The Upside of the European Economic Meltdown

admin — Sun, 20 May 2012 05:27:41 +0000

I’m watching the Greek economic malaise very closely these days. Not because I’m worried about my financial portfolio, not because I’m a news junkie, and not because I’m terrified about a possible economic contagion spreading to the rest of the world. I’m watching it in the selfish hope that the European Union will eventually collapse, bringing the high cost of traveling to these countries back down to a very affordable, long-term jobless vagabond kind of price. I know what you’re thinking: I’m a monster, I’m ignorant, and this economic bomb is going to harm me just as much as the EU. What kind of vile, filthy being could ever hope for such a thing? Perhaps I’m as bad as you think I am. Yet wouldn’t it be simply marvelous to cruise around Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Ireland, at rock-bottom prices the likes of which would put Southeast Asia’s budget travel circuit to shame? Just imagine cruising around the Greek islands, visiting wine vineyards in Italy, and partying it up in Spain while paying next to nothing. I’m always wary of the media. I always suspect they’re overhyping stories so that they can sell their vile advertisements, make their money, and feed their monkey. But this time it seems like this whole doomsday thing has legs. Greece is burning money like a champ, and they are but a trifle compared to some other whales in the equation . So what do you all think?

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Nonpareil’s China Adventures

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:55:40 +0000

I’ve been in China for a bit now, so here are a few observations that are game and non-game related for you, enjoy. This is not a data sheet; I have yet to accumulate any real data (we get paid monthly, not weekly or bi-weekly, and I’m spending a few days in Shanghai in May), but I plan to get a few when I can. I intend for this thread to be ongoing, so I will dump some data in here when I can, but until then… - If you are black, Latin, white, blonde, above 6′1 or have blue eyes, you will get Panda-beared like a motherfucker. Panda-beared? A term that I made up that describes the way that the local Chinese will eye you up like you’re the last Panda in the wild. They really don’t mean anything by it, I’ve been informed, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a touch unsettling. A guy I know here is from Cameroon and has been here nine years (he speaks the language) and says it still happens to him every day. If China wants international tourist appeal, then they need to curb that shit, because I don’t mind it personally, but some will find it creepy. -‘Ni Hao, Nihen piao liang!’ (Hello, you are very beautiful), the girls here just eat that shit up ( “WAS THIS BETA!!!!!???!?!?!?!” ), especially when it comes from the mouth of a foreigner (in fact it’s the first thing I ever said to the girl I’m currently seeing). Indication of a functional society #43: women reacting favorably to chivalry and compliments. You’ll get at least a pretty smile ten times out of ten with it, close the deal (if she has no English) with ‘Women yiqi chefan hao ma?’ ( whoa-men yi-chee shifan how ma? , literally ‘Can we get together?’ and whip out your phone or QQ number [QQ is explained below]). - If you’re flying in to anywhere other than Hong Kong, avoid Hong Kong International like the HIV; it has the worst layout I’ve ever seen and doesn’t seem big enough to service the area. First some jag pilot fucked up on arrival which routed us to Macau (to sit on the tarmac for 3 hours…unrelated, Macau seems cool and I’d like to check it out in the future, Vegas in Asia), then we get there and to just get to my gate, after I go through the detector, I have to ascend a flight of steps, walk a few hundred meters, go down an escalator, get on a tram, ride up another escalator and take two of those moving walkways. Sweating like OJ at a parole hearing running through the terminal with my 50 lb carry-on, I thought I almost missed my flight; but of course, because of the backlog from earlier (five hours earlier…), I was stuck sitting in a stationary plane for another two hours before my final two hour flight. As an added bonus, they lost my luggage (returned the next day, but that was quite the scare, and this was after 19 hours in a plane so I was feeling pretty damn cagey). I’ll hop a steamer to Japan to grab a flight out of Nagasaki or the high-speed to Shanghai and pay hand over fist before I ever go back to HKG. - As in America, Chinese guys date Chinese girls; they get zero