xpaulo

Phuket locals rally against Swiss man I'm surprised there aren't more headlines like this from around the world. I had a Swiss roommate for awhile plus day to day encounters with Swiss people who have emigrated to Canada. Holy cow they can be nasty and grumpy. I went out for dinner with my roommate once and he told me how he amazed he was by restaurant servers who come by your table during dinner to check on how things are. He said he'd never seen that happen at home. I got a Swiss francs tip from a Swiss tourist last summer. I left it in my wallet and passing through Zurich airport during the winter I tried to use it to buy a coffee and found out those type of bills had been phased out. What kind of asshole would do that.

My impression generally was that the Uber drivers were younger and more pleasant than taxi drivers. Of course there are always exceptions.

ha,ha.... my impression is that Americans usually elect the most likeable, to them, candidate, and don't care much about their policies. Bush, was more likeable than Gore and Kerry... there was the infamous photo of him and Ellen Degeneres yukking it up in a box at a football game, on Letterman top ten things I'm going to do when I'm president, "give the Oval Office a good scrubbin", Obama more likeable than McCain and Romney, Trump more likeable than Clinton, Biden more likeable than Trump....

I have a summer job that includes occasionally dealing with some Americans, mostly older men who have made a lot of money in their lives and mostly through their own hard work and smarts. Yet I overhear them making comments about Trump being persecuted and falsely accused and all kinds of other ridiculous comments. I can understand people who know Trump for what he is, but still prefer him over the alternative....(especially Clinton, she's nasty), but how can smart people pretend that he's a decent human being.

I stayed at a airbnb on St. Denis in December. It was nice... in an old converted hotel where all the little cafes, bars and fast food joints are.

That's really interesting, because it's getting lost that usually does me in and then I have to turn on the cellular data. I've tried lots of things... taking screen shots of google street maps ahead of time, etc... but something unexpected often defeats me. I'll try it without roaming sometime.

If you get the chance to go, it's worth it, I think. The people there are particularly friendly. I had a weird little panic attack when I was leaving a supermarket with some bottled water, I hadn't grabbed the receipt and I noticed a security guard checking receipts at the exit. I got all flustered, he locked eyes with me and told me in English everything was okay, then gave me a fist bump. I've never experienced empathy like that from a young man.... and he was really hot too. Hooked up with a hot guy off mileroticos and a guy working at the gay sauna's front desk. Nothing to do there except have sex really, there was a pool at the hotel/casino across the street from my airbnb where you can pay, not much, to hang for the afternoon, lunch is part of the deal. Cucuta was recommended by one of the others on this site and was really glad I went.

I was at St Moritz last month on a busy Sunday afternoon and they had a sex show with a hot Venezuelan top and another working guy. Volunteer clients could also join in. I guess sponsoring isn't a big stretch from that. Out of curiosity, each of the four times I went to St Moritz in the afternoons there were quite a few guys going up to the third floor... is there another type of business up there?

Ha, ha, not likely..... but Canada's Conservative party leader stepped in a big puddle when he endorsed a private members bill ( which means it will never be passed) that in the opinion of some experts would require Canadians to prove they're adults every time they sign into a porn site, "Canadians could see most internet services require us to provide a government-issued ID to log on, have our faces repeatedly scanned and stored in leaky databases to simply live our online lives.” Media commentators immediately dubbed it the jerking registry, because it's assumed most men use internet porn when they're masturbating...... and as Dan on Roseanne told his son, everybody does it, but nobody talks about it. That reference is a bit dated. Conservative leader Pierre Polievre, expected to become PM within the next year and a half, supports the bill, but won't say how it would be enforced. The issue came up in the context of an actual government bill called the Online Harms Act which is meant to prevent online abuse including material meant to encourage self-harm, promote genocide, sexual bullying of children and other crimes. Personally, my impression is almost anything complex done with the best of intentions doesn't work or makes things worse. l

I hope so. There's a concerted effort in Canada now to turn back the clock on acceptance of gay anything. Not sure if it's mostly a fringe thing, or widespread. But people are definitely feeling they can get away with publicly attacking anything gay. A pretend populist right wing politician seems destined to become our next prime minister. When he was a teenager his adoptive father came out, but he never talks about it or gay issues much. He supports various right wing groups that are certainly anti-gay and praised the organizers of Save the Children marches last fall which were blatantly accusing all trans and gay people of wanting to sodomize children and particularly targeting people working in schools, etc.

No, but banks and others use my Canadian number and text messages to verify it's really me for various transactions. I don't think missed anything important, but I worried about it. I use Whatsapp a lot, especially in Colombia where it's pretty much a necessity.

