This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

It probably makes more sense with the context of Schaz's post in the 2am thread about making another thread? idk.


In unrelated news i have re-entered design hell and feel like death, because i'm trying to format things for print about 3 hours before they need to be printed and done. I'm having college flashbacks

Hey, I used to work at a donut shop, where's my visit

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I'm closer to 26 but yeah you were in the area. Come eat my cakes 'n' breads, I'll fry what the fuck ever.

As a baker, my job gives me a lot of time for mulling and ruminating, and at about 1AM this morning my brain began to fixate on the idea that given Clinton's desperate but hamhanded attempts to appeal to youth and internet culture, it's almost inevitable that we'll be treated to a macro that says something to the effect of "if you want a president that'll go ham, you've got to go Rodham". It took hours to dislodge that train of thought, not least because that only works textually (and even then barely).

Hey, I used to work at a donut shop, where's my visit

you're sadly across the world and truck does not do so well with water

how about this one

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Spoiler

i, too, worked in a donut shop

technically

Hey, would anyone mind talking at me about, um... mobile phones, and phone plans?
I don't have a mobile phone at all, I haven't had one for a few years and the one I used to have was one of those old flip-phones. Dad had set up the phone plan back then, since we basically just used those phones to be able to contact each other in cases of emergency, or change of plans when away from home, etc. but back in 2012 dad decided that the amount of time we were using just carrying the phones around and not using them wasn't worth the phone bill so he cancelled it

anyway, i really wanna visit a friend out of state sometime early next year, but I've never travelled out of state, and I'm not going to as long as I don't have a phone, and I know nothing about phones these days. I guess I'd want something simple that just has calling and texting?? But I wouldn't mind if I could actually get a smartphone for as cheap as I could get some weird restricted travel plan phone.

i guess i could really use some recommendations on uh... companies that provide this junk too...? like do i want verizon or t-mobile or something else. are those companies even relevant anymore.

Idk about plans and stuff that aren't in NZ, but i would def recommend getting a smartphone and a plan that does data. I manage fine on 500mb a month so long as i avoid tumblr if i'm not on wifi, and its incredibly useful to have gps/a map, email, twitter and google on hand when you're out and about. FB messenger too, which is cheaper than texting :B

Ren and i both have htc phones and they've been pretty good. I got mine around 3 years ago for about $300nz and its still trucking, though the outside is pretty fucked up from me dropping it/general abuse. Screen is still completely intact though :')

One thing to keep in mind with smartphones is that you need to look up what the app space is- some of them don't let you install 16gb of shit onto them if you get a 16gb SD card, and only let you have the original 2gb or some bullshit for apps, which fills up pretty fast. Idk if thats a priority since you're looking for something cheap, but still good to keep in mind.

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I've got one google and zero personal experience with US cellphone carriers at my disposal, but this website looks good?

https://www.whistleout.com/

It lets you set parameters like "I have a phone already" or "I want to buy/get a phone with the contract" or even "I don't want to be locked into a contract"

The safest option if you barely use it is a no-contract/prepaid plan, the cheapest I saw was this company, US Mobile, here: https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Ca.../US-Mobile
They appear to let you pick the amount of phonetime, data, and texts you want to send, and will let you use your own phone if it's unlocked (and can in some cases unlock it for you if it isn't already?)

If they're anything like the prepaid mobile company I had in New Zealand (Skinny), they'll make you register an account on their website, then you can use credit cards/vouchers to top up your account before it's billed at the start of each month.
Like Plaid said, messaging apps are a good choice to stay in touch without paying for hundreds of call minutes/texts, especially if your few regular contacts all have smartphones. You can all install the same app (My preference is LINE but Skype, FB Messenger, What'sapp, they are all options too) and then use your data instead to text/call.

The downsides to going with a small company is that support/service/actual cell coverage may not be as comprehensive (making calls over apps will be a pain if your signal is shite), but if you can find anyone who'll give you a word-of-mouth recommendation then they could be a decent choice.

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i'm imagining your dad to be like "phone? outside calls? YOU DON"T NEED THOSE, YOU HAVE THIS CAN AND STRING for talking to me...... please don't leave you won't ever leave i'm needy"

actually he told me that getting a quick prepaid one-month phone plan would be a bad idea because "what if you need it for more than a month? you don't want it to just RUN OUT"

"dad i'm not planning to be visiting my friend for more than a week-"

"You're not PLANNING on that, right. ;) "

so he'd rather me get some kind of plan that only charges me as much as I use it, but also isn't part of a long contract, but also isn't as short as one month. :v

he knows the kind of contract he's talking about doesn't exist, that's why he doesn't have a mobile phone (among other reasons)

But yeah no, I have my own money saved up, I can definitely get a super cheap plan+phone once I figure out what I want (i have an old phone but it's one of those motorola razer flip-phones, it might still work but bleh)

Also, I mean, I'm not going to visit until February, so TECHNICALLY I don't need a mobile phone until then...

I used a Tracfone for years before I got my smartphone, and it's a really cost-effective way to go if all you need is basic phone stuff. They even have smartphones now, but I don't know how if that's as cheap and easy. You can get one for $10-30 at whatever big box store you find least morally reprehensible.

Schooltales time!

I planned a review class for third years, two worksheets (one for the two topics we covered this half-term). Some teachers asked me to do a full lesson with both, others asked me to only review the earlier topic to give the students a refresher from a month-ago class. I didn't actually have time/the sufficient fucks to go run this stuff by Mitch, seeing as she's always making non-committal noises about how busy she already is trying to fit in all the coursework without some foreigner distracting the place up on a mandate. She sees me making photocopies though, and I give her a copy and she schedules two classes with 3A and 3E.

