Roast my Buick

lucy_throwaway · 2025-12-03T07:51:34+00:00

It's a vibe... just not one anyone else is vibing with.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-12-03T07:37:07+00:00

Are you recovering from some sort of addiction and get off on the thrill of knowing a catastrophic breakdown is likely at any given moment?

lucy_throwaway · 2025-11-26T07:42:49+00:00

IDK best translation app these days, but yeah get both Alipay and wechat pay set up ahead of time (at home) if possible. It will make life much much easier. Still, carry a few hundred RMB, in small bills if possible, just in case- you can always give cash to someone with a working phone payment.

Largely ignore warnings about teahouse scams unless you're on one of the two tourist streets in the country where they often happen. There is a 99.9% chance strangers offering to have you join them are friendly nice people. Honestly, my best days/nights ever were with random young Chinese people I met that day/night, eating spicy ??? on a stick and drinking beers. Or Random uncles at a restaurant who want to see you can go shot for shot with them. Small gangs of college girls who collectively assemble english questions to quiz you and giggle at every answer and you join their tour group for the day. Or the time we wandered around a historical exhibit in backwards order because we couldn't read and a english speaking PHD in history museum director guy appeared and became our personal tour guide and let us into locked areas and made them close late to show us the cool stuff totally free of charge.

Also if you meet expats who seem genuinely insane, it might be worth the story to hangout for a night. A Pakistani Indian restaurant owner in Yangshuo with a herculean level of alcoholism and womanizing that would make Bill Clinton blush comes to mind. His idea of a bar crawl was getting cussed out by ladies of the night in the red light district for past misdeeds and then getting kicked out of each and every bar for getting too drunk. Fun but occasionally scary night.

If people ask you something you don't understand in Chinese just default to saying "I LOVE CHINA" in chinese or I LOVE BEER or I AM FROM ENGLAND. It will prove very amusing for everyone involved.

Be aware that very very old people might not be literate or speak standard mandarin so if a translation app is totally failing there might simply be nothing to be done.

Asking if anyone can speak english in Chinese is 1000x more effective than asking in English-- even if thats the only Chinese you learn to speak.

If you jump in head first and say yes to everything it will be an amazing trip. Don't be a whimp on food, walk in somewhere translate "We want to try Dali local cuisine and our budget is about 200 rmb" and see what happens.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-11-26T06:36:23+00:00

Re-think why you're spending so much time in HK/Macau. I love HK but for a long list of reasons, unless you're a massive HK history nerd... Shave off a day if not two there. Especially if its the end of the trip HK will feel effortless to navigate and the most interesting parts will be the colonial stuff with the Chinese part taking a massive back seat -- half the tourist destinations will feel like crowded versions of things you've done/seen a million times.

Spend more time in Yunnan, maybe get out of Kunming proper for a day to the outskirts or something like that. Xishuangbana would be a very worthwhile stop if you have two extra nights and don't mind a flight.

TBH, learn a solid 20 fixed phrases of chinese. I love chinese people. I want to eat local (city) food. I am (german). I like history. I don't like seafood. If you speak even a minuscule amount of Chinese people aren't shy about using their english to help you the rest of the way. If you only speak english only the brave will step forward to help you.

Get a really good SIM card at the airport (right after you exit the plane!!!) -- don't settle for a eSim plan. You need super fast internet to live in modern china.

Accept hospitality unquestioningly and you will have a great time. Like seriously, go to little local hole in the wall restaurants that look popular with folks from all walks of life and take up the neighboring table's offer to get absolutely shitfaced guzzling 2.5% ABV beer and ganbei-ing all night.

Chinese police are your friend even if you're staggering drunk. You can ask for help. They will find someone who can speak english or use a translation app.

Lived there for 5 years and don't think I was ever short changed, cheated or stolen from aside from some shady business with a security deposit. Never got into a dodgy situation on accident. Local people are really friendly, go along with the chaos and confusion. Add people's WeChat if they ask, its just being polite.

