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The "Complaints 'R' Us, complaint thread"

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  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 42,109
    edited March 2018

    ....growing up in Milwaukee, hearing German, Polish, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian was not unusual.  The Church our family attended held Sunday services in both English and German as well as the primary school taught German as a second language.

    Many rivers, lakes, and towns throughout the state also have French names (due to the presence French explorers and trappers before the territory became a state) and the biggest Bastille day celebration here in the States is in Milwaukee.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    ps1borg said:
    Mistara said:
    ps1borg said:

    Fruibats circling our trees backlit by a big ol’ fullmoon high in the northeast sky is quite a sight :)

     

    they leavin some pears for the lorakeets?

    Bats are into the Olive tree now, pears all long gone :)

     

    home grown olives?  heart  now i wishes i was a bat living in your yard

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675

    yikes  this is my journy home commute window

    36mph wind is an umbrella breaker 

     

    4:00 PM

    FRI

    		 Rain/Wind 41° 29°

    95%

    		 77% NNW 36 mph

    5:00 PM

    FRI

    		 Rain/Wind 40° 29°

    90%

    		 79% NNW 33 mph

    6:00 PM

    FRI

    		 Rain/Wind 40° 28°

    85%

    		 78% NNW 33 mph

    7:00 PM

    FRI

    		 Rain/Wind 40° 28°

    80%

    		 76% NNW 30 mph
  • NVIATWASNVIATWAS Posts: 1,242
    kyoto kid said:

    ....growing up in Milwaukee, hearing German, Polish, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian was not unusual.  The Church our family attended held Sunday services in both English and German as well as the primary school taught German as a second language.

    Many rivers, lakes, and towns throughout the state also have French names (due to the presence French explorers and trappers before the territory became a state) and the biggest Bastille day celebration here in the States is in Milwaukee.

    I think that if you never travel outside English-speaking countries there's not a practical point to learning a foreign language for most people.   But I personally feel it's arrogent to think that I can travel to, say, Poland and assume people will understand English!

    Of course, it's not just us.. we get a lot of folks from Mexico and South America that assume everyone in Texas speaks Spanish. :-| Can't count the number of times someone has come up to me and blasted away in Spahish, and won't take 'bi comprende Espanol' as an answer, so maybe it's a bigger problem and I'm just not exposed enough to it to se it on a regular basis... :-/

    Too bad Esperanto never caught on. :-P

  • NVIATWASNVIATWAS Posts: 1,242
    Mistara said:
    ps1borg said:
    Mistara said:
    ps1borg said:

    Fruibats circling our trees backlit by a big ol’ fullmoon high in the northeast sky is quite a sight :)

     

    they leavin some pears for the lorakeets?

    Bats are into the Olive tree now, pears all long gone :)

     

    home grown olives?  heart  now i wishes i was a bat living in your yard

    You'd be feasting on olives and pears all the time while fussing at lorakeets. Not a bad life at all!

  • NVIATWASNVIATWAS Posts: 1,242
    Mistara said:

    yikes  this is my journy home commute window

    36mph wind is an umbrella breaker 

     

    4:00 PM

    FRI

    		 Rain/Wind 41° 29°

    95%

    		 77% NNW 36 mph

    5:00 PM

    FRI

    		 Rain/Wind 40° 29°

    90%

    		 79% NNW 33 mph

    6:00 PM

    FRI

    		 Rain/Wind 40° 28°

    85%

    		 78% NNW 33 mph

    7:00 PM

    FRI

    		 Rain/Wind 40° 28°

    80%

    		 76% NNW 30 mph

    You'd think some bright young inventor would construct an umbrella out of thin Kevlar and titanium alloy to survive strong winds.  Probably cost too much... :-(

  • DanaTADanaTA Posts: 13,361
    NVIATWAS said:
    DanaTA said:
    NVIATWAS said:
    manekiNeko said:
    NVIATWAS said:

    ...Ocean, beach, mountains, forest, small towns and big cities...

    Actually, you just described New England, too!

    Dana

    Lots of New England is lovely, from what I've seen but you get a lot of FROZEN WATER FROM THE SKY so I hear.

    That is the thing that I hate more each year.  It is lovely to see when it's fresh, especially late at night.  But traveling in it is terrible.  Not that I can't hadle it, but so many others can't.  There are way to many idiots, and they think they can drive like on dry, summer, ground with no consequences.  So, watch out for the other guy takes on new meaning every winter.  I've taken some beautiful photos in New Hampshire, when there in the winter.  that's where it belongs, up in the mountain area!  laugh​  But, we don't get nearly as much snow here as in upstate Maine or Canada, or Minnesota

    There's a lot of nice farmland, flatlands, streams, rivers, falls, lakes large and small (in fact, a town near my city is called Lakeville!), ocean shores (Horseneck Beach is a popular one not too far from me, and there's the beaches in Newport, RI, and our own Cape Cod), salt marshes where you can see snowy egrets, great egrets, great blue herons (and I've even seen great blue herons in the pond across the street from time to time) rolling hills, mountains in various heights (even in Massachusetts - the Berkshires), Mount Washington in New Hampshire, the highest peak in the northeast, which also has the worst weather on the planet and had the strongest winds ever recorded 

    • Mt. Washington measured 566.4 inches of snow during the winter of 1968-69.
    • A 231-mph wind gust was observed in April 1934.
    • A temperature of 47 degrees below zero was recorded in January 1934.

