Testing Episode IV: A New Lament

[adr]

Whoa.

NCIS is still on!?!?!?

[Ralin]

I ended up chatting with an old Chinese woman who was picking her granddaughter up after school yesterday. She commented that I look like I'm an Uyghur and mimed cowering in fear.

[RogueIce]

Whoa.

NCIS is still on!?!?!?

They renewed it for a 13th (currently airing) and 14th season last year.

[adr]

Wow. I kinda like the show (though I haven't actually watched it for a long time) but I don't like it that much.... I thought it was starting to get old around like the 6th season.

[Bounty]

Is that the original they renewed or one of the brazillion spinoffs?

I will admit it's strangely addictive comfort TV on a rainy Sunday with a microwave dinner for one.

[adr]

I just watched the new Ghostbusters film... and I enjoyed it more than the 1984 movie.

I like the original film, but honestly, I don't love it. It has a few outstanding quotes but is overall I think overrated, and I don't particularly like Bill Murray's character. I don't think he's especially funny and do think he's a pig. The new ones, on the other hand, I found all to be fun and I outright loved Kate McKinnon's character.

I'd recommend it as a see.

[Stofsk]

I was going to see it at the cinema but I forgot

[The Spartan]

Anyone have suggestions on a country to move to that hasn't/isn't losing it's goddamn mind?

Preferably one where the primary language is English, German and/or Spanish (in that order). And one that doesn't take a lot of money to move to or live in...

[Ralin]

Hong Kong permanent residency is supposed to be automatic after seven years if you can find work there. Alternatively, the mainland still needs ESL teachers.

[Oxymoron]

Well, you can try Germany or Swiss.

[Ralin]

Isn't Switzerland the country where getting citizenship/residency requires literally the entire town/county you settled in to unanimously vote to let you have it?

[The Spartan]

Well, the urge has lessened, if not exactly evaporated.

That said, I'm not sure Hong Kong would be a good fit; I speak no Mandarin (that's the official language, right?) and the only thing I know about the culture comes from food/travel shows. Germany and Switzerland would probably be great fits since I can speak some German and have vacationed in Bavaria, but I don't know that I could afford to live there. I probably wouldn't be able to survive on what money I have saved long enough to adapt to living there and find work.

Even should the urge to leave surge again, it's probably a pipe dream.

[Ralin]

English is one of the official languages of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and you can easily live your entire life there without speaking a word of Chinese. If you were going to learn Chinese to fit in there you would want to learn Cantonese, not Mandarin.

Getting work on the mainland would be substantially easier. Most people there would not speak English, including your ESL students. But many, many people have managed living in China without speaking Chinese and you can too if you want to. Speaking the language would just make your life substantially easier.

If you decided to go the ESL route you'd need a bachelor's degree, 2+ years of post-graduation teaching experience, ideally some form of TEFL certificate or the willingness to blatantly lie about/fake some or all of those things. Should you find it necessary to lie about your qualifications the work experience requirement is highly unlikely to be checked or verified. I've never looked much into faking a degree or TEFL certificate, but plenty of people have done that as well.

If you're really interested the company that placed me in my current school is about to start recruiting for next year. I live in Shenzhen.

[adr]

i'm officially.... old

my life: ruined
my joy: gone
my hopes: diminishing

by this point in his life, captain kirk was already almost actually CAPTAIN motherfucking KIRK

so i was talking to my girl friends last night and they were like "yeah we can't be friends anymore you're the creepy old guy now STOP STALKING US"

and i pulled out my communicator and was like "kirk to enterprise" hoping to beam out of that horrible situation

but there was no answer because the crew of the enterprise knew full well that i wasn't actually captain kirk. the REAL captain kirk prolly ordered them to limit contact with the past to avoid polluting the timeline

well jokes on them i'm going to take apart this communicator and figure out how the transtator works and then in a few years, i'll be demanding a piece of THEIR action!!!!

bwaha- my evil laughter was interrupted by malcolm reed punching me in the face and taking the communicator back

now i literally have nothing

[Stofsk]

we've all been there mang

[The Spartan]

Hang in their bro, sometimes life kicks you in the balls and all you can do is take deep breaths till it passes.

I'm right in the middle of a not-dissimilar point in my life myself.

[Dooey Jo]

i thought malcolm reed was just Riker's holodream

[adr]

holograms exist!!!!!!!!!!

[Stofsk]

photons be free

[The Spartan]

Holy fucking shit....

So, most of my stuff is currently in storage. I went there yesterday so I could get some of my tools out and start making wood projects again and, while I was there, I went back to my fridge to clean it out since I was worried about mildew. To make a long story short, what little mildew there was wasn't the problem.

The problem was that, somehow or other, a package of raw turkey tenderloins had been left in the meat drawer.

It was hours before the smell/taste finally cleared out of the back of my throat.

[Bounty]

THANKS FOR THE NIGHTMARES

[The Spartan]

If it's any help, it was in a still-sealed container; the airtight one it was purchased in.

The smell was able to permeate through the plastic, but that's it. And it was enough. Ugh...

[adr]

eeek that happened to my brother a summer or two ago.... and it wasn't wrapped. so it rotted so badly it was just foul

we ended up having to replace the fridge as it shorted out too. yikes.

[The Spartan]

I don't think I'll have to replace it. I threw out the package of turkey and wiped down every surface I could reach with hospital grade disinfectant wipes. I also left a few of those wipes lying in the fridge and left the doors lying open so it would air out.

Hopefully that will take care of things. Plus, once I move it out of there, I'll get in and give it another scrub down.

[The Spartan]

"Obama should resign a few days early so that Biden has to be sworn in as 45th President, thus, ruining all of Drumpf's merchandise."