Non-US City Living?

Hehe, yep they do. But to be fair, that's just this one building, the rest of the ghetto is not that hardcore.

Gypsies have very little sense of anything communal or public. They trash the exteriors and the public space because "it's not mine, so what" but the interiors are very often pretty tidy, if kitchy. Lots of carpets on both the floors and the walls and bajilion of religious crap - crucifices, icons, rosaries and pictures of dead ancestors just hanging everywhere. Also not very roomy, because their natality is pretty high and they still kinda live as a tribe or something, not as a nuclear family, so people are flowing from one apartment to another 24/7 and everybody is somebody's cousin. But hygiene-wise they're really ok or even very good.

Source: grew up in projects that were like one third Gypsy.

Oh... whoops. 

Pharaoh X Llandy said:

I found Copenhagen a fun city, but I'm not sure what the uni is like or whether it would cater to your needs.

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I don't exactly need a city that has a university with programs I am looking at since it is up in the as to whether I want to go to grad school yet, but it would be a bonus.

Edinburgh is nice but has quite an expensive rate of living. Never been to Dublin, but southern Irish accents are impossible to understand so it would be *kinda* like learning a foreign language.

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My girlfriend has spent a bunch of time in both Ireland and Scotland and actually found the Irish accents easier to understand (the only one that was problematic for her was the northern Scottish accent - thick and quick). I've been looking into the cost of living for both and it isn't too bad - similar to what I encountered in NYC, or so it seems.

Austupaio said:

I wouldn't recommend it in general, but it depends on your personal and occupational interests.

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Why is that? I know maybe two or three people living there right now and some more who have spent summers working there and loved it from what I've heard (all of them in tech fields working for Microsoft, Google, etc.) - plus they have good coffee and beer!

kurczak said:

Come to Prague. Million population, looks like this , everybody under 40 who's not totally brain dead speaks English, snow in winter, 80 F in summer, very reasonable living costs for an American plus very few to none pretentious Western Eurohispters in skinny jeans, with knock off Ray Bens, greasy hair and a week old b.o.

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Hmm, that does sound convincing! My girlfriend really wants to visit there and says people love it. What s the job market like?


Anyone know much about Amsterdam and/or Vienna? Those are two other places people have mentioned might be worth looking into.

Might be best to ask a native about Amsterdam, try the Fris-twins though I don't know if they live there.

Phonemelter said:

Why is that? I know maybe two or three people living there right now and some more who have spent summers working there and loved it from what I've heard (all of them in tech fields working for Microsoft, Google, etc.) - plus they have good coffee and beer!

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Why wouldn't I recommend it?

Insanely high cost of living for being a total dump, it's one of the dirtiest cities I've ever seen and the extremely disproportionate homeless population isn't helping. Neither is the crime.

Night life is terrible, basically limited to divey bars and ritzy night clubs which, while very popular, are full of a bunch of very anti-social people who have some of the lowest liquor tolerances I've seen.

Safety, forget about it, I've mentioned the homeless and the crime, well add an inefficient, bloated police department with a really bad police abuse track record to it. I do not go downtown unarmed.

Food and shopping, it sucks, quite plainly. South center mall is supposedly one of the largest in the country, but it's all filler. There's absolutely no interesting stores in the mall or anywhere else. Good restaurants are few and far between, and surprisingly so is fast food. One of the main things I hear people ***** about is the hours, everything opens late and closes early, the lack of the basics, for example there are no Wal-Marts in the city and only one in the outskirts.

It's just not an ideal place for any career that's not directly tied into computer technology, generally with Microsoft and Google, as you mentioned.

The tourist traps are kind of lame and the city is not much to look at.

Good coffee? Try Starbucks. Everything is Starbucks here, or it's a franchise owned by Starbucks to give the illusion of competition. Good beer? Everyone here drinks Pabst or box wine and not one of them can handle their liquor. Bar hour is ****ing 1 for christ's sake.



HOWEVER, there is Bellevue. If you can afford to live in Bellevue, with it's even more exorbitant cost of living compared to Seattle, it's all the (scant) advantages of Seattle with none of gross lame ****tiness. Bellevue is also the real technology hub, Microsoft, Google, Bungie and other biggies all have their buildings there.

Bellevue is clean, they export their homeless (to Seattle), petty crime is much lower (week end binge drinking crime is just as high, if not worse), the police are equally as corrupt but much more efficient, highly trained and polite to people who aren't scum, the women are pretty (and really easy), along with the police being good, practically every building in central Bellevue has security (who are all networked), the buildings are great.

