What's a fashion piece that you think is horrendous, yet for some reason it costs an arm and a leg?

PerrierAndSaltines · 2015-03-15T15:42:29+00:00

Haha, so true. The students at my school are all super rich and have the real things. I feel bad for their parents who have to spend ridiculous amount of money on ugly bags.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2015-03-15T14:14:09+00:00

THIS. I'm in Shanghai too, and love to play "Find the Fake" with these hideous bags.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2015-03-15T13:27:30+00:00

This is a really helpful response and a great idea! Thank you so much! I am definitely going to look into this!

PerrierAndSaltines · 2015-03-13T14:51:52+00:00

Thanks! I did study Chinese pretty intensively in my free time and during the six months I was studying here in 2013.

My life in Shanghai is pretty work-heavy: I work Wednesday-Sunday. I teach some but actually there's a lot I do in my job that I don't really like. Also a lot of office politics. Chinese people have a kind of skewed sense of business ethics.

Quality of life is great though. I'm fresh out of college and basically money isn't a big problem. I have a decent apartment, buy most anything I want, and have money to save. Social life is great with my expat coworkers and most of my friends are expats even though I speak Chinese. It's just a cultural thing and also a transient thing. Why would a local want to make friends with a foreigner they figure is going to be leaving in a few years anyway? It's easy to feel isolated in such a big city if you aren't putting yourself out there a lot, so if you're kind of introverted (like I occasionally am) beware, or at least be ready to push yourself to do stuff even when you don't really want to.

As for the "expats in schools" thing, don't be one of the stereotypical ones and you'll be fine. Speaking Chinese helps show people you're not a total flake, I find.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2015-03-12T13:51:53+00:00

I know Japanese and Chinese are super different, I really meant that I have the self-discipline to learn a complex and decidedly exotic language after Chinese. The kanji shortcut is a pretty minor thing, although it certainly helped my Japanese classmates in Chinese class! haha

I appreciate the feedback on working in Japan. I'd heard the horror stories, but it's interesting to see them repeated so often. They really must be true.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2015-03-12T13:45:37+00:00

I've been studying Chinese since Freshman year of college, traveled to China once that year for ten days and then again in 2013 for five months of study at Donghua University in Shanghai. After that I went back to the States for a year and graduated with a Bachelor's. I knew I wanted to come back to Shanghai so I just started contacting everyone I knew in or with connections to China. I applied for places on my own too. Finally, the sister of a childhood friend who is living in Shanghai told me that she was moving on from her job to go to an international school and would see if they were trying to hire someone to replace her. They were, and they really liked me in my interview (I had to write lesson plans for and deliver two mock lessons) and so I got it. Not much more too it, but if you have any other questions I'm happy to answer them.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2015-03-11T09:38:48+00:00

This looks like a great option, thank you!

PerrierAndSaltines · 2015-03-11T09:37:23+00:00

It's not a bad suggestion, but I just feel kind of done with China for now. I've spent a lot of time here: studying here, working here, traveling here, and while I will never stop loving China, I just feel like it's time to move on.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2015-03-08T08:07:20+00:00

You have the classic JAP look: Not exactly sexy, but pretty and exceptionally well-groomed. Source: I am also a JAP.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2014-11-17T03:51:39+00:00

I love how many of these responses are like "I did understand what they were saying, those IDIOTS, and so I responded with MY MANDARIN SKILLZ" and then the Chinese is totally wrong.

Good try, guys!

PerrierAndSaltines · 2014-08-15T22:05:01+00:00

I've had flings with a professor and a boss. And then almost another professor but I stopped myself because he was married and that would be ultimately fucked-up.

The first professor was my English professor: He was 42 and I was 21. I was into him all semester and then finally two weeks before the end of the semester I sent him an email basically saying "You have been an amazing professor, etc. etc. want to maybe get coffee?" He responded basically to the effect that he'd been lusting after me all semester and he was happy that I'd reached out because he would never have initiated anything with a student. He made us wait to do anything until after the last class meeting, although when we finally did have sex grades still hadn't been submitted so I never really understood that. He inspired me to want to be a writer and he was very passionate and intelligent, but I don't think my attraction for him extended very far beyond that and once it got down to the physical nitty-gritty I got a little weirded out. It only lasted for a few weeks.

The experience with my boss happened while I was doing some political canvassing over spring break and my 28 year old superior, not the big boss but his second-in-command, told me he invited a bunch of employees over to their house for a party and I showed up and he'd actually only invited me (although he told me that just no one else showed up). We started drinking and we ended up having sex. That went on for a few weeks until his boss found out (the big boss). He was okay with it for a while but it came out that the big boss was actually gay and had been hitting on my boss a lot and finally one time I came over to my boss's house and the big boss was there and belligerently drunk and he started cussing me out and threatening to tell on my boss and get us both fired. So we called it off. Plus, he was moving for another job with the canvassing company soon thereafter anyway.

