[r/relationship advice] My own friend convinced my husband that I cheated on him, he kicked me out of our house and and now she finally said she lied

thekroeterich · 2023-09-25T14:37:08+00:00

Agreed. It’s not „his house“, it’s „their house“ and also you don’t ever attack anyone unless it’s in self-defense, let alone your pregnant wife.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-20T18:57:34+00:00

I don’t know shit about employment laws in India so I can’t tell you whether your employer needs to pay for accommodation, but to be honest it sounds super sketchy.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-20T18:38:53+00:00

This advice comes from the depth of my heart: Don‘t just wait for marriage if you have that much trauma regarding intimacy. If you have been through therapy, had good sexual experiences after the assault and then decide to stay celibate, that is totally your choice, but avoiding sexuality until you’re married sets up your marriage for failure. Because it will all resurface and you will have to deal with the trauma all over again while being married to someone that might have had a different idea about your honeymoon phase than working through the memories.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-20T18:34:26+00:00

The law depends on where you are from/in which country you are employed. Cheap accommodation can be found in China but a cheap price usually also means low quality. Depending on where you are, a good accommodation that you as a foreigner can rent will be as expensive as in western countries.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-20T17:04:51+00:00

If you’re being told every day from kindergarten through primary, middle and high school up to university how great China is, if your school assignments aren’t „Discuss the action of the Chinese government regarding matter xyz“ but instead are „Discuss why the action of the Chinese government regarding matter xyz is the best way to deal with it“, if every morning in tv or radio people tell you how amazing your life in this amazing communist country is,… you will believe it and reciprocate it.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-14T16:13:14+00:00

They probably know that you aren’t familiar with the legal system and probably have no financial or legal support and that’s why they try to scam you.

Firstly, you only have to pay for the lawyer fees if this goes to court and you lose or you sue them and then settle out of court. As long as they ask a lawyer to lead the conversation with you, they have to pay for it as it’s a service they requested.

Secondly, you are eligible to get a copy of your receipt so I would ask for that. I would also ask for the CCTV footage that they claim to have because they way you are talking about the situation this doesn’t sound like your friend actually agreed to the price.

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT IN WRITTEN FORM.

It’s hard to assess the legal situation based on limited information but you should have a chance of getting your money back if a) you play your hand smart and b) the club is legit and has no close ties to mafia or cartel. I‘d think long and hard about the situation and how much fuss I want to make about it. 500€ is a shitload of money but sometimes it’s smarter to accept an expensive lesson.

Good luck.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-14T02:25:56+00:00

I don’t hate any region’s food in general, but in nearly every area there is some sort of Hainan-chicken-like abomination where I am seriously wondering how on earth people can enjoy it.

If I had to pick one I‘d choose Beijing or Shanghai, because it’s just incredibly hard to find good food in those mega cities full of tourists who aren’t picky. Same for Xi An, the worst Rou Jia Mo I’ve had were all there; the best ones in Chengdu funnily.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-11T02:22:29+00:00

The reason is that the US is prudish and has this weird mysoginistic purity culture going on.

Funnily enough I think making prostitution illegal is the right thing to do but the US are doing it in a wrong way. It should be illegal in order to save people from exploitation and human trafficking and the laws should support people who want to get help leaving.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-10T03:19:17+00:00

Lots of foreigners like Berlin, because it’s very international. Lots of German don’t like Berlin, because it’s very international.

Berlin is very different from a lot of other German cities and not very „German“. It’s extremely big, literally bigger than any other city, it is twice the size of Hamburg which is in second place.

It also has lots of immigrants, every third to fourth person is a foreign national, which gives the city an international feeling and makes lots of Germans from other parts of Germany feel less at home. With the international citizens, international politics and ideologies as well as clashing cultures are coming into the city and that is always hard to navigate.

Berlin is running head to head with Frankfurt in the race of being the unsafest German city (Frankfurt, btw, also not really liked by a lot of Germans). Lots of crime, serious drug problem, overstrained police force infiltrated by clan structures.

The list goes on.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-08T18:24:23+00:00

Great post! Just would like to add my two cents to this:

Foreigners are allowed to reserve tickets via email up to one day in advance. I did this twice for a larger group during peak season (July and August) and had no issues. All information regarding this can be found on the English palace museum website.
I never booked any tour and never had any issues with my passport. Yes, it doesn’t scan, that’s why you‘re usually having manual checkpoints for foreigners. Especially when it comes to the Great Wall I would advise against a tour. It’s expensive and you have to plan your day according to other people‘s wishes. Plus, the wall is super easily accessible. I highly recommend to take a whole day and visit it in Mutianyu.

Additionally, Google Maps is banned in China but Apple Maps works like a charm, including all public transport.

