Wing it

I did worse than wing it actually… half of the groceries I got over the past few weeks were from Too Good To Go, so near-expired food that the grocery store winged-it for me💀

I’m usually a bit excessively modest, but if I’m reflecting on it… I left my precious job in the US & pulled off a successful cross-continental move with little to no outside help (even though there was a lot of stuff involved). Had a ton of fun traveling during the past year too as a result of that. I guess that would be the thing I’m most proud of

I remember every single place I’ve lived in (over a dozen) and remember the address of most of them; the ones I don’t I can look up quite easily

I do feel quite sentimental about two specific places (ironically the two “worst” places I’ve lived in), not much with most others; one I almost hate with a passion

What Christmas? I’m traveling and having a blast (through my wallet too but I’ll worry about my budget next month). Christmas Eve was spent on a night train

Physically, I don’t think so; the main enzyme in saliva mainly digests starch, which humans are not made of

More likely, you’d drown eventually due to not being let out, which would be one of the crazier ways to die I guess, up their with that time when some nobles drowned in fecal matter

Quite a few!

• Spicy food: didn’t grow up in a spicy-loving part of the world but tried a lot of Indian food in college and decided to just upping the spice level. I can handle some pretty extreme stuff, which always comes as a surprise when I meet Southern Chinese ppl
• Coffee: turns out it was less of an issue with my tolerance and just that I needed a good setup and locally-roasted beans
• Beer: surprisingly easy to get into, similar to coffee I just needed high-quality beer. I prefer the fruity ones over blondes/browns/pils though
• K-pop: unwillingly, because I play a “K-pop” game… I think I’m starting to get the appeal now though

Interesting that you mentioned… I was searching and found an older article about shoe choices of DDR/PIU/dance game players, saw that two of Puma’s shoes were mentioned

I’ll try to see if I can find a Puma store close to me. Weight (& have to fit my feet…) are also important so… We’ll see! Thanks a lot

OMG this was the random Marshall’s shoes I got. I’m pretty sure this is the brand name

I haven’t seen one yet… But maybe they sell it somewhere

Thanks!

Interesting… I will keep an eye on Merrell. And yes I guess that’s the type of water shoes ppl were talking about, thanks! I’ll see if I can find any like that as well

The first session of my workplace sponsored French class (A0/A1 lol) ended this week. Since I’m working at a university the next session won’t start until February when the new semester begins… until then it’s just self study

I’ve been making steady progress on the Anki decks. Finished the first 500 words of the frequentist wordlist (This one, not sponsored), so I’ve moved on to part 2 with the other 4500 words now. Also started working on the irregular verbs training and sentence training, wishing myself good luck. The vocab training’s effects have been showing… I can somewhat understand a lot of local news articles even before putting them in Google Translate now (if anyone has any recommendations for good LLM translators/“practice buddies” I’m open to them too, willing to pay)

Having some motivation issues with the main grammar courses since work is tough and I still want to have time for hobbies… (edit: also the courses are getting insanely difficult wtf) hopefully the Christmas break gives me some time to work more aggressively on those

I’m hoping that I could reach A2 by next year’s August… I think B1 is needed for a lot of workplace benefits/immigration/etc, so that is the mid/long term goal before I start to work on Dutch/Nederlands

There are! Problem is that most of them seem to be either “jobs” that companies don’t want to pay a full-time employee for, or require lots of entrepreneurship skills that I don’t think fits most people… I don’t see how someone living in a developed country would benefit more from an online gig than getting a shitty minimum-wage job at the local grocery store, but there definitely are options

A few non-scummy ones (at least by my standard) I could think of:

• Most practical one I could think of is to teach English/foreign languages. The East Asian countries (especially China) have a huge demand for these types of roles, and I’d presume they have platforms where you can do it as a freelance tutor (at least that’s what my parents told me lol)
• If you have any in-demand skills, it is possible to become a self-proprietor to do contracts for businesses… ranging from the classic IT consultant to selling art commissions on Twitter/X
• If you are good at crafts, I believe it is possible to make a small but reasonable amount of money by selling crafts online on places like Etsy, some ppl are really into these and I think ppl generally have a very positive view of these type of careers. Bonus is you might even be able to do some in-person events at conventions/markets/etc
• If you have a fun personality (or if you are a complete train-wreck), content creation/streaming. Standard Twitch streaming, YouTube streaming, making edutainment like the funny bike guy, if you are willing to let go of some morals then Kick… Quite fun if you are into it, but competition is fierce and most people don’t make it; and a lot of people who “made-it” chose to relocate to low cost-of-living countries where they only need like $500 a month so…
• Extension of previous point, if you have any sex-appeal… lots of places to “sell your body” online and make decent profits. Not doable without good genetics though