This was a week and a half ago. We had the 3A class yesterday, and they collectively cared so little about paying attention that we only got through the first worksheet. She for the most part commandeers the lesson so I figure, hey, if she wanted to move them on to the second worksheet she totally would've, right?

We're chatting this morning due to a scheduling error, and (and I am paraphrasing here because I kinda force-quit my short-term memory because what she said pissed me off so much) she claims she "didn't know" about the second worksheet. Not actually surprising, the first time she ever properly looks over any given lesson plan of mine is when I'm handing it out to the first class we have together. Sometimes the morning before if I'm lucky! Her excuse that I'd given materials to her two weeks ago was that she just got back from a business trip the morning before 3A's class, which, again, did not take two weeks.

This is the usual shit, though, so idgaf. What I'm bitching about here is she blamed the 3A class' "lower intelligence" for taking so long on one worksheet. (paraphrasing because I can't actually recall what she said, but, to clarify, what she did not say:

- Not "poor behaviour" or a poorly-structured fifty minutes, both of which could be addressed with a firm teacher who knew what the fuck they're doing. Half of them were playing a game to see who could go the longest without laughing, which apparently completely escaped her notice.

- Definitely not "lower English ability" or similar words, which she's used (euphemistically, apparently!) before, and at the very least is empirically checkable against test scores if you want some "data" to back up your shitty reasoning.)

I was kind of hoping she'd leak test questions to 3E today just so I could nark on her (she did not).

I was reading up on Maori mythology for this thread because Maori mythology is great, one time a demigod literally beats the living daylights out of the sun so it stops sprinting across the sky like an asshole

Anyway, before humans and demigods, primordial sky dad and earth mum are hugging so tightly none of their godchildrens have any wriggle room between them, and I knew for a fact that somebody managed to push them apart, but couldn't remember who so I looked it up.

Tūmatauenga, war god, suggested killing them first. Tāne Mahuta, god of the forest, father of birds, bugs, and trees, suggests something a bit less drastic and then pries his parents apart by lying down and pushing with his legs. I can't believe there's a forest deity with beautiful powerful legs, Maori mythology is actually the best shit

A part of the story I'd never heard is that afterward, Tawhirimatea (god of winds and storms) feels bad for their dad and declares revenge on his bros for separating their parents, so he knocks over all of Tāne's trees, musses up Tangaroa's ocean, and sends the gods of fish, lizards, crops, and uncultivated food plants scarpering. Then Tūmatauenga and his kids (humans) stand up to the storm and tell it to fuck off, then teach their cowardly bros a lesson by digging them up by their hair and fuckin' eating them.

Ahahahahaha I looked up "mental health" on an online Japanese-English dictionary to see what kind of search terms I could use to, hypothetically, find a practitioner in my prefecture

It spits out メンタルヘルス

Day-to-day Japanese* doesn't have a word for it so they just borrowed the English word, same goes for "counselling". I'm doing ok today but this isn't exactly encouraging


*Psychologists and junk do have a "Japanese" word for it but it's specifically listed on this site as being technical terminology, so using it in conversation would invoke "psychologist" as university researcher rather than a practitioner who interacts with mentally ill people.

are there equivalents for "therapist" and "psychiatrist?"

Have you asked your GP? They would probably be the best person to ask as a sort of gateway into the rest of the health system. They certainly have links to everything else here.

セラピスト (another loanword) and 精神病医, which would appear to be the search term I needed

my lack of familiarity with the latter term leaves me unsure though, where services range from counselling to a psychiatrist who could prescribe me stuff (and how much of an asshole they're going to be at the latter end). My lack of familiarity with mental health services in general (let alone in a notoriously bad country for it whose language I have considerable gaps in) leaves me anxious about talking to experts at all about this.

My experience with mental health professionals to date has been "acknowledge I'm in enough of a rut to work up the courage to make an appointment, go, be stressed out, possibly experience mild catharsis, fail to make subsequent appointments without external pressure to do so, let the issue slide until shit gets bad again, go somewhere completely different"

Edit @Plaid: yeah tbh I should do that instead of browsing around on assorted likely-out-of-date websites. I just... feel unsafe (paranoid, possibly) doing so in a small town, which is why I'm not confident asking my supervisor at work either.

I seriously needed a baseline for what mental health services are like before coming here (my experience really does consist exclusively of first-time visits).

Oh hahaha also there are indubitably no good places in my town so the nearest decent-sized city is forty minutes away. The prefectural capital is going to be an hour to most prospective places, so weekdays are out and not every place is open Saturdays (and in those cases, usually the mornings only).

E:E: This place looks worth an investigation, later, maybe

Do you have a local friend who can help or call places for you? At least that way you don't have to directly interact with people setting stuff up and you will know that the friend is sympathetic?

I really shouldn't be awake right now, but I am, and while I was not sleeping I checked my e-mail and there was a "REQUEST FOR A LEGITIMATE BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP" in my spam folder. In exactly those words.

I just had to share that.

seems legit

I mean, it says so right there.

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Eeey squad what are you all doing for New Years?

It's my first one since I moved to Japan where I'm not traveling elsewhere, so I'm swinging by a friend's place to eat soba noodles, cuz that's a thing you do.

I'm also hitting up a shrine with a different friend at Ass o'clock tomorrow, so I'm finally doing all the "traditional" Japanese new year dealies.

I just brought home an alarming amount of alcohol and ren and i are going to a friends house to watch movies. Expect increasingly drunk snaps, those of you whom i have on snapchat

(i got a $40 bottle of banana liqueur)

(i'm gonna put a nice dent in it)