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It is true. It is not a happy everyday. edit: I'm going to meet up with TWM in the next few days and we're going to do a new goon city for Tianjin. I haven't told him this yet but we'll include pictures. For goons that don't have archives, a lot of those links will be lost in the old thread.
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Jun 20, 2013 03:05
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caberham posted:Couchsurfing I am a CSer and a goon and I have mad street cred on CS and little cred on SA so obviously I'm awesome to stay with lol Also you accurately depicted TWM's place without ever setting foot in Tianjin, I am unbelievably impressed. I also feel I am not goony enough. 
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Jun 25, 2013 10:18
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Serious talk, all goons in person I have met are cool and I appreciate their hospitality. Afroninja has a swank Bachelor pad that just oozes with cool.
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I know all about maple leaf school, you can pm me if you want, one thing is it is definitely not in Tianjin, it's a good hour plus outside the city. No one cares in this thread about some international school in TEDA so you can message me with any questions if you like. I'm on holiday in Thailand right now, so I don't know how available I'll be but I'd be happy to chat with ya.
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Jun 26, 2013 22:02
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Go to Xingping and Yangshuo. The weather won't be too awful, you can fly into Guilin and head straight to Yangshuo for a few days before heading further away from the masses and end up in Xingping (which is the exact location of the back of the 20) and there's some small little sleepy mountain town there that's tiny and there are beautiful karsts everywhere and you can hike them and practice your Chinese at all the local places.
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Jul 9, 2013 02:04
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GuestBob for president 2016.
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Jul 9, 2013 03:56
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I'm not being sarcastic. You are responsible for a few coffee stains by my chair at work.
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Jul 9, 2013 06:21
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I definitely have a thing for GuestBob. I mean GuestBob is in my t9 on my mobile right now. Lebron is as well. GuestBob is the Lebron of my NBA.
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Jul 9, 2013 14:01
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DontAskKant posted:Who has been to Mongolia, I'm looking at a trip Aug. 10-18. Too long? What's the main draw? Expensive? I figure if prices for Vietnam have risen to the price of Mongolia, I might as well go there. I'll do a trip report for Mongolia at some point. I flew into Ulaanbaatar (sp?) and spent five days there. It was kind of crazy. I had a friend there that took me on a few trips into the countryside but the hostel I stayed at also offered those trips. It's a pain in the rear end to get out to the countryside if you don't know anyone, driving is worse than in China so you don't want to rent a car, you'll have to figure out a way to get out there but it can get done. If you're a Great Plains kinda guy you'll probably despise UB (though the food was amazing) and love the areas away from the city.
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Jul 19, 2013 01:28
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DontAskKant posted:I live in Seoul so Ulaanbataar might not be too bad I had rather semi-serious culture shock going to Mongolia and I live in China so I imagine Seoul might be a little worse. Seoul is really nice dude. On my way from the airport we witnessed two accidents, the girl who picked me up got in an accident going to the airport to get me and I almost got hit by a car the second time I crossed the road downtown. It's a hell of a place to visit but it's crazy as hell.
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Jul 19, 2013 02:06
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Smeef posted:I drove all over western Mongolia. This is my trip report 
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Jul 19, 2013 05:27
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VideoTapir posted:What are the coolest cities or tourist attractions within a 5 hour train ride of Beijing, like worth going to for a couple of days? I've been to Qingdao and Shenyang, and the wife says Dalian sucks. You can always come to Tianjin and watch TWM get drunk.
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Jul 26, 2013 05:04
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Um a pool? I can understanding wanting a gym with a pool but you want a complex with a pool? Have you ever been to china before?
