Quote: (08-10-2011 12:14 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:
Quote: (08-10-2011 09:38 AM)Moma Wrote:
Athlone, I think it's important for you to actually travel to these countries and live for a while before you speak so definitively about them.
Nobody needs to take what I say here as the absolute gospel. These statements are based on an educated perception and some first hand experience(I've been to Canada and England, and not just London and Toronto either).
I feel that some of these questions fall on experience. One cannot be truly authoritative on a place or how people act outside of a country that person has never been.
I also recall that you are 20 which means that if you did travel to Canada and England, it must have been in your teens. Therefore your experience with women wouldn't count as I doubt you dated women during your travels.
Speaking so firmly on events that one has not experienced is like Woody Allen trying to advise Arnold on how to bench 315lbs.
Also bear in mind that although I grew up in London and did not live anywhere else, I travelled to Kent, Surrey, Luton, Leicester, Birmingham and Liverpool extensively cities that I also clubbed in.
But London is where I ate, breathed, wept, laughed and shat so that's why I feel I can speak absolutely on that aspect of British culture from both an academic and from experience.
Canada: You may have guessed that I like to travel.
I have been to Montreal many times, I'm about to make my third trip to Ottawa, I've been to Nova Scotia many many times, Kingston, Barrie, Oshawa, Sudbury, Burlington and Winnipeg.
So I do have outside experiences to list and I am careful in my wording not to say that Canadian women suck but in fact that it is Toronto lizards in particular that are exasperating.
So don't take it to think that my experiences are just jaded by the cities that I have lived in.
I also have a very large amount of friends who are immigrants. These are one of the pluses of having lived in two of the most multicultural cities in this world (London and Toronto). I have very few friends that are not immigrants in Toronto and 99 percent of my friends in the UK were first generation Brits.
Because of this, I get a taste of the outside culture, you could call it secondhand.
Quote: (08-10-2011 12:14 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:
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American behaviour is a LOT more influential than you would imagine.
American influence can and will make other countries a little worse off, but they'll never reach the American level without truly becoming American(that means living here and adopting the culture and its unique quirks).
By city, London is easily the closest thing to the US, followed by perhaps Toronto (knowing a decent number of Torontonians at my school, I can certainly agree with this). Get outside of those areas and the difference is a little clearer (just as staying away from NYC or DC in the US and heading to secondary cities yields a big difference).
First of all, the US is not a city. London is a city. Every state in the US is drastically different. I always defend the US against Canadians who scream that they hate the US and have only been to one city in the U.S.
I know some cats who love Cali but can't stand Texas. I know some cats who love NY but can't stand Florida and so forth.
It is wrong to lump the US into one basket. Although I am not an American and I didn't grow up in America, I have travelled quite a bit through the US and the states and cities are as different as countries.
In Miami, I felt like I was better of knowing how to speak Spanish. I worked with this cat and I truly felt like I was in Latin America.
I went to Boston and I felt like I was in Ireland.
So when you say London is the closest thing to the US, I think you may want to change that and actually state WHICH city in the U.S that London is the CLOSEST to.
As you know I am a London man so all my information is FIRSTHAND. Not from the paper and not from the Internet.
Just got off the phone with my friend who was giving me a breakdown of the riots, firsthand.
I would say that Toronto is closer to the US (New York City) because Canada actually follows American principles. The accent is similar, Canadians drive on the right, similar terminology is used.
Canada is the midpoint between England and America so Toronto is closer to the U.S city of New York.
Black Scotians are very very similar to Americans. They even have segregated black communities in Halifax just like in some parts of America. They sound very similar to Americans, stunt just like Americans etc. There is no area like this in London.
Again, this is from firsthand experience.
Quote: (08-10-2011 12:14 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:
Nowhere in the world, however, will you meet women with the combination of size(more obesity here than any other developed nation) and entitlement that American women enjoy. Other nations in the anglosphere are bad, but I would still argue(again, you don't have to consider it the gospel) that America as a whole(some regions are better than others) has it the worst due to a combination of factors unique to it(obesity, celebrity culture/materialism, uniquely malevolent family law combined with litigious society, etc).
I would caution any guy against London and Toronto dating-wise almost as strongly as some here warn guys about DC, but if we're going by country and deciding which is preferable on average, I'll take Canada over the others any day of the week, followed by the UK and then the US.
Just my two cents.
I agree that America does lead the race but the influence on some of the other cultures are enough to be disgusted. For instance, I've never seen so many women with pretty faces and fat bodies than I have seen in Toronto.
It is also very feminized here, they are quick to call the sexist and womanizer card but a woman can do whatever she wants and somehow the blame will wind back up on the man.
London is slightly better because the Brits do somewhat of a job reeling in all that 'Yankee' behaviour but Canada has no such restraints.
Again, I cannot speak for the Dutch as I have never lived there and only visited one city there (Amsterdam) which I am not sure gives me the constitution to speak authoratively for the Dutch female culture as a whole.
My french lizard who lived there told me the women fcuk a lot and have a lot of open relationships but since I did not experience that firsthand, I must take that with a pinch of salt.