    The snow is often still there in June.  In Tuckerman's Ravine, the snow gets to an average of 39 to 52 feet.  It has been recorded at 70 feet.  During the Spring, there are sometimes "snow bridges" that form during the melt that can be 15 feet high and are dangerous, because they can collapse at any time and bury you if you are hiking a trail that goes under one.  Mt. Washington has a layer of perma frost at the summit.  As you ascend the auto road (or the Cog Railway) you pass through three climate zones.  The second oldest trees are up at the tree line...they are shorter than I, such slow growth.  Three weather patterns meet at Mt. Washington, which contributes to the extreme weather.  One year I was up there with a friend.  We decided to go up the auto road.  It was around 80f in the valley.  We were advised that we needed something warm, it was windy and 40f at the summit!  This was in the summer on a hot day.

    Dana

  • frankrblowfrankrblow Posts: 2,052
    edited March 2018
    NVIATWAS said:
    Mistara said:

     

     

    		      

     

    		    

     

    		      

     

    		    

     

    		            

     

    		      

     

    		    

    You'd think some bright young inventor would construct an umbrella out of thin Kevlar and titanium alloy to survive strong winds.  Probably cost too much... :-(

    https://www.daz3d.com/clambrella for less than $6 right now.

    Rain, huh? We had less than an inch of rain here the other day, which was more than we had in the entire, previous twelve months. Can we have some of yours? Pretty please?

    Post edited by frankrblow on
  • DanaTADanaTA Posts: 13,361

    Well, a nor'Easter has begun.  This one has started with rain.  During the day tomorrow it will be heavy rain.  Add to that the wind, which will be steady around 20-25mph, with gusts around 55mph, and some gusts as high as 75mpy (hurricane strength gusts!).  Then around 6:30 to 7:30 pm it will change over to snow...with the standard icy mix between them.  Accumulation is expected to be 4 to 6 inches in my area.  It will end some time Saturday morning.  In March. 

    We can get snow at the end of the month up here.  And I still remember the April Fools snow storm in the 90s.  it wasn't just an inch, either...it was plowable snow.  I had to go to some training in Burlington.  I was on Rte. 24 north when I saw something coming southbound...it was one of those plow trucks with one of those huge v-shaped plows.  it was throwing a wall of snow over the barrier that looked to be 20 feet high!  I was in the left lane (of a 3 lane highway at that area).  The plow was in the left lane on the southbound side.  I thought it was going to break my windshield.  It didn't, but it did break loose my left turn/running light.  It was dangling by the wire.

    Dana

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 42,109

    ..when I was in Hawai'i in '88, went up to Mauna Kea on the Big Island (where the observatory is) and there was snow on the ground at the summit in late May.

  • DanaTADanaTA Posts: 13,361
    kyoto kid said:

    ...The Gimbel's in downtown Milwaukee was the ultimate in class, seven floors, a real "Bargain Basement", and a cafe on the first floor with a real soda fountain.  Much of the interior was deco inspired particularly on the upper floors, with high ceilings (see below).  The coolest part was they still had a bank of several manually operated lifts with large art deco styled brass glass doors (fun to watch the inner workings moving while waiting) a rotating arrow indicator above that pointed to which floor a car was on, and of course, uniformed lift operators who would announce each floor  (yep, actually heard "Third Floor: Women's Clothing, Nylons, and Lingerie").   Every holiday shopping season, one lift was designated as the "Toyland Express" which went straight to the 7th floor with no stops. During that time of year, several the street level large display windows were decorated with all sorts of anamatronic characters train sets and other things.  It literally was like living the film, A Christmas Story.

    The Boston Store a few blocks west tended to be more "modern" in its approach though still a favourite during the holidays.  They didn't have the elaborate holiday window displays or classy lifts that Gimbels did, but there was a monorail kids could ride in which was suspended from the ceiling that circled their Toyland floor.

    Here's the imposing exterior (now a downtown hotel)

    That sounds like the McWhirr's store in downtown Fall River, MA.  Animated window displays at Christmastime, elevators with the brass accordion doors, floor indicator with clock-like pointer on the half circle.  It wasn't seven stories, but I think at least four.  it seemed very big when I was a kid.  Santa was there every year, too.  It closed in 1975, two years short of its 100th anniversary.  It had brass-laden revolving doors, which I thought were cool when I was a kid.  I'd go around a couple of times when entering.  The noise from the street was instantly muffled as you entered.  

    Next door was the other big one, Cherry & Webb.  Both stores had animated displays at Christmastime, and actually had a competition going on.

    http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20110414/PUB03/104140351?start=2

    Dana

  • DanaTADanaTA Posts: 13,361
    LeatherGryphon said:
    manekiNeko said:
    NVIATWAS said:
    manekiNeko said:

    yeah, the cool thing (landscape-wise, maybe not so much travel-time wise or when you're stuck...) about the US * is that it's so big. so vaste. here it's so populated that unless you're in the middle of the high mountains, you can't help stumbling on human structures everywhere. also you guys have the sea, canyons, volcanos..
    do i guess right when i say that california has probably an excellent climate, warm all year round but not as scorching as texas?
    how was taiwan as a foreigner? and hawaii?

    true, when industrialization doesn't go on par with ecologic efforts, the results are catastrophic for the environment. and megapoles are not human friendly - overpopulation drives people nuts, everywhere.

    always been my dream to move to sweden - sadly, no way we can all beam up there ~

    * (and probably also china, russia, australia - huge countries/continents)

    California, at least Central and Northern California, have a lovely climate compared to most of Texas.  The downsides are: earthquakes, fires, mudslides, insanely high cost of living.  My small studio apartment in Silicon Valley cost me US$1350 a month, not including utilities!!! No place for a low to middle income person.

