How is it where you are from ?

[PermenentMarker]

I know this forum is has users from all over the world so I was thinking it might be interesting to let everyone know how life is around your part.

To introduce myself, I enjoy to sarcastically call myself an ignorant Canadian.

Geography and history aren't my strong points and I haven't traveled that much.

I am quite curious about how everything is going around the world, so if it's alright with you, feel free to talk about the pro's and cons of your area.

I see it as a good way to educate others about pros and cons of life in general in other parts of the world.

_______________________________________________

I live in Montreal Quebec Canada.

The economy is ok, a little more stable then the USA thanks to having fewer but far bigger banks... I am sure there is more to it but I am no economist.

There are tons of jobs available, I never got an issue and I don't know of anyone who has had an issue finding work. Of course it depends, some people are just lazy.
An average decent salary of 20$ an hour shouldn't be that hard to find

1 bedroom appartment can cost 500 to 1000$
2 bedroom apartment can cost 500 to 1200$
Depending on if it's in the guetto or suberb or suberb guetto...
+ Hydro(electricity), around 80 to 150 every 2 months.
+ food

Real estate in Montreal is affordable but expensive.
I got myself a small condo in the center of Montreal for 245000
I will be in dept for 25 years... But I think it beats paying rent.

The free medical care is quite solid for emergencies. But it can be quite horrible. (Hospital wait can be up to 14 hours. (priorities go to real emergencies) so you might want to find a family doctor or smaller public walk in clinic.
If your work has health insurance, you can go to private clinics and get better service.

We lack doctors in Quebec. They are also underpaid and work too many hours. Most people who graduate as a doctor in Quebec go work elsewhere.

School isn't free but costs 1000 to 2000 a semester. On that you get half of it given by the government and the other half a student loan.
(The government is trying to raise it.)

Montreal has many very good universities. (McGill, Concordia, John Molson school of business, ETS to list a few)


We have some decent ski mountains. But they are sad little things compared to Whistler in BC and one of my goals is to go skiing in French alps or in Sweden.


Taxes.
20% to 55% of your salary is gone... you will never see it... Income tax.
Every 2 weeks I make 1600, I get 1150.

Out of everything you buy, you pay + 5% Federal + 9.5% Provincial tax

For example
Selling price $100.00 GST ($100

 

[C_Gibby]

I live in England and I eat fish and chips sometimes.

 

[Crusher]

I'm from belgium and I eat choclate every damn day, I enjoy drinking wine and the prime minister is a french talking italian homosexual but he does his job good so I forgive him for being a walloon. Proud to have one of the 2 gay PMs in the world, the other one is the lesbian PM of iceland.

 

[PermenentMarker]

I'm from belgium and I eat choclate every damn day, I enjoy drinking wine and the prime minister is a french talking italian homosexual but he does his job good so I forgive him for being a walloon. Proud to have one of the 2 gay PMs in the world, the other one is the lesbian PM of iceland.

That's funny. Must be quite open minded

 

[RedFlagWaver]

I live in a former Reichsstadt. Somewhere in a hole in what's probably the most utterly uninteresting part of all of glorious Europe. Stayed here because it used to be cheap. Now it just sucks.

And I can't wait to get away again this summer

 

[Nezzer]

I live in the former and short-lived Riograndense Republic (which is still written on the state flag), now a Brazilian state called Rio Grande do Sul (South Great River) after the Brazilian Empire crushed the rebellion 150 years ago. Homeland of the famous supermodel Gisele B

 

[Grabbed_by_the_Spetsnaz]

[rant]

Currently living in Auckland, New Zealand.

Economy is sh!t, cost of living is high, job are hard to get and most of this country is run by monopolies constantly whining "But we don't get enough government funding."

Currently finished school and is desperately looking for a job to help pay off student loan. Right now, job hunting can only be described as "fishing for sharks, using your wang as a rod" and I'm getting sick of it. Student loan will soon have interest fees as our current government thinks that students are being selfish and wasting all it's money on giving ourselves a higher education and creating high ranking future jobs, and would rather give the funding to the aforementioned monopolies so they can export all thier products to China and have us pay export prices for local produce.

