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Many of you here remember our friend littlenick.

Sending my condolences to him. Losing a dog is a very terrible thing to go through. I'm sure his dog knew he/she was loved, and I hope he wasn't in any pain.

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Can anyone here read Chinese?

Sorry I've taken forever to get to this. I can't really read very much, but my girlfriend should be able to read it just fine. Send it, unless you've already got this figured out by now.

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Hey everyone, long time no see.

~CaitherrA~ wrote:
Ikari is back. ๐Ÿ˜

Welcome! And sorry! Must have missed the email notice for the invite. I usually try to stop by and check in every once in a while. ๐Ÿ˜…

Nice to see you again!

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Hey everyone, long time no see.

๐•อคอญอฅฬ‡๐•–๐•ฅ๐•šใ€‚(Yeti.) wrote:
Ah, so it was a financial decision in part. That is prudent.

Thanks, didn't know about JET.
He seems to have gone on a trip to japan in dec - jan, however I know naught beyond this, nor desired to disrupt his busy schedule (as random stranger basically). Methinks that's one reason why many of helpcom's erstwhile younger audience hadn't returned - integration into life's routines. (Moreover, my first shout to rocco was literally what you said about lifeblood. :) )

It's awesome that you had so many foreign students in your university. Mine only had natives with whom I never connected deeply; had it been anything like the MOOCs I've been studying, it would've been a far more pleasant experience. I have had more in common even with the few americans encountered sporadically than pretty much every local I've met.

Just jumped on an airplane, huh? I couldn't imagine doing that, leaving my family behind. Weren't you scared? Have you been able to develop close associations since the migration?
Were you disappointed with this realisation of cultural pluralism / cross pollination?

By the way, isn't there a bit of a censorshi* thing going on yonder?

I wasn't really scared, a bit nervous and surprised by my own daring perhaps.I've made a few good friends here, have a decent social circle. On the contrary, I think that cross-cultural pollination is mostly a good thing; if you see something you like from another culture, why not enrich your own by incorporating it? A lot of it is the sort of inevitable things that come with modernization and development, like the breakdown in the authoritarian nature of families, where they dictate your marriage, career, etc, and increasingly equitable footing of men and women. Sort of the same way that in the west, the traditional "Father knows best" "I just need to marry well", "I can't do what I want if it doesn't accord with what they want" thing went away, so it is in China. There's a generational gap in culture, expectations, etc. It's like the west, just a bit further back in time.

Censorship is around, but you can find out everything you need to.

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Hey everyone, long time no see.

๐•อคอญอฅฬ‡๐•–๐•ฅ๐•šใ€‚(Yeti.) wrote:

Rockster160 wrote:

๐•อคอญอฅฬ‡๐•–๐•ฅ๐•šใ€‚(Yeti.) wrote:
Maugre their relative physical proximity, to my knowledge china & japan are quite different in some ways, culturally in particular

If this is pointed at me- didn't mean to infer that they are the same/similar. ๐Ÿ˜… Merely that I have an interest in all Asian cultures, despite their variance. Different aspects of each.

No chiding was intended, rocco. I meant that from what I knew of ikari back in the day (little, admittedly), figured he'd be more inclined towards settling in japan than china, so there might be an interesting story behind that decision.

I became more interested in China towards the end of university, and the cost of living in China is quite a lot lower than Japan, while the ESL salaries are pretty much the same.

soco wrote:
Welcome back! What took you so long to find us? Well, anyway. Glad to have you among the living.
[All them dead people stopping by was beginning to creep me out.]
Soco, e.g. Southern_Comfort

Glad to be back!

Kalinihta wrote:
hey @CommanderIkari!
I wasn't part of the old help but I'm very happy to see this online community grow! so a warm welcome back from me! hope to see you around!

Thanks, and welcome to the club!

๐•อคอญอฅฬ‡๐•–๐•ฅ๐•šใ€‚(Yeti.) wrote:
Hello.

I'm curious to know more of the tale of how you wound up in china. Pianoman's had his eye on a teaching position in japan (discussed it a bit in https://help-qa.com/posts/157-heyooo), and seemed practically compelled to dedicate substantial effort to keep up with the competition.
Maugre their relative physical proximity, to my knowledge china & japan are quite different in some ways, culturally in particular - how has the experience been so far (and how long)? How have you been faring vocationally, and environmentally (as in adjustment to the locale)?

