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Thanks for the thread! I hope I get around to visiting Iceland sometime. You guys are pretty far north, but are you north enough to have a weird day/night cycle with a midnight sun and all that? North enough for northern lights? I've never seen those. Can I ask about your occupation? Are you a longboat oarsman or a farmer or a vice minister of geothermal energy? I actually don't understand how Iceland became such a rich society. I can't think of any Icelandic products I've ever bought, or Icelandic resources used in products I buy. I've never heard of having a secret Icelandic bank account for offshoring my precious Jew gold. Are you guys one of those European societies where you work like ten hours a week and then the government forces helpless job creators to pay you US$70,000 a year? Your English seems pretty close to native level, at least in writing. Do most Icelanders speak perfect English? Do you have English medium instruction in public schools? Do you have any Jews? Wikipedia says there's like ten of us in Iceland. I wonder why a Jewish community was never successfully established there. What's the general opinion of Icelanders toward Europeanism? I was surprised to hear you're still printing your own money. I would've thought you'd jumped into the Euro a long time ago. I've got too many questions about Iceland. I'll leave it at that for now.
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Apr 26, 2013 02:29
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:27 |
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I can't tell if you're from an influential and well-connected family or your whole damned country is just that small. I keep reminding myself that this place is smaller than my hometown, in population. It's tough to wrap my head around, because Iceland isn't one of those joke countries like Luxembourg (more people than Iceland), Andorra, Liechtenstein or San Marino. It's a country that does things and matters and people know about. It still baffles me that Hong Kong has more than 23 times as many people. Maybe I'm too hung up on this population thing. I like the Icelandic language a lot. If I wasn't busy learning six other, much more economically and politically important languages, I'd probably take the time to study a bit. I like the word Eyjafjallajökull. I listen to the audio edition of the Economist and back in 2010, I got such joy out of hearing that poor British woman from Talking Issues say Eyjafjallajökull like six times in one article. Now I know a lot of reporters struggled through it and ruined the pronunciation, but the Economist is old school and hardcore, so this woman had carefully practiced and been properly coached on how to pronounce the ridiculous name of this volcano. And sure enough she painstakingly read out that name again and again. This List of the tallest buildings in Iceland is adorable. Do you guys have skiing in Iceland? What are the most popular sports there? I'm an avid skier. I'd like to ski down an active volcano. I'd ski Eyjafjallajökull in a heartbeat, and call out its name on the way down.
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Apr 29, 2013 04:30
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I forgot to mention I saw Iceland's elections on the news here in Hong Kong last night. I was at the gym, so it was muted TV news and I have no idea what was said or how it was played, but the fact that Iceland made the news here made me smile. It was TVB Pearl, though. English-language broadcast station, so I don't know if it would've shown up on the Cantonese programming. Maybe!
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Apr 29, 2013 05:41
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Oh does Icelandic McDonald's have any cool special menu items? In Hong Kong, for example, they offer the Prosperity Burger every Chinese New Year, which is like a McRib but made with beef or chicken and covered in Chinese sesame sauce. Do they have like a super filet o fish with fish heads and something spelled with a bunch of runes? Your language is adorable. "Fyrst" "aftur" "besta". Now I see why historical linguists love Icelandic.
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Apr 30, 2013 02:30
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Deceitful Penguin posted:I actually went to the tourist info today to check up on it, there are a few mo' places around but mostly cheap = fast food. And usually foreign, like subway or KFC at that. How much is a sub in HK, btw? The absolute cheapest one here is 29.9 HKD. Cost of living in Iceland is insane, Deceitful Penguin posted:We may not have tall buildings, Bloodnose, but how many mountains do you have in Hong Kong? Uh, only a metric fuckton. Hong Kong is also crazy volcanic, except our volcanoes are all dead. It's extremely mountainous terrain though. Good hiking options. CupcakePrincess posted:Wow I was not expecting such a long and helpful post - thank you so much! I clicked on the site of the knockoff McDonald's and almost had a heart attack, so the suggestions for cheap food are really useful.
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May 1, 2013 13:21
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So what's the ownership of the fisheries like? Do you have a cabal of shadowy super-wealthy fish oligarchs?
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May 4, 2013 05:14
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How are Iceland's universities? I've never heard of anyone going to Iceland for school. And did you say you went abroad yourself? Do businesses prefer to hire people who have studied overseas?
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May 6, 2013 02:48
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What's transportation like in Iceland? I can't see such a little place having a big metro system. Is there a big car culture?
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May 28, 2013 03:17
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I understand whaling is an important part of Icelandic culture or something, to the point that there's some kind of exemption for Iceland from the international conventions against whaling. On that note, how many whales have you personally killed and on a scale of one to ten, how delicious were they?
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Jun 17, 2013 00:31
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If I wanted to enjoy an Icelandic cultural product, like a TV show or movie (no Bjeourk please), what would you recommend?
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Jul 2, 2013 03:06
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Deceitful Penguin posted:Comics wise there's ol Hugleikur Dagsson showing off traditional Icelandic humour, but on shows, hmmm. Most of them are, strangely enough, in Icelandic so your options are farely limited. Deceitful Penguin posted:It's phonetically correct though. Ö sounds nothing like O, after all.
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Jul 3, 2013 02:08
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Deceitful Penguin posted:He gets just over a Million ISK a month last I checked (Roughly 10K USD a month), he gets to live at a cool crib in Bessastaðir, in the pleasant sub-urb of my town Álftanes and has his own personal driver and cars. This website is like terrible 90s bad. It looks like a Hong Kong government website. I thought you people were supposed to be good at Internet.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:04
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If you're sharing pictures, you should show off your home. I assume it's some sort of upturned longboat?
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Jul 26, 2013 03:04
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Deceitful Penguin posted:Icelandic, once you get it, is quite simple. It's just that getting it is a process that for many takes many years of effort and even then you'll probably never lose the accent. "Icelandic is very easy after you spend years upon years studying it, and after that you'll still sound like a foreigner." I wouldn't listen to Deceitful Penguin though. It's really hard for native speakers to judge how difficult their own language is, and there's a huge bias toward everyone on the planet considering their own language the hardest in the world. On the other hand, the effort that is required to learn any language might not be worth exerting for Icelandic because you can fit all the native speakers of the language into a good sized stadium.
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Aug 12, 2013 02:43
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I want to see the Icelandest picture and the Icelandest YouTube video. Also what's the oldest building in Iceland? Do you guys have any castles?
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Dec 7, 2013 06:19
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Deceitful Penguin posted:Iceland was for the longest time among the poorest countries in Europe so no, no castles, alas. I thought the oldest building was Hegningarhúsið, our first stone prison and was gonna make a quip about that but turns out it's apparently this thing, Viðeyjarstofa. According to Icelandic Wikipedia (no English article on it), it only dates to the 18th century. Even my babby country (America) is full of buildings way older than that. Did volcanoes and trolls eat all your old stuff or what? Nice videos too. I'll have to watch that hour and a half long movie later. Some of them have more views than there are people in your country which is tricky.
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Dec 10, 2013 07:21
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It sounds really dorky to me in the modern world where Thor is a comic book character.
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Dec 19, 2013 23:10
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:27 |
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There are many languages like that (all languages are like that) and it's why IPA was invented.
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Apr 20, 2015 14:50
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