ippy
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Posts posted by ippy
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If i was going to propose, id probably do it in winter in shirakawa to be honest. Kinda tacky probably, but romance is kinda tacky
Oooh oooh! if you want to propose somewhere in or around nagano, id also recommend a trip to the Hokkusai museum and a wander around Obuse. It also puts you in spitting distance of nozawa, myoko et al so you can go skiing or something.
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Still in China. Contract ends at the thoroughly useless date of October 21st. So unlikely a public school is bringing me in given that the school year is going to all but end on December 25th or thereabouts. Still, at least ill have a) savings and be) time on my crc (have only just applied for a crc application form. It wont even be complete until July at the earliest, with the apostille, that makes it around August/spetember before its ready, which sort of beats the 20 or so days after my tefl course finished).
As for cash, 10,000 RMB is about 964 quid or 1600 US.
Its almost 10/1 for pounds.
Realistically then ill be in a shitty hagwon gig but hopefully somewhere near the mountains. Ill suck it up, head to naju and pick up my drivers license and then after a few months pick up a shitty million won ride on SK encar or whatever that site was.
That should get me through snowboard season and into the new school term. -
Of that story
Off to gym now, ill photobomb it if i have time when i get back. -
So China:
Day 1 (THU): Welcome to China. No! dont wander about aimlessly and try and get your bearings. Instead your boss will come and take you all around the local area and feed you up and keep you awake. Eugh! cant i just rel... no no! boss! coming! get ready! its going to be a long day! (got back to the hotel around 10pm).
Day 2 (FRI): Medical check, bank, phone, and meeting at your school.
And in that meeting i learned the following:
A) Id be teaching at THREE schools. Two of them would be right next to each other. One of them would be 60km away on the other side of the city requiring a two hour commute by taxi, metro, taxi and then bus.
B ) Id be on 10,000/month, not 12,000 silly billy!
C) Id also be teaching high school grade 2.
D) I will be teaching at one of the most uptight schools in the district (renowned throughout Tianjin by students as 'the prison').
E) I must follow the text book. 'If he doesnt turn up with his lesson plan in his hands, we wont let him teach' (the schools words).
F) I will be the solo teacher. Teachers will be in the room but they arent there to help me in any way at all. And they wont. (and they dont, just as an FYI from the future).
G) When schools dont have class, I have to make up the classes by coming to the office and teaching one on one classes. Yes, the office is 60km from your house. We'll remburse you transport of course so no problem right! Youll have to do it every day in the holidays anyways!
H) Job starts on Monday! welcome to China!
Just to be clear, this somewhat deviated from the advertised job i thought i was getting:
- 1 school; 12,000/month; middle school; no ridiculous commute; typical ALT lark.
Day 3 (SAT): But before you actually start your lesson planning ipps, we need to find you a house. Dont worry, weve got 3 agencies and 10 houses to look at, youll definitely find something! but we need to get it all done by today!
House 1: haha! serously? WTF is this rat hole?
House 2: OMG! this is worse than the first one?
House 3: Are they all going to be like this?
Houses 4-9: 0_o?????
House 10: So, lets have a look at house 1 again...
Day 4 (SUN): Sign contract, move in. Realise that my paltry 2000RMB wont actually last more than a couple of weeks. I think im gonna cry )': Waste the entire day trying to find goodies for house cheaper and eventually give up. After buying setting up goodies, find somewhere a little cheaper to buy them. Come home, exhausted, shudder at the lesson planning i need to now do.
Day 5: welcome to your first ever day teaching Senior high! And your first ever week teaching 6, 7, 6, 6, and 3 classes. Well, at least you get friday afternoon off (:
...
And so it happened. I landed in China in mountains of debt. I compounded it with an immediate loan from my company to pay for the house (3 months rent in advance, 1 month damage deposit and 1 month fee to agency).
In months two (DEC1) and three (JAN 1) i paid this back (half salary for both months in effect) and managed to slip a tiny amount (2000RMB) home to cover necessary MINIMUM payments on my credit card.
