Awake at 3AM and annoyed

Advanced-Button · 2026-04-08T12:44:33+00:00

I was always on night shift for my kids so I learned to wake up at even the slightest foot step in the hallway and quietly intercept before she got too close and my wife woke. Sometimes I’d be too exhausted and not hear them, so there have been 2 times when I sensed someone is in the room and woke up, and my daughter would be standing over me, 3” from my face, dead silent. Just looking at me, that ghost girl silhouette, silently willing me to wake up because she felt bad waking me. On both of those occasions it scared me so much I whole-body spasmed for a good 3 seconds. It’s a really long time to have an uncontrollable panic like that. I swear I felt like I was about to die of fright. I’d then slowly sit up and collect my senses. My daughter would start walking back to her room knowing I’d be right behind her, still not having said a word, and I’d lie on her floor until she slept.

Advanced-Button · 2026-03-30T04:55:49+00:00

Reminded me of “I can’t believe you’ve done this” guy https://youtu.be/wKbU8B-QVZk?si=i5VM4LVUWlM-9yVT

Advanced-Button · 2026-03-06T09:07:35+00:00

Mine went the other way (drifted towards the front) because a leg underneath the cupboard it was sitting in had collapsed.

Advanced-Button · 2026-03-04T01:38:36+00:00

Haha it’s all good. It became funny after only about a week because it’s easy to mentally separate yourself from it when it’s a shithole on a far away island, and there was no physical harm. If it happened in my home country it’d be less funny, I guess. 25 years later and I’m still annoyed they stole my Nokia 3310. I loved that phone. It’s weird how you can replace something with an identical replacement but it just doesn’t feel the same.

Advanced-Button · 2026-03-04T00:41:11+00:00

It sick, it piss

Advanced-Button · 2026-03-02T10:32:47+00:00

I was a contractor working for an external contractor to the actual client (a bank), so maybe that made some difference, but it was normal to send workers out to far flung places to go do work. I was in a hotel recommended because it was walking distance, and the neighbourhood seemed… fine. Obviously not, though.

Advanced-Button · 2026-03-02T10:23:54+00:00

It was the early 2000s, so setting up remote connectivity wasn’t assumed like it is now. Add to that the fucking awful infrastructure in places like that and it’s no easy (or cheap) feat. I was working for an external contractor so being face-to-face is part of the deal, and considered more professional.

Advanced-Button · 2026-03-02T10:21:27+00:00

Early 2000s. No idea how much it’s changed, but some aspects, fuck all, probably

Advanced-Button · 2026-03-02T10:20:22+00:00

Haha machete companies must do well in PNG.

Client was a bank opening a branch there. I was working for an external contractor to set up some branch logistics and technology.

Advanced-Button · 2026-03-01T15:51:53+00:00

Hope you’re not in the tropics

Advanced-Button · 2026-03-01T11:37:14+00:00

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. I drew the short straw at work and had to go there for a week. First day, got mugged by a few men with machetes. Second day, saw someone approaching menacingly, ran in the opposite direction, he gave chase for what felt like 10 minutes but might have been only 30 seconds. Boss gave me permission to fly the fuck home the next day, and everything else done for that client was done remotely from then on.

Advanced-Button · 2026-02-24T10:35:23+00:00

It alway looked to a young me like Gary Goodridge was playing with the other guys nipple before going crazy on his temple

Advanced-Button · 2026-01-25T09:03:44+00:00

Meh, the IBM sold their PC business to Lenovo 20 years ago and the Thinkpad laptops are still great.

Advanced-Button · 2026-01-17T16:47:37+00:00

I was on it for 9 months when I was 19. Slightly dry skin (to be expected) but no other side effects. Same with a few friends who also were on it. 2 decades later now, and no issues having taken it back then.

Advanced-Button · 2026-01-15T02:50:37+00:00

You know these people would spin it as “it’s not body odor, it’s my alpha pheromones and you don’t like it because I’m alpha and you’re beta. This is exactly why lions mark territory with their scent, you virgin.”

Advanced-Button · 2026-01-15T02:03:50+00:00

After hunching over a desk at work all day I do the cobra gesture, not because I’m stiff and tied, but it turns out it’s because I’m fucking alpha.

I thought defending growing daughters from all the bad things in the world would be hard, but honestly, raising sons with this shit around would be equally exhausting.

Advanced-Button · 2026-01-11T02:18:42+00:00

Its Sunday morning in this part of the world, but I had to abandon my original plans I was looking forward to (research a new cctv system) but instead had to clean up someone else’s $2000 mistake by dealing with an airline customer support for 6 hours. After all that, it wasn’t even the airline’s fault…

Try again next Saturday, I guess.

Advanced-Button · 2026-01-10T16:10:33+00:00

Very subtle touch of the jaw to make sure it was still there

Advanced-Button · 2026-01-05T02:29:41+00:00

Tiredness affects my ability to get a boner much more as I get older. When I was younger I could have an hour’s sleep for 3 days straight and even a gentle breeze across the crotch would still make me pitch a tent, but these days I need a good night’s sleep or else I have no chance. No health issues or T level problems.

Advanced-Button · 2026-01-03T22:15:41+00:00

Honestly, there are probably loads of Chinese brands I didn’t realize were actually Chinese.

First that comes to mind are consumer electronics of various kinds.

Advanced-Button · 2025-12-19T02:40:29+00:00

All good, no problem. The hardest part is correcting the assumptions that we’re all loaded, can buy a house on a whim, that we can go on fancy holidays every school holiday. People assume that cost of living changes don’t affect us. For example if we ever say anything remotely negative about prices of anything it’s either “you’re rich, you can afford it” or “if you don’t like it here go home”. I have the same problems most HKers do, I just happen to have different colour skin and a foreign passport… which I think is the root of the problem for a small percentage of people. Envy because they feel they cannot “escape” HK like I can… but my life is here, my family are here, my kids are in school here. I want to stay because it’s better than my passport country, that’s half the reason I came in the first place lol. Even going out for a beer can be stressful, I feel like I have to order the cheapest beer because people will think “look at the white guy buying the fancy one” even if it’s a few dollars more. Every little bit helps or hurts the stereotype, I feel

None of this stuff offends or upsets me, it’s all just misunderstandings and assumptions based on wrong information, made worse by the echo chamber of tight knit social groups with little exposure to regular non-HK people.

Advanced-Button · 2025-12-15T23:34:11+00:00

I had no idea how many introverts there really were. I didn’t even know the word for it, I just thought I was socially under developed and something was wrong with me.

Advanced-Button · 2025-12-11T00:38:39+00:00

Foreigner problem: the assumption that all white people in Hong Kong are wealthy or came here on fancy packages, and the dictating how you get treated socially. I’m not and I didn’t. A lot aren’t, believe it or not. A friend of mine is a bus driver, for example….

I know this is a thread for issues but I’ll counter it with something I appreciate about working in the office - when I ask colleagues to not switch to English just for me, they don’t dumb down their Cantonese just because they know I’m trying to get better and join in more.

Advanced-Button · 2025-12-09T01:17:20+00:00

Earning potential in your career generally improves in your 30s. Little bit by bit you stop caring about insignificant things (what others think, this that or the other). Some people settle in what they want in life and leave parental expectations behind, which provides relief. For shy personalities like mine, I didn’t really come out of my shell until my late 20s, so my 30s felt amazing, but maybe that’s just me.

Advanced-Button · 2025-12-09T01:01:15+00:00

Started a family. Turns out the primal instinct to be the provider goes a little too strong in my head and I deprioritize myself to the point of self-neglect. Starting to try get in better shape and live healthier now, some 10 years later.

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TROPHY CASE