Not me personally but I had a colleague who got the best gift possible. Dude is as close to a stereotypical American guy as it gets (which I guess is quite funny by European standards), so a colleague got him a ketchup applier. That’s shaped like a gun. That you use by firing the trigger… Somehow the dispenser was even made in the EU

I think this Amazon link might be it… not affiliated, no idea where colleague got the thing from

A bit of a hot take… bigger communities tend to get harder to please, regardless of anything else

I saw a few gacha game communities (please don’t judge me lol) grow in real time, because gacha games need as large as a player base as possible for their business strategy (which is a separate topic)… Saw the level of toxicity rises in real time as my main game’s community get bigger. Like the community literally went from being okay with just about anything to arguing over the weirdest details on character designs and complaining about every live-service event. And then there’s all the rumor about communities of Hoyoverse games… including once when someone almost murdered the company CEO over a bunny girl event (I’m not making this up)

Among similar sized ones I’m not entirely sure

I assume you mean ppl who literally have “mathematician” as a job title? A few I could think of…

• I’d guess most likely as an academic researcher. There are academics in just about any field you could imagine, a lot of which are even more abstract/“useless” than advanced math. Not a traditional “job” in the sense that academics don’t directly add value to the economy… but are paid to do research that hopefully other people can add value based on. Downside is that these job openings are insanely competitive especially for the aforementioned “less useful” fields, because they are based on an organization having spare money to support research…
• As a cybersecurity researcher maybe? A lot of modern-day cybersecurity (the original “crypto”, before it became associated with bitcoin) are based on advanced math, so I’d imagine such expertise is still needed
• Somewhere in finance maybe? A lot of modern-day finance are built on data science/statistics, although I suppose this job fits statisticians better…

Disclaimer: level 1 ASD, low support needs

Was it ableist for my ex-friend to say “[all] autistic people make her uncomfortable “?

… maybe? It is true that the majority of Autistic people (including those with subtle symptoms, maybe especially those since uncanny valley and everything) tend to make NT people uncomfortable whether we like it or not, so just having that thought alone might not say much. I would assume most reasonable people would prefer to keep thoughts like that behind closed curtains even if they have those

As for your ex-friend’s specific case… I think the bigger issue is that your ex-friend was an asshole more than anything else. My understanding is that talking behind someone’s back is a big no for most people. There are… some parts of Asian culture where this type of behavior is more accepted, but if your ex-friend is American then I’m not entirely sure what’s wrong with them

That’s cool! For me Chinese (Mandarin), although it has something to do with language regulations: a lot of Chinese dialects really should be classified as different languages…

Speaking of that and Spanish… I was quite curious about Catalan actually, have a colleague that’s from that part of Spain. My understanding is that Catalan is considered a separate language but is quite similar to Spanish?

I have a pet rat that seems to be sick. My local vet has a long waitlist: do you have any suggestions on home remedies that can help them feel better in the meantime?

Thought I had it all figured out a year ago: had a condo, had pets, had consistent hobbies, and even close to having a decent friend group… crashed down and now I’m trying to “start fresh” again in a new country for less than half a year, no thanks to certain things that happened in the US

Not a completely fresh start since my career is still progressing as usual (one of the few benefits of having a PhD…), but everything else is a reset for me. Heck I went back to living in a “student/intern special” studio again, my pets are now under the custody of my parents, and I have to learn new language(s) (plural because of reasons) from scratch

Still I’m trying the best. I’m quick at adapting so I’m hoping that things can be sorted out in a year or so

Bossman/supervisor left for the US for a conference, which led me to see the surprising fact of… to put it nicely, how much some of my colleagues really prefer having a flexible work-from-home schedule lol. I have some personal opinions on why they are hosting a top research conference in Texas out of all places, in this economy… but I digress

Went to two nearby cities for day-trips over the weekend (for fun) and yesterday (for a Meetup) group, which were nice. And I accidentally stumbled upon a local rhythm game group which I was very happy for, hopefully I can join in on some of their future events

Speaking as an immigrant wannabe who personally investigated a lot on this… not ones that I’m aware of. At least I don’t know any countries that are both 1) what I’d imagine most Americans are willing to relocate to, and 2) have preferential or at least very “easy” paths for immigration for Americans. Maybe there are some for those with a “lucky” ancestry, but from my understanding that’s it

Netherlands technically “appreciates” American immigrants because of the DAFT, but that doesn’t really answer the question… NL isn’t that easy to move to, and from what I’ve heard a lot of people don’t end up making it on DAFT. Their job market is a bit screwed-up at the moment and they have a very significant housing shortage as well

Still, I think there are lots of countries that welcome aspiring immigrants who have in-demand skills (and some, with significant wealth), as long as one is willing to adapt to that particular new country/culture. If one is competent in a language that is not English that list grows even longer

I think there are lots of posts on this on r/AmerExit and r/IWantOut… lots of delusional posts, but a good bit of not-so-delusional ones too