Come month 4 (FEB 1) and it was rent time again reducing me once more to half a salary.
And then around mid Feb it was decided that i was soooooo good at my job (im not, but comparatively with some of my colleagues you might accidentally think that), that the company wanted me in the public schools but also in their 1 on 1 classes. I was asked to move to the TEDA area of tianjin. In return we agreed that i wouldnt have to pay for the costs, and id no longer have to do a commute since theyd give the prison and senior high to someone else. I accepted. Housing is obviously more expensive up here, i eventually ended up in this house im typing on - which is a kind of converted holiday inn hotel - its neat and about 800RMB/month more expensive 2500/month). So Februarys salary was munched up by that (7500).
March and April i actually managed to send some cash back and wipe out part of my debt for the first time. May 1st meant rent again breaking my little momentum. And so we come to now. Its almost june. Only ten more days and i should finally be debt free (or near enough).
From here on in it should be savings at last. The damage of that one decision by a principal that ****ing hated me for no reason at all finally repaired.
Ive done nothing at all here. Its been boring as shit. Its alright to live i guess. Ive learned that hagwons are money for old rope giving me some options. Ive also been pushed up a level from the sheer weight of expectation giving me an arsenal of activities and a few more strings to my teaching bow. Ive also learned that China has loads of jobs. So a year of experience here wont exactly hurt should i ever feel a burning need to come back. There is always a job in China. But the big news i guess is this:
Im not really ready for China. So at the end of my contract im back on the Korea trail! d: And there we go. Still, despite all these lessons and all this yapping about money, i dont learn shit. The nice thing i guess though is that my options are now far wider (its not PS or bust), and my pay demands dont need to be so high given that id rather be in Korea on 2.2 mill than in China on 10,000 RMB. So im stuck in this stupid industry for (yet another) 'two more years' as i try to find a way to wriggle free from it. Alas, i cant seem to bring myself to do the sensible thing and stick it out for another year and save the money to do something else. Well, we all have the right to self destruct. I plan to self destruct in one of the overly queues for the lifts on high one.
The ****ing end.
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Two weeks!
Only two more weeks left in thailand. God i couldnt wait. I didnt hate Thailand to be honest. Its a nice place, but dispositionally Im a bureaucrat by nature and its a little erratic for my nerves. The whole 'life is cheap' concept sends shivers up my spine as well (being in part a coward, to boot).
Still, two more weeks in Bangkok, working out at the gym, getting up when i feel like, wandering around the city and coming back to a nice hotel every day. Its hardly the worst I've had it.
But strangely it came close.
I was eating into my credit card of course, but so long as we could get this done in time, it'd just be a case of putting the money back in as soon as possible from my Chinese wages. I figured by January i should be close enough that i might even be able to treat myself to a weekend snowboard trip throughout february and March. Just two more weeks.
But those two weeks were met with near silence. (Well, aside from being told that the flight would be paid upfront by me and that it would be reimbursed AFTER i completed my contract (ETA fact fans, it wont)).
Finally at the start of the third week I got my reply. Everything was great! Immigration had accepted the documents and health check. We could now move forward. Everything would be sent out to me on Friday afternoon (arrive early week 4 now). All i had to do now was wait for them to mail out the documents to Thailand and then send them back to the UK to b...
hang on? What?
Why do they need to go back to the UK? I cant afford this. Im already pushing up to the limit. Ive got to keep money back for my flight now, these documents wont even be here for another week and then you expect me to pay for however long itll take to mail them to the UK to be processed by immigration and then mailed back to me? Cant i just get this done at the Chinese embassy in BKK like planned? Well no, it turned out because in July the rules were all changed. So now I had to also pay for a courier to do this crap for me. This was getting prohibitively expensive.
Hotel bills were adding up. Here and there little things like the documents being sent back to the DHL depot because the hotel didnt recognise my name costing me a few more days in delays and extra fees as well as national public holidays coinciding with the arrival of my documents at the start of October (immi shut for 5 days). This was a serious cluster****. I had enough to get me the flight a tiny bit of set up costs and maybe 1 more month of Thai life. After that i was ****ed. Properly and totally on the streets ****ed. No money, no job, no visa, and no way out. It was getting hairy.