    I was in Taiwan when I was 7 to 9 years old.  I remember a LOT of it, the country and people made a permanent impression on me.  At the time it wasn't polluted or crowded, we lived in a house in a town outside Taipei called Pey-to, Dad hired a maid/assistant for Mom since he was off doing erm 'stuff' for the government.  Her name was Oohmai if I recall.. she taught me some Chinese, took me out to net-catch shrimp for soup, even had me over to dinner wth her family! I developed a permanent love for Chinese food of all sorts, along with a deep long relationship with good rice, and a permanent 'thing' for Asian women *blush*. Everyone treated us all likfe family, in retrospecy I suspect a lot of it was due to what my Dad was doing.  The places I recall, like the hot springs at Seven Star Mountain, are long gone.  Very sad.

    I was only in Hawaii for 3 months while we were on our way to Taiwan.  I remember beaches, learning to snorkel, and developed a permanent love for tropical fish. I do recall folks were kind of stand-offish, I hear it's worse now in some parts of the island.

    It's so weird how perception and experience can be so varying.   I was warned that people in Paris were snotty and mean, and warned that if I tried to speak French I'd get laughed at.  I had just the opposite experience, everyone was friendly, my French wasn't disparaged, and I found the city nice and the folks decent.  Of course this was 20 years ago, who knows how it is now?

    I've never been treated like an 'ugly American', but then due to all the travelling my parents did when I was young I went in with a dairly broad cultural background, and never assumed that everyone spoke English. My Mom was a wizard at languages, she'd learn first then teach Dad and I enough to get along.  I crammed on French before I went to Paris, even for the short trip because it's dim to expect people in their own country to speak my language!!

    Anyway, I rant, sorry!

    right.. the fires. how could i forget that, i've just recently been talking to someone from there on smackjeeves... earthquakes too? charming. at least no tornados.. :( we have mudslides here too.
    yeah but silicon valley? you picked a place where people make fortunes in a blink from some software or other cyber idea... no wonder it was ruinous..

    those are great childhood memories :). did you keep some of the chinese you learned? also, lmao @ the part with the asian ladies ;)
    i love asian food too, sadly i had to increasingly refrain to eat a lot of things due to my intolerances. still use my wok to cook what i'm still allowed to though.

    i wonder if it's not a common thing in super-touristic places that the locals are sometimes aloof with strangers (i can understand it too).. happened to me in greece on a small island too, they really didn't appreciate us being there - still knowing some of their jobs depended on tourism...

    was in paris 2 times i think, just in passing, and the only place i felt ok was... in the tube/underground, because it reminded me of london, a city i love. same as in other french cities, i didn't feel at ease nor welcome at all - and i speak current french, my first language. funny enough, where i live now is not too far from france, and i have a few french friends i appreciate a lot.. :shrug: - maybe you just have to know the people first, like be presented/have something in common/meet for a particular reason before the ice breaks?

    i don't know but i can guess that if someone behaves decently and makes an effort towards people and culture in a country they visit, they won't make such a bad impression, at least not on sensible people. you have haters everywhere of course. many of the tourists accused of being ignorant obnoxious jerks usually behave like the cliché they illustrate perfectly..

    haha, not ranting, this is called human interaction, right? ^^

    Being such a large country, the US has a built-in disadvantage in the language department.  Only in the big cities and along the borders do you find many people who even experience hearing more than one language.  Much less practice one.  Things have changed a bit in the last 30 years with the introduction of Spanish in large numbers.  But there is a great deal of language momentum and unwillingness to learn or even accept the presence of anything but English.  There is a smattering of French in the northeast near Montreal and in the south in Louisiana.  Some oriental languages in small areas around the country.  But for the most part I find that many Americans are smugly and blissfully ignorant of the rest of the world cultures and languages simply because most of them can't travel far enough to have had a foreign experience.  (Canada doesn't count.) indecision

    I have traveled the world a bit and I am interested in other languages but I'm not much good at languages.  I know a smattering of Spanish, Italian, German and Russian but not enough to be comfortably conversant.  But for most Americans there is still no need or even desire to learn another language.  English is too pervasive around them their whole lives.   And if truth be told, I notice a great many Americans who casually slaughter English too. surprise

    In Fall River, MA, the city where I grew up, there were several languages spoken regularly.  Not that I knew any of them.  But I grew up in a mostly Portuguese area of the city.  It's not a huge city, but it had an Irish section, a French section, a Polish and Ukranian section, and overall a large Portuguese and Cape Verdian population.  As I was growing up, I was never aware of any prejudice.  Things may have changed a bit in later years.  Still, not so much as neighboring cities, I think.  Plenty of crime there, now, though.  Sadly, my mom and one of my sisters still live there.  I escaped in 2001.

    Dana

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 42,109
    edited March 2018
    DanaTA said:
    kyoto kid said:

    ...The Gimbel's in downtown Milwaukee was the ultimate in class, seven floors, a real "Bargain Basement", and a cafe on the first floor with a real soda fountain.  Much of the interior was deco inspired particularly on the upper floors, with high ceilings (see below).  The coolest part was they still had a bank of several manually operated lifts with large art deco styled brass glass doors (fun to watch the inner workings moving while waiting) a rotating arrow indicator above that pointed to which floor a car was on, and of course, uniformed lift operators who would announce each floor  (yep, actually heard "Third Floor: Women's Clothing, Nylons, and Lingerie").   Every holiday shopping season, one lift was designated as the "Toyland Express" which went straight to the 7th floor with no stops. During that time of year, several the street level large display windows were decorated with all sorts of anamatronic characters train sets and other things.  It literally was like living the film, A Christmas Story.

