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Post by stringypoo on Jan 1, 2022 22:58:07 GMT -5
I’ve never had their bagels, but I’ve heard their bagels are good. I’m a coffee purist, and for a chain brand coffee joint, this is my go-to. If you don’t like coffee you won’t really change that after having theirs though. Haha As for Timmies, not sure the selection they've got going in countries abroad but here in Canada, they have really started pushing the fast food aspect and started selling wraps, chicken strips and sandwiches.... I'm not a fan of that. I grew up with Timmies just being a good ol cheap coffee and donut shop and I still believe that where it's at it's best. So I'd recommend a Double Chocolate Donut or a Cinnamon Raisin bagel with Plain cream cheese. That's my go to. It's nice to go get my large coffee in the morning and it's only 2.25 compared to Starbucks at $5+ Also, not sure how it goes abroad, but in Canada we have different names for coffee purely from Tim's. You can get a Double Double, Triple Triple or Regular. (Double Double = 2 sugar 2 cream, Regular = 1 & 1, etc...) Yep, here in China, places like Tim’s selling wraps and sandwiches is a big thing. I feel like if they didn’t sell those things we wouldn’t have Tim’s. There is a Szechuan chicken wrap I’m somewhat curious about, but I’d still rather eat real food somewhere else. Coffee and donuts is definitely what I think this place should be about ultimately. I didn’t notice the double double, triple triple, and names like that. My go-to order is plainly a medium roast drip coffee, and occasionally a little donut and sometimes a chocolate Frappuccino after a hard workout.
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Post by stringypoo on Jan 11, 2022 21:01:32 GMT -5
I finally realized that my guitar pedals don't actually need batteries to be used, so I decided to try out my Joyo Extreme Metal distortion pedal with my new guitar for the first time two days ago and geese, it's so fun! And the weirdest thing about guitar for me was that once you turn on a distortion pedal and play with that, it not only feels and sounds good, but it makes playing the guitar WAY EASIER! What a shock! Without distortion, you have to play with greater accuracy and more careful finger/picking to get quality sound. With a distortion pedal cranked up, you can have poor technique and pull of clean and quality sound somehow. Now that I know that, I've gotta say, electric guitar feels like cheater mode...HAHA! Now I'm somewhat convinced that a lot of bands have very mediocre guitarists that pass off as great. After all, I barely played the guitar so far and have managed to produce the same power chord riffing with which many bands fill their songs, and I produced those results within the first 30 minutes of playing around with the instrument. Maybe it sounds like I'm bragging, but I'm fairly confident many people would be able to do the same thing, especially with prior musical knowledge and experience.
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Post by v9733xa on Jan 12, 2022 18:23:00 GMT -5
The ethics of this are so fascinating to me. There's this show on the network TLC that I had never heard of, apparently it aired last night, but lots of articles are out today about how crazy the central figure is. It's this young lady, 22 years old, who survived a serious cancer as a young child. But when attacking her brain and other adrenal glands, it essentially made her pituitary gland inert. So she never grew up, physically. She's 22 and looks 8. Think of all the times she has to prove how old she is and I'm sure still has people not believe her. Can she drive? Would you imagine the struggles of her trying to date? And, like, would it be ethical for a guy to be attracted to her? So bizarre. Normally I don't feel bad for anybody who craves the attention needed to star in a reality show, but you have to feel for this girl and how weird her life must be.
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Post by stringypoo on Jan 12, 2022 23:34:12 GMT -5
The ethics of this are so fascinating to me. There's this show on the network TLC that I had never heard of, apparently it aired last night, but lots of articles are out today about how crazy the central figure is. It's this young lady, 22 years old, who survived a serious cancer as a young child. But when attacking her brain and other adrenal glands, it essentially made her pituitary gland inert. So she never grew up, physically. She's 22 and looks 8. Think of all the times she has to prove how old she is and I'm sure still has people not believe her. Can she drive? Would you imagine the struggles of her trying to date? And, like, would it be ethical for a guy to be attracted to her? So bizarre. Normally I don't feel bad for anybody who craves the attention needed to star in a reality show, but you have to feel for this girl and how weird her life must be. Yes! This showed up in my daily Yahoo news email. Fascinating show. I didn't, and probably will never watch it, but the concept is intriguing. I did not personally agree with the idea that she looks like an 8 year old necessarily, but perhaps that is due to how she dresses. She dresses older than 8, which I think helps a bit, as well as the makeup. The kinds of proofs she must have to deal with surely are frustrating. I remember being frustrated when I came to Arizona that the bars thought my drivers license was fake, and then later when I got an Arizona license (Which has an expiration period of 50 YEARS!!!) the security at the casino in Hot Springs, Arkansas thought my Arizona license was fake. I mean, it IS ridiculous that my AZ license doesn't expire until like, 2063. lol But yeah, fascinating show theme here.
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Post by stringypoo on Jan 14, 2022 5:57:44 GMT -5
So I basically just learned it’s way better living in Shanghai than smaller cities like Kunshan where I am for work for a new reason. My full name is too long for their systems at the hospital when I need to do a Covid test... :/ But in Shanghai, their systems are generally updated to receive longer names.
