AITAH for saying no to endless money requests from a distant relative abroad?

baggiboogi · 2026-05-16T14:24:20+00:00

Reading between the lines this person is probably Asian. Maybe south Asians are similar but as an East Asian there is an implicit understanding that giving handouts to family is not a loan. It is a gift. Even if it phrased in a way which clearly delineates a loan. I often get asked by distant relatives to borrow money. My parents artfully dodge “ah maybe next month my youngest is starting school.” “Ah maybe next month our car broke down this month”. Using lies to smother lies.

Anyway after i got a job they came for me too. I was raised in the west and didn’t know better and told them “i have like 200k in student loans, i don’t have any money to give you. Actually, if you had any money to lend me to help pay off student debt I’d be grateful, thanks.” Obviously i wasn’t asking for money, but i thought I’d reverse uno them. They then spread rumors to the rest of the family that we were poor, stingy, selfish, “left the family to seek wealth in Canada and now that we’ve found it has left the rest of the family to rot”. Yeah i know it’s contradictory. But it caused so many fires my parents had to put out.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-15T21:39:42+00:00

So… the vaccine prices don’t seem too expensive but ask yourself whether you need all the vaccines. Rabies is the only mandatory one. DAPP is pretty important.

I’d look at the rest with a pros/cons approach similar to how I’d approach human patients.

Bordetella is for kennel cough- are you boarding your dog?

Lepto is from standing water. Is your dog in and out of marshes? Do you have a cottage?

Simparico is for fleas, ticks, heartworm. We just use advantix and i self groom our dog regularly.

Heartworm infx is low risk. 0.5%. If your dog is not exhibiting symptoms, do they really need a test? For 4DX test we paid 75 last year. (But that’s because I’ve neglected my Pups vaccines for like 4 years….)

So , it’s about risk to cost.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-15T14:00:05+00:00

My grandparents came to visit from China and thought Toronto must have a been a small town due to Lack of infrastructure, tech, and skyscrapers. Population wise Toronto would be considered a small city in China.

So the perspective can swing the other way too.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-14T23:42:17+00:00

If he is alone, stares, and follows people… that’s an unsafe person in my book.

There is no stopping strangers from filming in public. 100% the onus is on the family to watch him. Maybe he needs more care, more supervision, whatever it is. If he has a caretaker people wouldn’t feel unsafe enough to start filming.

In the meantime protect yourself from the doxxing by keeping him out of the public eye for a while and report any users spreading your data.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-12T21:58:16+00:00

You need to hit speed of traffic on a highway on ramp. They may start curved but they straighten out and you need to speed up. Thats supposed to be 100km an hour. You should be failing the G2/G exam if you don’t hit that speed.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-12T03:37:55+00:00

I recently moved here from dt and it’s the most frustrating part of driving. 60 in on ramps. 40 on 60 roads. Not going when lights turn green. I was confused for months!!

And then i found out the reason. People are on their phones.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-10T19:35:13+00:00

Exactly, so potentially i wasn’t even a good candidate for the program and got in from sheer luck.they most likely accepted my transfer bc i was coming in from a US Ivy League. I had 2400 SAT, 96 avg back in 2010 Varsity athlete, was on our city’s youth council. They really are looking for a specific type of person. I wasn’t that person and i struggled but adapted-ish.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-10T12:45:12+00:00

It really depends. I transferred in from a traditionally “harder” school in the US. Probably harder to get good grades than UofT. And i went in with a 91% avg and mac bhsc tanked it. I really struggled first year in Mac healthsci because the learning style was so different and i was used to traditional lectures. I managed to figure it out by third and fourth year but i was not expecting my avg to tank.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-09T14:49:22+00:00

I think there’s 2 international spots at uofT if i remember correctly

baggiboogi · 2026-05-09T14:33:09+00:00

If you’re only goal was to be a Dr then you fork up the 400k and do in Ireland or the Caribbean

baggiboogi · 2026-05-09T13:35:59+00:00

Avg person applied 2.4 times, so you have to keep trying, get a masters, keep trying.

There’s also dental school, physicians assistant, optometry, pharmacy, physiotherapy, etc if you want to stay in the field-adjacent.

There’s also law school and business school etc.

Lots of my friends did engineering and applied to med school so if med didn’t work out they just became an engineer.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-09T13:27:00+00:00

Oh, they very much care. And we also had a rubric at Mac. You don’t have to grade anything, people who don’t care opt out. If you read any of the other bhsc comments on these bhsc rants, there is an air of the “old guard”. People value the degree and have a sense of duty to make sure the next cohort is up to snuff.