    The Boston Store a few blocks west tended to be more "modern" in its approach though still a favourite during the holidays.  They didn't have the elaborate holiday window displays or classy lifts that Gimbels did, but there was a monorail kids could ride in which was suspended from the ceiling that circled their Toyland floor.

    Here's the imposing exterior (now a downtown hotel)

    That sounds like the McWhirr's store in downtown Fall River, MA.  Animated window displays at Christmastime, elevators with the brass accordion doors, floor indicator with clock-like pointer on the half circle.  It wasn't seven stories, but I think at least four.  it seemed very big when I was a kid.  Santa was there every year, too.  It closed in 1975, two years short of its 100th anniversary.  It had brass-laden revolving doors, which I thought were cool when I was a kid.  I'd go around a couple of times when entering.  The noise from the street was instantly muffled as you entered.  

    Next door was the other big one, Cherry & Webb.  Both stores had animated displays at Christmastime, and actually had a competition going on.

    http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20110414/PUB03/104140351?start=2

    Dana

    ....sweet. Glad to still have those memories as everything today seems so bland and impersonal in comparison.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • DanaTADanaTA Posts: 13,361
    kyoto kid said:
    DanaTA said:
    kyoto kid said:

    ...The Gimbel's in downtown Milwaukee was the ultimate in class, seven floors, a real "Bargain Basement", and a cafe on the first floor with a real soda fountain.  Much of the interior was deco inspired particularly on the upper floors, with high ceilings (see below).  The coolest part was they still had a bank of several manually operated lifts with large art deco styled brass glass doors (fun to watch the inner workings moving while waiting) a rotating arrow indicator above that pointed to which floor a car was on, and of course, uniformed lift operators who would announce each floor  (yep, actually heard "Third Floor: Women's Clothing, Nylons, and Lingerie").   Every holiday shopping season, one lift was designated as the "Toyland Express" which went straight to the 7th floor with no stops. During that time of year, several the street level large display windows were decorated with all sorts of anamatronic characters train sets and other things.  It literally was like living the film, A Christmas Story.

    The Boston Store a few blocks west tended to be more "modern" in its approach though still a favourite during the holidays.  They didn't have the elaborate holiday window displays or classy lifts that Gimbels did, but there was a monorail kids could ride in which was suspended from the ceiling that circled their Toyland floor.

    Here's the imposing exterior (now a downtown hotel)

    That sounds like the McWhirr's store in downtown Fall River, MA.  Animated window displays at Christmastime, elevators with the brass accordion doors, floor indicator with clock-like pointer on the half circle.  It wasn't seven stories, but I think at least four.  it seemed very big when I was a kid.  Santa was there every year, too.  It closed in 1975, two years short of its 100th anniversary.  It had brass-laden revolving doors, which I thought were cool when I was a kid.  I'd go around a couple of times when entering.  The noise from the street was instantly muffled as you entered.  

    Next door was the other big one, Cherry & Webb.  Both stores had animated displays at Christmastime, and actually had a competition going on.

    http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20110414/PUB03/104140351?start=2

    Dana

    ....sweet. Glad to still have those memories as everything today seems so bland and impersonal in comparison.

    Indeed!

    Dana

  • NVIATWASNVIATWAS Posts: 1,242
    DanaTA said:
    NVIATWAS said:
    DanaTA said:
    NVIATWAS said:
    manekiNeko said:
    NVIATWAS said:

    ...Ocean, beach, mountains, forest, small towns and big cities...

    Actually, you just described New England, too!

    Dana

    Lots of New England is lovely, from what I've seen but you get a lot of FROZEN WATER FROM THE SKY so I hear.

    That is the thing that I hate more each year.  It is lovely to see when it's fresh, especially late at night.  But traveling in it is terrible.  Not that I can't hadle it, but so many others can't.  There are way to many idiots, and they think they can drive like on dry, summer, ground with no consequences.  So, watch out for the other guy takes on new meaning every winter.  I've taken some beautiful photos in New Hampshire, when there in the winter.  that's where it belongs, up in the mountain area!  laugh​  But, we don't get nearly as much snow here as in upstate Maine or Canada, or Minnesota

    There's a lot of nice farmland, flatlands, streams, rivers, falls, lakes large and small (in fact, a town near my city is called Lakeville!), ocean shores (Horseneck Beach is a popular one not too far from me, and there's the beaches in Newport, RI, and our own Cape Cod), salt marshes where you can see snowy egrets, great egrets, great blue herons (and I've even seen great blue herons in the pond across the street from time to time) rolling hills, mountains in various heights (even in Massachusetts - the Berkshires), Mount Washington in New Hampshire, the highest peak in the northeast, which also has the worst weather on the planet and had the strongest winds ever recorded 

    • Mt. Washington measured 566.4 inches of snow during the winter of 1968-69.
    • A 231-mph wind gust was observed in April 1934.
    • A temperature of 47 degrees below zero was recorded in January 1934.

