Phaedrus

Congratulations, Frank!

I must confess to being somewhat bemused. Why on earth would anyone not prefer to see a SP who'd spent a bit of time getting herself ready for the meeting?

Congratulations on both!

There's nothing wrong with not having an opinion on something at all! And it certainly doesn't reflect a lack of effort on your part - I've often found that discovering more about something leads to less certainty about what my opinion is, rather than more. Doubt is an inescapable element of the human condition.

Danae Next: Lucian Freud

Why on earth would you need a fish finder?

Arrggh. I love traveling, but this is the one thing that I really, really hate. I find that I get so utterly sick of the hassle and the people trying to sell you things that I end up being preemptively and spectacularly obnoxious to anyone who approaches me... which is OK until I suddenly realize that I hate the asshole I've turned into. So then I stop it, and end up being far too nice to someone who's just running a scam of some kind, and then I hate myself for being so damn gullible. It sucks. And it's impossible to work out who's in the 5-10% of people who would be worth talking to, and who just needs to be got rid of as soon as possible. As for the rest of it - there's lots of good advice in this thread. One thing I'd add: learn a few words of the local language - even if it's just yes/no/please/thank you/hello/goodbye, the effort is almost always appreciated and will really make you stand out from the rest of the tourists.

You're welcome!

OOI, have you contacted the provider and asked her what was going on? She may not even know that it happened, and you may not be the only client in this situation. If she has no idea that anything happened she may not know that she has a friend (I use the term loosely) who can't be trusted to borrow a phone, so you might be doing her a huge favour by telling her...

RG has gone fishing. But he's been gone a while, and he's not back... Should we send out a search party? Hang on... no. He's fine.

I have to say, I'm liking the number of artists popping up that I know nothing about :) Anyway, Dawn Baker... Next: Tawaraya Sotatsu

Magic vines. Worth watching... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJIx4fRuOmE

Another never-ending thread, this one shamelessly purloined from Facebook. Post a pic of piece of art by the artist given by the previous poster. If you feel like it, tell us anything else about the work or the artist that you think might be interesting to the uneducated masses (that's the rest of us). And then... most important... pick an artist for the next person! No rules about repeats, especially of artists, but if the same artist comes up again then try and find a different painting or sculpture to post this time. Hopefully we'll all become a little more cultured along the way. Since there's no previous poster for me, I get to start with whoever I please... and so I think I'm going to begin with Raphael, and post his School of Athens - which is actually a fresco on the theme of philosophy. The title by which it's now known wasn't chosen by the artist. Hopefully it'll be somewhat obvious why I went for this one :) Next person... Jackson Pollock.

This is pretty awesome.

I'm sure all the other members of the FB crew can relate.

Sorry!

Congratulations, Porthos! Always look forward to your posts!

Have a fantastic day, Emma! Additional Comments: Have a fantastic day, Emma!

Another observation on this stuff. I'm not quite sure what prompted this thread in the first place - complaints about clutter in the General forum, if I may speculate? :) However... this same criticism has been leveled at the games threads, and the pics threads (both the silly ones and the T&A ones), and I'm pretty sure at many others too. The point is that while there's probably an awful lot of us who think that the general forum is cluttered, we probably have a lot of diversity of opinion on exactly which threads are useless clutter and which ones are good and interesting and relevant and deserve to be here. All this really reflects is the simple fact that we're a community whose members have a diversity of interests, but for me that's part of the attraction. It saddens me that there seem to be some who would prefer to silence those whose interests and priorities are different from their own. Down that road I see nothing but sterility and boredom.