[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
Well you’ve totally confused me and I’m a Brit.
I’m working class and nobody looks down on me if they know whats good for them,but that apart I cant honestly think of anytime anyone has ever looked down on me because of my class.
Well I look down on you…you working class oik 
bloody peasants, don’t know their place
Off Topic :
How well is the city recovering from the tsunami?
Joe
My uncle lived in Britain for two years, and left a very good job to return to the States. He said the #1 reason he and his family left were class issues in the UK.
Mainly the traffic. Regular motorists drive like Iraqi cabbies and cabbies drive like inebriated chimpanzees. Buses and trucks are best treated as if they are not under sentient control at all, and may go veering off at some random direction at any instant.
The noise, sometimes. People here have different standards. Nobody seems to notice blaring music that would have received dozens of calls to the cops almost anywhere in the US.
The chronic tardiness and inefficiency, not so much. That I’ve pretty much learned to deal with by coming late myself, or just shrugging it off and laughing.
But it is all made up for by all the great things that compensate.
I have say that in general it is pretty impressive, but I worry that much of it is unsustainable. Too much of the economy is dependant on aid money. But for a city that lost 25% of its people in one day, it is doing very well. When I think about it, I’m amazed it still even exists.
[QUOTE=chowder]
Well thats it then!you’ve blown any chance you ever might have had of joining the local polo club.
You can fuck off and buy your own mints!
Also I resent the implication that I’ve ever done a days work in my life.
The pluses massivly outweigh the few negatives, however…
Government beauracracy and an obsession with signatures and stamps which has nearly caused me to weep on occasions.
The driving, everyone seams to think the road is exclusivly for them and everone else should automatically move aside or cede right of way. The mind set appears to be, allowing someone to pass is tantamout to admitting to having a woefuly small penis and if you filter at a restriction, hell why not invite the person over to sleep with your sister whilst you are at it. Which is to say, none of the above happens.
What Colabri said up thread.
I’m not Chinese. I’m blond haired and blue eyed. Please, just yell “Nassara” (white person) at me when I walk down the street, not “Hee-Haw.”
OK, will do. But if you’re on a bike I’m going to crush your little blond head like an over-ripe melon…
[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
Working class oik is a figure of speech you uneducated lout.
I’m quite aware that you have never soiled your lily-white hands with anything so menial as work.
No, you and your ilk prefer to loiter outside Yates Wine Lodge begging for spare change in order to purchase drink and ciggies. You then stagger off to your hovels and proceed to beat the shit out of your slapper of a wife just because the poor wench hasn’t earned enough money on the “game” to supply you with a kebab supper.
And don’t get me started on your myriad sprogs, dirty, unclothed and half starved wretches
This is how far the “lower orders” have descended to :- Daily Mash 
I’m a brit living in the USA (NC) and I get annoyed by a fair few things:
Firstly, excuuuse me for not realising what an international person you are (50% chance you’re about to tell me about your visit to London, or how your grandparent was Scottish) and being polite by not assuming that you know I’m from the UK. Secondly, I’m NOT FROM ENGLAND! If you’re so international how come you think UK=England? Arrgh. small thing, but it’s the smugness that bothers me.
this is more my own hypocrisy. If you want to sleep with me because of my accent, fine, but that doesn’t mean I want to hear about your semester abroad when you went to stonehenge. I’m sure it was very interesting, but I’m tired of this conversation.
the bureaucracy here. As I’m sure you know, it’s tax season. This is just an example of how getting anything done in this country seems to require a lot of work.
the medical system. this is pretty well-worn, but I don’t mind paying. I do mind the incompetence, so much information seems to get lost between different providers.
everyone drives perfectly walkable distances, then complains about high petrol prices.
the infrastructure is awful: even the interstates are potholed, water pools everywhere in the rain, the lack of sidewalks, greyhound buses that would be illegal in the UK, standard 30 min delay on flights, even worse trains than the UK. Now Britain doesn’t exactly have a shining infrastructure, but it is dramatically better than the US.
cripplingly expensive fruit and vegetables, especially compared with how cheap junk food is. near me: full-size vegetable burrito: $2.30 inc. tax from mexican take-out. one tomato from the superstore: $2+. Isn’t that crazy?
whew, out of my system now.