    The snow is often still there in June.  In Tuckerman's Ravine, the snow gets to an average of 39 to 52 feet.  It has been recorded at 70 feet.  During the Spring, there are sometimes "snow bridges" that form during the melt that can be 15 feet high and are dangerous, because they can collapse at any time and bury you if you are hiking a trail that goes under one.  Mt. Washington has a layer of perma frost at the summit.  As you ascend the auto road (or the Cog Railway) you pass through three climate zones.  The second oldest trees are up at the tree line...they are shorter than I, such slow growth.  Three weather patterns meet at Mt. Washington, which contributes to the extreme weather.  One year I was up there with a friend.  We decided to go up the auto road.  It was around 80f in the valley.  We were advised that we needed something warm, it was windy and 40f at the summit!  This was in the summer on a hot day.

    Dana

    My toes and nos froze reading that!!!! :-O

  • TJohnTJohn Posts: 11,352
    NVIATWAS said:
    kyoto kid said:

    ....growing up in Milwaukee, hearing German, Polish, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian was not unusual.  The Church our family attended held Sunday services in both English and German as well as the primary school taught German as a second language.

    Many rivers, lakes, and towns throughout the state also have French names (due to the presence French explorers and trappers before the territory became a state) and the biggest Bastille day celebration here in the States is in Milwaukee.

    I think that if you never travel outside English-speaking countries there's not a practical point to learning a foreign language for most people.   But I personally feel it's arrogent to think that I can travel to, say, Poland and assume people will understand English!

    Of course, it's not just us.. we get a lot of folks from Mexico and South America that assume everyone in Texas speaks Spanish. :-| Can't count the number of times someone has come up to me and blasted away in Spahish, and won't take 'bi comprende Espanol' as an answer, so maybe it's a bigger problem and I'm just not exposed enough to it to se it on a regular basis... :-/

    Too bad Esperanto never caught on. :-P

    If you speak slowly and loudly enough while making stupid hand gestures, everyone understands English

  • manekiNekomanekiNeko Posts: 1,451
    LeatherGryphon said:

    Being such a large country, the US has a built-in disadvantage in the language department.  Only in the big cities and along the borders do you find many people who even experience hearing more than one language.  Much less practice one.  Things have changed a bit in the last 30 years with the introduction of Spanish in large numbers.  But there is a great deal of language momentum and unwillingness to learn or even accept the presence of anything but English.  There is a smattering of French in the northeast near Montreal and in the south in Louisiana.  Some oriental languages in small areas around the country.  But for the most part I find that many Americans are smugly and blissfully ignorant of the rest of the world cultures and languages simply because most of them can't travel far enough to have had a foreign experience.  (Canada doesn't count.) indecision

    I have traveled the world a bit and I am interested in other languages but I'm not much good at languages.  I know a smattering of Spanish, Italian, German and Russian but not enough to be comfortably conversant.  But for most Americans there is still no need or even desire to learn another language.  English is too pervasive around them their whole lives.   And if truth be told, I notice a great many Americans who casually slaughter English too. surprise

    it's funny in a way, because switzerland is sooo tiny - and there are 4 official languages. although the 4th, rumantsch, is only spoken in the east mountains, mostly by a minority i guess is composed of many seniors and revivalists. their schools are even in mandatory german i think. but (swiss-)german is the most spread language, then french, then (swiss-)italian, whereby the dialects are not official but everyone speaks them, even in schools now (our grand-something parents had to speak the "high" language at school).

    the city where i lived before was officially bilingual german/french, and while some people still only know one or the other, most people speak both to various extents. good luck getting a job knowing only one, except maybe manual labor. offices deal with other parts of switzerland, and besides Ger/Fre they often ask you master italian as well. english is a given when you work with anything computer related, and anyways most people under 30-40 know it too to various degrees i think, even if just because of the net.

    my best friend and previous flatmate is spanish, she actually brought her mother to live with us then (what an experience! ^^) and i had grazed it in high school, so now i stumble my way through spanish too, with about as many mistakes as in italian, lol. i dabbled in russian for a few months, also in high school (but have forgotten pretty much everything, can barely decypher cyrillic now, and maybe present myself or say the weather is good *sigh*), and i had my weaboo phase, hence i stutter/vaguely understand a bit of japanese (which i'm far too ashamed to produce in the presence of natives!), but without subtitles i wouldn't get any movie/anime at all. i really regret not having put more energy, will & discipline towards learning those two better until i'm at least a bit fluent, and also improve my spa/ita a lot.

    the distances in the US are so phenomenal.. i can understand that people might live all their lives in the same region, which might be the same size (or even bigger maybe) as our whole country here. going anywhere is not so easy i guess, when you don't have the means. having one's family spread through the country must suck big time, unless you have a private jet... and yeah, english is pretty much the global language, which doesn't disturb me personally - even if some argue it's imperialistic, and there should be a neutral global language, i'll never vouch for esperanto, because while being an awesome idea, it's so fugly. so english it is... i like it a lot, and it's easy to learn, having been through useful reforms, unlike french/german. so yeah, if they have no use whatsoever to speak another language, why should they (i mean, the americans who don't) - it would equal to a hobby, and i'm sure they have other interesting ones. it is one of mine, and while i'm a bit good at it, i suck biiiig time at anything physical, so who am i to judge ~

  • manekiNekomanekiNeko Posts: 1,451
    kyoto kid said:

    ....growing up in Milwaukee, hearing German, Polish, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian was not unusual.  The Church our family attended held Sunday services in both English and German as well as the primary school taught German as a second language.