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Jul 27, 2013 04:33
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Tier 2 is where it is at. Tianjin has everything I need...nice gym with a pool, good metro and bus system, Starbucks and legit Papa John's and nice western malls for my bad days but hutongs and hole in the wall Chinese family restaurants for the good days. I live in a two story penthouse for 6,000 RMB/month with two other roommates right downtown. You simply can't complain about any of that. Talking about all this pool talk, I apologize to BadAstronaut, I guess living in a tier 2 city I've NEVER, NEVER seen a complex with a pool. I've seen local pools near complexes but never one actually in the complex. Even my richest friends that are like international pilots here don't have that, and they are making like 800k a year in RMB, so I figured they'd live there if they had the chance. Never been to Shanghai before so I can't comment on that. This past weekend I went to this new "Water Paradise" as my Guangzhou girl kept referring to it, called 欢乐海魔方, about two hours away from the city center. I was super, super skeptical of going to a waterpark in China, although she insisted to me it had a wave pool and waterslides. I figured it would totally blow. Boy was I wrong. It was loving awesome. It had the biggest waterslide I've ever done, almost a straight drop from five stories that was absolutely terrifying. It was incredible. It had two other huge slides that were from four stories up, one with huge loops around and one with three big bumps. I had to wait in line an hour the first time but she and I stayed until after 6 and no one was there and we just walked on them a few times. The lazy river went through a huge badass CAVE and it was really clean. The wavepool was gigantic, made huge waves, and had some black dancers in the middle pumping up the crowd. I totally owned some Chinese kids at water basketball. It was...dare I say it...AWESOME. The food was even not so bad. I guess it opened 8 days ago so it hasn't had time to be ruined by Chinese people yet. But holy poo poo. Good job China. Also in the wavepool this whale of a Chinese chick was dancing and her boob fell out and she didn't notice. She was raging for like two minutes during some Chinese pop song with her right tit out. What was even more amazing was the amount of Chinese people that were not terrified of the water. Sure you had a fair amount of people who seemed completely horrified of the water but by and large most people seemed to just kinda be...I don't know...like...normal. I'm definitely going back. It was the most Western Fun I've had in China since coming here...four years ago. drat. edit: Should this have gone in the LAN thread? My bad, I am kinda blurred on what goes where, other than TWM's FYAD/Asperger outbursts obviously belong there. The Great Autismo! fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 02:22
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Link doesn't work for me at the office.
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Jul 29, 2013 02:33
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We have two big bathrooms, three bedrooms, a patio, a sunroom, a nice kitchen and it came with a big screen and it is 6,000/month for everything. Each roommate pays 2,000/month. Tianjin is dirt cheap. And I love it.
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Jul 29, 2013 02:41
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BadAstronaut posted:goldboilermark, did you see anyone surfing there? I imagine that during hours with lots of bathers they would not allow boards in the water, but would be cool to know. Good luck. This was not on the ocean, it was a waterpark. Just found this http://www.whitewaterwest.cn/HappyMagicWaterCubeNanjing.html that was the waterslide I was talking about. I Bing searched 欢乐海魔方 and some decent images came up. There was no surfing there.
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Jul 29, 2013 07:42
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BadAstronaut posted:Anyone in the know aware of how long it takes to organise a working visa? The company would take care of all the administrative side of things for me - I'm just curious how long it takes for these working visas to be issued? Depends how quickly your company is on the ball. I'm doing the same thing for my company right now, hiring foreigners, and from when they get everything ready to actually getting them to PEK takes between 1 and 2 months usually. 5 weeks seems to be the absolute, best case, lightning fast scenario. 2 months seems a bit more likely because 
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Jul 29, 2013 09:11
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Longanimitas posted:Live in Wuhan. I had better than that for free with no roommates. Yeah but I get paid a Western salary living and working here. Maybe I could get that in Wuhan, I don't know. But I'm content here with what I have for sure.
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Aug 2, 2013 03:09
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You could take the high speed rail to Beijing and just do a few days yourself based out of a decent hostel. All the hostels will be able to help you get to the Great Wall, and you can walk to the Forbidden City, Tiananmen, and easily shuttle around to Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace all by yourself. I had been in China for less than a month and I made a trip to Beijing to do all this stuff, so it's not like you need some overwhelming grasp on the language. Just be wary of Every Single Chinese Person You Meet and you'll be fine.