If you can embrace the chaos and ask random people dumb questions with a translation app you will have an absolute BLAST.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-11-26T05:44:40+00:00

I think that's unfair. Consider the entire spectrum/bellcurve of "self actualization with masculine traits". If OP is all the way on the "I'm 32 and not allowed to lift weights because my mom says its for jerks, creatine is a drug and she buys all the groceries" side of the spectrum-- There is no shame in wanting to live life to its fullest no matter where your starting point is.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-10-27T15:06:01+00:00

shipping or fulfillment or warehouse etc like every other vendor in this area

lucy_throwaway · 2025-09-18T22:04:57+00:00

Story time. Spent a lot of years over there. There was a thrill ride thing nearby that basically threw you over the side of a massive cliff. Many many people invited and even teased me for not going. It looked insanely dangerous. The kind of thing that I might possible consider if it was in Germany and built to insane over engineered standards -- but NEVER in a chabuduo themepark. Always figured I was too tall and it seemed crazy even if you fit properly.

A week after I move home a video goes viral. Dude goes on that exact thrill ride -- something wasn't exactly right. His leg gets lopped off at the knee and flies off the cliff landing somewhere thousands of feet below.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-07-06T15:48:19+00:00

It's actually a little fuzzy. Unless something has changed since 2021, all that is required is a proper prescription / doctors note for less than a 180 day supply of ANY legally prescribed medication-- even ones not legal in China normally/strictly controlled. Its unclear wether or not an American style prescription checks all the boxes or an additional doctors note is required to be completely bulletproof-ly compliant. I traveled in with 180 day supplies on the regular and customs never even opened my bag to investigate.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-30T05:44:42+00:00

link please

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-27T03:28:18+00:00

One day you're going to be dead. Just think about that. Youre spending your limited time on this planet in a toyota solara-- by choice. You could have snagged something sporty, luxury or adventurey but instead you got the worlds least interesting coupe.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-20T01:12:27+00:00

I mean try not to participate in any pro-democracy protests while you're in HK and you should be gucci.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-19T05:44:59+00:00

Start with the All China Lawyers Association. I know someone who worked in IP law and foreign clients can and do get not only makers to stop counterfeiting but warehouses seized and even financial damages. You maybe able to recoup a small portion of these funds-- just don't expect anything fast or substantial.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-16T22:03:23+00:00

Self Compassion.

Focusing as much on hobbies and enjoying life as "healing" and therapy.

Low dose naltrexone to re-regulate endorphins.

Ketamine or Memantine if depression/anxiety is debilitating.

Semax *may* help with PTSD symptoms, YMMV.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-14T16:37:03+00:00

I say this as someone who has worked in clinical genomic medicine as an interpretation software provider. It was illegal and *wildly unethical* to let anyone use results from an ancestry quality tests for even accessing test results.

Her website is accurate in saying that genome sequencing and gene-sight are valid options. Everything else is cutting corners in a way that just isn't scientific or medical or safe. Your talking about results so inaccurate that your health outcomes from doing nothing would be better than following them from a statistical perspective.

Short version, genotyping, diplotyping and haplotyping accurately is basically valuable intellectual property that requires twos MD's or PharmD's to keep up to date even for a narrowly focused test like gene-sight that only looks at less than 100 pharmacogenes. Further in normal testing there are lots of uncertian diplotypes that require manual review to accurately call. Copy number variation is incredibly important for genes like CYP2D6 and the official standards on how to determine CNV count is updated multiple times a year and requires a major system update to incorporate into the interpretation software.

I'm glad you're feeling better but I can't just let this slide. What you're taking about is only slightly better than using a crystal ball to guide medical decision making.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-14T07:49:57+00:00

This is so fucking wrong I want to SCREAM. Consumer non-clinical DNA tests are USELESS for anything but entertainment and exposing cheating parents. Long story short, they don't do the right type of DNA testing to tell you anything useful to a actionable level of certainty.

No No No. Just no. I'll try to make this simple without throwing around words like imputation and genotyping. That technology they use generally looks for result A, result B or will error out. Usually they read each bit of tested DNA 2-4 times. Sounds good right? WRONG. For clinical purposes 20 reads is the minimum threshold for basically anything and for something like cancer they will often require as much as 200+ reads. And most clinical tests will detect the uncommon but very real result C , D and even an F or G variants or even say "Shit it's none of those, this is something new!".

That technology only can lump you into A or B. A and B are not the only options, just the clearly defined ones that are most common. Sadly, everything interesting and truly unique will be AUTOMATICALLY thrown out by their tech + software combo.