And then a brief ray of light. The docs, finally in my possession were winged to my courier in the UK next day delivery on Wed 9th and bloody hell if it didnt actually happen! They arrived on Thursday meaning that the courier could have a crack at getting the visa on the Friday. We could seriously be done with a week to spare!
Friday arrived and... no bueno! Sooooorry, we cant take any applications for express processing today. And no, you cant change it to 4 day, youve already ticked the box.
Monday arrived and... soooorrryyy, we need another invitation letter. I know you only need one formal invitation letter, but actually today you need two. One formal and one informal.
Tuesday arrived and... sooooorrryyyy, we cant take applications from people outside of the country who are not using a UK mailing address.
Every time the courier would get back to me: "i dont know what to say ipps, ive never seen them be this difficult before, theyve never asked for this!"
I was done. This was getting stupid. I contacted my old company in thailand, schools were back soon, i needed a backup. One phone call and Booosh! Job again. In bangkok. Same salary. I told them i would give them a formal answer on the weekend but because id sunk so much money into this stupid visa i had to see if i could rescue something from it. I was going to give it exactly three more tries. If the visa wasnt granted by Friday, then that was it. I could not literally afford even one more week. I was at the absolute cut off point. I had around 500 quid left on my CC. It was enough to either set up in Thailand and pay myself through my first month without wages as school started up again, or pay for my flight, the visa processing/courier fees and have a little extra for setting up in China. Either way though, i wasnt going back to the UK. I'd crossed that Rubicon a good 300 quid or so back.
And then on Wednesday a MIRACLE!!! Chinese Immigration granted me the visa and we were on the way. The passport arrived on the Friday giving me just enough time to book a flight and get the **** out of thailand. Only now i was informed that upon arriving in China i would obviously have to pay for my new digs and that would mean three months rent up front. The company agreed to loan me it and that was it. Aside travelocity being dicks, having to call on a friend at the last minute to buy my plane ticket because they wouldnt accept my credit card for unknown reasons, and the driver picking me up at beijing and smashing my guitar it was fairly uneventful. Still, i couldnt quite express the joy i felt being able to walk off a plane and into 5 degree Celcius early morning weather. Its good to be able to wear a hoodie again
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get a dog dude. Its the instant solution to all fart and smell related issues. Think of it like chopping off your hand to stop your headache. Once that dog starts ripping it, your girlfriends farts will comparatively smell of roses.
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Mata ne!
(Theres something rather angry about times new roman, i find).
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Joy of six on the graun just posted this, and ive only finally stopped laughing. Its phenomenal.
Its just so... brutal. Theres no let up at any point. He ****ing charges that ball, smashes through (admittedly soft) tackles, and instead of rounding the keeper, just sends a screaming **** you! to every footballer in the world with finesse and skill. Its the hulk smash of association football.
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no no, comic sans all the way!
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haha! i think i will. Itll add a more sinister tone than i could ever hope to evoke through my writing.
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chill chill, im busy leveling a druid in warcraft. I dont have any time at the moment for stories or dreaded FLASHBANGS!!!
BOOM!!!
/Smoke bomb!
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Kinda wanted to do it now, the internet is LUDICROUS at the minute (took me almost 5 minutes to just sign in). But too drunk alas. Manyana!
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Part 3: Or how i learned to love the bomb.
The company and school were both hugely accommodating and organised a replacement. All I needed now were my apostilled docs from the foreign office and a 60 day tourist visa to avoid the border hops and i was set. Popped to Cambodia around the 18th July and handed my passport and cash to the Cambodian Mafia to get it done. Crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. After a few days of being ripped off here and there, (but mainly twiddling my thumbs) arrived at the border expecting the worst, only to find the dude with my passport all ready to go. ****ing amazing to be honest. Could have gone well south. In another moment of good fortune, the criminal records check and degree certificate arrived a day before i was due to leave for BKK. The sun was shining (metaphorically, i was wading in lower thigh deep water to work every day), mayhaps things were looking up?
