Enjoying your very active forums!

[Zachary Klaas]

Greetings Natopians! I'm Zak Klaas, the Interim Prime Minister of the International Association, into which by my order Natopia was just admitted!

Your Chancellor invited me to have a look at your forums, and I must say I was impressed by the traffic and evident interest in all things Natopian (and lots of other stuff!)

I liked your free forum server so much, by the way, I decided to get one like it for the Association.

Anyway, thanks for the invite, and will probably drop in on you at some point to see what goes on here.

Zachary Klaas
Interim Prime Minister
International Association

[RCH Ryan Grass]

Hey, what's up? Please visit more often. It gets boring talking to Tasneem in every post.

[ZacharyKlaas]

Hmm, what's the difference? It would be boring talking to me in every post as well. ;D

Incidentally, if one of you can make a list of who is and isn't a citizen of Natopia and send it to [e-mail] then I can confirm those people as Associates of the Association, who at present are also all persons with the right to be Representatives in the Parliament of the Association.

Is everyone here from the St. Louis area? That's sort of an ancestral home for me, though I haven't spent much time there myself. My Engler grandparents were born and raised in St. Louis, and my Klaas grandparents come from the Calhoun County, IL/Lincoln County, MO area. My Grandma Klaas lives in Manchester at the moment. I also had several relatives who at one point lived in Florissant, though that was a while back now.

[Tasneem]

Hey, I'm boring? Oh yeah. I knew that.

It wouldn't be boring talking to you. It's better than talking to the same person all the time. Also, it will probably higher my post count.

I think we're all from the St. Louis area. I was born in Mexico, Missouri though and I'm moving to Kansas City. I lived in New York for two years when I was a baby.

[ZacharyKlaas]

I lived in KC for a five-year period when I was a very little kid (ages 0-5, though I was born in California and not KC).

Kansas City I know reasonably well, as my St. Louis-born grandparents moved to Kansas City and lived there for a good 40 years - spent a lot of time there.

Our house when we lived there was on The Paseo.

[Tasneem]

We're going to live in Lee's Summit because of the schools. I dunno but Kansas City is alot smaller than St. Louis and I don't like that. It seems boring

[Nathan]

Thanks for visiting Prime Minister Klaas,

I'm currently in New York on Spring Break visiting my grandparents. We brought them our old computer, so now i can be online! However, I will be online a lot less this week (I'll get back Sunday) due to the fact that we've got a veeeeeery slow dial-up connection here in NY (im used to DSL ).

If you click on "members" up top you'll get a list of the Natopian Citizens who are on this forum, active or not. A more complete list can be found on freewebs.com/natopia then clicking on Incumbents. This however won't give you their e-mails. If it's not too much of an inconvienence, I'll send them to you next week.

You could look at the website anyway. It gives a basic overview of Natopia government and culture. I think some of it is a little outdated though...

Anyway, enjoy yourself here!

P.S. thanks for admiting Natopia into the International Association!

[Tasneem]

Poor you, having to be in New York. I hope you can try to have fun but that place is crazy.

[ZacharyKlaas]

Ah, the highly esteemed Chancellor Nate arrives.

Thanks, I can begin processing the new Associated Members of the Association from Natopia via those two lists you mention, and if you send the E-mail you plan to send next week, I'll use that to verify the others.

Also, I like the idea of posting citizen names only with the last initial, as many of your citizens do on the web sites. That protects privacy sufficiently and yet lets people know they're on the citizen list and therefore their rights in the organisation will be protected. We'll begin to follow that convention from now on in the Association.

I would only use the E-mails as official addresses for votes - official votes in the Association from specific Natopian citizens could only come from the specific E-mail addresses they supply. I would have no need to post these on the website and would indeed be against doing so for privacy purposes.

Zak

Zachary Klaas
on behalf of the International Association

[Nathan]

I'm glad Natopia has had a positive impact on the Association.

[ZacharyKlaas]

So far so good.

Having received the names of 21 Natopians, I have certified these 21 individuals as Associates, and at present all Citizens and Associates are entitled to vote as Representatives to the Association's Lower House. The quorum for a successful vote in the Lower House is 6, so any 6 of you can come over to the Association website at theassociation.tk and pass a law if you like.

Natopians - if you register on the Association's forums (which are run by the same folks that run this one), so long as Chancellor Nate does not claim that someone posting under your name is not you or something along these lines, then you're good to vote. The Lower House has been formally opened, and you're all okay to post there and make motions or cast votes.

Chancellor Nate is Natopia's Senator in the Association Upper House, and he is similarly okay to post there and make motions or cast votes.

Again, welcome!

Oh, and I'll have to check to see when the first Expos-Cardinals game is so I can taunt you all should nos amours actually manage to win.

[Tasneem]

The Cardinals should win against the Expos or all hope is lost. What does "nos amours" mean?

So I'm an associate? In those 21 people, does that include my little brother? I would take him out.

[RCH Ryan Grass]

Wow. I missed a lot while I was gone.

Born in St. Louis, living in St. Louis, plan on dying in St. Louis.

You should seriously not count Tasneem's siblings. They're rather, well......... (swirls finger in a circle next to head, while making cuckoo-clock noises)

[Tasneem]

You did miss a lot. I bet you should feel like a loser now.

Anyways, I was planning on living in St. Louis for my whole life but then there is that cone factor of how my parents pretty much control my life. So that's not gonna work out.

How would you know how weird my brothers are? But you're totally right. Seriously you don't want to meet them. The older one is more sane than the younger one though.

[ZacharyKlaas]

Hey.

Nos amours is literally "our loves", but is more like "our favourite team" in the context of the Expos. (Ya gotta love 'em, otherwise ya spend too much time noticing they lose a fair bit.)

Yes, I do recall more than one Chowdhury on the list of Associates, along with the umpteen different Grasses. Perhaps the Chowdhurys and the Grasses could be the Associations first political parties - sort of Hatfield and McCoy, I suppose.