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 #17 (permalink) Fri Nov 30, 2007 15:40 pm The grateful and the ungrateful |
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(I'll assume you're referring to the CR when it was Czechoslovakia and a Commie holding)
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Prezbucky
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| #18 (permalink) Fri Nov 30, 2007 17:20 pm The grateful and the ungrateful |
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| prezbucky wrote: |
| (I'll assume you're referring to the CR when it was Czechoslovakia and a Commie holding) |
No, about three years after. Their earning power and infrastructure hadn't caught up to Germany's yet, and they still haven't. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #19 (permalink) Fri Nov 30, 2007 19:09 pm The grateful and the ungrateful |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
In the Czech Republic, in the early '90s, I knew a German guy who lived on some kind of social assistance while shacked up with his Czech girlfriend in the land of cheap beer and groceries. He'd go back to Germany enough to make the government think he really lived there, but most of the time he was living like a rich man among the Czechs, constantly yelling, "Ich werde immer dicker! Ich werde immer dicker!"
Once I was in his girlfriend's apartment, and we were watching a documentary on German TV about the sad state of German single mothers on social assistance. The Czechs were laughing. The high point came when the program showed the state-subsidized apartment that one woman had to accept. In a dramatically tragic voice, the German narrator said, "The furniture is not new." The Czech women in the room started screaming, "GIVE ME THAT APARTMENT! I WANT THAT APARTMENT!" It looked like a palace to them. |
Nothing is so hard as man's ingratitude. And at times it seems that whinging is the dearest child of many Germans. You could also call this nag widespread discontent. Discontent with all kinds of political, social and private conditions, usually reviving most Germans' infamous ambition to perfect a system in order to be more efficient. But there are also quite a few people who perfect their system of exploiting the welfare state. Those people take the social net for granted and do not see their own responsibility to contribute to it. I find this attitude quite sickening.
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 Ralf
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| #20 (permalink) Fri Nov 30, 2007 19:45 pm The grateful and the ungrateful |
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| Ralf wrote: |
| Nothing is so hard as man's ingratitude. And at times it seems that whinging is the dearest child of many Germans. You could also call this nag widespread discontent. Discontent with all kinds of political, social and private conditions, usually reviving most Germans' infamous ambition to perfect a system in order to be more efficient. But there are also quite a few people who perfect their system of exploiting the welfare state. Those people take the social net for granted and do not see their own responsibility to contribute to it. I find this attitude quite sickening. |
We have people with that same entitlement attitude in the US, but in recent years they've made it harder for folks to be that way.
As for perfecting things, I remember reading a quote from a Finnish politician once. He said he'd gone into politics with the hope of making people happy. However, as he solved more and more of their problems, he found that people never stopped complaining. Because of that, he said he changed his goal to hearing people complain about smaller and smaller things. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #21 (permalink) Fri Nov 30, 2007 20:23 pm The grateful and the ungrateful |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| he found that people never stopped complaining. Because of that, he said he changed his goal to hearing people complain about smaller and smaller things. |
Sounds like a wise man. Do you remember his name?
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Ralf
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| #22 (permalink) Fri Nov 30, 2007 20:30 pm The grateful and the ungrateful |
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| Ralf wrote: |
| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| he found that people never stopped complaining. Because of that, he said he changed his goal to hearing people complain about smaller and smaller things. |
Sounds like a wise man. Do you remember his name? |
I can't remember it anymore. This was a long time ago. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #23 (permalink) Tue Dec 04, 2007 19:08 pm The grateful and the ungrateful |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| Ralf wrote: |
| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| he found that people never stopped complaining. Because of that, he said he changed his goal to hearing people complain about smaller and smaller things. |
Sounds like a wise man. Do you remember his name? |
I can't remember it anymore. This was a long time ago. |
I was just thinking the man in question could be the Swedish politician Olaf Palme. At least he said "Alla folks frihet, hela varldens fred" 
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| #24 (permalink) Wed Dec 05, 2007 14:25 pm The grateful and the ungrateful |
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When my father was in England, beggars always came to him saying "A penny for a cup of tea" and my father told me he always said "I thought I'd given you" and normally the beggar will go away, scurrying. But one time he met a beggar who used to serve in Tanah Melayu (now Malaysia), they talked and the beggar found out that my father was Malay and he started reciting a pantun, the Malay poem.
Tinggi sungguh burung terbang, tinggi lagi harapan saya...
Literally, 'The birds fly high, but my hopes are higher...' 
What a cute beggar!
My father thinks it was peculiar, because he only received 56 pound of scholarship per month at the time and the beggars received more from the government. Practically he was living below poverty line yet the beggars asked money from him. |
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| 'Impossible is Nothing'? (new adidas slogan) | Is there an American, British or Irish equivalent to the German mull wine? |
