Thumper:
Whitebread, eh? Funny, talking to my new Korean friend, she said that the people on the Hill for Canada Day were very diverse, but that the part of Ottawa that I'm from is very "Canadian." I was confused, and she explained that by "Canadian" she meant "white." Didn't even occur to me that that's what she meant, since "Canadian" means people of all races and cultures to me, but apparently that's not the perception abroad - we're just as whitebread to non-white foreigners, I guess. (To be fair, my area of Ottawa is very white - historically it's French Canadian - but using the word "Canadian" to mean "white" is still very strange to me)
Rommie:
That's
very cool. I actually got to meet him when I was a kid - it was right after his Mir flight. He was just a fantastic guy, and he's been my favourite astronaut ever since. When the whole world blew up about him, I got to do the hipster "I liked him before he was cool" thing.