Wouldn't you be worried about the language barrier?
My Finnish grandmother was convinced that no one who grew up speaking English could ever learn proper Finnish pronunciation. I've never met a Finn outside of my own family, so I've never had my attempts to pronounce Finnish names called out, but they're so difficult for me that I suspect she was right.
English is pretty common in both places these days. Obviously I wouldn't be able to practice law, but I could function as a foreign law consultant. After a couple of years I would be fairly high-functioning in Dutch, but Finnish would present a bigger challenge. The Finns have two official languages, so maybe I could learn Swedish.
I once knew a German who lived in Beijing and spoke no Chinese. He carried a deck of flash cards with the names of the places he most often went to show to cab drivers. I consider this gauche.
"I once knew a German who lived in Beijing...."
Damn, I thought it was going to be a limerick.
Do I hear no mention of escaping to Australia because we know someone who rails on a lot about how broken is that political system?
Never mind. I say we put our shoulders to the wheel and work at improving our own system one politician at a time.
MY Congressman, who is a Democrat, voted "no" to the first proposal. I've written and phoned his office to tell him I want him to vote "no" again today.
I certainly agree that the proposals thus far are way too precipitate and too stupidly pork loaded.
What we SHOULD have is a proposal that 1. will make the kind of unsecured "bundling" of debt securities (whatever they call them), illegal from this day forward.
2. Will require that the hedge funds, investment banks and all entities that created, traded in and profited from these things be required to declare every cent of profit made
3. Make that profit taxable at a steep rate.
4.Make every dime the government spends to bail out these entities be disclosed to the public so we can see where the money actually goes.
5. Require that not one penny of the bail out money goes to salaries or benefits to the executives of these entities.
Will this be what will be done? Of course not. And did any of our candidates for Pres. and Veep suggest any of this? Of course not.
Maybe I'll move to Canada, too. Sigh.
Australia has never been on my list. It is too isolated for my taste, and although I'm sure it has its charms, apart from passable red wine and excellent seafood it doesn't offer much that I'm interested in. I'd consider Tokyo, which may be one of my all-time favorite cities, but the language barrier would be too significant I think.
Commenting by HaloScan
