Your Culture, Positive Or Negative On Foreign Land

[DaFool]

I think I've been to enough countries to realize they are all sinkholes...basically unsustainable systems.

Problems of first-world countries: There are not enough young people who will work their asses to pay for their aging parents and support the economy.

Problems of third-world countries: there are too many young people and not enough industries for them to have jobs. And it's not like the first-world countries will welcome them either.

Problems for all countries: educational system going to hell. Social security too (if they even existed in the first place)

Well, perhaps the U.S. might stay afloat longer than other countries, as long as
1.) It keeps advertising through Hollywood that the grass is still green on its side of the world
2.) It keeps its borders open for talented people to enter and add to the economy (doesn't seem so currently)
3.) It maintains a high standard for education (well, public schools are definitely going to the shits. Universities should be ok for a while...unless the professors stop knowing how to speak in English...which is very likely, given my experience)
4.) China doesn't decide to take all its U.S. bonds and 'cook the turkey' it has been fattening up all this time.
5.) and that's even without mentioning wars and potential wars.

Canada is in a similar situation. I think its super socialized system is too big of an overhead....too unsustainable.

Pretty much we're all screwed regardless wherever we live in this world. That's why I don't consider immigration other than just being a temporary economic relief for at most a few decades. Not to mention the food supply is running out, unless Europeans suddenly decide that GM foods are perfectly fine (guess how India has had no famines all these years despite its billions? :P)

See now it's getting political, economic....cultural issues will be the least of our worries next couple of decades.

A lot of the members of this board are Gen Y and you'll have to forgive the pessimism of us Gen X's...while you had the assurance of your baby-boom parents that 'you're all set', we were told 'you're not worth shit...you are doomed to fail.' We'll have to stick through this together, and frankly I'm scared as we will be the leaders in the next generation and have to fix all the crap our parents made for us. (Yeah, Dad, being 60, is only now trying to be a parent. I say, f--- that, what were you doing all these years, but couldn't really blame him.) And yes, the first thing to realize is that the future does not look bright....it just looks as shiny as an overinflated balloon.

[kj1980]

I have a brilliant idea - I just don't know how to begin...

My plan involves:

1. Buying land in North Korea
2. When that country crumbles (which I assume it will), there will be extra land for Koreans to live
3. And seeing that Korea is small with a sizeable population, there should be a real-estate boom in areas with abundant lands.

It's a long term strategy of course. But I don't see that hermit of a communist state opening up its lands for foreign investment anytime soon....

[luchamasta]

Originally Posted by Luminare

I jest, though, but I think they do get a bit of East Asian culture through movies and anime (they do watch Hollywood films as well as Chinese kung-fu movies, and they translate Japanese anime, such as Captain Tsubasa, Doraemon, Shounen Tantei Konan, and various others into Arabic).

Yay for Conan.

"Don't smoke. Go learn Karate!"

What the heck lol. Why not football :P

On the other hand, there were a fair bit of Filipinos there that worked jobs like sales attendants or maids or waiters/waitresses, so if you didn't "look" Japanese or Chinese you weren't exactly respected in the same way. It wasn't really clear to me what they thought of South East Asia, though I imagine they also hold the same "nice people" stereotype most other cultures do (particularly about Thai's).

I do hear there are a bunch of migrant workers in the UAE. These days some of them are probably busy constructing waterfront resorts and skyscrapers.

Food? Whatever's fine

I was just wondering since people who have lived in several countries tend to be more accepting of the tastes of local food. For example many Japanese who haven't had experience living in the West complain that European breads are too hard and tastes too strong; they seem to prefer their own floppy types that don't fill your stomach at all :P

[Roopoo]

Originally Posted by luchamasta

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I do hear there are a bunch of migrant workers in the UAE. These days some of them are probably busy constructing waterfront resorts and skyscrapers.

I:P

I often read the English language newspaper for the UAE. the Gulf News and have found that many of these workers you speak of come from Asia and many many are not paid for months and left to live in awful conditions. There are no trade unions and these people don't seem to have any recourse. They have families, mostly in India, that are dependent on their (the workers) income for food.

I also visited Dubai and found that the local food appears to be of either Indian origin, Biryani and curries or Lebanese, hummous, tabouleh, fatouche (salad), stuffed vine leaves and pita bread. All of which I found very tasty.

[sanghyun1990]

Originally Posted by kj1980

I have a brilliant idea - I just don't know how to begin...