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Aug 9, 2013 00:22
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BadAstronaut posted:Thanks - just kind of surprised that it seems more than three times more expensive to fly to Taiwan than it is to fly to Hainan... It's really cheap flying through KL, fyi
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Aug 9, 2013 23:02
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The Worst Muslim posted:Oh yeah Abe I broke up with my girl too. Now you don't have to literally froth at the mouth whenever I mention her. Also 大胖糖(da pang tang) (big fat candy) turned out to be a manipulative psycho bitch intent on ruining our relationship (my ex and I, not you and I). Solution: Have her over for dinner sometime in the past few days  edit: This is not the LAN thread. Hi, T&T
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Aug 13, 2013 02:32
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Hong Kong is good...maybe great. Macau is incredible.
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Aug 14, 2013 11:45
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BadAstronaut posted:I want to go gamble in Macau. Who of you have been there - is it really just (Las Vegas)x(China)? I was there in 2011. I loved it. I loved Hong Kong and then went to Macau and realized I just liked Hong Kong and I LOVED Macau. I highly recommend it. Though my hostel mates were ridiculous and made the stay a bit more...er, crazy than I would have preferred.
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Aug 14, 2013 12:01
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If you are working properly for a real place, it isn't your job to figure out the visa requirements. If you are working illegally, then it is your job because they could not care less about you.
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Aug 16, 2013 23:43
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Rental Sting posted:So the school I plan to work for, American TPR English School in Zhuhai, mailed me all of the paperwork necessary for me to obtain a Z Visa through Worldwide Express Mail Service. With the tracking number, I can see that the package left Guangzhou on 8/20 (which I think is Chinese yesterday) for Chicago. You're going to be cutting it super close based on everything going smoothly. I did the Chinese embassy in Chicago in 2009 and missed the cut off for same day Z processing by about 15 minutes and I had to wait the weekend. Ugh. Get there early and get same day and you should, repeat SHOULD, have it by the 28 no problem. drat you cut that close though. I am in charge of hiring a girl from Chicago right now and I told her we will buy the ticket after she has the visa. I'll put it on the company bill, missing flights always freaks me out. Edit: it's only the 21st...you should be fine. Should only be a few days. Thought it was like the 25th haha. No idea why. Edit 2: it just left?? I thought it arrived. Ok you will be cutting it close. Good luck. The Great Autismo! fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Aug 21, 2013 |
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Aug 21, 2013 10:16
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Rental Sting posted:Nope. Haven't even left the country before. I wish I chose Cathay, since the prices were identical, and all. But hey, it's only fifteen hours of my life. If you want to acclimate to Chinese culture right away, ignore tr ferry, go hang out with caberham for two days, then make up some transparent bullshit excuse and show up happy a few days later. Really. Do this.
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Aug 21, 2013 10:30
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Big Alf posted:Oh you misunderstood, I wasn't being all supergoon or anything. I meant I think you should post this on the LAN thread as from what you have described about your employee so far, you might get some advice on there that probably isn't suitable for this thread. But advice you could probably do with hearing in your situation. I'm on my iPhone and not responding properly so I guess my above post should go in the LAN thread also
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Aug 21, 2013 10:31
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Actually just hope it rains the day you get in, you can then do whatever the hell you want and as long as it rained, you are totally covered.
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Aug 21, 2013 10:35
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Big Alf posted:In a nutshell they will move in to his house and destroy his life. In a nutshell, this.
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Aug 22, 2013 05:32
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The Worst Muslim posted:HONK HONK ALL ABOARD THE BROKEN FAMILY CLOWN CAR! Setting them up and knocking them down today, buddy.
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Aug 22, 2013 07:58
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Hainan is alright, no complaints from me, but my lack of discussion on the topic mirrors my level of how much I care. I had no problems but I'm low maintence.
