Sandman's Vacation

So, Sandy...how was your recent visit to the United States? Did you like
the country?

Grab many images and videos?

John

On 2014-05-04 19:58:28 +0000, John Turco said:

So, Sandy...how was your recent visit to the United States? Did you
like the country?

Grab many images and videos?

Naughty, thoughts there Br'er Fox.
Don't bait the tar-baby, it won't just be Br'er Rabbit you catch. It
will mire the entire NG.


--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article , John Turco wrote:

So, Sandy...how was your recent visit to the United States? Did you
like the country?

Sure, people are friendly and the weather was nice, apart from a few days
where there was some rain.

As per usual, food is awful and there's no coffee to be found anywhere but
at Starbucks, but that's just me being a European

Grab many images and videos?

Sure did. Most of it is your typical vacation images though. As I noted
before I left, Florida isn't known for its interesting and varied scenery,
it's pretty flat. We did make a trip to Tampa for some swimming in the
ocean and such at Fort De Soto, that was nice. A few pics can be found
he

https://www.facebook.com/SandmanNet/media_set?set=a.10152113768851985.1073741837.61584 1984&type=3

All in all, there was some 900 images and 20-ish videos, but as you may
imagine, most of it is private



--
Sandman[.net]

In article 2014050413334581977-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom, Savageduck wrote:

On 2014-05-04 19:58:28 +0000, John Turco said:

John Turco:
So, Sandy...how was your recent visit to the United States? Did
you like the country?

Grab many images and videos?

Naughty, thoughts there Br'er Fox. Don't bait the tar-baby, it won't
just be Br'er Rabbit you catch. It will mire the entire NG.

Huh?

--
Sandman[.net]

On 2014-05-05 05:23:53 +0000, Sandman said:

In article 2014050413334581977-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom, Savageduck wrote:

On 2014-05-04 19:58:28 +0000, John Turco said:

John Turco:
So, Sandy...how was your recent visit to the United States? Did
you like the country?

Grab many images and videos?

Naughty, thoughts there Br'er Fox. Don't bait the tar-baby, it won't
just be Br'er Rabbit you catch. It will mire the entire NG.

Huh?

Its an American cultural thing.
You will find that I am making a reference to a 19th Century take on
Aesop’s Fables, the folk-tales of Uncle Remus. Most American of a
certain age are familiar with the tales of Uncle Remus.
You might even have run into some of the Remus characters at Disney.
Disney made an adaptation of the Uncle Remus tale, “Song of The South�
for the screen and had laid claim to some of the characters. You might
be familiar with a song from that 1946 movie, “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah�.
One of the tales tells of Br’er (brother) Fox attempting to trap Br’er
Rabbit using a tar-baby. You might say I was thinking of an analogy to
the direction recent discussions have taken in this NG.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Remus

--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article 201405042310423510-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom, Savageduck wrote:

John Turco:
So, Sandy...how was your recent visit to the
United States? Did you like the country?

Grab many images and videos?

Savageduck:
Naughty, thoughts there Br'er Fox. Don't bait the tar-baby, it
won't just be Br'er Rabbit you catch. It will mire the entire
NG.

Sandman:
Huh?

Its an American cultural thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Remus

While I didn't get that particular reference, I did go on Splash mountain
on Disney World, which centers around that.

That said, the "huh" was more about what you mean about baiting, and "mire
the entire NG" for him asking about the trip? That's what I didn't get.


--
Sandman[.net]

In article , Sandman
wrote:

So, Sandy...how was your recent visit to the United States? Did you
like the country?

Sure, people are friendly and the weather was nice, apart from a few days
where there was some rain.

As per usual, food is awful and there's no coffee to be found anywhere but
at Starbucks, but that's just me being a European

then you went to the wrong restaurants.

In article , nospam wrote:

John Turco:
So, Sandy...how was your recent visit to the United States? Did
you like the country?

Sandman:
Sure, people are friendly and the weather was nice, apart from a
few days where there was some rain.

As per usual, food is awful and there's no coffee to be found
anywhere but at Starbucks, but that's just me being a European

then you went to the wrong restaurants.

It's more like; there's way too many wrong restaurants to go to. In the
end, I used Yelp in order to get a gauge on a restaurant and still ended up
at places where the food was atrocious.

There was one Olive Garden in Tampa that was pretty nice, and also the more
expensive restaurants inside the parks. But overall, really really bad.

I assume you CAN find good food in America, but being in a tourist heavy
area and pick the 20 nearest restaurants and I'll guarantee that 18 of them
are really awful, and the remaning... "ok"

And it's also a matter of brand recognition. So you go to America (where
I've been several times, mind you) and you don't know much about most
brands, but you know some brands by name, so you know they're at least big,
so you assume that perhaps they're at least halfway ok.

That's the reasoning that led us to Taco Bell.

God DAMN, worst food to ever cross my lips during the entire trip. Taco
Bell is now the same as "Found in Trash" in my mind. I really can't
understand how some (most?) Americans can eat things like that.

But, as I said, there surely ARE places with good food, it's just that it's
damn hard to find if you don't know where they are.




--
Sandman[.net]

In article , Sandman
wrote:

As per usual, food is awful and there's no coffee to be found
anywhere but at Starbucks, but that's just me being a European

then you went to the wrong restaurants.

It's more like; there's way too many wrong restaurants to go to. In the
end, I used Yelp in order to get a gauge on a restaurant and still ended up
at places where the food was atrocious.

sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap.

There was one Olive Garden in Tampa that was pretty nice, and also the more
expensive restaurants inside the parks. But overall, really really bad.

olive garden is not an example of good food.

I assume you CAN find good food in America, but being in a tourist heavy
area and pick the 20 nearest restaurants and I'll guarantee that 18 of them
are really awful, and the remaning... "ok"

18 out of 20 is in fact, 90%.

And it's also a matter of brand recognition. So you go to America (where
I've been several times, mind you) and you don't know much about most
brands, but you know some brands by name, so you know they're at least big,
so you assume that perhaps they're at least halfway ok.

That's the reasoning that led us to Taco Bell.

ugh. did you really expect a fast food joint to have good food?

God DAMN, worst food to ever cross my lips during the entire trip. Taco
Bell is now the same as "Found in Trash" in my mind. I really can't
understand how some (most?) Americans can eat things like that.

because it's cheap and quick.

But, as I said, there surely ARE places with good food, it's just that it's
damn hard to find if you don't know where they are.

ask the locals and don't rely on advertising because the better places
don't need to advertise.

also skip the chains, especially the major ones. there is the
occasional exception for local chains but that's fairly rare.

In article , Tony Cooper
wrote:

It's not that European or American coffee is "bad", but that it's
different than what we are used to.

What irritated me was that European places usually charged for a
refill. In any US restaurant, refills are free and unlimited. There
are exceptions like Dunkin' Donuts, but I don't count them as a
"restaurant".

nothing is 'free'. you're paying for the refills, whether you drink
them or not.