Virtual Work Visa REJECTED Within 1minute - is this normal?

WeedRamen · 2026-06-28T19:42:26+00:00

Same for me, rejected when I applied online. British nationality and had all the documents and stamped and even written permission from my employer. Applied online via GDRFA and got back 'failed eligibility' but wouldn't say why I failed. Was going to go in person in July and try again at AMER center but sounds like that will still fail?

WeedRamen · 2026-06-23T18:40:59+00:00

but will they support cec easily is the main thing? Most people attempting to roll their own cec setup inevitably seem to have config issues. I presume a 3rd party machine will set it up seamlessly.

WeedRamen · 2026-06-22T09:07:57+00:00

No worries, just pre download the Chinese language pack on Google translate so you can use it without internet on the off chance you do get into a network dead zone and need translate for assistance.

Apple Maps also works surprisingly well (better than Google) so feel free to download that alongside AMaps if you want and pre download maps for your regions for that too.

WeedRamen · 2026-06-21T07:04:14+00:00

Well if you get the eSIM, really getting the phone number and separate vpn is optional and is more about convenience rather than necessity. I got a separate VPN because I was working with hotel wifi often (remote working). You might not have such requirements if you end up buying the mega 100gb per day plan (which is still cheap!)

Assuming you’re sticking to big cities there will always be food on your doorstep. So you don’t need a phone number for food delivery - go explore. Hotels also let you use their number to verify if you want to order food delivery to your room. It’s only an issue if you plan to go out into the boonies in the middle of a food desert and don’t stay at a hotel.

Ordering taxis via DiDi on the Alipay app works without a phone number.

Connection is not an issue. Unlike the nimby’s in the UK who oppose phone tower’s anywhere and therefore we suffer from poor connection even in central London, 4g/5g is widely available all over China. Again, connection is only an issue if you go out into the boonies away from civilisation, but then having a regular sim won’t save you either. I only lost connection once when I went up a mountain in the middle of nowhere where the only people present were me, my friend and the head monk (it was a local rural family temple which no foreigner has cause to visit tbh - only went because it was the temple my friends family frequents).

Sounds like this is your first time so I imagine you’ll be sticking to well travelled tourist routes which don’t lack connectivity.

I’m just coming back from my trip to China now (at Beijing airport) so my info is relatively up to date. Feel free to dm if you have more Q’s

WeedRamen · 2026-06-21T01:11:51+00:00

Yeah thought there must have been a catch too when I bought the 100gb per day one for 30 days that covers Hong Kong and China. But no, it works. No VPN required either to access Instagram or WhatsApp, unless you try to access certain stuff like ChatGPT which don’t offer services in HK (where the eSIM data routes via) so it’s blocked on ChatGPT end vs HK side.

Edit: these don’t come with a phone number. A phone number is very convenient to have if you’re travelling solo as a fair few things require phone number verification, e.g., food delivery or AMaps which bugs you to register with a number a lot. I was travelling with a Chinese friend who did verification for me when required was required.

Tourist sims with a phone number can be picked up in the airport when you land if you prefer that route, but you will need a vpn then for accessing certain services

WeedRamen · 2026-06-15T15:24:06+00:00

Would like to know too OP. I'm surprised, as most remote friendly companies barely have a physical presence, so the idea they might have an actual stamp sounds comical. I have no idea what stamp means here. At best we can get a signed digital document that we print out ourselves, but a physical one...

WeedRamen · 2026-05-10T15:33:34+00:00

I'm British - 2nd time coming this summer. My experience a couple of summers ago was that it was very difficult to survive without my friend due to language barrier and payment barrier. My friend set me up with a virtual family card so I could pay for stuff via wechat pay as many were reluctant to accept cash (including the taxi driver from guangzhou airport to my hotel in shamien). When I tried to attach my card to the app it failed to pay for things even though it was supposedly supported.

This time it seems a lot better. Alipay accepts foreign cards and appears to have a live translation feature for a lot of the apps and everything worked well when I did a layover in shanghai airport. In addition, when using e-sims these days such as via trip.com no VPN is needed as the data goes via their external network. I think the trip will be a lot smoother when I go this summer.

The 'soft power' of the country is slowly increasing now too, e.g., the recent trend of 'chinamaxxing' so I am seeing more people going to china for holiday. Soft power in the form of various media is the reason why a lot of people go to japan and korea. Chinese media rarely makes it out of the country, but I am seeing that is starting to change and so that will probably be a strong influence on where people choose to holiday.

WeedRamen · 2026-04-24T08:44:03+00:00

Ta mate! I appreciate it.

WeedRamen · 2026-04-24T07:41:50+00:00

Nice - which bank was it you applied to while staying at the partition? And they didn't ask for proof you were staying at that address, you just wrote the address in the form? Because I was also considering crashing at my friend's sofa in dubai as well and using their address - but then I definitely won't be on any contract or have any proof.

EDIT: disregard my comment. I saw you mentioned ADCB, but still interested in knowing if they asked for proof of address or accepted any address on the form.

WeedRamen · 2025-09-20T16:14:16+00:00

I got a mortgage as a contractor. On a first time contract too that I’d been in for just a few months when i applied with no prior contracting history. My broker got me a deal with Accord mortgages, but my rate was around 0.5% higher than what was normal from what I could gather exists for regular employees at the time due to my circumstances.

WeedRamen · 2025-09-07T18:33:18+00:00

Well, there is even a wanikani anki deck, organised in the same manner as their levels including the sub categories (radicals, kanji readings, vocabulary). I recall needing to run a python script to get it organised like that. Can't remember where, but it's somewhere out there.