The few tentative enquiries Id made over the last month suggested that things were good for a public school gig in Korea. Id even been offered a couple of positions but turned them down because I had my heart set on Gangwon Do public school. This was honestly the best outcome all round. My replacement arrived in Trat on the Thursday, I popped in to see him at work on the Friday. He was massively fresh off the boat, seemed a little stressed by it all, gave him some game ideas and websites to keep him sane. On Saturday, he'd move in and i'd grab the 10am bus.
Only it's now Saturday, 10.30am and I'm still waiting for them to turn up. Around 11am (just in time to miss the next bus), he pulled up with the head of English and the company representative. "sorry ipps, slept in!"... Right, whatever, lets GOOOO!!! i can still make it. He popped into the house to check it over, I'm a little agitated at the moment but holding it in when suddenly he comes down the stairs and insists that he be taken back to Bangkok. Right now! He's done! Trat is not going to work for him and he wants to go home. This, i might add is a GROWN UP ADULT in his early 50s. He couldnt hack two days of rural? Ffs! After twenty minutes of the company dude, me and the head of English calming him down, he eventually relented and agreed to stick it out. We got into the van, I made the bus by a whisker and had a thoroughly (and fortunately) uneventful journey to Koh Samui... (with my seatbelt firmly locked in. Thai bus drivers are ****ing lunatics).
Arrived in Koh Samui, kinda broke I guess. June ate up the very last of my Japanese salary and also the very last of what was left in my bank account. The two months wages from Trat (for june and july) were eaten up by the course fees (32,000) and of course living and furnishing expenses for July. So realistically I was looking at around 5-6000 Baht in my pocket, nothing in my bank and a 1500 quid credit card to get me through it. I reasoned I'd likely have to dip into it at some point, but so long as I didn't lose my head I'd still have enough for the air fare to Korea as well as enough for that first month of living expenses.
Had fun on the course. Learned some stuff, met some lovely people, one of whom might... actually... ill not jinx it... No point really bothering with jobs at the minute, i figured, since the really good ones will crop up in a week or two. This, it turned out was massively idiotic. The second week flew past, lots of lesson planning and socialising and I completely forgot to check the job situation. At the end of the second week i popped to Daves ready to start applying when this strange question flew into my face:
Where's the public school jobs?
It must be a blip. Only, it obviously wasnt. As week 3 resumed, i'd frantically check every day. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The qualifiers came off. Gangwon do was dropped. Any public middle school is fine. This in turn became ANY public school at all by the fourth week. And now i was in trouble. The criminal records check expired on the 22nd September. A Tuesday. And Cheusok ran from the Wednesday before to the Sunday. Mailing docs was going to be an issue. I'd just had a week stripped from me. It still left me around three weeks though, so not to panic! No need to start looking at Hagwon jobs quite yet. Despite several recruiters telling me that public school jobs were DONE, i persevered. My patience always seemed to be rewarded. I was offered several jobs. I accepted them all. Only i didnt realise at the time that these 'offers' meant they were 'offering' to send my application to the school. This is a mistake I'd made severa times in fact. Time and again id be told that i just had to wait a few days only for the school to get back to the recruiter with this chestnut: "sorry, we really need someone in country that can start right away". Is this Japan??!?
I finished the course, time had screwed me. I had two weeks left on the CRC and three on the visa. Come on ipps! get off the public school trail! And i tried. Several times in fact! I almost took another hagwon job which i was ACTUALLY offered, but it came at exactly the same time as a public school job that i was certain id done everything to get. I tried delaying, but the PS decision process, which I hoped would have taken a day at most, took almost a week on it. I took the risk, lost the hagwon (shitty job anyway but actually in gangwon do), and started having to pay rent on a new hotel.