    Many rivers, lakes, and towns throughout the state also have French names (due to the presence French explorers and trappers before the territory became a state) and the biggest Bastille day celebration here in the States is in Milwaukee.

    yeah, i guess that american history, with all those pioneers originally coming from europe, has provided an interesting multicultural society, which is probably very different from what i know from here - as far as i could judge from movies etc. because their status, or the way the communities have been formed, is not the same. here, the immigration from foreign countries is pretty recent, i think after WW2 or even later, so the integration is not comparable (if you can even call it that), except maybe for italians/spaniards who came earlier (and we have an italian-speaking region anyway). they are considered foreigners here, unlike the "natives", even the younger generations were born/grew up in switzerland. it's slowly changing, depending on region and town size tho. so yes, you can hear a flurry of languages being spoken too. ^^

  • LeatherGryphonLeatherGryphon Posts: 12,220
    DanaTA said:
    LeatherGryphon said:
    manekiNeko said:
    NVIATWAS said:
    manekiNeko said:

    yeah, the cool thing (landscape-wise, maybe not so much travel-time wise or when you're stuck...) about the US * is that it's so big. so vaste. here it's so populated that unless you're in the middle of the high mountains, you can't help stumbling on human structures everywhere. also you guys have the sea, canyons, volcanos..
    do i guess right when i say that california has probably an excellent climate, warm all year round but not as scorching as texas?
    how was taiwan as a foreigner? and hawaii?

    true, when industrialization doesn't go on par with ecologic efforts, the results are catastrophic for the environment. and megapoles are not human friendly - overpopulation drives people nuts, everywhere.

    always been my dream to move to sweden - sadly, no way we can all beam up there ~

    * (and probably also china, russia, australia - huge countries/continents)

    California, at least Central and Northern California, have a lovely climate compared to most of Texas.  The downsides are: earthquakes, fires, mudslides, insanely high cost of living.  My small studio apartment in Silicon Valley cost me US$1350 a month, not including utilities!!! No place for a low to middle income person.

    I was in Taiwan when I was 7 to 9 years old.  I remember a LOT of it, the country and people made a permanent impression on me.  At the time it wasn't polluted or crowded, we lived in a house in a town outside Taipei called Pey-to, Dad hired a maid/assistant for Mom since he was off doing erm 'stuff' for the government.  Her name was Oohmai if I recall.. she taught me some Chinese, took me out to net-catch shrimp for soup, even had me over to dinner wth her family! I developed a permanent love for Chinese food of all sorts, along with a deep long relationship with good rice, and a permanent 'thing' for Asian women *blush*. Everyone treated us all likfe family, in retrospecy I suspect a lot of it was due to what my Dad was doing.  The places I recall, like the hot springs at Seven Star Mountain, are long gone.  Very sad.

    I was only in Hawaii for 3 months while we were on our way to Taiwan.  I remember beaches, learning to snorkel, and developed a permanent love for tropical fish. I do recall folks were kind of stand-offish, I hear it's worse now in some parts of the island.

    It's so weird how perception and experience can be so varying.   I was warned that people in Paris were snotty and mean, and warned that if I tried to speak French I'd get laughed at.  I had just the opposite experience, everyone was friendly, my French wasn't disparaged, and I found the city nice and the folks decent.  Of course this was 20 years ago, who knows how it is now?

    I've never been treated like an 'ugly American', but then due to all the travelling my parents did when I was young I went in with a dairly broad cultural background, and never assumed that everyone spoke English. My Mom was a wizard at languages, she'd learn first then teach Dad and I enough to get along.  I crammed on French before I went to Paris, even for the short trip because it's dim to expect people in their own country to speak my language!!

    Anyway, I rant, sorry!

    right.. the fires. how could i forget that, i've just recently been talking to someone from there on smackjeeves... earthquakes too? charming. at least no tornados.. :( we have mudslides here too.
    yeah but silicon valley? you picked a place where people make fortunes in a blink from some software or other cyber idea... no wonder it was ruinous..

    those are great childhood memories :). did you keep some of the chinese you learned? also, lmao @ the part with the asian ladies ;)
    i love asian food too, sadly i had to increasingly refrain to eat a lot of things due to my intolerances. still use my wok to cook what i'm still allowed to though.

    i wonder if it's not a common thing in super-touristic places that the locals are sometimes aloof with strangers (i can understand it too).. happened to me in greece on a small island too, they really didn't appreciate us being there - still knowing some of their jobs depended on tourism...

    was in paris 2 times i think, just in passing, and the only place i felt ok was... in the tube/underground, because it reminded me of london, a city i love. same as in other french cities, i didn't feel at ease nor welcome at all - and i speak current french, my first language. funny enough, where i live now is not too far from france, and i have a few french friends i appreciate a lot.. :shrug: - maybe you just have to know the people first, like be presented/have something in common/meet for a particular reason before the ice breaks?

    i don't know but i can guess that if someone behaves decently and makes an effort towards people and culture in a country they visit, they won't make such a bad impression, at least not on sensible people. you have haters everywhere of course. many of the tourists accused of being ignorant obnoxious jerks usually behave like the cliché they illustrate perfectly..

    haha, not ranting, this is called human interaction, right? ^^

    Being such a large country, the US has a built-in disadvantage in the language department.  Only in the big cities and along the borders do you find many people who even experience hearing more than one language.  Much less practice one.  Things have changed a bit in the last 30 years with the introduction of Spanish in large numbers.  But there is a great deal of language momentum and unwillingness to learn or even accept the presence of anything but English.  There is a smattering of French in the northeast near Montreal and in the south in Louisiana.  Some oriental languages in small areas around the country.  But for the most part I find that many Americans are smugly and blissfully ignorant of the rest of the world cultures and languages simply because most of them can't travel far enough to have had a foreign experience.  (Canada doesn't count.) indecision