leeway here, but once again, most of the female expats and teachers are fat, so I’m not totally sure that they care. - All those hot Asian girls you guys like…this is the source; the pure-Chinese girls are hotter here than the Chinese-Americans or Chinese-Canadians by a substantial metric. Not that there aren’t ugly Chinese women (there are…there are also ugly Spanish women, ugly Colombian women and ugly Russian women - there’s over half a billion of them, not all of them are going to look like Tia Carrere…and yes I know Tia Carrere is Polynesian or something, but you get the pic), but the prime ones? Good lord are they fine, this coming from a guy who has never been hugely into Asians. Also, they are mad stylish; skirts, boots, stockings, heels, rouge, putting time into their hair and very few of them fat…these women know how to be women; sure, they have their shortcomings (negative ass, their skin isn’t always great, they’re cloying and easily infatuated, they’re very concerned with status, they have good family values but if the family doesn’t like you they will wet you up etc,.), but it trumps North America with ease. I know in NA feminists claim ‘Woman has the word man in it!’, well fuck you, there’s a reason you can’t find one for more than a night. The talent in China is fine, not quite all world (it’s not Poland or Colombia), but I have been very pleasantly surprised; don’t believe that it’s possible for a 6 to make herself an 8 by dressing sexy and putting a few hours into her hair and makeup? Chinese women would like a few words with you (but you won’t understand them). - Dating in China is significantly different than dating in North America. In North America, you meet a girl, you’ll fuck her and if she’s cool and if she likes you, it’s like ‘Well…okay, let’s date for a couple of months and see what happens’, and once you get out of the honeymoon stage and assess, she either becomes a girlfriend, a casual fuck or if she’s lame, yet another girl that you used to fuck. In China, you meet a girl, you’ll fuck her and she gets the thunderbolt; she almost instantly wants to introduce you to all her friends, her co-workers, her family (I suspect all except the family is their way of lording ‘That’s right, I’m hot enough to get a tall foreign guy, your move…’ over everyone in their lives; I have already met a girl’s parents [and shocker - they aren't thrilled that their daughter is getting fucked by a foreigner, but they were polite about it], in North America it rarely happens inside three months). I cannot confirm or deny if this is how it goes for Chinese men. - The Chinese youth worship the west; the girls love all the crappy Western pop and buy expensive cremes and powders to lighten their skin (this, and their love of makeup, and the generally shitty quality of the water, and the oily, fried diet, are what I think leads to some of them having not-great skin), and the dudes dress like hipsters. I bet if a 21 year old Chinese man moved to America for three years, he would be appalled by the shrine he had previously built to it (3 years of no American pussy, I should mention). Nonetheless, as a result they love people from the West. I once heard from a fellow foreigner (from Michigan) say that being a white guy in China makes him appreciate what hot women back home must go through every day; people staring and everyone wanting to talk to you but most everyone being afraid to. He’s dead on. - Flying out from NA, I recommend Cathay Pacific; in addition to the sexy Asian stewardesses (I was trying like a fiend to set something up with a tiny Ziyi Zhang lookalike FA with bigger tits and better teeth, zero avail), the inflight entertainment was mad good. On a 16 hour flight, I was able to watch all of season 4 of Breaking Bad (awesome), The Artist (massively overrated), The Descendants (good, not great), catch a 2-hour nap and run a chop on the Ziyi-Doppelganger. Both flights (I had a connector to Hangzhou from Hong Kong) total cost about $975, same week booking. - The women are professional. Unlike in North America, where a woman thinks being ‘professional’ means having a meaningless job with a fancy-sounding title, her SmartPhone riveted to her ear and that having a vagina means she gets to be a cunt whenever she wants and she should get whatever she wants, these women just get it done; they diligently work long hours even in the absence of praise, they wear skirts, stockings and heels (haven’t seen more than a 4′ yet, but come on…you won’t get a 4 on the average American girl unless she wants to put them on and then fuck…also stockings; need to make a comeback), they wear rouge and they put work into their hair; I have yet to see a young Chinese girl out in public with disheveled hair in pajamas, and I’ve been in Nanjing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, all cities with 5 mil +, even the young girls I teach (3-12) wear dresses and have their hair all done. There is no ‘Gender is a construct we need to eradicate!’ Feminist circle-jerking in China; the girls wear pink and the boys wear blue. I highly doubt any of my female students are taking Basketball class, just like I doubt any of my male students are taking ballet. Most of all is the stark difference in the demeanor; Chinese women (who speak English) aren’t brackish, snobby and sarcastic, they’re sweet (but not so sweet it gives you diabetes), they smile, they have respect for themselves and for you and they know how to flirt without being clumsy, hostile and obvious. If a Chinese girl isn’t into you, she won’t take your number and use your SMS to make her boyfriend jealous or feed her ego, she’ll tell you flatly, but politely that she isn’t interested. I pray that Feminism eats itself long before it takes hold here. - Chinese women age extremely well; at least once a week I’m walking and I see a girl from behind and think ‘Damn, check her out!’ and I see her face and she’s like 50, my buddy’s 44-year old wife (he’s like 55), if I wasn’t told she was 44 before I met her, I would have guessed 32. My co-workers are all 24-26, and all could easily be freshmen at any campus in North America. The girl that picked me up at the bus terminal, when I first met her I thought she was 16, but she is 25. However, this goes both ways; it is close to impossible to tell the age of girls aged 15-25, so be careful and ask first. - As if you needed more confirmation that there is a massive Obesity epidemic in the west, the number of fat, young (18-30 by my estimation, meaning they could be anything from 14 to 40) Chinese women I’ve seen in almost three weeks: 11 (and I know the exact number because it’s such an unusual sight, and I log it and other things in a journal, and yes, I have seen tens of thousands of them in this time). Meanwhile, I have met about fifteen women from USA-UK-Canada and eight of them are fat. I know why Chinese girls are so thin; because when you live in a country that has 1.3 billion people to feed, a vast majority of the population cannot afford to gorge themselves on fatty foods all day, and it’s hot, and cars and transport are expensive so everyone walks, and most residential buildings don’t have elevators (I’m on the 9th floor, FML), and the only western fast-food Franchises I’ve seen are KFC and McDonald’s, etc,. - Though they seem frosty, the people, provided they can understand you, are very nice. In North America, people go to work where they talk with their co-workers. On the ride home they’re either alone in the car or glued to their phone on the bus, avoiding all outside contact at any cost. They then either watch TV alone or with the wife or girlfriend or go out with a few friends. In China, I see strangers chatting with each other all the time, and as an outsider, people are always ripping ‘Ni hao!’ and ‘Hello!’ at me. - Want to get laid from the second your plane lands? Pre-study some Mandarin before you leave. I regret that I didn’t learn any before I came here, because given how many women will eye you up, a little bit of Mandarin will give you the edge you need; I had to ‘talk’ to at least 100 girls before I met my first Chinese girl; if I had fluent Mandarin I’d bang a new girl every week (which doesn’t sound like crazy volume, but the culture here is wildly different with regards to dating, as I explained above). I’m meeting my tutor next week (we’re doing a tradeoff; he gets English from me, I get Mandarin from him, and I will just be going for conversational Mandarin here; when I pick it up I might do lessons over Skype for my fellow Rooshmen, free of charge, operative word being ‘might’ here; I am going to be very busy teaching the rugrats how to speak in the summertime, but time should open up in the fall). It might not be as essential to the bang as Spanish or Russian, but at the same time given that one fifth of the world’s population speaks it, and the non-banging opportunities it can open up for you (in Toronto you can charge $150 an hour for lessons in Mandarin, or Putonghua), it’s still an important language. - If you aren’t comfortable opening mixed groups, then get comfortable doing it. The Chinese eat, roam and party in packs; often just of two or three, but also of up to 10 people, mixed sex. Yeah sure, you might diss a guy by saying in