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Aug 22, 2013 23:10
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This is me being super helpful. As fate would have it... Rental Sting, today (Friday) in the US one of our new employees in the States went to the Chinese embassy in Chicago and it was a disaster. She got there an hour before lunch, waited around, they came back from lunch, finally got to see someone around 2, and they told her she had to have a photo like the passport kind, as well as photocopies of all of the papers, plus she had to fill out two more papers, including one asking for her address in China. Furthermore, they informed her they no longer did same day processing. So she waited around all day to be told to fill out more paperwork and go get a photo taken. She did this, and by the time she got back, it was after 2:30pm, when the embassy closed. So she'll be there Monday morning as well. Perhaps you'll bump into her, wouldn't that be cute? I would suggest being there as early as possible, with your photo, and all four or five pieces of paper. I would make a ridiculous amount of copies of these papers, because who knows what they will ask you to do. If you can't get same day processing, you are looking at getting your visa by Tuesday at the earliest, barring any kind of Super Chinese Handling Of The Situation. I'm not trying to freak you out, I would just recommend you do all the stuff I said and hope it goes smoothly. Are you getting a Z visa? I imagine you are, and if that is the case, then all of this applies.
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Aug 24, 2013 01:43
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Our HR department is just as Chinese as every other aspect of our company that is run by Chinese. Interestingly enough, our recruitment and education departments are wildly successful. Foreigners run those. Hmm. edit: Our secretary ain't bad when she's awake, which is about half her workday.
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Aug 25, 2013 05:11
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One of the more Chinese things I have seen in four years was someone that took a huge turd, didn't flush it and instead put out their cigarette right in the middle of it.
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Aug 29, 2013 12:00
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bad day posted:What are some English short stories that would be appropriate and interesting to 9th grade students in China? The school nixed my plan to have the students buy Kindles (breaks already constantly broken school rule on electronics) and now I have to make my own textbook and have it printed in the next few days. Not short stories, but I've done the following with middle school students, though it is slow and takes a while, and I created reader's guides for all of them a few years back - Charlotte's Web - Holes - When You Reach Me - Where the Mountain Meets the Moon - Walk Two Moons Walk Two Moons was a bit slow, but had the good ol' American road trip in it, so that's something. Holes was the biggest hit, and then we watched the movie afterwards and all the girls loved Zero. When You Reach Me was a little confusing, as I had to spend 20 minutes explaining A Wrinkle in Time, but after that it was smooth sailing, though they do mock the Chinese accent somewhere in the middle which was annoying as it was completely unnecessary
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Aug 29, 2013 13:37
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Arglebargle III posted:I'm gonna go ahead and un-recommend Walk Two Moons. It is full of old and unusual slang that will confuse the students and frustrate the teacher. Dealing with words like "chickabiddy" is just a gigantic waste of time. The characters speak like a woman in her 50s would imagine a young girl speaks. The story is complex and meandering and some of the characters speak in dialect which again is a huge waste of time unless you're preparing students to head to a generic native american reservation. Got ya, but... Arglebargle III posted:I like stuff about being a teenager because they can relate to that. Enter Walk Two Moons. Once you teach them that there are a bunch of nonsensical words it is doable. It's not great, not NEARLY as good as Holes, Charlotte's Web, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, but it's doable. I get books for free and I make the best of them. I'd be interested in your opinion what's good, because once we finish Liar and Spy (it's been a bit up and down) I have nothing else planned.
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Aug 29, 2013 14:26
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How is their level? Life of Pi and The Kite Runner are both awesome. A few other contemporary books I've read in the past year or so were The Tiger's Wife (meeeeeh), In the Sea There Are Crocodiles (meeeeeeeeh) and A Hologram for a King (yay Dave Eggers! Good overall, but a little substandard in my opinion for his work usually. [Sorry Dave]) Uhm...comedy option, ASOIAF series? This might be a derail that is better suited for TBB.
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Aug 29, 2013 15:26
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The LAN thread is leaking again. Though I'll admit, I chortled.
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Aug 31, 2013 00:44
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Monkey Fury posted:Yayyyy Chengdu. I'll be around too, I think. I only teach three days a week. You're back in China? Cool man, come back to Tianjin sometime if you like, happy another quality expat is over here! 
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Sep 2, 2013 03:08
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Smeef posted:A friend of mine works at a 5-star hotel in Bangkok, and she said that their biggest problem for the past few months has been Chinese tourists going to breakfast in their boxers. So far the most effective solution has been to pump the aircon and offer bath robes. We seriously live in the best country.
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Sep 2, 2013 10:42
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