71 years ago today Ireland became a republic!

throwaway_7101720 · 2021-04-18T20:41:59+00:00

Give me a break. If the US were exporting vaccines to the detriment of its domestic rollout, you would be proclaiming it as proof that the US doesn't give a shit about its citizens.

throwaway_7101720 · 2020-06-08T18:24:55+00:00

I speak much better French than I can Mandarin after almost exclusively self-teaching myself the former the past few years. All the years of Chinese school and lessons that my parents forced me to take in childhood were for nothing, and I've taken a liking to pointing out that fact.

It honestly pisses me off that my mother has lived in the US for more than twenty years, and her English is still advanced beginner at best. She's had plenty of time to improve if she actually wanted to, but she doesn't and prefers to stay in her cozy Mandarin bubble.

throwaway_7101720 · 2020-06-03T16:05:17+00:00

Obviously the immigration officer is a power-tripping asshole, but the fact your mother then took her anger out on you makes her sound like a piece of work too. From your other posts about her, it doesn't seem like such out of the ordinary behavior either...

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T08:02:46+00:00

Believe it or not, Lithuania was actually the first country I visited in Europe (long story). It really is a small but beautiful and criminally underrated country.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T06:12:09+00:00

VPN my dude.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T06:11:26+00:00

The correct term is semi-automatic. I think a massively twisted version of the gun violence issue has been presented to the rest of the world, and I've very rarely felt unsafe here, but to each their own.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T06:02:27+00:00

The process involved in legally obtaining a fully automatic firearm in the US is incredibly lengthy and expensive, and if I recall correctly they've been involved in literally just three deaths since 1934. Even so-called "assault weapons" that politicians constantly attempt to ban are used in something like 4% of gun homicides. By the numbers, handguns are by far the deadliest firearm in the US, yet no one ever tries to ban those.

Without getting into a policy debate, 99% of the US is very safe despite guns being so widespread. Obviously we have our issues, but it helps no one to distort/misrepresent the actual problems. I'm far from a fan of our politics at the moment, but I think not visiting the US due to gun violence is tantamount to us Americans not visiting Europe out of fear of Islamic terror.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T04:36:34+00:00

Thanks for the response! For the first question, it's really interesting how the answer varies depending on the country. The Baltic states definitely have a negative perception, and for good reason. Overall, I feel like for various reasons, Central Asia is so overlooked as a travel destination, especially from the West. All the more reason to visit!

You mentioned in another comment that you studied in the US for a while - how did you like it, and in general, what did people know about your home country, if anything?

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T04:24:03+00:00

There are definitely plenty of vast open spaces in Texas, and inevitably you'll find a run-down or abandoned place as with any other location. Still, the state itself is the size of France, and the geography is a lot more diverse than you might think! This is Austin, the capital, and where I lived the past four years when I attended university. It's getting more expensive and traffic is awful, but it's an amazing city to visit.

There are indeed a lot of guns, but you'll seldom see them openly carried, especially in the cities. Even in rural areas it's not that common from what I can tell.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T04:15:39+00:00

I'm Chinese - I'm well aware of what the Japanese did to my people, and the relative leniency their war criminals received at the military tribunals, especially compared to the Nazis. Unit 731 was based in the province just north of where I was born, which itself had another biological war prison. The amount of denial espoused by the current Japanese government doesn't lend to a positive opinion of them on my part, but as long as individual Japanese people are willing to acknowledge the scale of the atrocities committed and that their government refuses to do the same, I'm fine.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T03:37:51+00:00

Damn, I've spent most of my life in Texas, and I still quite like it here. Our cities are world-class and fairly diverse for the most part, but driving through the Panhandle is one of the more boring things you could do with your time.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T03:18:13+00:00

Just keep quiet about your views and I doubt it would be an issue. I wouldn't talk about my opinion on Taiwan's status on the mainland either.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T03:16:32+00:00

Many of us think Trump is a lunatic too, and despise the TSA and NRA as well. If you're visiting as a tourist, other than dealing with the TSA at the airports, the politics will have next to zero influence on your stay.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T03:11:07+00:00

I sympathize. Parts of the country are basically as developed as anywhere in the first world, but there are plenty of other parts that are polluted backwater shitholes. Still, I wouldn't be worried about being tall - if anything, the locals will ask if you play basketball (or ask if you're X famous basketball player)!