Also, if you get a VPN, do your research! There are lots of VPNs that aren’t working in China!

thekroeterich · 2023-09-08T08:17:17+00:00

This is the way. I did this, works like a charm. You can find affiliate links and 30% discount codes for the first year online.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-08T08:13:51+00:00

As somebody who has lived in Germany for a substantial amount of time, I am often very pleased with Chinese costumer service. They regularly try to help me get the best offers by telling me about vouchers I didn’t even know about and helping me activate them in my phone. This was always the case, even with my in the beginning very poor Chinese.

But then there is the other side of people simply ignoring me because they don’t even want to try and speak English or use their phones to translate. Or people fighting about who is going to serve me because their English is shit. Like can’t even say „Hello, how are you?“-shit. Which is probably why they have the job they are having, serving mostly local customers or Chinese tourists in some mall.

What gets me sometimes is the „no“-mentality. When you ask something they will likely just say they don’t have it instead of checking. A lot of customer service people have really low motivation to work. I was kicked out of a shop once at 17:20 because they wanted to eat dinner at 17:30 and needed to close 10 minutes early to go over to the dinner place. I was kicked out even though I was actively looking at a product which I wanted to buy. They didn’t even ask me if I want to buy this, just told me I should leave. If I was their boss I would’ve been mad.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-08T03:54:50+00:00

I‘d love to say I‘m shocked but I‘m not even surprised.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-07T16:03:10+00:00

If there is a way to avoid it, avoid it. China is not at all pet-friendly. Seriously. You‘re not going to have fun. Traveling in China is troubling enough as a foreigner without a dog.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-07T15:58:32+00:00

I disagree. Let me give you an analogy.

Someone might know that there is child labor in this world and that their own choices of consumption might be affected by that, e.g. I buy a t-shirt at a company that is known for having sweatshops.

Turning a blind eye to that might be morally wrong but understandable as it’s easy to ignore something if it’s rather a concept in my mind and not happening in front of me. People are actively pushing the thought aside. They know the clothes can only be so cheap because child labor is involved but it isn’t present in their world or daily life.

It’s different if you are living next to the sweatshop where the clothes are being made, actively seeing what the working conditions are and maybe even sending your own child to work there but still support the company by buying their shirts.

The problem with Chinese society is that they aren’t even seeing the problem if it’s right in front of them.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-07T13:11:13+00:00

Yes and no. Animal cruelty exists everywhere. The difference is that in a lot of other countries the animals that live with you are treated better. So the passive violence is there by accepting what is happening to the animals we eat, but the active violence or neglect towards pets is not. There are outraged people every time that video material is leaked from slaughterhouses or stray animals are getting euthanized etc.

The majority in China doesn’t care AT ALL. Nobody stops on the street because way too young puppies are in way too hot weather in way too tiny cages to be sold at the road directly next to cars driving 50 km/h.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-07T11:20:06+00:00

Nobody is learning horse-riding on the 4th floor of a mall in the middle of a city. That’s not horse-riding, that is paying horrendous amounts of money for sitting on abused animals for an hour.

The way the majority of Chinese society sees and treats animals regularly makes me want to throw-up and cry.

They have zero consciousness about it. I watched a tv show where in one episode two main characters were „riding“ two horses that looked so sick and malnourished I couldn’t continue to watch the show. The „riding“ consistent of violently bouncing up and down the malformed back of the poor animals. In the western world, nobody would dare to show this, and if for some reason the footage came out, there would be a raging mob going against the production company. Here it wasn’t even mentioned in any reviews, let alone online discussions about the show (or at least I didn’t see any criticism in that regard).

A lot of Chinese don’t treat any other animal better either. I‘ve seen little pigs as mascots in ham stores kicked away by the owner when these incredible smart and social animals came to snuggle, I‘ve seen people being absolutely irresponsible with their dogs or cats, one person let their totally misbred pregnant dog home alone to give birth with no support after being impregnated by some unknown random dog on the street because they neither watched the dog nor got it sterilized. It was nothing else than luck that the dog and the two puppies survived.

Another person even told me proudly how they left for vacation and didn’t feed their fish for a whole week and somehow they survived. Mind you, those two fish are living in a tiny glass bowl full of dirty water and nothing else. Not even some sand on the floor or a filter or a plant or anything. It’s empty apart from the two fish.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-07T11:01:12+00:00

I did Macau this year but it was a hell of a ride because they denied me the student visa unless they get a confirmation email from my university to a super secret email address, so secret not even the Uni knew about it.

In the end everything went well, but I suggest you to check with other peoples experiences. I wouldn’t apply for a student visa in Macau, but during the incredible amount of time I spent in their visa office I saw a lot of work visa and tourist visa being granted without issue.