The money was obviously taking a hit. Another 250 was withdrawn (Cash = 1000UK now). The CRC had a week left, the tourist visa had 2 weeks left. No matter what, the koh samui clock had ticked down. The PS job finally came back to me: "They loved you, and they really couldn't decide between you and a canadian girl, but they decided that in the interests of a more international department they wanted her."
I was now ****ed. I used and abused every contact I had, and although usually positive, they all stopped pushing as soon as they found out the CRC expiry date. I even tried to get the shitty hagwon job above since it was still available. They seemed peachy keen, then the next day they got back and said "sorry, we decided to just not hire anyone". It was over. Korea was done. I was recruiter poison. Theoretically I could have still beat the buzzer, but it would have been just too tight.
And then for some reason I looked on the China page at Daves. I didn't think Id bother, but almost instantly got an email for an interview with a recruiter. Sailed through it. Got put in contact with the school. Breezed the interview, offered an on the spot job with a formal contract for 12,000 RMB/month. Not great, but with cost of living, its almost equivalent to whatt you might save in Korea. I asked how long we could do this all (having not researched a thing). "a couple of weeks" came the reply.
Shit! its back on!
(ETA: Pics to be added when my PC recognises the existence of my ipod).
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nah, will get onto it. But too sleepy at the moment.
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haha, i know right. I did think itd be a stupid idea and i could bail on it, but like falling off a cliff, you need to commit, so suck it up princess.
Part 2:
Scored a job almost immediately the week after Songkran. Well, thats that ticked off! Thirty two thousand per month, in Trat! by the beach! Awesome! Apparently would start early May so er, brilliant! Had time to just chill out in Bangkok in the hotel id paid for right up until the start date! All was sweet. The company would start on the work permit, so just kick back and relax. Wandered about bangkok, spent time in the pool, didnt once do anything naughty. Loved the street dogs, went to some temples, but mainly played games and avoided the sweltering heat.
A week before the job began in Trat got an email: "hey ipps, wanna work in chonburi instead? It starts two weeks earlier on the 15th May". Um, what? Turned it down because you know... koh chang/koh kut and holidays on a motorbike through cambodia and vietnam! But what do they mean? They want me in Trat on the 9th May?!?! Surely shome mishtake! No mind. Time dwindled down and i packed my bags ready for my new life on the beach.
Arrived in trat (after an INSANE and shameful bus ride.... which some of you may know of) ...kinda nice place. Bit rural, but liveable. Loved the mooing frogs and night market. Was reminded by a few randoms that this was their favorite part of Thailand, and figured id lucked out. Learned to ride my a moped on my first visa run to cambodia. All was kinda nice. Turned up at school two days later on the 9th, suited up and ready to start only to find out the job wasnt starting at all. Itd start on June 1st. The pieces fell into place.
No worries! More time on the beach! plus, subsidised housing (3500 baht per month!). No more hotel fees! Time to finally stop lugging that stupid snowboard bag around. And time to meet my cool new flatmate!
And immediately walked into a shit storm. The previous teacher refused to leave. Point blank refused to leave. The school couldnt do anything, the agency couldnt do anything despite screaming at him while im standing there shame faced. The house was kinda creepy anyway, the flatmate was... interesting?...
So after a visit around trat at some horrendous emergency accommodation options (im not snobby, i can live in a shit hole, but these were dark, stinking, hovels), finally settled for 7000/month at a place with an outside bog and a gap in the main door big enough for a frog and a few lizards to ninja through. Hopefully the house would be done before the end of the month. Either way, its an adventure, innit.
Then it dawned on me. My next pay cheque wouldnt be until July. The savings were dwindling and i was fast approaching zero. The beach plans were scuppered. Fortunately, managed one weekend at Koh chang (a fantastically enjoyable weekend by the way) before the rain really started anyway.
And this rain is other worldly. Despite my efforts to get on a bike and see the sights, as soon as you hit about 10kms out of town, the heavens would open up scuttling you back to the hole from whence you came. It didnt matter the direction - whether cambodia bound, or koh chang, or chantaburi, the rain was sending you home even if itd been nothing but blue skies all morning. It was like the Truman show. Well this was sucking. No money, no exploration, no job, nowhere to live. I wasnt exactly loving it and just keen to start the job. If nothing else I was still excited to figure out Thai students and push their buttons. Once the teaching started, i reasoned, i could go back to what i do best. Its all about those kids after all!
