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I live in Vietnam. Very happy for now. But things can always change.
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Feb 15, 2018 15:02
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 07:34 |
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Detroit, MI It's ok. Now is currently the lovely part of the year where it's grey and cold (5 months of this yearly), so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. Otherwise the summers are amazing in Michigan. Tons of lakes and outdoorsy stuff to do. But back to Detroit. I actually live outside the city in the burbs like 99% of "Detroiters" but am only maybe 20-30 min from downtown when traffic isn't bad. Downtown is very cool and there are tons of old buildings that are being renovated, but keeping the old aesthetic outside. Lots of folks work in the auto industry (myself included) but there's a lot of options in the metro area (Google in Ann Arbor, U of M, Quicken Loans, etc) outside of automotive. This area gets a lot of poo poo for crime but I've never felt unsafe being downtown. Sure there are probably bad places to avoid but I have yet to be robbed and/or murdered. My wife works downtown and it isn't something that worries me. Food here is pretty insane and seems lots of chefs are coming here because it's dirt cheap and easier than paying rent in NYC or somewhere else. There's a large Mexican, middle eastern (largest outside of the actual middle east I've heard), and Asian populations so lots of diversity for restaurants. Beer is also phenomenal, tons of choices and breweries peppered throughout Michigan and some pretty decent ones locally (Griffin Claw). Still, the big ones (Bells, Founders) are hard to beat. The roads are as bad as you may have heard, cavernous pot holes and lovely expansions joints everywhere. Trucks are allowed to carry double the normal load so our roads go to poo poo in no time, and lol at there being money to fix them. There are random dirt roads peppered in cities/suburbs even, which blows my loving mind. It's pretty sad and you will immediately notice the difference in road quality passing into Ohio or Indiana. People here will commute distances that shock me, an hour or more each way just to live way out in the middle of loving nowhere. I don't understand how there's any sort of car culture here with roads like this. I immediately got rid of my lowered car with stiff springs because poo poo is unbearable. Housing prices are getting stupid since there are a lot of folks with auto money. It's ridiculously competitive where we live if you're looking to buy (went through this 3 years back). I used to live in Cincinnati before moving up here, and I loved it there. It sounds like it's only gotten better since I left. I think that's coincidence.  It feels like the winter is a few weeks longer here on both sides of the calendar vs. Cincy, which is unfortunate. I don't think I'd choose to live here if it weren't for the job I have, which I don't think I could do many other places. I wish there were some elevation change, at all, here.
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Feb 20, 2018 19:24
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I'm in Heidelberg, Germany but was born in pittsburgh. It is pretty nice, a little touristy but not in a tacky way. Public transportation is pretty good, you can get by easily enough with only english and some basic german, and most people are used to having americans around since it used to have a large us military presence. It also largely went unharmed during the war so there are a lot of cool older buildings around. Minor downsides: since it is a tourist destination it is a little pricy compared to smaller german cities. The train station is kind of small so you won't find many direct routes there to say frankfurt (nearest airport) or munich etc. Also you have to pay some bullshit tax just for owning a tv or radio etc (whether you use it or not), but thats true for all of germany. Major downside: the summer. It often gets to be in the 90s or sometimes over 100 (fahrenheit of course) and basically no apartments or houses have air conditioning. Imagine the rhino scene in ace ventura when nature calls and thats what it feels like when i'm at home (thankfully where i work has AC).
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Feb 21, 2018 10:52
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yeah I eat rear end posted:Also you have to pay some bullshit tax just for owning a tv or radio etc (whether you use it or not), but thats true for all of germany. do you have to pay the tax if you just watch netflix or other streaming tv stuff on your computer or phone?