front of him that his girl is beautiful, but so what? Not every Chinese guy (in fact a small amount of them I’ve found) are Triads or Kung-Fu experts, and I am 6’3 190 (probably more like 180 now, but still substantially larger than the average Chinese man), while the average Chinese guy I’ve seen is 5’7 and maybe 140…so yeah. Don’t fear the big mixed set, you’ll also encounter the two or three girl set so there’s that, but girls solo on the street tend to be wary or in a hurry. - There is betatude to the eeeeeeenth degree here; herb poses, guys walking behind their girls, PDA, purse holding (the funny thing about the purse-holding? The American girls love it over here, but guess what purse-holding gets you in the States? The ‘I think we’re better as friends’ speech…I tell them like it is; holding a girl’s purse is fucking gay as fucking fuck and I refuse to do it, even for the girl I’m seeing. Can’t carry your purse honey? Then buy a smaller one)…but given that China has 1.3 billion people, China is a place where you need to tap into the beta down below; compliments and chivalry go over well, and really, all these girls are getting fucked by someone. I will report back with the results once I get a bit of Mandarin in my head. - Beta or not, the men have style; not necessarily G-Manifesto vindicated shit (though I did see suits and plan to get a few cut in Hong Kong eventually), but they seem to keep in shape, take care of their hair and wear some pretty flash clothes. Bring your style A-game, Chinese men 18-34 don’t go out sloppy. - No one can fuckin’ drive…oh, this shocks you? Setting a 1-minute phone timer, the amount of horns I heard in the last minute (in Ningbo): eleven. Strangely though, after 3 weeks I have yet to witness a single car accident. - If you can’t use chopsticks well, then stay away from fish; my chopstick game is decent, I still choked on a bone, all fish in China have bones. Also, if you can use chopsticks with your left hand, you will be considered clever and lucky, so if you don’t know how to use chopsticks or never have, try learning to use them left-handed, it just might be the status demonstration that gets you an extra bang or two in your time here. - The Chinese like their beds mad hard; not firm, hard, like rock hard…I was legitimately worried that I would break the spine of my Chinese girl on my hard bed, but (shocker…) she loved it. - Most of the liquids that we in the West like to drink cold (water, beer, juice, soft drinks), the Chinese drink warm; if you value cold water, beer, juice or soda, buy some and keep it in your fridge. - Never forget that China is about the same size as America; do not be shocked when the cute girl you’re talking to, who is from Guangzhou, has never been to Beijing (they’re about as far apart as Tampa and Chicago, and there are a shit-ton of big cities in China, something like 200 with over a million people, and the average Chinese person makes far less and has less recourse to travel than the average American). - You can smoke almost everywhere; in cabs, in hotel rooms, hell, the office bathroom has an ashtray and butts in the toilet. You can also walk down the road, in the middle of a day, with a bottle of beer, and if you have to piss, just find an alley. - Smoking: Lots of men do it, but very few women do it (publically at least; I know of a few who smoke at home), and straight from a cute girl’s mouth; the women who smoke in China are perceived as ‘bad girls’…so if you see a girl in a Shanghai club smoking, ask her for a lighter. - You will never get used to some of the funky smells in the air. I will never forget on my second night in my place, wandering to rock a piss and grab some munchies late, and just getting hit with a pure shit smell from my bathroom, and I am on the 9th floor, and I took a shit like 12 hours earlier. This happens frequently. - Speaking of shitting, most public outfits have ’squatter’ toilets; a hole in the ground, and toilet paper is almost never provided (it’s hose a bucket type of deal, if that); China is about 70 years behind the west in terms of sanitation. I’ve seen people shitting in alleys, and I’ll probably have done it once or twice before I leave. If you come to stay for a prolonged period of time, buy toilet paper and learn to clock your shits at your apartment or hotel room; trust me, if you aren’t used to the squatters you will come close to shitting yourself at least once, and you will not want to use the public toilets that are western-style. - Current rate of exchange is about 6.3 RMB per US Dollar, fairly favorable (but appreciation is picking up), given that my place