If you want to move to Washington, move to Bellevue, not Seattle.

P.S. When I say things like 'it's one of the dirtiest cities I've ever seen', keep in mind my frame of reference includes my time living in cities like Atlanta and Los Angeles.

P.P.S. Don't kill me, Coming Winter.

Phonemelter said:

Hmm, that does sound convincing! My girlfriend really wants to visit there and says people love it. What s the job market like?

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Pretty good, it's a busy city. What kinds of jobs you're ideally looking for? Even after skimming through the wiki article on Cognitive Science, I'm not quite sure what it is...or does. Does it mean you like read minds now or what?

kurczak said:

Cognitive Science, I'm not quite sure what it is...or does. Does it mean you like read minds now or what?

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AI type of stuff.

Have they cleared up that"Methanol in the Booze" scare I heard about some time ago?

Wow, that sounds pretty terrible.

I hope to one day be able to study in maybe Austria, Hellas, or Scotland, because, university is public there, innit?

Pharaoh X Llandy said:

kurczak said:

Cognitive Science, I'm not quite sure what it is...or does. Does it mean you like read minds now or what?

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AI type of stuff.

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So I'm basically inviting a Skynet invasion...nice.

I don't know, honestly, that's a way specific market that I have no clue about. But I do know that basically all expats here in Prague either teach English (not so great, but doable money) or do some IT...programming...computery stuff for very good money compared to the living costs. It's mostly some software something for banks and hospitals etc so that's probably not really AI and I'm running out of filler words, so here goes the end of the post.

crodio said:

Spoiler

I hope to one day be able to study in maybe Austria, Hellas, or Scotland, because, university is public there, innit?

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I doubt it's free for non-EU nationals though.

kurczak said:

Even after skimming through the wiki article on Cognitive Science, I'm not quite sure what it is...or does. Does it mean you like read minds now or what?

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It is a very broad field that has the basic goal of trying to model/map the brain, but I've been recently looking into the computational linguistics side of things. As Llandy said, it also encompasses AI stuff, though more of my experience is with the neurosciencey side of sound and language processing. Unfortunately my programming skills are not as good as my computer science counterparts due to having taken less classes than them, but I'm willing to learn whatever is needed for jobs. I am also thinking abut web design since I have some experience with that and am learning more about it - I've noticed there are sorta okay paid intern/apprenticeships for that all over the place, which might be a good starting point if I wanted to do that in a different country.

Sorry I wasn't more helpgul, earlier.

No hard feelings - I'm pretty sure my response wasn't serious anyways. 

He's so upset about Werewolf that not only did he get absolutely wasted, he also wants to leave the country.

Phonemelter said:

kurczak said:

Even after skimming through the wiki article on Cognitive Science, I'm not quite sure what it is...or does. Does it mean you like read minds now or what?

Click to expand...

It is a very broad field that has the basic goal of trying to model/map the brain, but I've been recently looking into the computational linguistics side of things. As Llandy said, it also encompasses AI stuff, though more of my experience is with the neurosciencey side of sound and language processing. Unfortunately my programming skills are not as good as my computer science counterparts due to having taken less classes than them, but I'm willing to learn whatever is needed for jobs. I am also thinking abut web design since I have some experience with that and am learning more about it - I've noticed there are sorta okay paid intern/apprenticeships for that all over the place, which might be a good starting point if I wanted to do that in a different country.

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I understand the individual words, but I'm still having troubles putting the whole picture together. I'm probably too old for the cool stuff now. Anyway, yeah programming or web design sounds like the path of the lesser resistance to me. Or at least I know there are jobs for that

Lord Brutus said:

Have they cleared up that"Methanol in the Booze" scare I heard about some time ago?

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Yup, case closed. Only 47 dead plus some who know how many left blind for life! It was one company who cut their very low-end hard liquors with methanol. Because apparently their liquors weren't already disgusting enough as they were.

Phonemelter said:

Anyone know much about Amsterdam

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I love the guts out of Amsterdam. The people in particular. 'Multiculturalism' is a word often used in vain, but Amsterdam is the exception. You'll notice ethnic groups dissolved into each other.

The shop opening hours are really stupid though compared to Germany. the only upside is that not every store is closed on sundays, but other than that it pisses me off already.
also, Hamburg not exactly being a cheap city to live in, in my experience Amsterdam & around is even a bit worse. and internships are also paid even more ****tily than in Germany. but (in a different area though) they seem to be more abundant.

kurczak said:

I doubt it's free for non-EU nationals though.

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I can get  la italiana ciudadania! I hope.

You should probably learn how to say it in Italian before you apply for it