My plan involves:

1. Buying land in North Korea
2. When that country crumbles (which I assume it will), there will be extra land for Koreans to live
3. And seeing that Korea is small with a sizeable population, there should be a real-estate boom in areas with abundant lands.

It's a long term strategy of course. But I don't see that hermit of a communist state opening up its lands for foreign investment anytime soon....

Yeah thing about land in North Korea, all the house all old and there is nothing modern. Only place that is modern is North Korea's capital. Also why would Korean want to live in North Korea when there is nothing there. Finally, what you said is little insulting to us Korean.

[kj1980]

Originally Posted by sanghyun1990

Yeah thing about land in North Korea, all the house all old and there is nothing modern. Only place that is modern is North Korea's capital. Also why would Korean want to live in North Korea when there is nothing there. Finally, what you said is little insulting to us Korean.

How is it insulting? It's practical capitalism at work here. Such real estate development is what made Donald Trump a billionaire by buying and selling properties in New York, Zhou Zhengyi for Shanghai and numerous Hong Kong real estate developers when they bought "useless" land in that small island back in the 1960s.

You buy land cheap, you wait until the time is ripe, properties values once touted as worthless suddenly increases at the rate of ~20% per year, much like what's happening in Los Angeles.

So should the communist state fail, in about 10 or 20 years, the areas around Pyongyang and rural areas around that region will suddenly become suburbia for urban sprawl spreading northwards from an overcrowding southern portion of that peninsula.

I call it brilliance! Damn, I should've done that to buy properties in Liepzig or Moscow before the wall collapsed!!

Hey since DPRK accepts only USDs, Euros, or yuans, I can pay in Chinese yuans and make another fortune with currency exchange while I'm at it!!

Shit, my idea is suddenly starting to grow!! Who's in?! wwwww

[Knight Hawk]

Originally Posted by sanghyun1990

Yeah thing about land in North Korea, all the house all old and there is nothing modern. Only place that is modern is North Korea's capital. Also why would Korean want to live in North Korea when there is nothing there. Finally, what you said is little insulting to us Korean.

Did you even bother reading what he said?

Originally Posted by kj1980

2. When that country crumbles (which I assume it will), there will be extra land for Koreans to live

Originally Posted by kj1980

3. And seeing that Korea is small with a sizeable population, there should be a real-estate boom in areas with abundant lands.

With what kj1980 said, it would be a good investment to own land to a booming country (that is if N.korea crumbles and korea becomes a single country)
Also i see no insult in kj1980's post at all, besides the fact that North Korea is a hermit state


EDIT: Oww kj1980 beat me in posting

[DaFool]

Buying land in North Korea....is that even possible? I mean its currently a noncapitalistic state, so isn't the land government-owned? And if they don't sell to citizens, why should they to a foreigner?

Is it actually wealth that we seek, or just rest? If it's just a peaceful, quiet, comfortable life, just follow the example of this Italian man I met:

He visited the Philippines on a tourist visa. Met a woman. Married. Moved to a remote island that's only a few kilometers wide. Took care of ownership of land (By law 60% local 40% foreign investment). Put up an Italian Restaurant business. Separated from wife. Now, in an island in the Pacific, he's enjoying peaceful life sleeping all day and cooking Italian food for tourists (mostly German...actually a few settled as well). (Btw his ex-wife now works in New York City. I think she's stupid. Well, the grass seems greener...) The half-white children will then grow up to be beauty queens and be pawned off as starlets to add to Channel 7 / Channel 2's stable of disposable celebrities, but will earn their parents lots of money in the process.

The scheme might work well for many types of expats, but I think in general it works better for westerners:
http://www.mangosauce.com/news/phili...e_japanese.php (um...please don't pay attention to the sidebar....:P)

[kj1980]

Originally Posted by DaFool

Buying land in North Korea....is that even possible? I mean its currently a noncapitalistic state, so isn't the land government-owned? And if they don't sell to citizens, why should they to a foreigner?

That's where the pickle is...any ideas?

I wonder if the South Koreans Unification Ministry actually has addresses built up for North Korean lands. You know, something like "should we unify under capitalist rule, then this portion of Pyongyang's address is XXXXX." And since from South Korea (let alone North Korea) does not "recognize" the other side's existence, then technically from the ROK government's view, Pyongyang is considered to be a part of Korea "not currently in our hands," I suppose.

I'm assuming so with regards to my country's issue with addresses and properties of the Northern Territories, currently held by Russia.

