North America questions?

[19magic]

Please don't feel like any one person has to answer the the random questions I have lol

If you live in one of the top states and have a Canadian job does it matter? Or vice versa. Is there anything extra you need to do to cross from one border country line to the other?

I heard someone before say the dollars are different and that Canadians are more serious about ice hockey.

Is there anything separating it at all? I know north Ireland and Ireland there isn't anything, same with Wales, England and Scotland.

Are bumper stickers actually a big thing? In every movie there's always Nashville or Ohio things.

Also are personalised number plates a big thing that people do?

Is Swarovski actually a really common surname? No matter what movie I watch, if it has millitary in it that name will be included.

Is there an unspoken grievance between the northern and southern states?

Is every city in America all grid-like? Whenever I see videos I see these perfect 3/4 bed houses huge gardens and it's like a kid got a square and rectangle stamp and stamped them in parallel lines. Also every time these blocks seems to be on perfectly flat land - I know that can't be true for everywhere. But the only time I seem to see unlevel land is where you have a hut/bungalow type thing in the woods and they own all that land.

Lastly for barristers for tea and coffee drinkers, is the people who choose tea super rare or is it split evenly. I see so many Brits love tea, that I just think well surely Americans like tea too. Or brits and their milk, is that really and truly a British thing?

If there's a gathering at a home it's 1:4 times the women would choose coffee:tea and for the men it's 1:2:3 for coffee:tea:beer/ale and kids drink pop or juice.

Updates

6 mo

Although, me and some mates had a good ol' convo about our favourite cuppa dunkers & which one was king for the dunks. If it was: rich tea, plain or choc digestive, bourbon, custard cream, hobnob, choc chip & we asked our polish friend and she was like I've never dunked in a tea. That night I brought a selection pack & the next day we all sat and dunked and made her try each one, her response - I don't understand this tradition, cookies and milk sure, tea... no.

Updates

6 mo

And this is why you don't trust speech to text recognition, the name in question is Kawalsky, a couple of examples top of my head is starget and black hawk down. I know for us Smith is actually quite common along with colours green, white, brown etc

[NamerOfStars]

1. I haven't been to Canada in several years, but as of the last time, you DO need a passport, at least at official crossing points (there's one town in... Vermont, I think? Where one side of one street is in the US, and the other in Canada; the attitudes are VERY relaxed, compared to other borders I've seen). It's still pretty fast and easy to get through. Living in one country and working in the other probably has some tax issues, but unless you're handling matters of national security, the headaches probably aren't huge.

2. Canadian dollars are indeed different; they're a separate country after all. It's kind of silly that they chose to steal our name for a unit of currency, after what we'd just done to the country that stole our name- but I guess they claimed they were stealing it from the Netherlands or something.

3. Ireland is a little different, given the extreme unpleasantness of Irish history; the US and Canada have MUCH less antagonism between them. Many Canadians boast of being from "the only country to defeat the US in a war", but I think that this is mostly just contributing to North American historical ignorance, since A. they didn't defeat the US in a war (that was Vietnam), and B. they do have the best record against the US (successfully repelling two invasions and being the only reason the War of 1812 wasn't a total loss for the UK). The border is pretty porous; it's 5500 miles long, which means that you'd need something like a third of the population of Canada standing shoulder-to-shoulder to cover it all.

4. Bumper stickers are far from rare, but nowhere near every car has them. Those that do often have several, though. The same for personalized license plates; I've seen some truly clever ones, but most are just the random mix of letters and numbers.

5. I believe that Swarovski is the name of a jewelry company, or a type of crystal or some super-luxurious thing; I don't think I know anyone with it as a last name, though. I suspect if you keep seeing it very frequently in movies, it's probably an in-joke of some kind.

6. No, but there is a kind of low-key, mostly (MOSTLY) friendly rivalry.

7. No, but many of our larger cities were laid out in grid patterns; a perk of being able to design them from the ground up, rather than having them grow naturally- and an influence of French civic designs, as opposed to English ones. Many people from other countries think of the US as mostly being English in origin, but that's only part of the picture; we got started as a mix of English politics, French philosophy, German culture, and Irish propensity for beating each other up. It only got crazier from there.

8. Tea IS a popular drink here, but nothing like it is in the UK or Ireland.

[19magic]

This is really super interesting, a lot of it I've never really thought about. Especially with the currency, I had always assumed it was the same it was only recently I thought about the mixed history of UK and Canada though, and wasn't it Canadian money had the queen's head on it. But I had always figured each county makes their own designs but it's the same.

There obviously is still a lot of antagonism but I know at least in some parts it's non existent. I don't love all of his stuff but I do love the song Nancy Mulligan by ed Sheeran, and thats a great example of the antagonism.

Sorry the name was meant to be Kawalsky I have no Idea how I didn't notice that before posting it.

I mean I had suspected as much but it's quite rare to see it on telly.

And it's nice to know if I ordered a nice cuppa I won't get too many strange looks.

[NamerOfStars]

Ah, Kawolsky. Yes, I DO know a few people with that last name, but I think seeing it in military movies is probably a reference to Dreamworks' Madagascar, which had a very interesting group of military-esque penguins, the most constantly-referred to of which was named "Kowalski"; that's probably what inspired it.

The name itself is derived from "kowal", which means "blacksmith"; it's the second most common surname in Poland. And we do have quite a few Poles here- Chicago, in particular, has more Polish people than any other city in the world, except Warsaw.

[WhiteSandyBeach]

Back when we had laws, you needed a work visa to work in America if you were Canadian.

As for crossing the border, just get a passport.

[19magic]

Wait you actually need a passport? Does that mean there's like junction boxes on every road or something

[WhiteSandyBeach]

No. You will be asked to show your passport at the US/Canadian border, or a Trusted Traveler Program card. But if you want to work in the US, you technically need a work visa. If you cross into America from Canada, you have to play by the rules. But if you come in from Mexico, there are no rules. And back when we had laws, you would have to prove you weren't displacing an American worker if you got a job here. But now the entire world can come to America if you promise to vote Democrat.

[19magic]

I mean I heard about the Mexican wall and like boxes where you checked in but had assumed that was down south. It sounds like a great idea though, if only we could do the same 😞 our population has gone from 52.5m in the 60s, to 56.3m in the 80s, to 58.8m in the 00s, to 67m in 20s with the yearly increase containing migrants at 70-90%, every 5 years another 2-3 million higher population.

[WhiteSandyBeach]

Enter through Canada. The Mexico border is too dangerous.

[WhiteSandyBeach]

Thanks for the MHO

[Daniela1982]

Personal plates are really a thing.

[19magic]

These are awesome, how often is it you see one?

[Daniela1982]

Almost every time I'm driving here in California.