Whats It Like Over There?

[clarky2o2o]

Unless you're going to a city built in the past like...60 years, good luck with that. Downtown new york or los angeles are FAR from cardboard. Its only in suburbia that everything blends together >_>

lol no 3 closest citys to where im going are cincinatti, OH ,washington DC and Charleston, WV

 

[Azalin]

Eh, washinton ain't too bad. Make sure you take pictures of the copoius amounts of protestors outside the white house though!

And i hear cincinatti has some interesting architecture.

 

[Alex.]

I'd like to move around first, before having a fixed home somewhere. Some of the places I consider are Montreal, New York City (especially this one, much for NYC), and of course anything Brit.

Craig was right in everything he said here, Europe is simply a more exciting place to live in, with greater variety and deeper roots. The North American continent is mostly bland, with the exception of the greater cities, such as NYC and Montreal. It drives me crazy, everywhere around me are empty pastures with plywood homes placed in a grid pattern, like in a tilemap. Boring + isolation = frustration and decay.

- Alex

 

[Trip]

It's true that the UK has some stunning buildings, but you tend not to notice them too much when you actually live here.

e.g. I've lived in Bradford my entire life, but never even taken notice of the town hall until they lit it up the other week & made it coloured to show off the architecture.

Shame on me

 

[inksmithy]

You guys think Europe sucks for console releases and so on, think about how hard it is in Australia. I have no idea when the wii will be released over there, but if its anything like past performance, it will be somewhere in the middle of 2007.

Everything comes later out there. Consoles, movies, comic books, everything.

It comes down to economy of scale. Australia has 20 odd million people, UK has maybe 55, the USA something in the region of 270m.

I came from Australia in late 2003 to live here in the UK (about 11 minutes drive from craig's shop/office/distribution centre) and the thing which bugs me most about it is the amount of people over here. Before we got married, my wife asked whether I had ever had a shag on a lonely road. I asked her to define a lonely road and she said 'a car every ten or fifteen minutes'. To me, thats a busy road, a lonely road is a car a day. I can't imagine what it would be like to live even in the south of England let alone just about anywhere in the USA.

 

[PokeParadox]

Actually Oz gets the Wii on 7th December a day earlier than Europe.

 

[Instantjewmix]

I start the coolest threads. hehe.

 

[inksmithy]

Actually Oz gets the Wii on 7th December a day earlier than Europe.

Is that right? I'll be buggered. Thats gotta come close to being a first.

My wife pre-ordered her Wii within a day or two of the shop allowing it, so far she has organised for the kids to be away that weekend and she's starting to put microwave meals in the freezer in preparation of the big day. I'm not sure whether to be grateful or fearful.

 

[skysnapper]

Australia got the DS before Europe too.

 

[inksmithy]

Australia got the DS before Europe too.

Well there you go, shows what I know!

Things must have changed since I left in 2003. Completely possible that the big makers have decided to use the place as a test market or something.

It was hell growing up there though, reading about all this stuff we wanted but wouldn't get for ages.

 

[Orkie]

To me, thats a busy road, a lonely road is a car a day. I can't imagine what it would be like to live even in the south of England let alone just about anywhere in the USA.

We have about 4/5 cars per (busy) day on our road, that is fairly quiet.

 

[Loubear]

To me, thats a busy road, a lonely road is a car a day. I can't imagine what it would be like to live even in the south of England let alone just about anywhere in the USA.

We have about 4/5 cars per (busy) day on our road, that is fairly quiet.

I live in a cul de sac.

 

[AcidiC]

Australia has shitty game release dates, and also crap pre-owned cultural trends.

 

[Blah]

I want to see the world, there are too many idiots here.

 

[refractor]

One of the things which does let England (and alas the rest of the UK too) down are some of the people, ie the social underclass we have of chavs, scum, dole cheats etc. whenever I come back to Newcastle airport and her some twat screaming on about something or other in broken slang chav English I do feel slightly ashamed.

That's one of the reasons I left the UK and hate going back. The underclass is a serious problem that sooner or later needs to be dealt with. Older people I've chatted with tell me that it works in cycles, with the socialism swinging back across to conservatism. I hope so. Britain was a great place, but I can't help but feel that it's going down the toilet. Too many people are sitting on their arses doing nothing, feeling that they're entitled to everything on a silver platter. For example, I know somebody who has more disposable income than I do. I'm married, no kids, university educated and work in IT (i.e. I'm not doing badly). She's unmarried, has 2 kids, left school to have the first kid, has never worked a single day in her life, and has benefits coming out of her ears (pick any illness or sickness that means she can't work and she'll claim she has it: asthma, IBS, ADHD, depression, etc, etc). It's just too easy. The whole "take take take" thing just disgusts me.

Another one. A woman I went out with was on the dole and had kids. She never bothered to even look for a job, 'cos she'd worked out how much the job would have to pay to give her the same amount of income as the benefits and there weren't any that she could do. Catch 22.

Sorry for the rant. I love the UK; I grew up there. But now I just can't help but feel that it's all screwed up.

 

[A_SN]

After travelling for a few years (including driving coast to coast to coast in the USA / Canada) I think England is the best place in the world (But I would say that, right?), maybe followed by rural France. I like some parts of Asia too.

One of the things which does let England (and alas the rest of the UK too) down are some of the people, ie the social underclass we have of chavs, scum, dole cheats etc. whenever I come back to Newcastle airport and her some twat screaming on about something or other in broken slang chav English I do feel slightly ashamed.

But what is great about England (and the UK) is how much variation and history there is, I can drive from my house to Europes biggest shopping mall in 10mins, then 15 mins south into Durham City, a city over 1100 years old (think harry potter location) and then 30mins west into the Pennine mountains then onto the lake district, then up and alongside the 1800 year old Roman Wall and back into Newcastle for dinner. What more cound I ask for?

My observations on the USA are that outside the cities it is like a 3rd world country and the whole place is like a cartoon background: the grid system and building things from what is basicly cardboard makes everywhere look the same (thus losing character) - and of course it has no history. My house is older than the USA.

Canada seems to look after its people a bit better than the USA and actually has some old buildings

Ah I could go on an on...

-Craig

I feel you, I was born in a 15th century house too, one with big ass wood logs on the ceiling, ceiling which was not much more than 6 feet from the floor. I now live in a 16th century village, although my house is (only) 25 year old and I have a roman road like half a mile from here.

Anyways, I've been to England a few times, and although Cornwall, London and the south east were pretty cool, the north was the worst place in the world. I recently went to Sunderland/Newcastle/Durham and that area SUCKS. People speak a form of english even worse than ebonics (I think they call it Jordy), it's cold as fuck, always raining (and I'm coming from Brittany!) and if it wasn't for the red bricks you hardly could tell you're in england by how this whole place lacks the english feel. I'm not even mentionning how food sucks, we went to Burger King (among others, but McDonald's was still decent, although not so good) and we ate the weirdest tasting burgers ever. I'm not mentionning either stupid drunken football fans and girls who all dress like £2 sluts.

But yeah, other than that, that whole american thing consisting in making up quickly a whole suburb with nothing but wooden houses that are all perfect clones quite surprised me, and well that sucks. Oh well, that kind of housing is not quite as bad as slave shacks that you can see in the countryside

 

[NoidZ]

We have this caves with salesman in it, some are kind others not.. Those ask allot of ruppees for stuff like a candles or shields.