It wasnt however enough. The rain was incessant.
The classes were hard work, And although i finally got to move into the house around the second week of June, it was a miserable experience (summed up that first day when i walked into the kitchen to get some water to cook, only to be met by a sink full of ants trying to figure out how to get a dead cockroach out of the plughole and back to their nest).
My awesome new flat mate was possibly the weirdest person ive ever met. He was in his 50s, proper biker mustache, no social skills at all. Rarely talked. Kept himself to himself and had some rather curious ticks (like aggroing himself while he walked around the street). It took me almost two weeks to get him into a conversation. We never hung out. He'd come back and read, or go get his dinner and turn up at 11 or 12am. Throw in the barren room with broken air con and god knows what crawling around it, and i just needed to get the hell away. Id given it a month, the kids were sweet, but it was just too much. I had to get out. As luck would have it the criminal records check which id applied for (just for the hell of it) in march, wasnt due to expire until september 22nd! I could get it apostilled along with my degree certificate in time for the new Korean school year.
After a few shots at it, the beach after all turned out to be no real draw, so why the hell not do it now instead of reapplying for another criminal records check and wasting my time. The plan was set in motion! id leave in late august and get a job in a korean public school!
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Still in China. Im just explaining (so i can remember for myself) the shit kinda hitting the fan a bit.
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Duuuuude! dont be evil.
4,5, 6. Then go read up about the old republic. If you really must know about the clone wars watch the cartoon. Its best if you never watch 1-3. To this day, i wish i could unwatch it. Your imagination is going to paint a far better picture than that shit.
Its over Annakin! I have the high ground!
<collective groan by the theatre audience>
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Rightyo, this ones huge and rather self indulgent. Its really the summary of the last year since i was shitcanned in japan (er, i mean 'not recontracted' by the BoE). Im breaking it into two or three parts just because its too woe is me for good taste. So hopefully, by the time it hits the last bit, the wry irony chip will kick in in my head and ill be a little less of a cry baby. The first few sentences though are a teensy bit self pitying.
What a day. Just two days prior, the reports had come in from the BOE meeting. They were positive! F (my supervisor) sent me an email congratulating me for turning it round with that one special pain in the ass school. It was all but done that Id still be teaching in Nagano in 2014. And then the bombshell! They decided to go with another company.
Still to this day im aggrieved by it. Im not really prone to self delusion. I know when ive winged it. But this felt utterly unjust. One headteacher in a school i visited once a month (but who i later learned was the head of all the headteachers in the area), took a total dislike to me from day one and no amount of trying to placate her could dissuade her of this.
The other three elementaries loved me, and most importantly my base school (the school i taught in 4 days a week) wanted me to stay and had nothing but praise in their reports. But this one teacher petitioned for a change (her exact words and her ONLY words on the matter were "i think its time for a change") and got her way (it was all relayed to me by a friend with a stronger connection to the BoE). In an extra fun twist of fate, the principal was moved to another school in April. She wouldnt have even dealt with me.
Since then, its been surreal. The panic to stay in Japan and find a job at such short notice certainly cost me an almost shoe-in with AtoZ (who really wanted me the previous summer), but it was when even interac told me to bog off i knew the writing was on the wall. Rather dispiritingly, my lost korean drivers license (which is irreplaceable without a trip to Naju in Korea) cost me another job in Nagano. I literally had the job if i could just get my license, but id lost it in October along with my wallet in the very first instance of my wallet never coming back to me in Japan. So I had to make a decision.
And my decision was to buy time.
I knew id have no issues with Korea. I just needed to get the documents sorted and that took time. So either id come home (UK) with almost no savings and begin the process again and move back out, or come to Thailand and see if i liked it?
With a certain degree of hesitancy I plumped for Thailand.
