http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_funnel-web_spider

Oh my god. No Australia visit for me.

Edit: And the Black House Spider picture on Wikipedia just made me literally cower into a ball. Good times.

How do people type chinese/japanese ? It seems like there wouldnt be enough keys on the keyboard.

Lol That's nearly the same here on a Saturday night - even the horse.

I'm in Glasgow and the view I get from my window is awesome, I've climbed some of the hills, Ben Lomand, Ben Nevis and the Campsie Hills, and the views you get at just the feeling from being up that high is more epic that words can describe. The Lochs are beaitful too, been camping at one once and waking up in a foggy valley beside a Loch at 7AM was nothing short of eery but still a beautiful sight. The ruined castles...those ruined castles, they are rather neat place, I always got chills when I entered ones down by the shore or at hilltops, it's good to know they've been left to nature and for people to freely explore even if it's nothing more than one or two rooms - once one at the beach had a dungeon with the locks that looked like > o O o, I forget it's name though.
Glasgow still has loads of old masonary buildings and gothic styles attached to them so it's very, unique I guess. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Glasgow_City_Chambers.jpg/800px-Glasgow_City_Chambers.jpg and at night http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3466/3928731284_5cfb56a563_z.jpg - I've had to pass this on the way home from work and it looks so majestic at night, it's lovely.

As for wearing Kilts, if it was up to me I'd be wearing one everyday, they are mostly used for ceremonial events like Weddings, some Army ceremonies and the Highland games. My dad has to drag me out of the kilt shop because I can't stop looking at the patterns/styles, pins or daggers that come with them. I think they're one of the smartest formal wears you'll get rather than the obvious meh suit.

Depends on what you define as 'best'. Wynn, Bellagio, and Caesars are the highest luxury casinos in my opinion. (Based on ambience, not price)

The Mandalay Bay was the best hotel IMO. Bellagio is all hype.

Besides gambling, I'd go see the Cirque de Soleil show "O". Amazing.

I can answer this one! (kinda.) I had a Chinese boyfriend and he had a normal QWERTY keyboard, and he could still type Chinese characters on it. I suppose he had a setting on it that meant he'd know which keys to press for what, he was a pretty fast typer so it was hard to tell what was happening.

He also told me there was about 20,000 characters in the Chinese language, and that it was normal for someone to only know 7000-8000 of these at any one time, because there was lots of different ways of saying things.
If you think about it, it's only like English having 26 characters, but thousands of words that can be made from it. No need for hundreds of keyboard keys.

Seems Queensland, Australia has some bad flooding. I'm still thinking of heading over on holiday, would really like to see the landscapes and wildlife in Oz too

But how would you even be able to type 1000 of them ? I just dont see how they can use a keyboard with their language. They pull it off, but damn I dont understand it. Japanese has a few alphabets, one of those alone has nearly 50 characters. Then you have kanji which there are apparently 10,000 of.
It just seems overcomplicated, and inefficient to have so many.

According to wikipedia they type the word phonetically in a language that uses an alphabet and the computer then prompts them with the corresponding kanji.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_keyboard

Those crazy asians...

Ah, ok. Thats more efficient I suppose.

It's not as hard as you'd think, you just type it out normally and the computer handles the conversion to kanji.

I think Japanese keyboards can type hiragana directly, so instead of typing 'A RI GA TO U' as 8 letters they just type ありがとう as 5 letters.

Does anyone know exactly how different Teriyaki food is in America from Japan? Always been a curiosity of mine.

And are there suburbs in France?

Most of Queensland is fine, just around Townsville to Innisfail is getting flooding at the moment.

Do park rangers in Australia carry revolvers with bird shot in them for all the nasty critters?

Sure. Not really sure what you mean by suburbs, though. Suburbs like you see in US shows, with the identical neat creepy little houses ? No.

The classic thing that's happening, and keeps on happening in french towns is that the center gets more and more expensive, and so poor people get driven out the city. Mostly you get towers of cheap stil-barely-afordable and-yet-grossly-overpriced rented appartements with extra thin walls.