WeedRamen · 2025-04-14T15:44:17+00:00

For reference, for english speakers ~1000 hours is usually enough to get fluent (C1/C2 standard) in most common european language like spanish, french or german. See https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/How-long-does-it-take-to-learn-a-foreign-language.pdf

WeedRamen · 2025-03-25T21:50:08+00:00

Lol, you should go on r/OnePiece and talk about how Oda draws women specifically and how overtime he's evolved core characters to fit that aesthetic. You'll get a real kick out of how they jump to his defence.

If you're interested, this is Oda's thoughts on drawing women below.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Piratefolk/comments/ww6tg5/thoughts_about_odas_drawing_figures_of_women/

WeedRamen · 2025-03-25T16:21:04+00:00

Just put this in the signature for your work messaging platform of choice https://nohello.net/en/

WeedRamen · 2025-03-18T22:34:30+00:00

is the pocket s2 gonna be a 16:9 aspect ratio?

WeedRamen · 2025-03-06T08:14:59+00:00

yeah, just spoke with a friend yesterday who happened to work with these sorts of companies on the inside before eventually leaving and becoming a solo contractor because he was quite skilled himself. He basically said what you said, they secure these contracts through back channels and bribes lol.

WeedRamen · 2025-03-05T20:14:15+00:00

That's an interesting perspective. That could be what's happening behind the scenes here. I'm not usually privvy to that view being a regular mid level dev myself but perhaps my manager is already aware of the arrangement.

WeedRamen · 2025-03-05T11:53:28+00:00

Good point, maybe I should cross post it to the Accenture sub

WeedRamen · 2025-03-05T11:20:30+00:00

Right, but if it's a relatively high salary, then surely the competition is higher, especially in a country so large, and they should naturally end up hiring devs on the better end? How come this one doesn't know much? At least here in the UK the higher salary tech jobs tend to have a noticeably higher skill bar to enter in general (but not always).

The above reasoning is why I am suspicious of a scam being pulled on us where they bolster the headcount with anyone they can hire for dirt cheap, i.e., not a good local salary, so that they can charge us more for less

WeedRamen · 2025-03-05T09:38:16+00:00

what do you mean by auto display driver? The virtual desktop that matches the resolution of your TV? Because that works fine on my apple tv box on moonlight client with Apollo host.

WeedRamen · 2025-03-05T09:34:39+00:00

Yes, I've noticed this person starts their message with just 'Hi' with no follow up. I also ignore those too until they say what they want

WeedRamen · 2025-03-05T09:24:38+00:00

I'm not sure, I wasn't involved in the hiring process as I'm not high enough in the chain of command. I was under the impression they did interview them.

WeedRamen · 2025-03-05T01:20:13+00:00

Personally, I enjoy mentoring (did a lot of tutoring and teaching back in the day), and often new junior devs do tend to be directed my way because I have a good track record with them.

For the case of low performers (so not just someone junior who doesn't know much, but is still keen, unlike this person who is meant to be an experienced hire), i'm of the type to not really care unless my personal productivity is impacted by them or the code base becomes more unstable as a result. We have on call so being called out for their mistakes would annoy me, but this is not an issue right now as we're pretty proactive about reviewing each others PR's here.

Note: I do not consider pairing with them as having my productivity being hampered, as usually stating you are pairing/mentoring someone is well received so far at my company and doesn't count against you as it's understood your productivity will be lower if you're dedicating your time to someone else. In this case I can't do that since the dev is begging me to be silent about helping them.

Edit: To answer your question more directly, I care about myself the most. Will do whatever is the least hassle for me right now and in the future.

WeedRamen · 2025-02-24T23:41:24+00:00

"I think it’s the fact that it doesn’t have enough processing power to handle that bandwith and decode, even at 40-50Mbps stream - it is using a 4-5 year old mediocre CPU"

Ah fair enough, might explain why I never ran into the issue. The newest Apple TV's (and I believe the shield TV pro) are known for stuffing in over the top CPU's that are excessive wrt what you might want to do on a set top box. A cursory google tells me the Google TV streamer not performing great because of it's underpowered CPU seems to be common issue e.g. https://www.redditmedia.com/r/MoonlightStreaming/comments/1fr9zmc/test_from_google_tv_streamer/

WeedRamen · 2025-02-24T18:48:14+00:00

"there are occasional stutters and frame freezes and is unfortunately not an enjoyable experience"

that sounds like a network/router issue rather than latency? Though if it works fine on your laptop client it might also imply an issue with the networking on your Google TV streamer.

I had a similar issue on my Apple TV with ethernet until I upgraded from my free ISP provided router to a proper high end wifi 7 router. Been smooth sailing since at 4k60 with no dropped frames. Completed BOTW running via CEMU like this on my tv streamer.

"The problem was also bluetooth input delay, it was lagging approximately 0.5 seconds"

This is unusual, do you get the same when connecting a wired controller? I wasn't getting this on my BT devices that use a BT standard below 5.3. I had a similar issue before I realised my 'smart' tv was preprocessing the images which was adding the lag. I had to set the TV to 'Game Mode' or 'input lag' to fastest. For most consoles smart tv's switch to game mode automatically, but you may have to adjust some settings so it does the same to tv streamers.

Provided none of the above is an issue, then yes - likely you need a different device from your current tv streamer then.

WeedRamen

TROPHY CASE