If you could live anywhere in the world....
Feb 23rd 2013, 4:55 am
#31
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Jan 2006
Location: Dubuque, Iowa, USA
Posts: 3,770
Feb 23rd 2013, 5:17 am
#32
Lost in BE Cyberspace
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 41,518
Re: If you could live anywhere in the world....
Feb 23rd 2013, 5:37 am
#33
BE Enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2011
Location: West Sussex - did 3 years in the US...
Posts: 577
Re: If you could live anywhere in the world....
I don't mind the heat too much in AZ - been here nearly 3 years now.
What I struggle with are perhaps minor...
1 - the staggeringly bad driving standards
2 - the level of self-absorption in a significant number of people here, which certainly doesn't help with #1
The GOP nut jobbery you can find most places.
In time I get used to #1 and 2 - gives me reason to bark at the moon, which I like to do frequently.
TV programming is sh1te - probably a generic thing.
The medical, political, financial, educational systems are utterly broken - not specific to AZ I am sure, though sometimes AZ seems to try harder to be more broken about them.
Being here is a career move. We don't plan to retire here - couldn't afford it.
Most other things I like. Most people I have regular interaction with here are just delightful, helpful, sincere, thoughtful, and all-round good eggs.
Oz, the small bits I have seen is nice. But I think for me & the Missus, the heart is back home in Blighty. The green, the rain, the family, the NHS, and decent tea!
What I struggle with are perhaps minor...
1 - the staggeringly bad driving standards
2 - the level of self-absorption in a significant number of people here, which certainly doesn't help with #1
The GOP nut jobbery you can find most places.
In time I get used to #1 and 2 - gives me reason to bark at the moon, which I like to do frequently.
TV programming is sh1te - probably a generic thing.
The medical, political, financial, educational systems are utterly broken - not specific to AZ I am sure, though sometimes AZ seems to try harder to be more broken about them.
Being here is a career move. We don't plan to retire here - couldn't afford it.
Most other things I like. Most people I have regular interaction with here are just delightful, helpful, sincere, thoughtful, and all-round good eggs.
Oz, the small bits I have seen is nice. But I think for me & the Missus, the heart is back home in Blighty. The green, the rain, the family, the NHS, and decent tea!
The people here are self-absorbed, to the point of selfishness. They do nothing to help counter the view that the rest of the world has of Americans as rude, fat and lazy. Those that they import to do their work for them (mostly H1 from India and China) are effectively a replacement for the 19th century slaves as they are not extended basic human rights and are paid significantly lower.
It's not just TV that is shite. It is every public service, because fundamentally, even though they sing patriotic songs, wave flags and shout "USA" like a bunch of automatons every day, they dislike any form of society with a passion. So, there is no public transport, a post service that doesn't work, schools that people are allowed to opt-in/out-of at will, no health-services, a nasty set of war-mongers funded to-the-hilt, and a Police State mentality to everything.
Ridiculous garbage spouted about "Free Trade" and "Freedom" - yet failed businesses are allowed protection and rise from the ashes time-and-time again; restrictive rules on "foreign" ownership designed to keep as many Americans employed so that they can buy their health insurance rather than deliver good service. Maybe if the US wasn't the only "Western" country not to provide universal health-coverage as a right as the UN has declared, they could allow some foreign know-how to come in and take over. But they can't allow that - the goal appears to have every American do "something" just so no-one else has to bother themselves about them.
And they manage to do all this whilst APPEARING to be pleasant, polite and friendly.
You have to hand it to them - it's quite a con trick.
Feb 23rd 2013, 5:42 am
#34
Life goes on.
Joined: Dec 2006
Location: Texas
Posts: 23,661
Re: If you could live anywhere in the world....
Actually, you've just described America-at-large.
The people here are self-absorbed, to the point of selfishness. They do nothing to help counter the view that the rest of the world has of Americans as rude, fat and lazy. Those that they import to do their work for them (mostly H1 from India and China) are effectively a replacement for the 19th century slaves as they are not extended basic human rights and are paid significantly lower.
It's not just TV that is shite. It is every public service, because fundamentally, even though they sing patriotic songs, wave flags and shout "USA" like a bunch of automatons every day, they dislike any form of society with a passion. So, there is no public transport, a post service that doesn't work, schools that people are allowed to opt-in/out-of at will, no health-services, a nasty set of war-mongers funded to-the-hilt, and a Police State mentality to everything.
Ridiculous garbage spouted about "Free Trade" and "Freedom" - yet failed businesses are allowed protection and rise from the ashes time-and-time again; restrictive rules on "foreign" ownership designed to keep as many Americans employed so that they can buy their health insurance rather than deliver good service. Maybe if the US wasn't the only "Western" country not to provide universal health-coverage as a right as the UN has declared, they could allow some foreign know-how to come in and take over. But they can't allow that - the goal appears to have every American do "something" just so no-one else has to bother themselves about them.
