legov

No rollercoasters in Iceland at all? What a shit place to live in.

I'm all super excited and giddy like a child. It's the Star Wars theme, isn't it? THE iconic Hollywood musical piece, bar none.

Have mixed opinions on this. Very complex (and sensitive) issue. Fire away. This is VT, anything goes. Might have something to do with how rapidly those societies are changing. You get people who have acquired large amounts of wealth in a very short period of time, but still have the mentality of someone from a lower social class, and thus lack intuitive knowledge of the social etiquette that is expected in societies that are economically more well developed. I don't know, just a hypothesis at this point in time. Sensitive, because it is politically an extremely sensitive issue, esp in Singapore. Mixed opinions, because while I do agree that these migrants often tend to be rude and uncouth, I understand at the same time that that is in all likelihood due to the fact that they are a product of their environment, which is different from the relatively affluent one I grew up in, so I try to accept them more than others generally would. Not to mention that I identify with them (as a Chinese person, and as a fellow human being), and so I try not to complain too much about their habits, whether I like them or not.

Have mixed opinions on this. Very complex (and sensitive) issue.

Ehhhh....we will see. That's not a lot to go on at all.

How the heck do they manage to spend so much every season?

Because the languages they speak are all very closely related to each other, which makes them easy to learn, assuming you already speak at least one of them. I doubt it has anything to do with an innate ability to handle multiple languages.

Wonder how many people on here have heard of Singlish before.

几乎像姚明一样高的巨人，更何况是皮肤深褐色的非裔人，这种人在内地乡村地区走来走去，真的是难以想象

You've been all over the world - </envious> I'm just confused, because you put "Chinese" and "Mandarin" side-by-side with each other, which suggests that they are at the same level of the language hierarchy - they are not. Linguistically, Mandarin is merely one of many, many Chinese languages (albeit by far the most widely spoken one) - Chinese is more like a language family (wiki article here). In colloquial speech, however, we often use the word "Chinese" (中文/汉语/华语）to refer to Mandarin (the Chinese world's lingua franca). (indeed, the Chinese often treat Chinese languages as variants of the same language - hence why the word "dialect" is often used misleadingly to refer to non-Mandarin Sinitic languages like Cantonese. Linguistically, however, they are separate languages.) There is written Chinese though - that's where it gets a bit blurry.

Am now genuinely interested to know how much Mandarin 8pints knows Edit: So which one is it?

That's more like 0.000001%.

Edit: nevermind!

Hot, huh.

not sure that anyone has says there is Well, theoretically, praising your children (in front of others or otherwise) would further encourage their interest in whatever they happen to be good at. Similarly, not praising them would act as discouragement. So the theory goes. (okay, okay, perhaps there's no need to to tell everyone about how impressive your children are...come to think of it, that might be counterproductive. Not sure, any psychologists on VT?)

Uni starts next week for me. Excited, terrified.

What's wrong with people (incl. kids) being the best they can be?

He only had 12 months to go on his contract and Madrid weren't the only club in for him. I think 20m is pretty much par given those circumstances. Yeah, I know, economics. Just lamenting aloud, that's all.

Why have 370 and 17 been placed in the same thread? Apart from the fact that both incidents involve the same airline, they are not related at all.

I'd agree with that. I think in large parts of Europe they have that cafe culture where they all pop along and can sit outside with their mates, have a casual beer or coffee because the weather is generally decent, just generally get along. Over here we sort of have to make the best of what we've got when we can, and too many end up bingeing and turn out to be utter cocks. Of course it's hard not to make sweeping generalisations when it comes to topics like this though. One thing I've noticed is on game shows just how little general knowledge the kids just out of education/uni have. They can just google rather than having to learn facts at school. I have this argument with my brother who is a history teacher and he says there's no need to actually teach them events or dates in our history any more. It's all just analysis and repeated essay writing. I don't know why anyone would be a history teacher and not want to share all of what's happened to make Britain and the rest of the world what it is. So what you mean is that they can google things, but they choose not to, and that results in them having little general knowledge, right?

Ah, Con, you make it sound so simple sometimes.