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Feb 21, 2018 16:18
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The tax (legally speaking it's just a fee, though nobody knows where the difference is supposed to be) is levied in order to finance the public broadcasters (of which Germany has a fuckton of due to its federal structure and history). It used to be that only the owners of those devices able to receive public broadcasting (i.e. functioning TVs and radios) had to pay. The public broadcasting agencies literally had a debt collection agency of their own, the dreaded GEZ, which would literally send people to your house to check if you really didn't own any such device. As the GEZ agents didn't have the legal authority to enter your home and were paid by success rate, this often led to funny/weird situations like GEZ collectors perving through your window or trying to pose as vendors of TV magazines in order to bust you. When the broadcasters started to put their content online as well this led to endless additional headache, because now all computers and smartphones fell (in theory, at least) into the GEZ category, too. Thankfully, this monumentally stupid situation is over now. For a couple of years, the GEZ fee has been turned into a general fee payable by every household, no matter if they have twenty TVs standing around or zero. It's at about 17,90€ per household and month now, I think. I actually don't mind it too much, because even though the public broadcasters have a lot of poo poo in their programme, they also produce a lot of genuinely good content, and e.g. their orchestras and big bands are an extremely important part of the German cultural/musical scene and rightfully are highly renowned all over the world. I did say that Germany has a fuckton of public broadcasters, right? Well, I wasn't joking: TV broadcasts: 3sat arte Bayerisches Fernsehen Nord Bayerisches Fernsehen Süd BR-alpha Das Erste Deutsche Welle (DW) DW (Amerika) DW (Arabia) DW (Asien) DW (Europe) DW (Latinoamérica) EinsPlus EinsFestival HR fernsehen KIKA MDR Fernsehen Sachsen MDR Fernsehen Sachsen-Anhalt MDR Fernsehen Thüringen NDR Fernsehen Hamburg NDR Fernsehen Mecklenburg-Vorpommern NDR Fernsehen Niedersachsen NDR Fernsehen Schleswig-Holstein Phoenix Radiobremen tv RBB Berlin RBB Brandenburg SR Fernsehen SWR Fernsehen Baden-Württemberg SWR Fernsehen Rheinland-Pfalz Tagesschau 24 WDR Fernsehen Aachen WDR Fernsehen Düsseldorf WDR Fernsehen Köln WDR Studio Bielefeld WDR Studio Bonn WDR Studio Dortmund WDR Studio Duisburg WDR Studio Essen WDR Studio Münster WDR Studio Siegen WDR Studio Wuppertal ZDF ZDF info ZDF Kultur ZDF neo Radio stations: Bayern 1 Bayern 2 Bayern 3 BR-Klassik BR B5 Aktuell BR Puls BR Bayern Plus BR B5 Plus HR1 HR2 HR3 HR4 HR Info YOU FM MDR JUMP MDR INFO MDR FIGARO MDR KLASSIK MDR SPUTNIK MDR 1 Radio Sachsen MDR Sachsen-Anhalt - Das Radio wie wir MDR Thüringen - Das Radio NDR 1 Niedersachsen NDR 1 Radio MV NDR 1 Welle Nord NDR 90,3 NDR 2 NDR Kultur NDR Info N-Joy NDR Info Spezial NDR Blue Bremen Eins Bremen Vier Nordwestradio Funkhaus Europa Antenne Brandenburg radioBERLIN 88,8 radioeins inforadio kulturradio Fritz SR1 Europawelle SR2 Kulturradio SR3 Saarlandwelle UnserDing SWR1 Baden-Württemberg SWR1 Rheinland-Pfalz SWR2 SWR3 SWR4 Baden-Württemberg SWR4 Rheinland-Pfalz DASDING 1 live 1 live diggi WDR2 WDR3 WDR4 WDR5 Funkhaus Europa Deutschlandradio Kultur Deutschlandfunk DRadio Wissen DW Radio Amharisch DW Radio Dari DW Radio Englisch DW Radio Französisch DW Radio Griechisch DW Radio Haussa DW Radio Kisuaheli DW Radio Paschtu DW Radio Portugiesisch DW Radio Türkisch DW Radio Urdu (This list also doesn't appear to be fully up to date, because e.g. BR Heimat - a radio station which was started in 2015 - isn't on there. As I said, we've got lots of 'em )
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Feb 21, 2018 19:13
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That is a much more detailed answer than I could have given. But yeah, I was told everyone just has to pay it but my landlord advised me to just ignore them because it takes them a long time before they'll actually do something about you not paying. For me it took 2 years and 3 months and suddenly I got a letter from some government lawyer saying pay up or it will be just taken from my bank account and some other bad things would happen (my german isn't very good). On top of what I owed I just had to pay like a fairly minor fine for late payments so I think it was worth the gamble that they wouldn't come after me until after I moved out of Germany in 6 months. In any case it's a dumb fee and I hope the people trying to fight against its existence in the courts will be successful (probably not).