And they manage to do all this whilst APPEARING to be pleasant, polite and friendly.
You have to hand it to them - it's quite a con trick.
The people here are self-absorbed, to the point of selfishness. They do nothing to help counter the view that the rest of the world has of Americans as rude, fat and lazy. Those that they import to do their work for them (mostly H1 from India and China) are effectively a replacement for the 19th century slaves as they are not extended basic human rights and are paid significantly lower.
It's not just TV that is shite. It is every public service, because fundamentally, even though they sing patriotic songs, wave flags and shout "USA" like a bunch of automatons every day, they dislike any form of society with a passion. So, there is no public transport, a post service that doesn't work, schools that people are allowed to opt-in/out-of at will, no health-services, a nasty set of war-mongers funded to-the-hilt, and a Police State mentality to everything.
Ridiculous garbage spouted about "Free Trade" and "Freedom" - yet failed businesses are allowed protection and rise from the ashes time-and-time again; restrictive rules on "foreign" ownership designed to keep as many Americans employed so that they can buy their health insurance rather than deliver good service. Maybe if the US wasn't the only "Western" country not to provide universal health-coverage as a right as the UN has declared, they could allow some foreign know-how to come in and take over. But they can't allow that - the goal appears to have every American do "something" just so no-one else has to bother themselves about them.
And they manage to do all this whilst APPEARING to be pleasant, polite and friendly.
You have to hand it to them - it's quite a con trick.
Feb 23rd 2013, 5:50 am
#35
BE Enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2011
Location: West Sussex - did 3 years in the US...
Posts: 577
Feb 23rd 2013, 5:51 am
#36
I have a comma problem
Joined: Feb 2009
Location: Fox Lake, IL (from Carrickfergus NI)
Posts: 49,598
Re: If you could live anywhere in the world....
Actually, you've just described America-at-large.
The people here are self-absorbed, to the point of selfishness. They do nothing to help counter the view that the rest of the world has of Americans as rude, fat and lazy. Those that they import to do their work for them (mostly H1 from India and China) are effectively a replacement for the 19th century slaves as they are not extended basic human rights and are paid significantly lower.
It's not just TV that is shite. It is every public service, because fundamentally, even though they sing patriotic songs, wave flags and shout "USA" like a bunch of automatons every day, they dislike any form of society with a passion. So, there is no public transport, a post service that doesn't work, schools that people are allowed to opt-in/out-of at will, no health-services, a nasty set of war-mongers funded to-the-hilt, and a Police State mentality to everything.
Ridiculous garbage spouted about "Free Trade" and "Freedom" - yet failed businesses are allowed protection and rise from the ashes time-and-time again; restrictive rules on "foreign" ownership designed to keep as many Americans employed so that they can buy their health insurance rather than deliver good service. Maybe if the US wasn't the only "Western" country not to provide universal health-coverage as a right as the UN has declared, they could allow some foreign know-how to come in and take over. But they can't allow that - the goal appears to have every American do "something" just so no-one else has to bother themselves about them.
And they manage to do all this whilst APPEARING to be pleasant, polite and friendly.
You have to hand it to them - it's quite a con trick.
The people here are self-absorbed, to the point of selfishness. They do nothing to help counter the view that the rest of the world has of Americans as rude, fat and lazy. Those that they import to do their work for them (mostly H1 from India and China) are effectively a replacement for the 19th century slaves as they are not extended basic human rights and are paid significantly lower.
It's not just TV that is shite. It is every public service, because fundamentally, even though they sing patriotic songs, wave flags and shout "USA" like a bunch of automatons every day, they dislike any form of society with a passion. So, there is no public transport, a post service that doesn't work, schools that people are allowed to opt-in/out-of at will, no health-services, a nasty set of war-mongers funded to-the-hilt, and a Police State mentality to everything.
Ridiculous garbage spouted about "Free Trade" and "Freedom" - yet failed businesses are allowed protection and rise from the ashes time-and-time again; restrictive rules on "foreign" ownership designed to keep as many Americans employed so that they can buy their health insurance rather than deliver good service. Maybe if the US wasn't the only "Western" country not to provide universal health-coverage as a right as the UN has declared, they could allow some foreign know-how to come in and take over. But they can't allow that - the goal appears to have every American do "something" just so no-one else has to bother themselves about them.
And they manage to do all this whilst APPEARING to be pleasant, polite and friendly.
You have to hand it to them - it's quite a con trick.
