stupid first world problems you're dealing with

I buy stupid things because I get into haggling. When I've haggled the price to something like 1/2-1/4 of the asking price I feel too embarrassed to back out anymore and have to buy the thing.

Now I have a custom made colorful African shirt I got for 40% of the asking price.. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it.

lol

lol

  On 10/17/2018 at 12:47 PM, mokz said:

I buy stupid things because I get into haggling. When I've haggled the price to something like 1/2-1/4 of the asking price I feel too embarrassed to back out anymore and have to buy the thing.

 

Now I have a custom made colorful African shirt I got for 40% of the asking price.. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it.

pics. I'd prolly take it

  On 10/17/2018 at 12:45 PM, Stickfigger said:

Take some degas mate , will sort u right out

I always preferred monet, but to each a zone

Had a really shitty cold about a month ago and now I have one again. What the fuck. Wash your hands, people.

  On 10/17/2018 at 12:47 PM, mokz said:

I buy stupid things because I get into haggling. When I've haggled the price to something like 1/2-1/4 of the asking price I feel too embarrassed to back out anymore and have to buy the thing.

 

Now I have a custom made colorful African shirt I got for 40% of the asking price.. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it.

fwiw, regularly haggling something down to 25% of the price is pretty damn impressive. You might want to think about antique dealing or public buying (like me!)

Apparently marijuana was legalized in Canada today, but I thought it was already legal for the last 5 years or so, given there are more dispensaries here than McDonald's and Starbucks combined.  Kind of dulls the excitement... theoretical excitement I guess, being a non-pot smoker surrounded by easy pot access since forever.  It's neat that my mom's finally taking an interest in it tho tbqh.

  On 10/17/2018 at 11:48 PM, Zephyr_Nova said:

Apparently marijuana was legalized in Canada today, but I thought it was already legal for the last 5 years or so, given there are more dispensaries here than McDonald's and Starbucks combined. Kind of dulls the excitement... theoretical excitement I guess, being a non-pot smoker surrounded by easy pot access since forever. It's neat that my mom's finally taking an interest in it tho tbqh.

I imagine that's why the buses were so much slower today,

Island time has just slowed down 50 percent.

  On 10/17/2018 at 5:48 AM, Zephyr_Nova said:

My friend was trying to show me an important video at the time, so it's a pretty big deal. I was missing this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4XpwLHPlhw&feature=youtu.be

I just lost so much progress, fuck me. I really need to get this sorted, happening way too often.

My breakfast banana got all brown and mushy towards the bottom from when I accidentally dropped it a few days ago after a grocery run. My advice is do not drop bananas.

...not even 15 feet?  

*runs to nearest grocery store*

If you put it in your butthole it doesn't fall down, but it gets brown anyway.

What I'm trying to say is that shit is bananas, and bananas is the shit.

  On 10/18/2018 at 9:52 PM, Gocab said:

that shit is bananas

I wrote that exact same thing in the observations thread, but then changed it to "totally bananas" because I don't know why.

  On 10/17/2018 at 11:00 PM, luke viia said:

 

  On 10/17/2018 at 12:47 PM, mokz said:

I buy stupid things because I get into haggling. When I've haggled the price to something like 1/2-1/4 of the asking price I feel too embarrassed to back out anymore and have to buy the thing.

 

Now I have a custom made colorful African shirt I got for 40% of the asking price.. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it.

fwiw, regularly haggling something down to 25% of the price is pretty damn impressive. You might want to think about antique dealing or public buying (like me!)

It's not particularly hard in lots of places. Like in Vietnam a person selling t-shirts on the street might ask 5USD or even 10USD for a shirt because sometimes a tourist will come along and pay that price. It's peanuts to some American package tourist on an organized trip and they might even think it's cheap. But the seller will probably break even around 1USD so you're going to get it for like 2USD and they will still be happy with the deal.

The strategy is to just say that the price is way out of ballpark, then do an extreme low-ball offer and sloooowly raise it and start to walk away if they don't agree to drop the price. They will come after you if they can make any profit on that price.

How ethical is it to haggle the prices to such extent when the person selling the goods is some poor person on the street is another question.. but they will not sell it if they're not gonna make profit. So idk. Just pay what you think is fair, is my answer.

Traveling in poor countries in general raises a bunch of ethical questions and some are hard to answer.