is paid, and you can go out and eat, drink and party on 600-1200 RMB per week (that’s $100-$200), if you come to teach you can afford to have fun. A beer in a grocery is about 3-9 RMB, a pack of smokes is about 8-15 RMB, a good, filling meal is about 30 RMB, but some shit is more expensive; a bottle of Grey Goose, for example, runs about 400 RMB ($67), and a hand of fresh bananas will cost you about 21 RMB ($3.50). Do you have any Renminbi in your portfolio? - How much money should you come with? Relative. It’s much cheaper to live in a place like Urumqi than it is in Beijing, just like in the states it’s much cheaper to live in Nebraska than Manhattan. If you have a job (and pay packets in China come in monthly, so don’t get stupid and spend all your cash in one week), you should be able to survive on 2500-4000 RMB ($420-$675) for the month provided you don’t make any big purchases instantly. If you want to live in a primo spot in Shanghai for two months without working, you’ll probably need substantially more money, think like 25k RMB. I am not based in Shanghai, and I live comfortably in an expensive city (eating out, going out, remember my place is paid) on 600-1200 RMB. Typical meal and drinks at a nice (not necessarily a 5-star, but nice enough to take a pretty Chinese girl to) spot is 50-100 RMB. - It is crowded everywhere. China is bigger in area than America by about an Ohio, yet has over 4 times as many people, and about ten times the amount of cities with over a million people. - There is no Facebook, Twitter or Youtube but I think that this is a good thing (apparently there is a way to get it, though, but only for foreigners with pre-existing accounts). It definitely curbs attention-whoring (at critical mass in America and Canada, low to low-moderate in China; Chinese women are skinny and stylish, they don’t need the internet’s help attracting male attention), but the reason is that China wants their own Chinese Facebook to take hold…or so I’m told. - So without any social networking sites, just how do the Chinese stay in touch? Well first of all they talk to each other face to face like human beings should, but also Cell phones are the rage (and they’re fairly inexpensive) and QQ; QQ has an almost identical layout to MSN Messenger, but instead of registering with an email, it assigns you a 10-digit number. Write this number down and put it in your wallet, or if possible memorize it, because you will get a ton of people asking you for your QQ and it is a solid link (with the aid of Google Translate) to girls. - Much of the concerns over censorship appears to be overblown (as you can see, I’m posting on Roosh right now), however, it would appear that Roissy is blocked. - My first experience with Racism (not counting the ridiculous Panda-bearing): About 15 hours in. I got in late, then checked into a hotel late and stayed there, then the next day I went to work and came back at 4. With some of my shit (including my laptop) still in my room, I was told to go stay across the road. I came back with a native speaker and he told me that only Chinese are allowed to stay here…would have been nice to hear that before you took my money, but since you did, then fuck you you’re stuck with me until I check out. Say what you will about political correctness (I think it’s faggy), but you can’t just change the rules after you take someone’s money. Make sure if you’re staying in a hotel, it’s international. - The women here are appalled when I tell them that the women from where I come from can’t cook, will sleep with 20, 30 or even 50+ guys (many of these concurrently), go out without showering in their pajamas and will dismiss a man because he isn’t tall enough or isn’t well-dressed enough, and yet feel like they’re still entitled to a $50,000 wedding. I always smile a little on the inside. So overall, would I recommend China? Well, if you’re young, wayward, misguided, overeducated, underemployed and have game and love women, then why not take a year off to teach? For what I get paid (relative to the average Chinese person it’s more than decent) and how easy (but at times irritating) the job is, and the options available, it’s definitely worth checking out. If you’re unsure, you can always take a three-month contract (though I’d recommend covering your return flight before you leave; remember, that $1000 US flight is $6300 RMB, which is a month’s pay after tax at a good school), but yeah…it’s pretty good so far. This thread is about the discussion of China, and in which I will reposit some of the information I’m gathering. NP

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