The main issue was there is and was a $16 daily charge even if I had to flip over to make a single phone call. This was an unexpected financial thing that came up that had to dealt with. And I'm not sure that anybody who hasn't lived in Canada can truly appreciate how badly we're ripped off by a handful of big corporations that control the communications and banking industries.

If I understand this correctly, you can pay a one-time monthly fee of $50 to use your phone in almost every country in the world. Canada is so fucked up when it comes to cell phone service, especially in other countries. I'm with Virgin Plus and to be fair, I've never really figured cell phone plans, but I think they also do a bit to make sure the plans are confusing. Anyway, it always ends up costing a lot more than I thought it would. My trip in January to Colombia I just had the sim card changed at the airport and as far I know, Virgin didn't have any way to add on extra charges. I used the esim in Europe last year, it was fine, but because of some shit going on at home I had to keep changing back and forth... paid dearly for that.

I'll say.... they routinely claim they are living under a tyranny in Canada. There are lots of things the Canadian government can be accused of, gross incompetence, endless acts of virtue signalling with no actual changes, misleading the public..... but tyranny is hardly one of them. Canada's tolerance for homosexuality ( as far as I know it doesn't differ significantly from western Europe) does seem however to be a major grievance. For the religious right wingers living in a country that doesn't persecute gays is not acceptable.

Ngn I was there four times in January, sadly it was nothing like the selection at St Moritz in Bogota. It's a nice sauna but relatively quiet and not many working guys on the days I went. A Friday evening was the only time there were more than a few people there.

When I went to Colombia in mid-January there was one station in the Bogota airport's customs hall with a credit card handset designated for Canadians to pay the fee. But there wasn't any kind of notice posted about it. So after a longish wait to get to the front of the line, I realized I could have just gone directly to that station where there would have been a short wait or no wait at all to clear customs. As you walk into the hall, it's the very last station on the left hand side.

A German pharmacy refused to sell me their equivalent to Imodium without a prescription. I think they've loosened up on that restriction though.

I see the International Ice Hockey Federation has extended the ban on Russian and Belarus teams from international competitions for the upcoming year. I think the elite hockey world in Canada was hoping they'd let Russia back in. Hockey people are completely focused on their sport to the exclusion of everything else and they believe Russian players should not be penalized for their government's policies. Russian players are also well liked within the NHL. I'm still not clear if the ban is mostly to do with Ukraine, mostly due to drug use or a combination. I think some of the European countries... ie ones who are worried about Russian expansionism want them ostracized. I know nothing about the internal goings on... but it's possible Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic might have raised the possibility of boycotting.

There you go for next time straight from Britney, the voice of a generation... "mind your business, bitch."

There was sort of an unspoken arrangement in Canada where most people just minded their own business and left others alone. In Canada I think it was mainly only a hardcore wing of the Catholic Church that openly spoke against rights on issues like gay marriage and abortion. But now a lot more people are open about hating gays, hating immigrants and hating women who want freedom from patriarchy.

I was talking about these marches that were occurring in Canada, they were probably about 99.9 percent white and just before the Hamas attack in Israel they were joined by members of a national Muslim association who were probably 99.9 percent brown. Please don't start looking for things that aren't there. I'm pretty sure there are bigots in every race.

I'm not American, so no expert, but my impression has been Americans elect the candidate they find the most likeable. Obama is very likeable, Bush has a good sense of humour and never mind qualifications and politics, he was more likeable than Kerry and Gore. The Clinton one is more difficult because she's nasty (think of the nasty attacks on Obama during the primaries), but so is Trump. A lot of Americans had a longstanding hatred for her though. Supposedly no incumbent has ever lost during a good economy and I believe the American economy is doing well..... but we seem to be in the upside world right now.

That's for sure. Anti-gay stuff is all over social media now in Canada. We had a series of "Save the Children" marches in Canada in the fall.... you can guess who the children needed to be saved from. The usual radical Christians/right wing bigots were joined by Muslim gay haters which was a first. They provided comments like, "they're disgusting, they should be dead," and "they have no human rights, they're not human, they're animals." As for the white bigots, they're using gays/trans as targets for now because they're easy to go after without much blowback, but it will spread to more severe racially motivated attacks and against women.

I think my mother died sometime between 1995 and 2005. Time to send me to the glue factory. I guess to be fair, I have no intention of being the President of the United States, nor would I accept such an offer if it were made.

From the description of what happened, I don't see how anybody would think it was sex trafficking, unless the employee is just disgusted by older men with younger men.