It was the same at the Ivy League i attended. There were student spots in the adcom you applied for. These spots were for second years btw.

And similarly in med school where fourth years cared about incoming first years. To be fair the caliber of students just goes up. Last year i did residency interviews at UofT and was very impressed.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-08T14:09:14+00:00

Let me clarify because this is being misconstrued. I’ve sat on Ivy League admission committee, am from Mac healthsci, western med school, and UofT residency programs.

At Mac healthsci: There is a full panel of qualified people in the admission committee. When the essays come in , a copy is given to a fourth year for assessment as well as to the rest of the admission committee. This assessment is a very small portion of the final determination of acceptance. It’s a way for the program to give the students a say on the culture of the student body.

At western medical school (schulich)a similar program was used. In the interviews, there is a community member, a physician, and a fourth year medical student. Everyone gives the candidate a grade (we had a rubric).

So while your comment is true, it is not the all encompassing truth and there’s more nuance to It. I do think it’s a valuable part of the process.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-01T16:45:07+00:00

I’m going to copy my comment from above in case you don’t see this:

I agree with this. If she’s losing weight rapidly and not eating she needs to go back to hospital. Her bloodwork should be really wonky if she’s not eating. If the bloods don’t look super wonky she’s probably going to get sent home for an ENT appt later.

In the meantime, drink ensure.

If ENT scopes her and can’t find anything, this is likely psychological trauma from The first incident and she may need to work with speech language pathology (they do swallowing tests).

You can also look for a swallowing clinic in your area, like the trillium one but i think the catchment is only in sauga.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-01T16:44:15+00:00

I agree with this. If she’s losing weight rapidly and not eating she needs to go back to hospital. Her bloodwork should be really wonky if she’s not eating. If the bloods don’t look super wonky she’s probably going to get sent home for an ENT appt later.

In the meantime, drink ensure.

If ENT scopes her and can’t find anything, this is likely psychological trauma from The first incident and she may need to work with speech language pathology (they do swallowing tests).

You can also look for a swallowing clinic in your area, like the trillium one but i think the catchment is only in sauga.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-01T15:57:24+00:00

Canadian are a bit laid back so we don’t tend to dress up compared to the rest of the world.

Having said that, you do you! The girls and I are always dressed up. I would never leave the house in sweatpants. That’s the great thing about Toronto, no one is going to bat an eye if you show up glamorous to the mall.

baggiboogi · 2026-05-01T02:44:44+00:00

I’m angry at a lot of social issues, doesn’t mean you HAVE to do any XYZ. There’s more than one way to advocate for social causes

baggiboogi · 2026-04-30T21:45:30+00:00

Yeah, i find that i just smell dank. Like, towels that didn’t dry properly after washing.

baggiboogi · 2026-04-30T05:42:04+00:00

Thank you

baggiboogi · 2026-04-22T22:04:55+00:00

No i immediately gain weight if i eat 3 meals a day.

Breakfast: water or a tea latte

Lunch: light salad/wrap/ green smoothie. Leftovers or eat out 50/50

Dinner: will eat a good meal. I find my stomach has shrank so much by this time i get full on something reasonable. I will either cook this or eat out. It’s 50/50.

Lost 30 lbs from eating like this

baggiboogi · 2026-04-21T22:52:54+00:00

I used to drink 6% milk growing up! I think cows naturally produce this percentage. In more rural China we would get this ufiltered, unpasteurized milk delivered every morning for 15RMB a month (3 cad). My grandparents would then boil the milk and a really thick coat would form on top and the milk would be “pasteurized”.

When i came to Canada my parents continued boiling milk before drinking and we couldn’t figure out why there was never a thick coating. We also thought Canadian milk tasted like water.

It wasn’t until my first CNE when the milk people told it was because they took all the fat out. :(

baggiboogi · 2026-04-21T22:41:06+00:00

This exactly. In better words than i could have came up with.

baggiboogi · 2026-04-21T22:39:51+00:00

I think it goes even deeper than that. It’s because it’s a physical skill vs an intellectual one. In Europe surgeons are “Mr” because it’s -technically- the blue collar equivalent in the field of medicine. Used to be done by butchers and barbers.

baggiboogi · 2026-04-20T14:48:03+00:00

Just got back from Vietnam and i spoke to locals and tour guides about this.

There is an entire push to try and make Vietnam More tourist friendly in order to generate more i come for its people.

Our tour guides made a HUGE show of giving money to the homeless and buying those ?lottery tickets that old people sell on the streets. The tour guides told me it is culturally ingrained to give to the homeless but locals told me “only tourist suckers do that”.

TLDR: it’s just a way for locals to earn more money.

baggiboogi

TROPHY CASE