That being said, there has to be a cooler place to live stateside than NE Illinois
. Sad to say, I find myself starting to agree in part with Eb. The Northern Ireland I remember seems not to exist anyone so it's time to make the best of it here ...
Feb 23rd 2013, 5:53 am
#38
BE Forum Addict
Joined: May 2009
Location: on the horizon
Posts: 4,382
Re: If you could live anywhere in the world....
Actually, you've just described America-at-large.
The people here are self-absorbed, to the point of selfishness. They do nothing to help counter the view that the rest of the world has of Americans as rude, fat and lazy. Those that they import to do their work for them (mostly H1 from India and China) are effectively a replacement for the 19th century slaves as they are not extended basic human rights and are paid significantly lower.
It's not just TV that is shite. It is every public service, because fundamentally, even though they sing patriotic songs, wave flags and shout "USA" like a bunch of automatons every day, they dislike any form of society with a passion. So, there is no public transport, a post service that doesn't work, schools that people are allowed to opt-in/out-of at will, no health-services, a nasty set of war-mongers funded to-the-hilt, and a Police State mentality to everything.
Ridiculous garbage spouted about "Free Trade" and "Freedom" - yet failed businesses are allowed protection and rise from the ashes time-and-time again; restrictive rules on "foreign" ownership designed to keep as many Americans employed so that they can buy their health insurance rather than deliver good service. Maybe if the US wasn't the only "Western" country not to provide universal health-coverage as a right as the UN has declared, they could allow some foreign know-how to come in and take over. But they can't allow that - the goal appears to have every American do "something" just so no-one else has to bother themselves about them.
And they manage to do all this whilst APPEARING to be pleasant, polite and friendly.
You have to hand it to them - it's quite a con trick.
The people here are self-absorbed, to the point of selfishness. They do nothing to help counter the view that the rest of the world has of Americans as rude, fat and lazy. Those that they import to do their work for them (mostly H1 from India and China) are effectively a replacement for the 19th century slaves as they are not extended basic human rights and are paid significantly lower.
It's not just TV that is shite. It is every public service, because fundamentally, even though they sing patriotic songs, wave flags and shout "USA" like a bunch of automatons every day, they dislike any form of society with a passion. So, there is no public transport, a post service that doesn't work, schools that people are allowed to opt-in/out-of at will, no health-services, a nasty set of war-mongers funded to-the-hilt, and a Police State mentality to everything.
Ridiculous garbage spouted about "Free Trade" and "Freedom" - yet failed businesses are allowed protection and rise from the ashes time-and-time again; restrictive rules on "foreign" ownership designed to keep as many Americans employed so that they can buy their health insurance rather than deliver good service. Maybe if the US wasn't the only "Western" country not to provide universal health-coverage as a right as the UN has declared, they could allow some foreign know-how to come in and take over. But they can't allow that - the goal appears to have every American do "something" just so no-one else has to bother themselves about them.
And they manage to do all this whilst APPEARING to be pleasant, polite and friendly.
You have to hand it to them - it's quite a con trick.
Feb 23rd 2013, 5:56 am
#40
Account Closed
Joined: Jun 2011
Location: UK
Posts: 4,891
Re: If you could live anywhere in the world....
Most of them are coming from parts of the less developed world, that's why it's so appealling. But for a European or anyone from another First World area, the USA doesn't have quite the same attraction or advantages.
Feb 23rd 2013, 5:58 am
#41
I have a comma problem
Joined: Feb 2009
Location: Fox Lake, IL (from Carrickfergus NI)
Posts: 49,598
Re: If you could live anywhere in the world....
The USA will get there, but it needs people like us to help it along the way.
Feb 23rd 2013, 6:05 am
#42
BE Forum Addict
Joined: May 2009
Location: on the horizon
Posts: 4,382
Re: If you could live anywhere in the world....
The logic's not that difficult to grasp - don't move to the countryside and start complaining about the smell of cow shit.
Feb 23rd 2013, 6:19 am
#43
Life goes on.
Joined: Dec 2006
Location: Texas
Posts: 23,661
Re: If you could live anywhere in the world....
Feb 23rd 2013, 6:22 am
#44
Life goes on.
Joined: Dec 2006
Location: Texas
Posts: 23,661
Re: If you could live anywhere in the world....
Somebody who hates the USA, but is happy to stay here while it suits their own needs, whining about Americans' selfishness, is just a tad ironic in my book.
Feb 23rd 2013, 6:22 am
#45
I have a comma problem
Joined: Feb 2009
Location: Fox Lake, IL (from Carrickfergus NI)
Posts: 49,598
Re: If you could live anywhere in the world....
