It was pretty bad. He missed a lot of school. I think he ended up repeating grade six. I never saw him much after that, but I did hear that he got married to another person I went to school with eventually, so presumably his life wasn’t ruined or anything.

There was a solar eclipse when I was in grade six. One of my classmates was riding his bike home, and was stupidly looking at the eclipse, and got hit by a car. The irony.

Or when you have a problem that seems adjacent to another problem that many people have, but their solution doesn’t work for your niche case.

Usually cheese. It’s expensive in Korea if you want something other than processed neon orange slices. If I happen to have a block of something nice I paid way too much for on a whim, I’ll definitely plan a few meals around it.

This is baffling. In Korea, you pay up front. You pay for a month, go to the gym for a month. Pay for a year, go to the gym for a year. The more time you pay for, the better the deal you get. WTF would anyone subscribe to a gym? That’s not incentive to go to the gym, that’s incentive to quit going to the gym.

The older generation still skews largely conservative, and they (particularly the dreaded mother-in-law) expect certain behavior out of young, married women. When a couple get married, there is a prevailing attitude that the woman becomes a part of the man’s family and is expected to attend all their family gatherings, do a shit ton of cooking while the men get drunk and play games, and essentially forsake their own families. The number of grown men I’ve met that don’t know how to do a fucking load of laundry is disturbingly high because they’re molly-coddled (largely by their mothers) their entire lives. Particularly first-sons who are the only children who really matter to a lot of Korean parents and grandparents. Many women are - rightfully - rebelling against this. As are a lot of younger, more enlightened men.

Men on the other hand, are also rightfully upset that they are required to join the military for two years, usually right around the time they would be attending university. Which is giving women an edge in some aspects since they graduate sooner and don’t have their education interrupted by a military stint. Pretty sure the younger generation is in favor of getting rid of mandatory military service, but again, the older generation won’t have it. Especially with the North up there rattling their limp sabers constantly.

Basically, old conservatives ruin everything.

As a hobbyist musician and coder: Csound. Cubic spline curves make particularly interesting noise.

Download GODOT and learn the scripting language and the shader language. Make a game! Or at least neat shader art.

Bonus answer: Csound. Make funky noises with code.

Yeah, Samsung charges more for their products here than they do in other, even richer countries because they can. Korea’s economy is super protectionist. Understandably so since Hyundai, Samsung, LG, et al basically run the country.

Haha! My favorite (the only) middle eastern food place near where I live used to give too much pita with everything. It was glorious.

Like just about everywhere, COVID hit them and now you get barely enough. Sigh.

Razors

Definitely! I used to chase the largest number of blades. Mach 3, then Fusion. And then noticed that it was getting a bit insane paying $30 for a pack of four replacement heads. About ten years ago, I noticed a resurgence in double edged safety razor popularity. Bought a $50 Edwin Jaggar handle (which they replaced with a sturdier version for free when I broke it!), and have been picking up my Dorco blades $10 for 100 since. The shave is just as good, if not better, and getting straight lines is actually much easier. I feel like if more people knew, Gillette would just go out of business.

I’ve learned this the hard way. Got two nice, different Panasonics in a row only to have both fail after a relatively short time period (“relatively short” kinda varies for me since I think things that happened five years ago happened “the other day” these days). After the second failure, I just got the cheapest of the Panasonics, and it’s outlasted both of the previous ones already and does just as good a job.

Luggage.

You don’t want to be repacking your shit while late a for a flight because you’re a kg over the limit and it’s gonna cost an extra $100 if you don’t and mistakenly rip the zipper off your carry-on. You really, really don’t.

You don’t have to completely break the bank either, but if you value your sanity, I wouldn’t spend too much less than $200 on a carry-on/check-in pair.

That was my thought. I spent the last 48 hours in various airports, and this briefly looked normal to me.

No, no. This is literally steeped ice cubes.

I’ve noticed YouTube acting funny in Firefox, too. Full-screen no longer works on our Galaxy Tab A using Firefox with ublock. On my PC, YouTube seems to randomly switch audio devices to output to. Neither of those problems exist in Chrome or the YouTube app. They didn’t exist in Firefox either until recently. Almost like it’s intentional…

Told the granddads to choose a name as is Korean tradition.

While you cook up some boxed mac and cheese on the stove, cut up some broccoli and onions or whatever appropriate veggies you have lying around, and open a can of tuna (any kind of cooked protein is fine, so fry and shred some chicken breast or ground beef if you’re feeling ambitious.) When that’s done, mix it together in a casserole dish, throw some cheese on top and chuck it in the oven until it turns a bit brown.

Betting houses are offering .5 to 1 odds he wins. Halve your money with one smart bet!

I love the Delgados. They broke up a long time ago and cited being dissatisfied with not obtaining much success. The most exposure they saw was one of their songs being used for an anime opening. Alun Woodward released one pretty neat solo album as “Lord Cut Glass”, and Emma Pollack made (is still making?) a few solo albums afterwards that are all pretty good, too. I think their drummer was one of the most unrecognized musicians working in popular music ever. The drums on the Delgados albums go hard.