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Post by stringypoo on Jan 30, 2022 6:22:03 GMT -5
Another fun example of how living in China can be fun is having different regional burgers in the same area. I’m not sure Five Guys is all that regional, but it did just open in Shanghai not long ago, and I do enjoy going there from time to time, especially for that super generous helping of fries they’re famous for!
So now here in Shanghai there is a burger joint battle going on. Anyone here got an opinion on which is better between Five Guys and Shake Shack? Both are exploding here! I’m excited on it, even though I rarely go for burgers in China because it’s expensive.
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Post by stringypoo on Feb 14, 2022 2:01:00 GMT -5
Welp, I did my usual train Sunday night from Shanghai back to Kunshan, the city where I work and stay from Monday to Friday, and was forced to do a Covid test before I could leave the train station to enter the city (everyone had to, not just me). I didn't think much of it, other than the fact I was annoyed that I didn't know ahead of time. If I had known I would have picked a slightly earlier train ticket since the bus 31 I take to get home only takes off every half hour. I hate missing it!
This morning (Monday) I got up at 6:15am, and I had seen a message from another school's teacher whose school is hosted by our school in the same building that schools in Suzhou (the nearby connected large city which Kunshan is somewhat part of) has closed all schools suddenly due to Covid cases in Suzhou and was wondering if we had school. And sure enough, 10 minutes later, school is now closed for me as well, for an indefinite duration of time. It could be just today, it could be just this week. It could also be a month of online teaching... Yucky! But for today, I simply don't mind. I am only sitting here scratching my head over one thing, which is whether I'll be able to find an appropriate way to teach string orchestra class online, considering it's impossible for students to rehearse together online, and secondly because 95% of the students don't own their own instrument that they have access to. So yeah, I'm having to stretch and think outside the box a bit here.
Best parts about teaching at home: 1. Could do it with no pants if I want! 2. No need to use up another mask if I'm staying home! 3. I get to avoid the annoying students. Worst parts about teaching at home: 1. It's boring as hell. Students only answer or talk if you call on them. Otherwise you are teaching to a silent wall of faces. It's frustrating. 3. Having to get resourceful and creative is a bigger consumption of planning time. 4. I have to figure out my own lunch plan. 5. Hard to stay motivated sometimes when all my distractions are in the same walls.
So yeah, teaching online stinks. Schools all over Suzhou, which is a very large city, are all shut down. How many cases caused this? 4. This may be the reason so many foreigners are experiencing China fatigue. They're getting frustrated over how locked down this place becomes in the face of small numbers of cases. As for me, I'm not exhausted by that yet. I somewhat appreciate the level of seriousness the country shows towards it. Is it a longterm sustainable approach? I don't really know, and I kinda don't think so. But who knows?! Maybe this is the best practice in the end. Hard to say right now.
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Post by v9733xa on Feb 14, 2022 18:10:55 GMT -5
It's interesting how COVID has made countries respond differently.
Aiming for COVID-zero just doesn't seem to make any sense any more, as it's probably going to unnecessarily stretch out the pandemic in parts of the world who aren't building any vaccine or transmission immunity. Believe me, not having 940,000 Americans dead would be great, but at this point at least the U.S. can look forward and assume things are going to improve with a relatively high vaccine uptake and the blizzard of infections that happened with Omicron in the last two months.
All in all, I wish we had done more of what China and Australia had, though I understand large parts of the country wouldn't have tolerance for it. It's the kind of time when a central authority would be needed, to shut down (or at least drastically reduce movement) in certain regions, states, or even just cities. After three weeks of that almost two years ago, we lost all appetite for it. But, inevitably it would have saved lives. Australia has a little less than 5,000 COVID deaths this entire time. That many people die of COVID in America every two days.
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Post by essien on Mar 12, 2022 17:47:12 GMT -5
Happy weekend, y'all.
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Post by v9733xa on Mar 15, 2022 17:55:15 GMT -5
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Post by Corvus on Mar 15, 2022 22:02:47 GMT -5
I am running on a platform of timezone reform. If elected, I will pressure the world governments to adhere to one universal time, the American time. By syncing all clocks globally to Washington D.C., we will eliminate further confusion about timezones and finally be free of this silly fantasy of chasing orbital whims. Vote for Corvus if you believe it's time for change.
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Post by essien on Mar 16, 2022 3:39:47 GMT -5
I’ve always been in favour of sticking to British Summer Time. There’s something depressing about it regularly getting dark at 4pm in the winter. I think the arguments against it are a) it makes the morning rush hour more dangerous on the roads since more people are driving in the dark in icy conditions and b) some parts of Scotland wouldn’t see light until 10am. I can’t see it changing unless Scotland becomes independent.
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Post by stuartoxlade on Mar 16, 2022 4:36:41 GMT -5
Damn it's been over a year since I last visited the Mosh. How is everyone?
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Post by bainzy on Mar 16, 2022 15:52:15 GMT -5
Damn it's been over a year since I last visited the Mosh. How is everyone? Didn't realize that as I check your Letterboxd weekly haha Welcome back! Not a ton of action goes down here anymore tbh!
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Post by tao on Mar 21, 2022 19:56:50 GMT -5
Whatever happened to zerotoleranxe?
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