Convince Me to Move to Your Country

[lysergic]

I've heard good things about Belgium. I do like your chocolate (well at least what is supposed to be Belgian chocolate, I get the feeling the real thing would be better). How hard would it be for an English speaker to get by?

Well it depends. Socially speaking pretty well since most can speak at least a little bit English but for jobs yeah you might need to learn french or dutch.

Yeah you would have to to learn some dutch or french, however in the bigger cities,
there are jobs available for native English speakers.
oh and we have over 2000 different kinds of the best beer on the planet, i think that could be a good argument

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

Britain is quite nice. We have more steam locomotives per capita than anywhere else in the western world. We are incredibly well mapped, are unique (or at least we used to be...may not be anymore) in that all our public highways are paved, and our meteorological service is second to none. We have otters. We are home to the finest tailoring. We have two currencies - the pound and sarcasm. We have the longest country name in the world (in English, now that Libya has undergone a name shortening. We have marvellous cheese. Our soft drinks are awesome (Tizer, Irn Bru, Fentiman's Old Curiosity Cola). And, most importantly, we have Nectar Points.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

I'd say come to Canada... er, I mean Harperstan... but no one should come here with the crap currently going on. Escpecially if you're an enviromental engineer - they'd probably arrest you and sew your lips shut.

The only way out would be if you started working for the Oil Sands and the only words you could ever speak would be "Oil Sands. Good for Canada. Good for the Environment."

You think I'm kidding, don't you? I'm not.

Damn, Canada was on my short list.

Not to say we don't have our good side. But we're in the middle of some pretty terrible political controversy right now, that I can only hope brings down the current government. We've had a Conservative in Power for 2 terms now and he's slowly changed laws and subverted the country - it's becoming totalitarian. We'll always be a very progressive country, but our PM is... well... kinda like yours, right now. As things stand right now, they probably will not win the next election, though that's not until October 2015. They're throwing people under the bus left and right, but that bus is down a hole that's quickly becoming bottomless... and getting wider, too. Hopefully something comes of it.

As for Canada being on your shortlist, well, you do need to weigh the options of all the different provinces. Considering how big we are, our climates differ incredible. Political and regular weather. You'll have to research climate, cost of living and the job market in each province (and maritime) individually, because while a house costs $120,000 in PEI, it costs $2Million in Toronto or Vancouver. And there are places with tons of jobs (Alberta, Saskatchewan) and places with next to none(the maritimes).

I have close family in Brisbane, though, so I do know what you're coming from. They were just here this summer and come visit often, so I do know the general climate of Australia and the costs involved there, compared to here. When they were here a few years ago they seriously considered buying a car here and shipping it to the US and then changing it over to Australian standards... because it would be cheaper.

Captcha says Skynet is watching... Has CSEC developed Skynet already? Harper is a douche. Please pass that along to him.

Jesus, 2 million?

I'm also a little put off as well. My "goal" after I finished college next month was to investigate and decide weather I wanted to imigrate to the fabled Canadas. I've heard so many great things about it for so long: the food, the people. The thing that really set me over was that Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain piece.

I always thought somewhere outside Toronto would be nice to settle down. My family is New York based so I really don't want to leave the East Coast.

 

[trollnystan]

Isn't it really hard to get a job in Sweden if you don't actually speak swedish?

Probably yeah. Oddly enough, I think GETTING a job without speaking Swedish is probably A LOT harder than actually KEEPING a job without speaking Swedish, at least if the language you do speak is English. Or quite possibly a mishmash of Norwegian/Danish and Swedish.

I know of, for example, a English priest in the local church who has lived here about 30-40 years and he hardly speaks more than a few words in Swedish. Don't ask me how that works.

If you have a job lined up before you actually move here then not speaking Swedish might not be that big of a deal. But if you move here and then try to look for a job... Our job market is pretty pitiful really at the moment - a mark AGAINST moving here - so unless you have contacts you'd probably be shit out of luck. There are plenty of immigrants that don't speak Swedish with jobs - I just recently had a bunch of Russians invade my flat to install internet fibre of which ONE spoke any kind of Swedish - but they most likely had contacts to set them up with something before they arrived.

I don't think it'd be hard to learn Swedish though if one puts one's back into it and tries to interact with Swedish speakers as much as possible. My brother-in-law from Ireland learnt to communicate well enough for a job at McDonalds after 9-10 months and my American friend learned it after 9 months via Swedish For Immigrants (SFI) - and she also installed Sims 2 in Swedish to learn that way as she played a lot of it back then. True, my friend - though having lived here for about 8 years - still has problems with pronunciation and grammar; however, she's spent the last 5 of those years at home with the kids and with a very deep depression, so she's had almost no opportunity to practice until now that she's going out into the work force again. My BIL on the other hand dove in head-first by joining a local football team for dads and insisting on speaking Swedish to his co-workers and to everyone around him except us. His accent is still rather terrible but he's perfectly understandable and that's what counts! I understand him better when he speaks Swedish than when he speaks English in fact, because his Irish accent is so thick... >_> (I'm only HALF-Irish okay??!)

Sorry for babbling, I just woke up! Hope this made any kind of sense.

 

[SpAc3man]

New Zealand. Like Australia but with a more left leaning political bias. Just don't bring any of your friends. One Australian is enough.


EDIT: Some nice pictures and shit. I'm stuck at home studying so I will post some pictures of where I would rather be. My local beaches.

Spoiler: Beach 1

This beach is 400m down the road from my house.

Spoiler: Beach 2

This is the next beach over. It is 900m down the road from my house.