caeron

"I'll be happy to help you with that when I see you." Don't let your dick and your heart over-rule your head. There is a chance he is being honest. There is a much, much larger chance that he is playing you. Don't send him money and let him prove he's showing up before he gets paid anything.

For those of us who have never been to Bali, what is a reasonable tip?

You are wise. My experience mirrors yours. Be polite to the worker bees, and explain your pain to them. When treated well, they often work miracles for you. I've had multiple experiences where that courtesy has paid out in spades.

Personally, I'd start with "Prove it."

I much dislike the Church, but in among the piles of shit are some true gems.

I loathe banks. They're remarkably ingenious in figuring out ways to bleed you while making the simplest of actions unachievable. I moved to a credit union a couple of decades ago. They're often inept, but they do really try to help. After a cockup on their part on my last trip to Brazil, they called up and chatted through the details of the incident with my partner and modified their processes to ensure it didn't happen again. The incident that made me change from Wells Fargo was a trip to the UK. I withdrew money in pounds with my debit card. Upon reviewing my statement, I noticed that I had been charged two fees. One from the bank who owned the ATM which I found reasonable, if annoying. One from Wells Fargo for using another bank's ATM, which I found galling. I asked about the charge and was told I should just use a Wells Fargo ATM. The agent I spoke to had no answer to my question on what ATMs Wells Fargo operated in England. I doubt they cared. I closed the account the next day. Fortunately, that was long before the long list of other sins they perpetrated on their customers that cost them $3.7B in fines.

I left those forums years ago because it had such frequent bouts of nastiness. Life is too short to hang out with venomous jerks.

Veritas is a joke. A sick, dangerous joke, but a joke.

Japan hasn't much changed as far as I can tell since I lived there in the mid-80s. It is stuck in its past of imaginary greatness and can't even begin to contemplate the changes necessary for the country not to rot out from within. It's a pity, but it's a situation entirely of their own making. The LDP has been in charge forever and done nothing, and still they keep getting re-elected. The nation would rather die than change, so death it is. On the plus side, I see a lot of reasonably priced guys so maybe I will stop over on my next asian trip and try to bang the rust off my Japanese.

Very simple, really. You need to pay for imports with foreign currency. Therefore the demand for foreign currency goes up, and you have to pay more local currency to get the foreign currency you need to buy those imports. So all the goods you just bought with more local currency now must necessarily cost more local currency when you sell them. Inflation. I'm not an economist, but it does seem to me that such regulations are likely to have unintended consequences.

Your time tends to come up quicker if you stand in traffic.

I soured on her for her support of Trump and general ass-hattery.

Someone named gayinpattaya defending the venomously anti-gay Putin is ironic, to say the least. They are, after all, the very western corruption that he rails against. This rather makes me question the quality of judgment involved. Certainly, the "you've done bad things, so everybody can do bad things" logic is ludicrous. It's the logical equivalent of saying that since Cain killed Abel, murder has been an unpunishable crime, because well, Cain killed somebody so you can't judge any other murderer.

They had free elections until they decided they'd rather have a Czar. Now they get to deal with the Czar and his imperial ambitions while tens of thousands of people die.

Um, no. Partially because it couldn't possibly pay enough to compensate for the risks in such postings to the guys and to myself. Partially because I'm not sure I want to be seen by anybody that such a video would turn on!

After blowing $220B on various things to host the World Cup, what's a few million more? And for all that money, Qatar still looks like a backwards religious extremist dictatorship trying to spray perfume on a turd.

It is probably hemorrhoids. That fits the description and what I've experienced a few times. It manifests, at least for me, as a red lump that can be just annoying to painful. I understand the fear of the big C, but I think hemorrhoids is far, far more likely. A quick google suggests that 80% of anal disease cases are that. It also suggests that Anal cancer is internal to the anus in the anal canal, not on the exterior. Wish you luck, but suggest you try to keep the fear in check. Anxiety, speaking from personal experience, sucks. Try not to feed it.

I didn't have much luck there a few years ago either. Not much to my tastes at Aquarius, and I got no responses from those I wanted online. I too noticed that the prices seemed not to fit the market.

For those who don't know, if you click on your profile in the upper right one of the options is "ignored users". Click on that, add a forum name, and magically they go away. Works wonders.

Retired in Oregon. Happy here with my partner. Enjoy visiting, but I have a circle of friends here, and don't want to relocate. If my partner died, I might try it for a few months, but I suspect I'd come back to the green and the rain. The thing that might get me to truly move if my partner passed is if my money grew a bit tight, because it goes so much farther elsewhere. In that case, I'd probably pick Mexico because as others have said, the language is easier and it would be easier to visit what friends and family remained.

Leonard Nimoy will always be Spock. (and pretty much the rest of the cast ditto)

Joan of Arc WAS non-binary, at least, maybe trans. She fucking fought in a damn war at a time when women didn't. Suggesting that she was a CIS female is idiotic. I'm fine if wokeness doesn't get in the way of the story. I find art that lectures me uninteresting.

I think the higher costs will make this a very niche product. Like Unicorn says, arrive in super comfort after 10 hours, or cattle for 6? Is the 4 hours really worth it? I doubt it. This will only sell to those to whom time is a super premium.

My partner doesn't care that I hire, as long as it isn't in the house. She knew I was gay when I married her. But, she's my best friend, and I'd be lost without her. All relationships are compromise, that was part of ours. We're coming up on 30 years, so it works for us. I spent most of my 20s trying to find the perfect guy and realized that spiritual fit and sexual fit was too high a bar for me. That's when I finally realized I had my life mate, I just wasn't interested in fucking her which was totally fine by her. It adds an extra expense to the budget, but the benefit is that my boyfriend of the hour is always hot and fresh.

I think it is premature to say that the sanctions on Russia aren't working. Russia is, of course, saying that, but I'd rather trust a Yale study. https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-imploding-sweeping-sanctions-corporate-exodus-yale-study-2022-7?op=1 I do not begrudge China its rise. But, I loathe strongmen everywhere. When the fate of a people rest on the whims of one man, it often ends badly.