    I have traveled the world a bit and I am interested in other languages but I'm not much good at languages.  I know a smattering of Spanish, Italian, German and Russian but not enough to be comfortably conversant.  But for most Americans there is still no need or even desire to learn another language.  English is too pervasive around them their whole lives.   And if truth be told, I notice a great many Americans who casually slaughter English too. surprise

    In Fall River, MA, the city where I grew up, there were several languages spoken regularly.  Not that I knew any of them.  But I grew up in a mostly Portuguese area of the city.  It's not a huge city, but it had an Irish section, a French section, a Polish and Ukranian section, and overall a large Portuguese and Cape Verdian population.  As I was growing up, I was never aware of any prejudice.  Things may have changed a bit in later years.  Still, not so much as neighboring cities, I think.  Plenty of crime there, now, though.  Sadly, my mom and one of my sisters still live there.  I escaped in 2001.

    Dana

    Yes, other languages are present around the US but not to the point where you need to learn them.  In this area when I was a kid you knew that parents of other kids spoke Italian or Swedish but you never heard it in school.  And the Amish around here speak something akin to German.  But you don't go into shops and have to deal with another language.  You don't see signs in other languages, and unless you tune into limited range radio or TV stations specifically you don't hear other languages, and why would you if you didn't have to?

    I really admire people who can speak more than one language.  It's like having two eyes instead of just one, you see another dimension of the world.  Even just the little bit I know of Russian, gives me the ability to see a sign in a movie, and be able to pronounce the word and in many cases figure out what it is telling me.  Whereas before, the sign was just wierd Cyrillic chicken scratchings. 

  • LeatherGryphonLeatherGryphon Posts: 12,220

    For the people east of Buffalo in the path of that storm, hunker down!  I woke up this morning to 8 inches of FROZEN WATER FROM THE SKY the consistency of cake frosting. surprise  I tried to sweep it off my porch and it just compacted into alabaster cement.  No mini-adventures for me today. indecision  And it's still coming down! sad

  • NVIATWASNVIATWAS Posts: 1,242
    Tjohn said:
    NVIATWAS said:
    kyoto kid said:

    ....growing up in Milwaukee, hearing German, Polish, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian was not unusual.  The Church our family attended held Sunday services in both English and German as well as the primary school taught German as a second language.

    Many rivers, lakes, and towns throughout the state also have French names (due to the presence French explorers and trappers before the territory became a state) and the biggest Bastille day celebration here in the States is in Milwaukee.

    I think that if you never travel outside English-speaking countries there's not a practical point to learning a foreign language for most people.   But I personally feel it's arrogent to think that I can travel to, say, Poland and assume people will understand English!

    Of course, it's not just us.. we get a lot of folks from Mexico and South America that assume everyone in Texas speaks Spanish. :-| Can't count the number of times someone has come up to me and blasted away in Spahish, and won't take 'bi comprende Espanol' as an answer, so maybe it's a bigger problem and I'm just not exposed enough to it to se it on a regular basis... :-/

    Too bad Esperanto never caught on. :-P

    If you speak slowly and loudly enough while making stupid hand gestures, everyone understands English

    OH!!! I'll try that next time! :-O

  • NVIATWASNVIATWAS Posts: 1,242

    I can recognize Kanji and katakana, from my days trying to learn some Japanese to understand what the anime was REALLY saying, can't speak/understand it.  I know a little Spahish, a little French, and 2 years of German in high school is still sticking with me a bit.  I can read some Sephardic Hebrew and know a few words, my ancient Grek is gone though 20 years ago I could *just* read a bit.  This was at the height of my study of comparative religion and I was dead set on reading as many source documents in their original language as I could.  Never got to study Aramaic, a very important Biblical-era language, and I gave up on Sanskrit after 5 months - it's worse than Mandarin Chinese! Plus, the way Sanskritwords were joined changed over the years so you needed to know WHEN something was written to know what compound words really meant.  German, for me, is the most logical, French is the most idiomatic. 'Pomme de Terre'? Apple of the Earth, really? :-/

    No wonder I prefer computer languages.,, :-|

  • NVIATWASNVIATWAS Posts: 1,242

    Speaking of pomme de terre, it's time to whip up some pomme frites' for breakfast!  Fresh red tater wedges air fried in olive oil, served with melted cheese... omg.. and coffee with French vanilla creamer since we're on the topic of langyages! :-)

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited March 2018
    LeatherGryphon said:

    For the people east of Buffalo in the path of that storm, hunker down!  I woke up this morning to 8 inches of FROZEN WATER FROM THE SKY the consistency of cake frosting. surprise  I tried to sweep it off my porch and it just compacted into alabaster cement.  No mini-adventures for me today. indecision  And it's still coming down! sad

    I am trapped indoors.  At the front, the way the wind tunnelled through it has meant that half the street is almost clear and driveable.  This side of the street, the old houses have drifts caused by the wind actually blocking the front doors, well mine is blocked anyway and I can't get out to check if it has picked on me especially, and yet the other side, where the new houses have gardens they have snow drifts in their gardens, but can get out to clear it as they have porches so not as thoroughly blocked as I am.   At the back I only have a 15 inch drift across the back door, but it is quite a trek to struggle out of that,  find a spde or shovel and walk up the garden along the back lane, down the next road and back along to my front door.  Not certain I care to try opening the front door to try to clear away a drift that varies from 2ft 6inches to almost 4ft. We are at 23f, (real feel 7f due to wind chill factor)

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675

    dealing with some extreme soggy big puddles and lots of kick up from cars driving by

    i brought my slippers and an extra pair of socks to work.  dry feets!