And then was immediately hit with bombshell number 2 as i tried to book my plane ticket. I needed 6 months left on my passport to book a flight... obviously I had 5.
The documents were filed, the passport was winged to hong kong and all i could do was wait (at my mates house - because the boe wanted me out of the house on the last day of my contract. They eventually relented and gave me another 4 days).
Around the 10th of April the new passport arrived! Yay! time to get that double entry tourist visa! Booked the flight to give myself a few days to screw up. Popped to the embassy the very next morning. Went to the wrong embassy (its been under renovation for the past two years), crossed to the other side of Tokyo and arrived at the right place.
"No walk ins, you must book an appointment online". Quickly logged in and had a crack at it. Next free appointment was May. Bollocks. 30 day visa-exemption! no problem, enough time to get a job, maybe do a visa run, and have the work permit filed.
Arrived in Thailand with my huge snowboard bag and was immediately ripped off by the taxi drivers who insisted that this was too much luggage and id have to pay 1000Baht to drive into Bangkok. Pushed them down to 700. Obviously i couldnt care less, it was 2am, i was exhausted and pissed off anyway. Just get me to the hotel.
Finally arrived at the hotel, and was met with yet another issue: The key, which was supposed to have been left with the security, hadnt been left with security and no one bothered to mention this to them either. After a 2 hour battle in broken English and just as i was accepting the prospect Id be sleeping outside the gates until they opened, all problems were resolved and I finally got into my room.
Not many jobs at the moment, but its coming up to songkran anyway. No problem. Got used to thailand, thai prices, and thai bargaining. Bangkok seemed alright, plus it was nice having a pool.
Welcome to Thailand.
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2 days in togari, GinmaBoarder!!! whee! maybe a day and a half too many, but still, if the conditions were good, its an awesome little cheap ticket.
As for me, donut. Not a sausage.
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according to youtube, hes fine.
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1
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Key points:
40 seconds, first serious warning flag.
43 seconds, MASSIVE red flag.
47 seconds, why the hell did he turn away from the line he was on to the OBVIOUSLY far more exposed (even if you cant see the landing) and dangerous drop? I know there was a couple of trees he was turning from, but he had time to get back on his line once he saw the drop and realised he couldnt stop.
47 seconds, commit to the landing or youre going to eat serious shit.
There we go. Its a good educational lesson
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I know nine! yay! Am i an academic yet?
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I used to live in Germany on the dutch border. We had one lousy TV channel that showed nothing good (BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service) later known as SSVC (services sound and vision corporation) i believe). German TV had a tonne of oompah bands and 'discussion' crap. Any foreign programmes were dubbed. The only saving grace was (The netherlands) TV II which used to show married with children, tour of duty and then the best tv an adolescent could ever hope to watch: The pin up club
Stay at home and watch your television.
Layback in your lazy chaaair.
We come to cheer you up!
With the pin up club.
We cheer you up!
We cheer you up!
We cheer you up!
With the pin up club!
NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!
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Quick heads up for the smug, condescending and sneering middle classes:
Stewart Lee's comedy vehicle is back on the telly (or youtube if you like) for its third season.
Still hilarious. Im also loving that hes physically planting his tongue in his cheek whilst cracking more mainstream gags now and again to stop himself from looking like hes enjoying it all a bit too much.
I cant decide, but its between him, kitson and stanhope for my favourite at the moment. Im such a guardianista
ETA: i think i forgot to mention it, but archer is also midway through its run. Not entirely in love with this season to be honest. I cant even remember if im up to date on the episodes or if ive forgotten a couple. Cant even bring myself to find out. And as a big fan of archer since i first came across it, this kinda shows it might be going off the boil a bit.
No clue for New Year or place to propose
in Snow talk, trip reports, Japan avalanche & backcountry
Posted
How could you not take photos there! its a lovely little town
Still, you got zenkoji, and since zenkoji is my favorite temple in Japan (not just nagano bias - i really love how monolithic and imposing it is), then all is right with the universe.