Does anyone know how former East German properties were assessed when they assimilated with FRG? Did Bonn decide beforehand that "ok, this portion of Dresden will be XXXX" before moving to Berlin?

If so technically then, a person can buy land through "proper" procedures from by registering at the South Korean government? I wonder if there is such thing called a "Pyongyang city council in exile" somewhere. Perhaps there maybe?

Hmm...interesting thoughts swirming in my head right now.

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by kj1980

Does anyone know how former East German properties were assessed when they assimilated with FRG? Did Bonn decide beforehand that "ok, this portion of Dresden will be XXXX" before moving to Berlin?

The GDR government (former East Germany) disseized major private property and transformed it into state property. Sure, it was not impossible to own land in the GDR, but not too much, otherwise it had been disseized. And every property owned by non-socialist countries foreigners (including FRG citizens) was disseized anyway.
The only chance to get some of the land property back, was when you or your ancestry owned land before 1945 (and you can still provide the documents stating, that it was your (ancestry's) property).
But this applies only if your property was not disseized during 1945-1949 (the time when east germany was soviet zone of occupation). Well, basically all major private properties of land were disseized in this time, so there are few examples where people got property back.

The FRG did not sell land of the GDR in pre-reunification times. But when the reunification was succeeded, a german government trust handled all the now waiting to be privatized land/property. This was the time, when you were basically able to buy land for peanuts (from this trust) and local communes as well as common citizens (of the former GDR who still owned little property/land).

But even now, there are still chances to get land/buildings very cheap. For example Dresden sold 47,857 apartments and 1,319 trade places for approximately 1 billion Euro to an US consortium. Dresden did that because of its debts of 800 million Euro.

[kj1980]

Originally Posted by Jinto Lin

The GDR government (former East Germany) disseized major private property and transformed it into state property. Sure, it was not impossible to own land in the GDR, but not too much, otherwise it had been disseized. And every property owned by non-socialist countries foreigners (including FRG citizens) was disseized anyway.
The only chance to get some of the land property back, was when you or your ancestry owned land before 1945 (and you can still provide the documents stating, that it was your (ancestry's) property).
But this applies only if your property was not disseized during 1945-1949 (the time when east germany was soviet zone of occupation). Well, basically all major private properties of land were disseized in this time, so there are few examples where people got property back.

The FRG did not sell land of the GDR in pre-reunification times. But when the reunification was succeeded, a german government trust handled all the now waiting to be privatized land/property. This was the time, when you were basically able to buy land for peanuts (from this trust) and local communes as well as common citizens (of the former GDR who still owned little property/land).

But even now, there are still chances to get land/buildings very cheap. For example Dresden sold 47,857 apartments and 1,319 trade places for approximately 1 billion Euro to an US consortium. Dresden did that because of its debts of 800 million Euro.

Cool. I do remember someone in Dresden was on this board, so I'm glad I can get such on-hand info!!

Hey you know what? North Korea and Cuba are practically the only remaining Communist states, it's a gold mine for real estate investments up for grab!

....Cuba, hey....now we're talking!! A prospective Carribbean paradise under state-owned Communist rule? What a treasure waiting to be digged!!!

[iKumdo]

Originally Posted by kj1980

Cool. I do remember someone in Dresden was on this board, so I'm glad I can get such on-hand info!!

Hey you know what? North Korea and Cuba are practically the only remaining Communist states, it's a gold mine for real estate investments up for grab!

....Cuba, hey....now we're talking!! A prospective Carribbean paradise under state-owned Communist rule? What a treasure waiting to be digged!!!

Brilliant!

If you buy North Korean land, you may get more money from the government. I think lot of N. Korean land is good for agriculture or something. Besides the houses that need to be built for it's massive population, you'll need to build highways to connect China with Seoul.

[SeekAndDestroy]

Originally Posted by Roopoo

Yes sorry about that. I was quite surprised myself about Spanish. But in the US it is very popular I guess because of South America.

Actually South America has very little to do with the popularity of spanish. A big part of it is Mexico, not only the fact that it borders the U.S. but the migration of Mexicans into the U.S. creating huge hispanic communities in california, texas, south western states. Also don't forget that puerto rico is a comonwealth of the U.S. In general, it's like Carlos Mencia said (a Mexican stand up comedian) if you speak spanish in the U.S. your nationality changes depending on where you are (refering as how you are perceived) if you're in florida, you're cuban, if you're in N.Y. you're puerto rican, and everywhere else you're mexican; it kinda sux.