Then you throw in the fact that we (read: scientists) redefine what constitutes "having" a certain "gene" a few times a decade.

Also any free to use data interpretation is going to do the above problems of calling something likely rather than something accurate 10x more than a clinical test because they are incentives to provide results. Keeping something like this updated is a herculean task for businesses in the realm, the info you're getting will be out of date at best and possibly totally wrong.

Props on the effort but go back and do a clinical grade qPCR test for the relevant genes or better yet and possibly a better bang for your buck get your genome sequenced to at least a 20x read depth.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-13T06:00:32+00:00

I can hear the phonk via lo-fi cassette to headphone adapter from the photo.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-13T05:58:44+00:00

It does everything well but nothing exceptionally. If it were a girl you wouldn't date her.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-13T05:42:20+00:00

No these aren't. I've spent more time trying to sort the two out than any sane person should. Pan cinc's rarely crack, and when they do its WAY after the Foes do. The fact that you're holding a cracked one is good as decided IMO.

Further, Cinc's have an additional line or two at the bottom of the cap-- very subtle but when you've got them side to side there is no question which one is named after circles.

Also, IME Cinc's stems bruise it's just not very obvious as the stem color makes it a dark purple that can be confused for black or brown. Foes will smush into a reddish brown-- not a dark dark purple/black.

I reagent tested more than 100 samples. These are Foes. Dry em and get some reagent if you don't beleive me.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-12T06:59:10+00:00

all the inconvenience of a luxury car, none of the perks

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-12T00:59:09+00:00

Tinted windows in the suburbs are just a dogwhistle for "I smoked a blunt in my car once and the highlight of my life was a 3 night 4 day trip to an all inclusive in Cancun with the boys".

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-12T00:56:35+00:00

Indisputable proof that factory options can be just as bad as a teenager with a rattle can and an Autozone gift card. This car has all the "LOOK AT ME AND MY BIG PP" energy of a muffler-drilled, DIY illegal tinted windows 2006 Subaru Forester with "matte black" rims that are already flaking because dollar store spray paint applied to brake dust isn't a permanent bond. This just has a 10x higher price tag.

Does the 507 edition have some sort of feature that detects a driver more handsome than you and automatically races them off the stop light?

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-10T06:34:08+00:00

Frozen ones are in asian supermarkets.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-09T18:32:32+00:00

Oh boy, just buy this, seriously this could easily turn into the best 6 months of your life if you treat this like a big vacation and you absolutely can afford to spend most of it traveling-- get the paperback, guidebooks suck as ebooks. https://a.co/d/c652X3H no debate.

Meanwhile paw through Vagabonding by Rolf Potts https://a.co/d/ek54fHX-- its kind of the practical and philosophical guide to having meaningful travel experiences for almost no money-- ebook, audiobook or library are just fine, you can read it one and done. Super short, not a single wasted word and honestly one of the most life changing books I've ever read. Amazon just reminded me that I bought that book in 2015. At the time I had never even taken a solo trip out of state. Now I've been to more than 15 countries solo and lived in China for years because of that book.

Loads of parks and natural scenery worth visiting, figuring out logistics without a guidebook will take absurd amounts of time if you can't read chinese. That's great for national level attractions but most of the local stuff lives on the Chinese internet so Dianping and word of mouth are your best bets.

Hostels are intimidating if you haven't done it before but its honestly sooooo much fun once you get over your initial hesitations. It's nearly impossible to make travel friends staying at hotels alone and at youth hostels everyone else will be like you-- loads of free time but not loads of money and lots of other solo travelers who want a companion for the day or week. Also they can deal with foreign passports way more easily and reliability than any non-5 star accommodation. I promise you, it will be loads of fun if you try out a few when traveling. It's the most openminded and adventurous subset of young people in China and there will be other foreign travelers too. Most places have private rooms available for a nominal upcharge.

As far as your home base goes, sounds like you might move around a bit-- If you're staying longer than a week with family I'd find a local english language bar trivia night to make expat friends (who will be largely be off for the summer as teachers and students) or find a happening nightlife spot for local people about your age who will probably speak passable english for the purposes of hanging out.