Pianoman has his eye on Japan? Reading through his post, seems like he's going for the JET program, which is the best way into Japan. Seems he's not been on in months though, I wonder if he got in and he's in Japan now?

The longer version of how I got to China is that my university, like many, had lots of Chinese students, and I became friends with some, which sparked more interest in China. As well, I became online friends with some Chinese people. One of them was in Shanghai, which made me interested in the city. After graduating university I had an itch to go out and see the world and not just jump into some economics related job immediately, especially because I wasn't having that much luck initially to even find a job like that anyway. I did some online interviews, the ball started rolling, and a few months later I picked up my visa at the consulate in Los Angeles, and about two weeks later got on the plane and left everything behind.

The adjustment process wasn't as hard as you'd imagine, as in the first-tier cities of China it is entirely possible to live and work with no Chinese ability, and you can find bilingual Chinese people who are willing to help with anything that comes up. The pollution is definitely worse than the west, but doesn't bother me much. The crowds and the gargantuan scale of everything here are the biggest changes, but you become used to everything. The infrastructure, especially the transportation infrastructure of Shanghai is very developed, superior to my hometown. People are very nice, mostly, and the place has a real energy, everyone is going and doing something, there's money to be made and life to be lived. Culture differences don't really get in the way much, makes me realize how similar everyone everywhere is. The biggest barrier is the language barrier; Chinese is very difficult to learn though, and I've been lazy. I should apply myself more.[‌quote Rockster160]

CommanderIkari wrote:

Yes, I remember you a bit, not very well, I'm sorry, but it has been a long time. It's a truly herculean effort you've gone to, recreating it all from scratch, ultra props to you for putting this all together!

Rockster160 wrote:

What's been your favorite place over there so far?

Meiji Shrine was beautiful, huge and such an intimate, peaceful place tucked away in the midst of a huge overwhelming city. Passing under the huge Torii gate and walking on the wide path towards the temple with all the branches of the huge trees on each side completely surrounding and insulating you from the city was a great experience.

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Hey everyone, long time no see.

Rockster160 wrote:
Welcome back! ๐Ÿ˜„ We interacted on the old site a bit- I'm Rocco. That's cool you moved to China! I've always loved Asian culture. Paid a visit to Japan for about a month last year. ๐Ÿ™‚ I'd move there if it weren't for the huge population (Not much a fan of crowds) and China is even worse! ๐Ÿ˜‚


Unfortunately, the codebase for the original site was lost. A majority of the data itself got kept, reformatted, reformatted again, and is now stored at archive.help-qa.com (There's a lot of data and the server is small, so it's a bit slow.)

This site was built from scratch by memory, screenshots provided by a few different users (including a couple of old mods), and the web archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20080131224341/http...
It's entirely different underneath the surface, but built to look as close to the old site as possible, with a couple of tweaks and changes.

I believe you were friends with @~CaitherrA~A~, correct? She was around for a little bit. Maybe she'll come say hi. ๐Ÿ˜‰

Yes, I remember you a bit, not very well, I'm sorry, but it has been a long time. It's a truly herculean effort you've gone to, recreating it all from scratch, ultra props to you for putting this all together!

Yes, I remember being friends with her, seems she last posted two months before. I wonder if there's any way to coordinate things to get a sea of people all back at once, I seem to remember there being a facebook group with former members? I guess the true lifeblood of the site is random people googling though; that's how almost all of us found it originally, myself included.

I visited Japan too! It's so cool seeing a place after wanting to go there for so long, and being based in China has made traveling the rest of Asia much more doable.

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I donโ€™t have anything worth living for.

It's worth considering trying to find time to take a rest. Volunteering for animals is a very admirable thing, but you need to take care of yourself too. Volunteer at least once a week to take care of yourself, get back to the shelter when you have the energy for it. You're your own best advocate. Work is part of life, a lot of work, but it's not the only thing. Keep up the struggle, take time to be kind to yourself, and don't give up. You can make it.

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