Australians how do you feel about "New south Wales" as a person from south Wales. I [censored] hate it.

Despite being an American, suburbs do creep the hell out of me. The people who live there never have to see the outside world.

I don't think I understand what you are saying. Don't people who live in the burbs generally work in the city and commute back and forth? And don't they go driving in the country? I think I'm missing something.

Yes and no. They only ever need to go to the executive parts of cities. Many of the people I know in the burbs work from home. I don't like being there, all those neatly lined up houses just bug me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that most of the people I've known who grew up in the burbs were very, very sheltered. I don't mean to generalize, but this is just what I've experienced. Most suburban areas have a mega (i.e., more, higher quality products) version of a supermarket, and a assortment of food chains just around the corner. Usually Apple Bees, Red Robin, T.G.I. Fridays etc. The only time they really need to leave is for work.

I'm painting with broad brushes and speaking for people here, I apologize. I just have had some...less than pleasant experiences with suburbanites. To explain my aversion: about 70% of the middle class people in the South aren't Southerners, but Yanks that have moved down into the suburbs because of business stuff. It inspires resentment among the working class, they have better schools (yes, most suburban areas have their own schools), better tasting water, free lawn care, big houses. Many of the families down here work themselves to the bone just to scraqe by. I'm not saying that the working class deserves hand outs or that the middle class and upper middle class don't deserve their wealth. Unless they were born into it, they earned every penny too their name. It just inspires a lot of hot air, seeing them live better lives than the locals. Then they feel like they can tell us how to live, what is wrong and what is right, that is what really gets people. Many of them I've met seem to think of the locals as ill mannered barbarians who sacrifice goats on the altar to bring the magic cloud tears down upon our plant babies.

I considered bringing them up. Can't remember why I didn't.

"Sydney funne-web spider"

Meaning it only lives in and around Sydney . If you steer clear of New South Wales, your chances of coming across one are extremely limited outside of zoos. Since theres's still friggin' tons of Australia left after you make that exclusion -and even if you also exclude the deserty bits that make up most of our land- it's no reason to not come. Hell, you could even spend your time avoiding the mainland completely (ignoring flights) by hanging on one of our numerous islands (I recommend not going to the one populated by birds [when it's the season for babehs] and giant snakes [when they're not hibernating, which translates to "When there are birds around to munch on").

As to black house spiders: from that very same Wiki page, "Black house spiders are venomous, but are not considered dangerous. They are timid and bites from them are infrequent".

Oh I'm not worried about actual bites. I'm just worried about the fact they scare the [censored] out of me. I'd constantly be living on edge.

That's interesting. Not sure I'd agree but I am sure not in a position to speak for anyone from the suburbs or the city or most country folks. But seems to me that no matter which side of the fence/road/highway/byway or train track one lives on they tend to have misperceptions and lack of understanding of the other side. Mostly because I don't think you can put labels on people. There are many various folks living in many different situations and different types of people living all over. Of course most of those different places have their own schools. I think more often it's got to do with what one exposed their children to when growing up and what they are taught.

It's the melding of these people that make America what is is I think. I guess I'm a label cans not people sort and try hard not to judge anyone by where they live or how they make their living. I do however understand that economical divisions happen in cities/suburbs. Seems they swap places every so often like a revolving thing. The rich live downtown then move to the burbs then it becomes popular to be downtown and the rich move into old places downtown and renovate them only to eventually move back to the country or the burbs. Never ending cycle.

I feel fortunate to live where we need one another no matter how much money we have and are judged more on how good we are at survival rather than what cloths we wear.

Isn't there a large number of car accidents in Australia caused by those spiders falling out of rear view mirrors and glove boxes and stuff?

I realise that sentence is awkward as hell by the way. I'm wining and dining. Minus the dining. So I ain't gonna change it tonight.

Suburbs are quite weird. The children that grow up in suburbs are usually... undesirable personalities who grow up to be... blind, self-absorbed, bland people. You get the odd few who aren't like that, of course...

Suburbs are where people go to get away from the scary poor people and the looming threat of progress.