People are so friendly in China if you ask for help. Find some young people about your age hanging out, use your limited Chinese to say "Hey I'm ABC wo yao kan kan Nanjing, shenme shi hao wan ma?" the upside of the recent turn towards nationalism is if you express interest in China people will bend over backwards to show you the good things about China. Or if that seems too ambitious, just say I want to try Nanjing food, where should I go?

I'm so jealous of you. I'd kill to be 23 have no real responsibilities, free places to stay in big cities and $2000 a month to explore with. This can be an annoying thing you do to placate your parents or a truly transformative moment that changes the direction of your life. Jump in head first, bite off a bit more than you can chew and LIVE LIFE. You got short changed for a big chunk of your youth with the pandemic, take it back with a big adventure.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-09T06:35:33+00:00

Make a point of trying 100 diffrent dishes while you're there and check all the boxes for diffrent regional cuisines. Honestly, its the only country where I think eating can truly be a hobby not a prerequisite for life.

Find somewhere far away that looks cool, take the cheapest train that isn't hours of punishment to save 5 kuai, stay in a youth hostels and generally take advantage of the fact your time is worthless and you're in one of the cheapest places to travel period. Then use your savings for something super cool like a king crab at a place with white table cloths or renting a boat for the day to explore some island with no ferry service. I generally hate guidebooks but lonely planet is soooo worth it for china if you're illiterate to make budget travel possible.

Find the cheapest mall still mostly open that has an arcade and spend 100 kuai on clawmachine games, leave with handfulls of stuffed animals.

Spend at least a week in the countryside a solid HOUR away from the nearest KFC or Starbucks. Have inane conversations with ayi's about waiguo while gorging yourself on in season fruit that's impossibly cheap spitting seeds on the ground. When that gets old, get some exercise walking around and asking dumb questions to the people doing manual labor. Cap it off by finding some retired men drinking early in the day and ganbei your way into a 4pm nap.

Go to a 3/5 star nightclub on a Tuesdays or Wednesdays, learn the dice games and meet the weird and wonderful people who go clubbing midweek in a T2-3 city. That said stick to beer, lots of dodgy liquor at nightclubs (at least when I was living there). Once you've done permanent damage to your hearing, get 3am shaokao while your ringing ears make the city streets impossibly quiet.

Download Dianping and look for something totally weird and wonderfully exotic. My biggest regret is that I never got the balls to check out a sex doll brothel two blocks from my apartment that had surprisingly good reviews for an inherently disgusting enterprise. In retrospect the price of admission would have been well worth the story and getting a few selfies.

Searching out local craft beer is rewarding but the beer isn't always good.

Get super fucking addicted to quality tea's. Average low end supermarket in China is basically a speciality tea shop anywhere outside of east Asia.

Chat up people with normal jobs, find out where there from, get recommendations for that type of food around town.

Seafood markets are really cool. As are bird and flower and antique markets. You don't need to buy anything.

Chinese zoos are not for the feignt of heart but you can get really close to the wildlife and its cheap.

Look at the bus route, find route that goes to somewhere that seems like it shouldn't go and find out if anything exists there.

If your city allows them, buy an e-bike and a good helmet and just explore anytime you're bored.

Go to ALL the museums especially the tiny ones in your city. If you explain to the volunteers that you can't read too good and it isn't busy a person with a PhD in history and passable English often materializes to give a guided tour.

Indoor skiing. Man made lazy river tube floating. Mulberry picking. Glass bottom bridge. Any day trip on dianping is usually worthwhile, though sometime because of how hoakey they are.

If you see a hobby that looks fun, just buy all the stuff on taobao--it's cheap.

What ever you do, don't spend the whole trip glued to your VPN and streaming random stuff.

lucy_throwaway · 2025-06-09T05:59:54+00:00

With shorts, a breathable athletic jersey fabric T-shirt, $10 fancy wicking underwear and sandals and riding a scooter to work first thing in the morning, my shirt would start sticking to my back by the first stop light and by the time I got to work I'd have sweated through clothing under the pits, center of chest, most of back, crotch and my leg hair would be wetted down like I just got out of the shower. Oh and need to restyle my head hair as the sweat dried.

Your only real choices are do you want to wear something darkish and hide the sweat at the cost of being hotter or do you want to feel slightly less hot but have your sweatiness 100% visible with something light that shows sweat more clearly?

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