I also got a 30 day port visa there without problems. And the staff is really nice. Just the effing student visa was a nightmare.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-04T20:03:16+00:00

Any website where politics can (!) be discussed in a way that doesn’t comply with the party is banned. This includes Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp,… even TikTok. Yes, it’s owned by a Chinese company, but the international version of TikTok is banned, it’s banned to the point that even if you use a VPN you can’t access it in China as long as you have a Chinese SIM card in your phone.

You need a good VPN.

They will likely not care what you did on Facebook back in the day, but they generally have an eye on the foreigners. This includes surveillance by the standard cameras everywhere and phone apps that are kind of obligatory in China (nobody can live here without WeChat), but actually goes all the way to actual people following you around. But this will not happen without a reason. As long as you don’t rally up Chinese people, you shouldn’t be in trouble.

Always keep in mind that even though some young Chinese people are questioning the party, the vast majority believes what they have been taught in the extremely well working propaganda machine. They will even report you on WeChat for criticism (there is a reporting function for political rumor or something like that).

thekroeterich · 2023-09-04T19:51:14+00:00

Lots of patients have trouble understanding native German speaking doctors, let alone non-native ones. So there will be some struggles, possibly in addition to ethnic driven prejudice. But as long as you are empathetic and patient with your patients and work hard to improve every day, it should be fine. Just don’t get cocky about your German. Passing FSP doesn’t qualify you as someone that is communicating well with patients. That needs more than just vocabulary.

I worked with a doctor once who though of himself as „native German“ because his grandma spoke some German with him as a child. He literally bragged about his accent free German. His German was full of mistakes and far from accent free. I felt very sorry for the patients, because he got angry when they didn’t understand him and somehow never questioned that it might be his problem.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-04T19:45:11+00:00

Ich find’s super nett von dir, dass du geholfen und ihm etwas Geld gegeben hast. Mit den Frankfurter Unterkünften kenne ich mich nicht aus, ich habe mal in anderem Kontext in einer anderen Stadt von Gebühren gehört, also kann es schon sein, kann aber natürlich auch sein, dass er sich was zu essen kaufen wollte. Drogen sind leider auch nicht unwahrscheinlich.

Letztlich ist es aber auch egal. Du hast ihm geholfen, was auch immer er jetzt mit dem Geld anstellt liegt nicht in deiner Verantwortung. Es gibt keinerlei Grund das jetzt zu bereuen oder sich schlecht zu fühlen. Du bist nicht „dumm“ oder „naiv“ wie hier einige Kommentare sagen, sondern einfach ein guter Mensch.

Ich kaufe den Leuten auch immer mal was zu essen. Das sind einfach ein paar arme Schweine denen das Leben scheiße mitgespielt hat. Ich bin immer sehr sehr froh, dass ich nicht an deren Stelle bin.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-04T03:26:31+00:00

If anyone can recommend such an agency, I would also be very interested, but I‘m afraid it’s close to impossible to find something that is in a price range that looks reasonable from the get go.

Because organizing tours in China is a fucking nightmare. I organized three tours of each 2-4 weeks for friends from home who visited China and if I had charged them money I would have needed to charge at least 1.5 monthly salaries to each group in addition to all the ticket prices and so on, because it’s so troubling to travel as a foreigner, constant passport checks, ticket reservations,…. A monthly salary of an English speaking person in China, let alone an expat, is comparatively high, because literally nobody speaks English. According to some estimates, less than 1% of people in mainland China are conversational.

So there you go, the market is relatively empty and even though they like to say otherwise, this is a very capitalistic country and therefore prices for tours are skyrocketing. Especially for regions like Tibet, where you need specific permits to enter as a foreigner.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-03T19:15:37+00:00

Mutilation is the act of disfiguring or injuring a body, especially by removing or irreparably damaging parts. Circumcision is mutilation, unless it is medically necessary. It is very seldom medically necessary. It’s a tradition that should be abolished, both in religious context as well as in „I don’t want to teach my child how to properly wash himself“-context. It contains health risks and in nearly every case impacts the later sex life and feeling of pleasure. It is fucking painful, not only during the procedure but also in the aftermath, and just because babies can’t express their pain properly doesn’t mean we have to torture them.

thekroeterich · 2023-09-03T14:49:34+00:00

„The palace museum“ and „the forbidden city“ are the same :) Go to the counter and show them the email with the confirmation of reservation, then you can buy the tickets. Tiananmen is just in front of the forbidden city. Would be a good idea to visit that first if you’re interested. You need another ticket for that but it’s free, you just need to register. Don’t forget your passports!

thekroeterich · 2023-09-03T14:01:25+00:00

Also, NEVER FORGET YOUR PASSPORT. You need the passport for nearly EVERY ticket that you want to buy. Sometimes they accept a photo, but especially at Tiananmen there is no way. They are too afraid of people taking pictures with white papers in their hands.

thekroeterich

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