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Feb 22, 2018 15:44
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 07:34 |
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My favorite city that I lived in was probably Las Cruces, NM Pro's: -amazing mexican food -College town (albeit new mexico state univ was pretty low tier) so you can go to basketball/football games if you want to watch a team lose but drink copious amounts of booze and fight frat kids -decent amount of amenities for the size of the town -100k live there but the traffic isn't unbearable, lots of side routes and other avenues to where you want to go. The main arteries of town get a bit busy during rush hour but going from one side of town to the other seems to be easier than the other towns that I've lived in which comparable population sizes -The people are pretty friendly overall. I don't remember wanting to stab everyone in the face so that's always good! -El Paso Texas is 40 minutes away, so big city amenities also exist and I-10 actually flows quite well except for rush hour times -You can go to Juarez and get kidnapped in an hour drive -Very, very bike friendly community. Zia Velo cycling team/biking community has established what I feel is a good relationship with the community, and with the large amounts of cyclists it's expected to see them cruise the street. Lots of bike paths introduced as road construction has gone on. Also: the mountain biking is phenomenal..Plus you're at 4k ft elevation so if you compete out of state you're decently acclimated to the elevation, unless you find yourself in Colorado racing up towards 7-8k elevation then you're hosed lol. -Want to get up in the cold mountains? Silver city and Cloudcroft are 2 hours and 1 hours away respectively. Gila National Forest in Silver city lets you get into the woods, same with Cloudcroft. I don't think there's much in terms of skiing and that's something you'd have to travel to Albuquerque for which is 3 ish hours away -If you like the sun, you'll like Las Cruces. Tons of sun, you get "monsoon" storms in the evening that make the whole place a nice 10-15 degrees cooler and just pummel the area with rain. Then it won't rain for another 24-72 hours and you'll get hit with the storm all over again. The winters are cold from like Jan-Feb, then you're back in the 60's-70's from March til late april then it gets hot as fuuuuck. Like 100+ days, which I think is awesome. It also will snow once or twice in the winter, causing everyone to go crazy and do stupid poo poo but it'll be gone in like 4 hours. -"A" mountain is a nice tall mountain that has 3-4 ish miles of single track trails that you can run or bike on. -Dona ana mountains are probably 10 minutes west of town and tons of fun to mountain bike on. You can bike to the trailhead, which is about 6 miles or get there by car. -Fruit and veggies are fresh and taste amazing. I've never had such good produce before, but I used to live in Kansas so YMMV. Cons: -Poverty is an issue. The cost of living is cheap but there's a large portion of individuals who are significant low income (not a bad thing to be poor of course, just jobs aren't super plentiful if you're career field doesn't have jobs available). Your main jobs are the two hospitals *Mountain View/Memorial Medical* the University or the city/government. There's other jobs of course but the other employers are at white sands missile range, NASA has a small contingency there but you aren't going to find massive employers. Lots of people commute to work in El Paso, like I did working air ambulance. -It's pretty dirty. When biking I've run over a couple of used syringes, that I doubt were used for insulin... -The drivers are either super kind and obey traffic laws, or they're old people that have no clue how to drive. -Jobs, again.. You're limited on to what you can do there so it's not like a huge city where all types of businesses and job specialties are available. All in all, I think Las Cruces is essentially a diamond in the rough if you're into outdoorsy stuff and hate winter. Nice and hot piss fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Feb 28, 2018 |
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Feb 27, 2018 23:10
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