     

     

    Storm Warning for Long Island Sound West of New Haven CT/Port Jefferson NY

     

    Until 6:00am EST, Sat Mar 3

    Action Recommended: Avoid the subject event as per the instructions

    Issued by: New York City - NY, US, National Weather Service,

    ...STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM EST SATURDAY... * WINDS AND SEAS...NORTH WINDS 35 TO 45 KT WITH GUSTS UP TO 60 KT. SEAS 7 TO 12 FEET ON THE OCEAN. SEAS 3 TO 5 FT ON LONG ISLAND SOUND. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... A STORM WARNING MEANS SUSTAINED WINDS OR FREQUENT GUSTS OF 48 TO 63 KT ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. RECREATIONAL BOATERS SHOULD REMAIN IN PORT, OR TAKE SHELTER UNTIL WINDS AND WAVES SUBSIDE. COMMERCIAL VESSELS SHOULD PREPARE FOR VERY STRONG WINDS AND DANGEROUS SEA CONDITIONS, AND CONSIDER REMAINING IN PORT OR TAKING SHELTER IN PORT UNTIL WINDS AND WAVES SUBSIDE. &&

    Other Alerts in the Vicinity

    Other affected areas: New York City, NY

     

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    Chohole said:
    LeatherGryphon said:

    For the people east of Buffalo in the path of that storm, hunker down!  I woke up this morning to 8 inches of FROZEN WATER FROM THE SKY the consistency of cake frosting. surprise  I tried to sweep it off my porch and it just compacted into alabaster cement.  No mini-adventures for me today. indecision  And it's still coming down! sad

    I am trapped indoors.  At the front, the way the wind tunnelled through it has meant that half the street is almost clear and driveable.  This side of the street, the old houses have drifts caused by the wind actually blocking the front doors, well mine is blocked anyway and I can't get out to check if it has picked on me especially, and yet the other side, where the new houses have gardens they have snow drifts in their gardens, but can get out to clear it as they have porches so not as thoroughly blocked as I am.   At the back I only have a 15 inch drift across the back door, but it is quite a trek to struggle out of that,  find a spde or shovel and walk up the garden along the back lane, down the next road and back along to my front door.  Not certain I care to try opening the front door to try to clear away a drift that varies from 2ft 6inches to almost 4ft. We are at 23f, (real feel 7f due to wind chill factor)

     

    eek.  trapped by snow drift seriously complaint worthy.

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    LeatherGryphon said:

    For the people east of Buffalo in the path of that storm, hunker down!  I woke up this morning to 8 inches of FROZEN WATER FROM THE SKY the consistency of cake frosting. surprise  I tried to sweep it off my porch and it just compacted into alabaster cement.  No mini-adventures for me today. indecision  And it's still coming down! sad

     

    definitly shoulda hunkered this morning.  delta oscar hotel

  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675
    dragonfly_2004 said:
    NVIATWAS said:
    Mistara said:

     

     

    		      

     

    		    

     

    		      

     

    		    

     

    		            

     

    		      

     

    		    

    You'd think some bright young inventor would construct an umbrella out of thin Kevlar and titanium alloy to survive strong winds.  Probably cost too much... :-(

    https://www.daz3d.com/clambrella for less than $6 right now.

    Rain, huh? We had less than an inch of rain here the other day, which was more than we had in the entire, previous twelve months. Can we have some of yours? Pretty please?

     

    omg, luv that clambrella. orcs don't leave home without one

  • NVIATWASNVIATWAS Posts: 1,242
    Mistara said:

    dealing with some extreme soggy big puddles and lots of kick up from cars driving by

    i brought my slippers and an extra pair of socks to work.  dry feets!

     

     

    Storm Warning for Long Island Sound West of New Haven CT/Port Jefferson NY

     

    Until 6:00am EST, Sat Mar 3

    Action Recommended: Avoid the subject event as per the instructions

    Issued by: New York City - NY, US, National Weather Service,

    ...STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM EST SATURDAY... * WINDS AND SEAS...NORTH WINDS 35 TO 45 KT WITH GUSTS UP TO 60 KT. SEAS 7 TO 12 FEET ON THE OCEAN. SEAS 3 TO 5 FT ON LONG ISLAND SOUND. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... A STORM WARNING MEANS SUSTAINED WINDS OR FREQUENT GUSTS OF 48 TO 63 KT ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. RECREATIONAL BOATERS SHOULD REMAIN IN PORT, OR TAKE SHELTER UNTIL WINDS AND WAVES SUBSIDE. COMMERCIAL VESSELS SHOULD PREPARE FOR VERY STRONG WINDS AND DANGEROUS SEA CONDITIONS, AND CONSIDER REMAINING IN PORT OR TAKING SHELTER IN PORT UNTIL WINDS AND WAVES SUBSIDE. &&

    Other Alerts in the Vicinity

    Other affected areas: New York City, NY

     

    GEEBUS!!! Stay safe!!!!!!!

  • Charlie JudgeCharlie Judge Posts: 13,398

    Complaint: AOL is down and I can't get to my email

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