This made me laugh. I think most foreigners in the US encounter this to some extent. “Oh, you’re from Korea? My friend’s cousin’s dog used to teach English in Japan!” My favorite way to respond to this is to put on a serious expression and say something like, “The Japanese are the sworn enemies of my people” and watch them stare at me and sputter.
[QUOTE=chowder]
So you DO know me
I thought there was something familiar about you.
Er I’m a Brit and personally my morals are in the gutter,if you’re a fit female and you want to use me for sex then I’m more then happy for you to tell me how you love the Queen,enquire ifI have met any of the Beatles AND tell me about your semester abroad including the visit to Stonehenge,you dont even have to tell me you love me or that you will call me.
Basically I’m a total trollope,obviously I feel terrible about being this way but I try to live with it and somehow just handle the pain.
Hope to hear from you soon(This FREE offer has no time limit and is not restricted to American women,attractiveness guidelines may apply)
I’m an Australian, and one of the most frequent questions i get is “What part of England are you from?”
Oh, Jesus, yes.
Unless you’re doing the most basic possible EZ form, American tax forms seem to have been designed as some sort of labyrinthine mental torture. I’ve worked,m and paid taxes, in Australia, the UK, and Canada, and none of them comes close to the US in the difficulty of the basic tax procedure.
I have no idea how undereducated people deal with their taxes.
Yep. The hostility to walking and to public transportation, except in a few specific cities (NY, SF, Chicago, etc.) get pretty irksome at times.
A friend of mine moved to Australia from the US a few years ago, and he told me that something he had to get used to was the different definition of “Just around the corner,” especially when it pertains to walking. In America, he said, if you were walking somewhere and someone said it was “just around the corner,” they meant literally, right around the corner. But in Australia, where walking is more common, “just around the corner” can actually mean a 10-15 minute walk.
Yes, although this sort of thing is regional, and seasonal.
Here in Baltimore, i can pay over $2 for a tomato at the wrong time of the year, but in the mid-to-late summer i can get 5 or 6 beautiful ripe tomatoes for 2 bucks.
A few weeks ago, my wife and i made a trip to California. The fruit and vegetable stores in the Mission, and the large Asian grocery stores, had nice tomatoes for 90c a pound, while we were paying $2.99 a pound for lower quality produce back in Baltimore.
I’m a Brit living in France and the things I really get wound up about are all the bureaucracy and the fact that there are no shops open on a Sunday, apart from the odd few grocery places/supermarkets and even those close by 1pm. Argle!
On the plus side, having a train/metro service that runs every single day of the week, including Christmas Day is pretty decent. When the’re not on strike that is!
mhendo: Glad you liked it! I love the produce shops in the Mission too; also the ones in Oakland’s Chinatown. Hope you come back & visit again sometime.
I understand that Baltimore has a very cosmopolitan feel to it. I’d like to visit there.
Everyone seems to hate the bureacracy in their host nations. I think this is a sign that bureaocracy dominates the entire world, and the only difference between your country and any random foreign country is that you’re used to the paperwork and notarization and required signatures and family history and photo IDs your own country requires, so you don’t notice it so much.
Also, in response to put down the sabre, parts of the USA have terrible transportation infrastucture because there’s a small amount of wealth spread out over a huge area. The southern states are notorious for this, even the “big” southern cities like Atlanta.
Other places have excellently maintained roads and at least some kind of organized public transportation. Here in Las Vegas, road construction and renovation happens literally all of the time. I have lived here for 12 years, and the freeways have been under major construction for some project or expansion or repavement literally every day since then. Also, you can get anywhere in the city on a public bus system that typically runs stops every 15-20 minutes on major routes, and 30 minutes on minor ones.
