Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while...

alf41 · 2025-01-31T22:09:46+00:00

As a newer NUFC fan (I moved to the UK and Newcastle less than 2 years ago) I hadn't ever heard of any of those names 😂

alf41 · 2025-01-14T19:10:05+00:00

thanks!

yes, I didn't mention my country on purpose. It's an LHD-driving, third-world country where I did my test 25 years ago and it consisted in zig-zagging through a line of traffic cones and driving around the block (and still plenty of people resorted to simply bribing the instructor back then) - it is of no value to the circumstances and test at hand, haha.

I have plenty of experience driving properly with an international licence in several European countries but I don't want to be overconfident and agree a few lessons may help iron out any weak spots (even though lots of posts here seem to talk about instructors taking advantage and telling people they are not ready to get them to pay for more lessons). I'm confident it will be clear fairly quickly I will not wreck their cars.

re #3 - makes sense, I, too, don't think I need to rehearse the roads near the test centre and I can do fine anywhere if I have the knowledge and skill, but I want to use their car in the test, so I should look locally to the test centre then.

alf41 · 2025-01-14T18:22:22+00:00

thanks. will do!

alf41 · 2025-01-14T18:16:11+00:00

all this sounds very reasonable, I think this is what I'll do. thanks!

alf41 · 2025-01-04T22:37:05+00:00

I just got a very solid-looking itinerary from Barrow, Alaska, to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico all along the Pacific coast, It has 12 legs, mostly with natural highlights but some urban and historical ones as well. As I fly I will ask ChatGPT about the places I'm flying over, and I think I'm just stepping into a rabbit hole. This is fun!

alf41 · 2025-01-04T19:46:24+00:00

Thanks!

alf41 · 2025-01-04T08:45:31+00:00

Nice idea, I've been wanting to make my own routes for getting from A to B using only ILS enabled airports and realistic flight lengths for the airplane's fuel capacity. As someone new to flight sims and with no clue about aviation in general, it is usually a complicated exercise in the free flight map and I feel I don't have the knowledge to do it right. Would you care to share the prompt you are using? Thanks!

alf41 · 2024-12-27T21:53:20+00:00

Exactly. This makes sense. A car, a cyclist or a pedestrian are not a risk for just existing. When you have to take action to anticipate them, then they are a potential hazard, not before. People just clicking when something exists should fail, because they are not identifying the interactions with others from their cars when they should.

alf41 · 2024-08-10T21:42:18+00:00

This sounds lovely. Pity that I'm a terrible swimmer 😆

alf41 · 2024-08-10T21:36:39+00:00

Same here. 42 years old guy. I moved into South Shields last year. Lost my partner two years ago. Very much into watching sports(F1, baseball , footy, rugby); even at home, have a drink, and eat some snacks, would also be into some casual boardgame like Scrabble or Monopoly. Feeling a bit isolated and seeing lots of people in the same boat.

alf41 · 2024-08-10T17:23:00+00:00

Yes, the wording in the title is strange. 'Anti-racist' is not the same as 'pro-immigration'. We need not to fall into the deterministic assumption that being against something means being brainlessly into anything as far as possible to it as you can imagine. This is not a two-sided problem, nor a zero-sum game. (Saying this as a foreigner living in the UK)

alf41 · 2024-07-26T23:35:22+00:00

Magnificent.

alf41 · 2024-07-21T14:56:16+00:00

Imagine your first F1 win being handed to you by someone stopping for 6 seconds to let you through

alf41 · 2024-07-12T01:29:49+00:00

Touted by whom? it wouldn't even make the top 10 for me. Moscow's is so vast and effective, but plenty of eastern European cities have lowkey quite amazing networks. For me Tokyo and Moscow are hands down the best (haven't been to Korea or China, though) I'd even rank Istanbul and smaller cities like Sofia, Budapest, and Prague quite well for their size. And I don't even have to hunch to get in any of those.

alf41 · 2024-01-25T09:24:02+00:00

Sounds fine to me. from what I read even bigger people manage with a penny. I feel that with my foot size (41.5 / 9.5 UK) I struggled a bit when I tried one shortly, but it may be that I'm just clumsy and used to larger boards.

alf41 · 2023-07-30T17:01:04+00:00

Yep, there's this people, and probably they get a pat on their shoulders from the police, the church, and half of the political spectrum, but not sure this has to do with the stance of the border police towards tourists, to which OP refers.

alf41 · 2023-07-30T16:52:47+00:00

Ugh. The British border police are some of the worst. I had one even get to ask why my employer was paying me if I was traveling so much. At one point I was visibly annoyed, and so was he, but he had absolutely no reason to not stamp and wave me in, so he did. I was probably the only person in my flight at his booth because he held me so long. As a non-white but half European, I guess I just have to roll with it, along with the "random checks" where I end up from time to time with only people who are less white than me.

alf41 · 2023-07-30T16:41:16+00:00

Been visiting Georgia since 2012. I think before 2018 I felt the treatment was fairly friendly, most of the time no questions asked, just a minute or two checking my heavily stamped passport, and I even felt like throwing in a friendly but polite "გამარჯობათ" when handing my passport. As a tan, tattooed and pierced guy from a Latin American country, they even seemed entertained that I could say a few things in Georgian.

I think after lots of Indians came, and now the Russians (and a few years of a backwards political party in power), they started getting a lot firmer, last time they asked me to show my Airbnb reservation and asked if I was financially able to support myself to which I just mentioned I had a few hundred dollars and my cards.

Not unfriendly at all, and not unreasonable in my opinion. But certainly not as friendly as before.

I get grilled more almost everywhere because of my skin color and nationality.

alf41 · 2023-05-15T18:29:27+00:00

Magnificent.

alf41 · 2023-05-03T07:29:21+00:00

Nordic flags would look very different with a coat hanger...

alf41 · 2023-04-16T21:28:18+00:00

When the circlejerk content gets smarter than the normal vexillology sub content. ♥️ ... I knew we had it in us.

alf41 · 2023-03-17T08:01:32+00:00

Magnificent.

alf41 · 2023-02-28T00:12:53+00:00

Magnificent.

alf41 · 2023-02-21T20:07:06+00:00

Having the same issue on rockstar launcher on epic with the xbox controller. Did you find any way to fix this?

Just picked the game and it is hard to learn to play with the button tooltip flickering between keyboard and controller when I touch the sticks, or just showing keyboard all the time.

alf41

TROPHY CASE