Joy

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

I’ve just come back from a brief, uneventful trip out-of-country which mostly involved completing my manuscript and updating the blog.  Whenever I arrive back here I get depressed.  No whining, Nikki!  Okay, okay, but just let me say, I checked how many days I have until I completely finish this contract and I was not cheered to see that the number was two hundred and forty-fucking-five.

What is it, I’ve sometimes wondered, that I hate so much about this country?  Is it the fascism?  The stupidity?  The petulance?  The endless complaining?  The lack of basic services that even Cambodia has mastered, like water and gas?  The unenticing dating market?

Some time ago I realized no, it’s none of those things.  It’s not even the totality of them

It’s Read More

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Don’t click

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

Some time ago Piggo put out a post showing how Clementine Ford uses outrage directed at her for fun and profit, and I wrote a riff basically agreeing and expanding.

Since then I’ve begun a fun little hobby.  Every time I notice a clickbait headline and choose not to bite, I Read More

This is the rough beast that slouched towards Bethlehem to be born

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

A prominent blogger’s wife left him.

I’d had misgivings after reading some of his earlier posts, but I’m not close enough to him to have made any comment.  What do I know?  I’ve never been married.  I’ve not even had a long term relationship since my twenties.  But when the news came I was not altogether surprised.

What gave me concerns?  Very small things.  He never mentioned any children.  He talked about how he didn’t need game.  Perhaps there were other things I’ve now forgotten.

Just from these scant tea leaves, I could read the future?  No.  This and the fact that, everyone’s wife is leaving them.  No one’s wife is happy.  They all want out.  Even if they stay, they show their man contempt.  So slight tremors like those listed are enough for those who’ve been paying attention.

When I lived in Japan there was a forum for foreigners and one thread was about ‘relationships’.  Mostly Western guys would Read More

What I did last night – #MeTooOOOoooo

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

It’s time I had good hard look at myself and tried to figure out how I get into these situations.  Does this happen to anyone else there in the peanut gallery, or is it just me?

There’s a lady I once hooked up with.  She happened to be staying in a nearby city for an event.   I had to fly there anyway for my connection so I came here a few days earlier than planned to hang out.  She booked hotel rooms in both our names, so I thought, looks like she’s good to go then.  But I also thought, Read More

My decision

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

Some time ago I pondered quitting everything and retiring into seclusion in a cheap location for the rest of my life.  In fact, I’ve been considering something like it for a long time – see this post and this one.  My most recent effort was greeted with a diversity of reactions from my valued commenters.

Having done the dry run and consulted with a few people who know the ground, I’ve reached a decision.

I think that I Read More

Word from the dark side, 2nd January 2019

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

vintage cambodian

My kingdom for a time machine.

Remember these?  In six months or so they may become regular again.

Bloody interesting article on Slate Star Codex about former environmental scares and whether they were alarmist, solved, or ongoing.  Turns out to a bit of each.

Delicious Tacos likes white socks and his ex’s cuntflaps.

Aaron Clarey says there are only NPCs to date.

Didact reports on an amusing case of Read More

How many paragraphs until they admit it?

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

From The Age: ‘Beachgoers attacked, robbed, glassed at Chelsea as teenagers run riot’.

Even foreigners would have picked the keyword in that headline, but let me fill you in on other facts: Chelsea beach is renowned for occasionally being a bit rough as it is just south of two high-immigrant suburbs, Springvale and Dandenong.  Just how rough it is at any given times depends on who’s living there – Vietnamese, Afghans etc.

Second, the nature of the attack is a dead giveaway – Read More

Don’t fuck up

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

In prehistoric times, there were endless ways of fucking up.  You could zig when you were supposed to zag while hunting woolly rhino.  You could get an infected cut.  You could get caught sleeping with Og’s girl and have your skull cleaved in two.  You could fail to adapt when your world suddenly freezes over and your previous food sources disappear.

Even in the agricultural age a lot of things could go wrong.  Most of them related to Read More

So happy I can’t feel it

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

[Ed: this was written six months ago, at the end of the first year of my two-year African contract.]

Done.

The toughest year of my life.  Wee hours spent thinking, shall I go to work tomorrow?  Or head to the airport instead?  And being held back mostly by the need for an exit visa and all that that entails.

Days of thinking, this is beyond bad.  This has reached Read More

Techies needed – what computer should I get?

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

I am low tech.  You’re about to find out the extent of my Ludditism.  Don’t judge me.

My 2012 MacBook Air is starting to creak.  Some updates and new software are no longer working, the memory’s running out, and occasional bugs scare the willies out of me because out here in the jungle I cannot back up automatically to the cloud.

Let’s face it.  I love this little machine, most of the time, but one day soon it’s going to go to that big, polluted, Nigerian recycling and data-stealing slum in the sky.

I’m going to run this baby right into the ground, but I’m already starting to consider what to replace it with when it finally gives up the ghost.

My needs are so minimal as to be laughable to you tech guys with your fancy games and marketable skills.  Some wag will no doubt suggest Read More

Volunteers requested to test-read my books

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

Hi lads,

I’ve completed two books and I need some feedback before I get too far into starting another.

The first is a non-fiction work called The Poor Man’s Guide to Financial Freedom: A Realistic, 10-Step Manual for Building Liberating Wealth on a Low to Medium Income.  It is very much a beginner’s guide to personal finance and covers such basic requirements as eliminating debt, establishing an emergency fund and a budget, investing in bonds and shares, and how to find a good financial advisor.  It is 24,000 words.  It started as a series of blog posts but once I got to 10,000 words I decided to just make it into a book, instead.

There are two types people who might make suitable reviewers for this book: Read More

It’s all your fault

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

There was an article in The Age bemoaning the fate of a couple of older women in Reservoir (povo northern suburb of Melbourne).

They were living in a dodgy rooming house with a leaky roof and rotten footing.  They survived on the dole and struggled to pay the rent.  The article was all about how the government should give them more money because Read More

No whining

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

I hate whingeing.  People who can’t drop a spoon, miss a green light or endure a bit of rain without furiously shaking their fist at the very heavens and making a big song and dance about it.  Boo hoo!  Life is so unfair.  No one else ever, EVER misses a green light.  Woe is me.

If you were born in a civilized country you’ve already won the lottery of life and have no legitimate grounds to complain about much at all, unless you’ve been locked up for a murder you didn’t commit or something like that, and I very much doubt you have.

So just pick up the Read More

Oxfam whores

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

For reasons some of you may be aware of, I upload posts many months after I have written them.  Hence my topical articles are stale and I have to remind you what they’re all about.

Cast your mind back around eight thousand years, to the heady days of February 2018 when some Oxfam staff got busted rooting Haitian whores.  Remember that?  No?  Well, look it up while the rest of us get on with it.

There are many curious and interlocking layers of hypocrisy involved.  Let us peel back the onion layers until we cry.

First, everyone pretended to be Read More