  On 10/19/2018 at 3:09 PM, mokz said:

 

  On 10/17/2018 at 11:00 PM, luke viia said:

 

  On 10/17/2018 at 12:47 PM, mokz said:

I buy stupid things because I get into haggling. When I've haggled the price to something like 1/2-1/4 of the asking price I feel too embarrassed to back out anymore and have to buy the thing.

 

Now I have a custom made colorful African shirt I got for 40% of the asking price.. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it.

fwiw, regularly haggling something down to 25% of the price is pretty damn impressive. You might want to think about antique dealing or public buying (like me!)

It's not particularly hard in lots of places. Like in Vietnam a person selling t-shirts on the street might ask 5USD or even 10USD for a shirt because sometimes a tourist will come along and pay that price. It's peanuts to some American package tourist on an organized trip and they might even think it's cheap. But the seller will probably break even around 1USD so you're going to get it for like 2USD and they will still be happy with the deal.

 

The strategy is to just say that the price is way out of ballpark, then do an extreme low-ball offer and sloooowly raise it and start to walk away if they don't agree to drop the price. They will come after you if they can make any profit on that price.

 

How ethical is it to haggle the prices to such extent when the person selling the goods is some poor person on the street is another question.. but they will not sell it if they're not gonna make profit. So idk. Just pay what you think is fair, is my answer.

 

Traveling in poor countries in general raises a bunch of ethical questions and some are hard to answer.

 

Well, it confronts you with the unfairness of the economical systems but in the end tourism is what poor places need. Tourists = money

The cat box shit scooper handle broke off.

  On 10/21/2018 at 2:05 AM, Stickfigger said:

Yeah but u need to make sure u don't destabilise the economies with foreign currencies . If someone can make more from begging from tourists than they would by seeking an education or setting up a business this is obviously not good and we all need to know our part . I remember meeting people who were like "I gave 100 USD to a guy on the street in Sihanoukville, feels great" and just thought that is about 10% of the average income of a Cambodian ... does not sit well with me at all but maybe this is all just a rationalisation for being a scrooge

Yeah, that's the thing. If people can make more money on the streets sponging off the tourists than an engineer or medical doctor or a teacher then who's going to want to educate themselves and get jobs or create proper business that employs people? This is particularly relevant with children who should be in school, not begging on the streets. It was actually illegal to give money to children on the streets in Zambia.

What I see here in Africa the problems lie so deep. There's corruption, superstitions, no qualified teachers, lack of capital, education, rights of women and children and rule of law, and the general culture that discourages self development and betterment. You want to become rich? Go see a witch doctor for a magic wallet. Your neighbor is doing better than you? Try to trip him over as hard as possible. It's all so fucked. Just pouring money to this witch's brew is not going to make the deep underlying problems go away, probably just makes it worse.

  On 10/21/2018 at 2:22 AM, whosebrian said:

The cat box shit scooper handle broke off.

pour into bag

leave bag on door step of least favourite neighbour

depart into the night

  On 10/21/2018 at 11:42 PM, cwmbrancity said:

 

  On 10/21/2018 at 2:22 AM, whosebrian said:

The cat box shit scooper handle broke off.

 

 

pour into bag

 

leave bag on door step of least favourite neighbour

 

depart into the night

 

you forgot: light bag on fire

textured,

far out

I got in a fight with the sidewalk saturday night after imbibing a bit much at a halloween party. 

Sidewalk: 1, Stephen's elbows and legs: 0.

it's that time again: week of night shifts

I currently work for a defense contractor. I'm doing software for a spanish ship, but a different team is working on the ship(s) we're supposed to be selling to the saudis. I live in an area with crazy high unemployment, with loads of people in the naval industry, which depends largely on the deal with the saudis. Now, left leaning and even right leaning parties agree we should just stop selling weapons to the saudis, but at the same time you can't just leave a fuckton of people without a job. The moment the president started making moves to stop the weapons deal, and during my first week in the job, the whole factory went on strike and started burning tires on the roads and shit, which, you know, it's kinda fucked that the biggest protests here are *against* trying to mitigate the biggest human rights crisis in recent memory.

Today during the coffee break we were talking about the journalist that was butchered by the saudis, and how it's gonna affect our work, etc. and one guy went "guess it's time to go burn some tires again" to which other guy replied "it sure draws more attention than burning a yemeni kid", and then everyone just went to work again