.
Cons:
-It is Florida
-Weather is pretty unbearable in the summers when the humidity is near 100% and temperature gets near 100 Fahrenheit.
-Most tourists I've met are either unfriendly or so caught up in the whole tour aspect that it's really ridiculous. Example: A couple from out of state was fascinated that there is a university located in Orlando and pointed out to their children "Look at all the students who get to go to Disney and Universal everyday!" Tourons would be a proper word here.
-Racism continues to be a big problem around here.