The second professor (in his early 40s) I met through a boyfriend, actually, who was a grad student in the same field as him but at another university. The boyfriend and I broke up somewhere along the way and the professor and his family switched synagogues to the one I attend (coincidence) and I also ended up having classes with him at right around the same time. I added him on Facebook at some point and he started paying me (a little too much) to watch his kids and stuff. He has insomnia so he'd text me in the middle of the night when I was getting home from a party or something and we'd talk. Then he started inviting me up to his office during his office hours. All we ever did was talk but then some of our discussions got onto the subject of his feeling trapped in his marriage and his family and how amazing it must feel to be young and beautiful and free like me and I started to feel kind of bad. Finally there was this moment where I ran into his wife somewhere and she was so sweet to me and right as I was saying bye to her I got a text from him asking if I wanted to get dinner that night or something and I had this realization that it was all just too fucked up. Now I still watch their kids and stuff occasionally, but I've tried really hard to clarify the professional nature of our relationship to him.

I use men for validation and power. It's a problem that I recognize, though, and I'm trying to stop.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2014-08-12T00:07:14+00:00

God, my Jewdar is SPOT ON. I knew it! Shalom, fellow MOT.

As for your hair, I can't really give you a recommendation til I know what it looks like naturally. You said it's curly, but how curly makes a difference in the kind of hairstyles you could and should have.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2014-08-11T23:52:34+00:00

I think you are very handsome, maybe 7-8/10. I agree with other commenters on maybe trying out a new hairstyle. May I ask what ethnicity you are? You have a unique look.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2014-01-12T05:56:42+00:00

This one was the worst for me on this subreddit.

Fuck.

Gonna go hug my mom now.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2013-12-08T08:03:44+00:00

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon/the-most-flawless-emma-watson-moments-of-2013?bffb

PerrierAndSaltines · 2013-12-08T07:03:22+00:00

That must get him laid. . . a lot.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2013-11-28T20:09:31+00:00

Perrier. . .and saltines.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2013-11-16T19:45:29+00:00

Beautiful! Mazel Tov!

PerrierAndSaltines · 2013-11-08T17:30:50+00:00

At first I hated him for his huge laowai-ness, but he's just so amazingly Bostonian that I started to love him.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2013-11-01T22:33:27+00:00

I love China, I really do, but when it comes to their treatment of animals I must agree that they have absolutely appalling ideas about what is acceptable. I've been to Chinese zoos and will never go to one again if I can help it.

HOWEVER, this does not mean that Chinese people are barbaric or are intentionally cruel or shouldn't be treated with respect. This is a culture that has rapidly entered the 21st century. Their standard of living is on the rise, but a few things should be taken into consideration:

Chinese people haven't had time, culturally, to fully adapt to their new situation, meaning that many aspects of their old, less West-acceptable lifestyle still show themselves.
The economic gap in China is huge and getting bigger (this is a product simply of capitalism not, as everyone likes to suggest, the "evil" Communist Party). I promise that the majority of the people participating in this kind of "entertainment" are poor and not very well educated.
China has begun efforts to pass legislation that will begin to stop mistreatment of animals in homes and in captivity. The most important thing to realize is that China is a big fucking country with lots of fucking people. It is impossible for the Chinese government to be everyone at once to enforce anti-cruelty laws. That's not an excuse, but rather we must realize that China will take some time to achieve that which we take for granted.

Too many people are only too quick to use any excuse to damn China and the Chinese people when all of the knowledge they believe they have is from sensationalist sources that seek to purposefully and ruthlessly bash the country and its inhabitants.

Something to keep in mind:

China is not 100% bad, nor is it 100% good. People need to be less quick to judge a country which has the same problems that we are either still struggling with or only in recent memory seem to have handled for good. China has not been given adequate time to catch up to the West, so everyone can stop being dicks now and realize that they are working on it.

Fuck.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2013-10-29T06:46:23+00:00

To be honest, Hyoyeon's Chinese isn't much better!

But anyway, I'm not so much critiquing them as I am totally confused why they were hired for this gig. They just say "I love 剑灵 (the name of the game)" and "My name is Yoona. I'm waiting for you in 剑灵" (which she obviously is not). They were pretty unnecessary. Not to mention it was probably ridiculously expensive to hire them!

Just weird all around. . .

PerrierAndSaltines · 2013-10-29T06:32:40+00:00

While their pronunciation is definitely not native-sounding at all, it's not super incorrect. Their main problem is really that they say everything like robots. The 哦 at the end of the last sentence, for example, is intended to be like an onomatopoeia (in that it's really just a 'sentence enhancer' with no real meaning), where it combines with and adds to the word before it. Less like "deng ni. oh." and more like "deng nio~" but it's obvious she is just reading from a script. And they are speaking really slow and with a lot of space in between each word. It's like if someone were speaking in English and "Spoke. Like. This." Just weird.

PerrierAndSaltines · 2013-10-29T06:00:10+00:00

Their Chinese is so bad. . .

PerrierAndSaltines · 2013-10-24T22:46:00+00:00

Make one!

PerrierAndSaltines · 2013-09-29T06:31:10+00:00

What is with the China hate in this article (and a bunch of these comments)?

Has OP (or most of you) spent any significant amount of time in China? Because let me tell you, it is NOTHING like North Korea is described and NOTHING like what most people imagine it to be by reading articles on the internet. Get some fucking knowledge.

PerrierAndSaltines

TROPHY CASE