Renting somewhere to live costs just about the same amount of money it costs to Mortgage house now, cept you don't have to pay $50,000 in advance. Which is going to be hard for ex-students like me to pay as the minimum wage is a mere $12.75 an hour (usually with unpaid overtime), which could be amplified, once again due to the current government believes that students are nothing but greedy money wasters, and is reducing the minimum wage down to about $10.00 an hour.

If you do manage to get a job and manage to scrape a living on with the little money you do earn, the current government once again must make our lives that little bit extra miscible by passing a law with allows corporations to fire new employees within 90 days immediately without so little reason as "Ehh" on the reasoning, so if you don't work your little slave butt to the ground, they will fire you (and take a big sum of your final paycheck), and sometimes, even if you do, they'll fire you anyway because it's cheaper just to find another puny little infidel to work like a slave for 90 then get laid off.

Tax is fairly standard, but GST (product tax) has soren to an all time high at 15% GST tax on everything.

Our roadways are getting bigger by the day as the current government is utilising the same economic plan as Hitler did though "Stimulating" the economy by building useless extensions of road everywhere, somehow our family house gets the cop too, as the roadworks want our entire front in order to extend and double the road shoulder capability. (It will be a two lane shoulder going into a one land street, go figure).

Trying to get into a Tertiary computer programming course, if I get in, school is going to cost me about $10,000 a year for three years if I am to do the advanced studies too. I'm praying to god that I manage to fine a secure finance and income by the time the bill arrives, but going into IT, prices like these are expected.

Medical care is free, but service, efficiency and reputation has gone done the gurgler due once again to the current government new healthcare plan and cuts to the system.

The beneficiaries will cease to exist soon to the goverment thinking 100% of the people on the beneficiaries are pot addicted teenagers who are too lazy to write a CV and get a job.

Everything in New Zealand is in a slump right now and will only be getting worse in the foreseeable future, however us New Zealanders are trying our hardest to grin and bear it. However it's getting harder and harder to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and many New Zealanders have already given up trying to save NZ when a working paradise is a less the three hour flight from here (Australia). Mind you we don't call NZ the big "Brain drain" for nothing


P.S: If you haven't noticed yet, I don't like our current government.

[/rant]

 

[PUTZ]

I'll give this a shot (though a bit more brief than the OP)

I've lived the past 11 years in Baltimore, Maryland (with the brief exception of Roswell, Georgia for 6 months)

The local economy is pretty vibrant. Home building has already restarted, and road repairs now seem to be picking up.

Jobs can be difficult to come by, but this is based on my profession (photographer).

In my area, an apartment can run from $600 (USD) to about $2000 or more. I'm lucky to have a condo-apartment place with a detached garage. Though, just down the block they've built a Section 8 housing development.
Got this place in the suburbs (it's at the end of the metro) for $187000, during the recession in 2009. It's gained a bit of value since then, so I am pleased.

Electricity can be a bit painful. I'm paying roughly $150/mo. And this is on cheap rate stuff I switched to. Locked in for the next couple of years...but still.

Medical care (as in much of this country) is stupidly expensive and sometimes impossible to get, especially if you are self-employed or hourly-employed at a job that does not provide benefits (most hourly jobs DO NOT provide benefits).

Schools in the area are abundant. Too many to name, and of all sizes and several religious denominations. It's a great place to go to school...

About 2 hours away are the Allegheny foothills, and there are several ski resorts. But being so close to the Chesapeake Bay, most people have boats. Some have condos out on the coast... me, I go to Hawaii. It's cheaper.

State sales tax is 6%. Alcohol is taxed at 9%. Though, I will say this. Registering a car here is for 3 years, and the fee is $160 (iirc). In Georgia, it's something like $200...every year.

 

[I. Kant]

Interesting topic which is bound to get even more so once different perspectives from the same countries start flowing in.

 

[mrPuma]

I'm from belgium and I eat choclate every damn day, I enjoy drinking wine and the prime minister is a french talking italian homosexual but he does his job good so I forgive him for being a walloon. Proud to have one of the 2 gay PMs in the world, the other one is the lesbian PM of iceland.

