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Congratulations, Rodi (and also to your brother and his wife)! I hope your niece lives closer to you than mine. Being the fourth child in a five-child family, I have 2 nieces and 4 nephews, but all of them live in Ontario and I see them once every couple of years. I have to imagine being an uncle is cooler if you actually get to spend time with the kids.

I'm currently feeling incredibly cynical about Canadian politics. For those who may not be aware:

One thing which I've always been happy about in Canadian politics (especially compared to our Southern neighbours) is the vote of no-confidence. I realize a bunch of you live in countries that also have this, but for the benefit of those who don't know it means that if our parliment can prove that it has lost confidence in a leader, a new election is called immediately to replace them. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it makes me proud that we have the ability to do it. It happened last month, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper was forced to call an election for May second. So far so good. The thing is, he's running again. Currently, he's even in the lead. That this seems fine to everyone is staggering to me. This guy has been leading a series of controversial minority governments for years now, but at least he stayed in power legitimately. Now, he's been effectively impeached by his country, told by a parliment of their (supposed) representatives that the nation has lost confidence in his ability to govern, and responds with "Nah, it's ok guys. I got this."

The thing is, I would be ok with his party (The Conservative Party of Canada) being re-elected. I wouldn't be happy about it, considering myself much further left than that, but I wouldn't be offended either. That Harper specifically is running again is fucking outrageous to me. Call me old-fashioned, but once your country removes you as its leader, I don't think you should be able to go right back to running it as if nothing happened. If Harper is elected on May 2nd, it will be the saddest day for Canadian Democracy.

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Nice! Would love to get a road bike too, even with semi-slicks the MTB can be a thrash.

Is it for commuting, touring, or occasional rides?

Hi Nach, it's for triathlon and commuting the 32 mile round trip to work (when I get some steam up in my legs!)

Interestingly, I saw my first ever 'adventure' bike whilst in the shops looking for mine. It was a drop handlebar racer/hybrid with tyres betwixt a road bike and a hybrid. It looked quite cool but wasn't rally what I was after ultimately. Never seen one before though and I almost got it as it was quite rugged yet slick looking.

Also, congrats Rodi. I'm an uncle to 5 children and it's great so good luck with your uncle-ing!

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And, driving to work the other day, I was reminded of my good friend Poo...

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Imposter! You should've beheaded him on my account!

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Today and half of tomorrow is going to suck. I'm going to board a plane to India later today, so I will be stuck in a small place with smelly people for quite some hours :/

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But you're doing it to go to India... Somehow I would think that would balance out the suck. :P

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Yes, the cities are a lot more crowded than the plane. :)

From what I have gathered from my sister's stories, to maximize the changes of an enjoyable stay there you should avoid the megacities as much possible.

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Just finished an evening of cooking : in 3 hours, I prepared an oversized pasta salad as well as from (left to right, top bottom) 6 small melty core chocolate cakes, 1 prune pie, 1 onion quiche, 1 ouiche lorraine and 1 normandy-style apple pie.

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I had to fight the erratic electric oven everystep of the way, and the result doesn't look perfect, but they look picturesque (or rustic) and I'm confident about the taste.

If all goes to shit though, I'll pull out the foie gras and everything should be alright.

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I have to say, for a regular pen pusher like I am, it was really fun to work during the easter weekend on fixing our bikes.

The summer is coming so I fixed our bikes and changed the tires and checked brakes and did some paintjobs etc.

Some good honest manual labour and things are looking pretty good right now.

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From what I have gathered from my sister's stories, to maximize the changes of an enjoyable stay there you should avoid the megacities as much possible.

I'm here for work. So avoiding megacities isn't really possible. I'm in MegaCity 41 (number 6 in India).

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I'd advise you not to take up any of the street ear cleaners' offers.

Erm, that's pretty much the only helpful thing I can think of off the top of my head.

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(For lack of a better thread to put this in, and it's certainly not deserving of its own.)

Does anyone in the UK/greater Europe actually give a fuck about the "Royal Wedding"?

Or is America just stupid?

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Here in Finland every possible media outlet is streaming that whole extravaganza live.

Propably all the elderly people are watching it right now while the rest of us are working and not giving a damn about the whole thing.

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Yeah, I think it's about 50/50 in England - the old people care, the women just like big weddings, and no one else gives a shit.

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(For lack of a better thread to put this in, and it's certainly not deserving of its own.)

Does anyone in the UK/greater Europe actually give a fuck about the "Royal Wedding"?

Or is America just stupid?

Some do. There are a lot of royalists that come out of the wood-work that one would not necessarily think. People on the site have asked if we know anywhere that's showing it ("No"), and g/f has 3 friends over who are glued to the TV. G/f doesn't give a toss.

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There are a bunch of people spending the day at Nottingham Hackspace who don't give a toss. I'd say <5% of people I know care about it, but that's not exactly an unbiased sample.

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It's obviously a charming event, though I don't see why anyone outside of the UK would give a toss, nor why anyone would be going apeshit over it.

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Another bonus is that it's socially acceptable to start drinking at 10am today.

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Canada won't shut the fuck up about it (they're our royals too, after all!). A surprising amount of monarchists have shown up, given that we're not even on the same fucking continent as the royal family. There have even been front page news stories in my city about "this woman who works downtown looks a lot like Kate Middleton and her name is even Kate!" Seriously? What the fuck, everyone? We have a federal election on Monday, and this is the front page news?

In closing, fuck the fucking royal wedding.

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Here in India quite some people at the office didn't even knew about it.

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Here in India quite some people at the office didn't even knew about it.

Travesty.

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Hundreds of years of British rule and they still don't give a fuck about the Royal family. Appalling.

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