+ 1 - 0 | § ¶Dammit
Someone I know once summed up how I feel in a few short words: "What the fuck is wrong with you fucks!?"
Trying to decide where to move, now that the decision has been made to leave Japan. As much as I want to sit on my ass making easy money my whole life I want to get the fuck out of here before the country shakes itself to pieces, starts a war, or I shoot myself out of pure boredom. I've been looking at both Canada and Australia, and I've come to the decision that basically everywhere sucks. A lot.
Canada's job situation sucks ass. Trying to find work may be tricky no matter where I go 'cause I haven't any letters like BSc or MD after my name, nor have I any specialized training or, in fact, any recent job experience. Who's gonna hire a guy who can only put on his resume that he's been smart enough to pay the bills and buy lots of toys without actually doing any real work for the last eight fucking years? Trying to find a job would not be unlike trying to get a loan when you're self employed: You'd have better odds if you were dead. All I've got in my favour is my brain, somewhat less than the tack sharp monster it used to be, and my attitude - which, it must be said has soured somewhat. So basically it's back to The Grind no matter where I go... Which doesn't bother me so much as the very thought of working for some asshole for minimum wage.
There's the relative situation. My sister's family is great, they live in Kelowna. Pretty much the entirety of the rest of the relatives live in Australia, but despite their sheer quantity I confess I've never really enjoyed their company. Well let's face it, I don't really enjoy anyone's company!! They're nice enough in their own, quaint, primitive kind of way. We're not all cut from the same cloth, it would certainly seem.
There are no beetles in Canada to speak of. The ones in Australia don't really compare to Japan's but they are at least as plentiful, and as colourful. I like insects.
Australia's a legislator's wet dream, with strict laws about fucking everything. You can't bring anything into the country that might have been alive at one point, including sausages or seasoning for your rice that might have had something resembling an egg involved in its creation. When we moved to Japan we brought over some really large, really heavy boxes full of our gear, but Australia's luggage limits are half what they are for either Canada or Japan, and the overweight or oversized rates are so extreme you might as well chuck your old gear and buy it all anew when you get there. Which, I'm sure, is the intent.
Biking in Canada is world fucking class. In Australia I've been told it's not at all bad, so that's kind of a wash. Canada wins the snowboarding competition tho, kind of a no-brainer there. Housing prices in .au are good, but let's face it, it'll be decades before that's an issue for us.
Cellular phones in Canada or Australia are three years behind what we have in Japan, and they're three times more expensive. That's nearly ten times shittier, all told, and the situation doesn't appear to be getting better. It depresses me to now end that in either .au or .ca I'll go back to being some sort of fucking technophobe, disgusted by anyone who has a sexy phone, because of their extreme cost and retrograde features. When I hear people saying things like "I only want a phone that makes calls!" I want to tear off their skull and then hurt them real bad - but after seeing how shitty their phones are I expect to be one of them, and that pisses me off. Cellular carriers in other countries are dragging their feet bringing out new features, counting on their virtual monopolies and price fixing agreements to keep prices high and devices antiquated. It's fucking disgusting, but when I read about the prices and feature availability ($989 for a phone in Australia that's not as good as the free ones in Japan!) I can't decide if I should shoot them or myself. Where's their sense of national pride? Of competition? Of self fucking respect!? There isn't any, it's all about milking the old cow and dragging the feet.
Which brings us to internet access, about which I have really nothing good to say. In Canada at least prices and availabilty are decent - Australia's restricted services and high prices are what I'd expect African fucking Jungle tribes to be paying. I like to run my own servers, I like the level of control and reliability I get out of the effort, and there's a shred of accountability this way - I have only myself to blame when the server slags itself. Canada doesn't allow servers of any sort, and Australia's ISPs permit in a month the traffic I chew through on a busy DAY. And let's not talk about the SPEED! Australia's 1.5mbit connections for a mere $100AUD per month may sound good when you're a 56k user, but that's 1.5% of the speed I get here now for triple the price! And fuck me - 100mbit in Canada is $1788 per MONTH and there's traffic fees on top of that!!
The same non-competing foot-dragging assholes beating you to death with cellular phones are in charge of the internet!! And don't give me that shit about Japan or Korea being so small that it's cheap to wire everyone up with fibre - I paid $450 CDN to have fiber installed at my house - and then I moved across town and paid it again! It's cheaper by 50% to leave my computer running as a server here in Japan than it is to pay hosting anywhere else, and I get the whole system to myself, can run it how I like, and never pay for traffic.
The only drawback to Japan is the language barrier, total lack of professionalism, shockingly incompetant doctors, corrupt goverment, earthquake threat, warlike tendencies, and infrastructure that's wound so tight it'll go completely spastic the very nanosecond Something Bad happens.
So basically I'm fucked. I'm bored. I'm depressed. This shit enrages me - every country's filled with greedy self-centered assholes trying to fuck their fellow citizens and I can't stand it.