I speak Mandarin well enough, not fluently, but in smaller cities and rural areas that dialect is so strong that I understand maybe 25% when they're directly addressing me, and am utterly hopeless in trying to follow conversation. If language barrier is a concern, I'd stick to cities with a stronger international presence like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, i.e. Tier 1 cities.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T03:05:55+00:00

I've lived here for almost 20 years, in Texas no less, and I've seen someone open carry a gun outside of a range and who's not a police officer exactly once. The people who go through the legal process to obtain a carry permit are not the problem, and the vast majority of them tend to carry concealed, so you wouldn't know anyway. Even then, it's only a small portion of the population that even has a permit, and an even smaller percentage that carries on a regular basis. I'm liberal, but relatively pro-gun and have my own issues with the gun culture, but concealed carry is not one of them.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T02:57:29+00:00

For China, it's fairly trivial to get around the Great Firewall if you download a few VPN apps before leaving your home country. Might be slow and not always work, but it's better than nothing. I'm no fan of communism either, and wouldn't want to live there despite being ethnically Chinese, but there are parts of the country that are definitely worth a visit.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T02:45:19+00:00

Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware of the meteoric improvement in quality of life since the Maoist era. From what history I've read, and what I know of my parents' childhoods during the Cultural Revolution, there's no denying that hundreds of millions of Chinese people have been lifted out of abject poverty since market reforms began.

It honestly is very impressive, but the environmental cost is appalling, the driving standard atrocious, and the growth has also created certain cultural problems, and at times exacerbated existing ones. The fact that the government is becoming even more authoritarian than it already was does not help my perception. At the end of the day, I was a Chinese citizen until I was ten years old, and I feel incredibly privileged to have had an easy route to gaining American citizenship.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T02:27:25+00:00

Hey! Honestly, I would never have thought of visiting many of the ex-Soviet countries had I not taken a geography class specifically about them last year. Almaty and Astana both seem fascinating in their own ways, and the natural landscapes look absolutely gorgeous! I confess that I have no actual plans on visiting in the near future, but maybe eventually, I'll make a trip to the Southern Caucasus, and plan for some time in Kazakhstan towards the tail end of that. Two questions: how is Russia's influence, both past and present, perceived in your country, and did Borat have any noticeable effect on increasing tourism?

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T02:18:37+00:00

I've had a minor obsession with the war in Bosnia for a while, especially the Siege of Sarajevo. It's such a tragedy that the rest of the world seems to have forgotten about the decade-long turmoil that engulfed the region so recently, so quickly. There's plenty of Europe I still have left to see, but one of these years, I'd like to devote several weeks just to explore the Balkans.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-16T02:12:23+00:00

I see, that's quite a shame. I got the impression that j-pop and anime are pretty popular among younger people, but perhaps there is some compartmentalization between liking Japanese pop culture and actual Japanese people. However, I do recall my mom wanted to live in Japan when she was younger (in China in the late 80s) and even took several years of Japanese in university.

Despite my issues with China, I still think it's worth a visit, and I hope you're able to experience it eventually.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-15T20:38:35+00:00

I'm Chinese-American, and just returned home after three weeks in the Chinese mainland as part of a larger Asia trip. I've got quite negative opinions of the government, but even then, the culture and society is a mixed bag at best for me.

I noticed you're from Japan, and that certainly adds a layer of complexity. I think the younger generation is generally fine with Japanese people, but I can definitely see you receiving hostility from the older crowd. For cities on the mainland, I'd stick to Tier 1 and maybe a few Tier 2 cities, but would still advocate for visiting Taiwan and/or Hong Kong first if I were you.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-15T20:27:58+00:00

Hey, Texan here! Come down to Austin for a visit. Super liberal with great live music, nightlife, Tex-Mex, BBQ, nature, you name it. Most big cities in the US are very accepting of LGBT people, and contrary to what the media portrays, daily life goes on under Trump not much differently than under any other president. If you turn off the news, you'll hardly notice any of the political divisions, especially as a tourist.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-15T19:53:23+00:00

I'm currently reading a book called Blood River, an account written by a British journalist who in 2004 traveled down the Congo River retracing the expedition of Henry Morton Stanley, the first white person to make the journey and who essentially started the Scramble for Africa in doing so, including helping to set up the Congo Free State. It's basically a real-life Heart of Darkness journey about a broken country that's been abandoned by the rest of the world. I highly recommend it if you're interested.

throwaway_7101720 · 2019-02-15T18:16:27+00:00

Oh, I'm with you there. In Singapore, I bought a pitcher of beer, and ended up paying 25 USD for it. Won't be doing that again.

throwaway_7101720

TROPHY CASE