In a couple of weeks time we might have out 1st gay president here in finland. Right now were freezing our asses off. Its -20 here and the cold arctic wind makes it feel like -40
the town i live in is middle sized town 250 000 ppl in it. Life here is pretty good we have jobs here but some have difficulties finding one. Winters are long, dark and cold. During the winter theres a 2 month period when the sun only shines for and
An hour and after that its all dark again. Summers are nice though with +20. Allso the sun shines here in midsummer 24/7 for a month. During that time its never relly dark city i live in is called oulu btw

Nice topic btw i like this really much

 

[PUTZ]

Just received an interesting phone call from my father. The car we are renting in Bod

 

[Blockbot]

Hi I am from Norway,

In other countries they have problems with food, medicine and other important stuff. In norway we have 10-20minute debates on TV for not having butter made from milk, saying that our companys like "TINE", who has 90% of the butter marked is corrupt and only have monopoly over the butter market. (WHO REALLY CARES)

also norway is one of the richest countries in the world. (top 3 if you count money/people ratio) we also have a oil fund that have so much money if we where to devide it to all the people in norway every citizen would get about 300.000 dollars +. Strangly norway is one of the countries that gives the most money away to foreign countries. we even give the double maybe tripple the rates of 2nd biggest hand over (if u conside money/people rate) but still norway is one of the few countries that goes with a huge economicly+ each year! (even we give people tons of money. we still have one of the lowest immigration invations in the entier world, cuz we allways tell them to "**** of!")

I've heards stories from immigrants that I know. before they moved to norway they thought "norway was so rich it had roads made of gold and houses made of silver." but sadly this is not true Norway have the lower three badest roads conditions in europe, even each year norway have allways voted for the "presidential cendidates" that want to make roads. but still after hounders of hundreds of millions. we still have crappy roads because we have too many mountains cliffs and ****ty politicans. the price calculated for giving the whole norway new roads is tha same as renew all the roads in the entier germany and great britain! which should be pretty cheap.

In norway we are so simple minded that if we buy something or writing an important contract. we most likly dont care reading the contract or checking the manual what we acctually bought. because we trust everyone and anything, simply beeing naive

 

[DraKon2k]

Been living in the same 120m

 

[Blockbot]

Just received an interesting phone call from my father. The car we are renting in Bod

 

[Lt_Kettch]

Just received an interesting phone call from my father. The car we are renting in Bod

 

[mrPuma]

In norway we have 3 diffrent sertificates for normal 3.5tons cars. where one is for manual gear box. if you can't drive it or just have a serticate automatics only. you can get easily jailed for setting other people around you in danger by driving a car.

the last time you drove with a driving teacher was it automatic? well then ur not allowed to drive in norway you got manual gears for a reason. think of that when you are stuck in a pile of snow will you!

but be aware. it is not allowed to be gay and a couple in norway, the tons of christian people in norway will hate you because of that!

EDIT: and yeah norways fuel is x3 x4 times more expensive than in america where 94% is taxes (pleace come again)

same here with the automatic transmission and fuel prices, wich sucks big time one litre cost 1,65 euros and rising

 

[kapulA]

Well, to make it short, apparently we're just joining the EU - which is good, just in time for its imminent collapse. Heck, we were probably just brought in to speed up the whole process, being experts at that (see Austro-Hungaria, Yugoslavia ).

 

[DraKon2k]

Well, to make it short, apparently we're just joining the EU - which is good, just in time for its imminent collapse. Heck, we were probably just brought in to speed up the whole process, being experts at that (see Austro-Hungaria, Yugoslavia ).

Having more hot croatian girls around is always good. Just make sure you keep retards like Boran Stella-Rossa feat. Patrick Kiing - ZENO MOJA - (M U S I K V I D E O) - YouTube in your own country

 

[kapulA]

I am deeply offended that you should refer to our esteemed avantgarde artists in that manner.

 

[The Masta]

Well, to make it short, apparently we're just joining the EU - which is good, just in time for its imminent collapse. Heck, we were probably just brought in to speed up the whole process, being experts at that (see Austro-Hungaria, Yugoslavia ).

Croat sappin mah EU