Trying to decide where to move, now that the decision has been made to leave Japan. As much as I want to sit on my ass making easy money my whole life I want to get the fuck out of here before the country shakes itself to pieces, starts a war, or I shoot myself out of pure boredom. I've been looking at both Canada and Australia, and I've come to the decision that basically everywhere sucks. A lot.
Canada's job situation sucks ass. Trying to find work may be tricky no matter where I go 'cause I haven't any letters like BSc or MD after my name, nor have I any specialized training or, in fact, any recent job experience. Who's gonna hire a guy who can only put on his resume that he's been smart enough to pay the bills and buy lots of toys without actually doing any real work for the last eight fucking years? Trying to find a job would not be unlike trying to get a loan when you're self employed: You'd have better odds if you were dead. All I've got in my favour is my brain, somewhat less than the tack sharp monster it used to be, and my attitude - which, it must be said has soured somewhat. So basically it's back to The Grind no matter where I go... Which doesn't bother me so much as the very thought of working for some asshole for minimum wage.
There's the relative situation. My sister's family is great, they live in Kelowna. Pretty much the entirety of the rest of the relatives live in Australia, but despite their sheer quantity I confess I've never really enjoyed their company. Well let's face it, I don't really enjoy anyone's company!! They're nice enough in their own, quaint, primitive kind of way. We're not all cut from the same cloth, it would certainly seem.
There are no beetles in Canada to speak of. The ones in Australia don't really compare to Japan's but they are at least as plentiful, and as colourful. I like insects.
Australia's a legislator's wet dream, with strict laws about fucking everything. You can't bring anything into the country that might have been alive at one point, including sausages or seasoning for your rice that might have had something resembling an egg involved in its creation. When we moved to Japan we brought over some really large, really heavy boxes full of our gear, but Australia's luggage limits are half what they are for either Canada or Japan, and the overweight or oversized rates are so extreme you might as well chuck your old gear and buy it all anew when you get there. Which, I'm sure, is the intent.
Biking in Canada is world fucking class. In Australia I've been told it's not at all bad, so that's kind of a wash. Canada wins the snowboarding competition tho, kind of a no-brainer there. Housing prices in .au are good, but let's face it, it'll be decades before that's an issue for us.
Cellular phones in Canada or Australia are three years behind what we have in Japan, and they're three times more expensive. That's nearly ten times shittier, all told, and the situation doesn't appear to be getting better. It depresses me to now end that in either .au or .ca I'll go back to being some sort of fucking technophobe, disgusted by anyone who has a sexy phone, because of their extreme cost and retrograde features. When I hear people saying things like "I only want a phone that makes calls!" I want to tear off their skull and then hurt them real bad - but after seeing how shitty their phones are I expect to be one of them, and that pisses me off. Cellular carriers in other countries are dragging their feet bringing out new features, counting on their virtual monopolies and price fixing agreements to keep prices high and devices antiquated. It's fucking disgusting, but when I read about the prices and feature availability ($989 for a phone in Australia that's not as good as the free ones in Japan!) I can't decide if I should shoot them or myself. Where's their sense of national pride? Of competition? Of self fucking respect!? There isn't any, it's all about milking the old cow and dragging the feet.
Which brings us to internet access, about which I have really nothing good to say. In Canada at least prices and availabilty are decent - Australia's restricted services and high prices are what I'd expect African fucking Jungle tribes to be paying. I like to run my own servers, I like the level of control and reliability I get out of the effort, and there's a shred of accountability this way - I have only myself to blame when the server slags itself. Canada doesn't allow servers of any sort, and Australia's ISPs permit in a month the traffic I chew through on a busy DAY. And let's not talk about the SPEED! Australia's 1.5mbit connections for a mere $100AUD per month may sound good when you're a 56k user, but that's 1.5% of the speed I get here now for triple the price! And fuck me - 100mbit in Canada is $1788 per MONTH and there's traffic fees on top of that!!
The same non-competing foot-dragging assholes beating you to death with cellular phones are in charge of the internet!! And don't give me that shit about Japan or Korea being so small that it's cheap to wire everyone up with fibre - I paid $450 CDN to have fiber installed at my house - and then I moved across town and paid it again! It's cheaper by 50% to leave my computer running as a server here in Japan than it is to pay hosting anywhere else, and I get the whole system to myself, can run it how I like, and never pay for traffic.
The only drawback to Japan is the language barrier, total lack of professionalism, shockingly incompetant doctors, corrupt goverment, earthquake threat, warlike tendencies, and infrastructure that's wound so tight it'll go completely spastic the very nanosecond Something Bad happens.
So basically I'm fucked. I'm bored. I'm depressed. This shit enrages me - every country's filled with greedy self-centered assholes trying to fuck their fellow citizens and I can't stand it.