Ask me about:
I’m not knowledgeable about most other things
Kind-of. Researcher in EU, the funding source on paper mandates 7.6 hrs of work per day, so with lunch breaks it is almost exactly 09:00 - 17:00
Depending on whom you ask academia may or may not be considered a real job though… and my hours may be nice, but the folks who do experiments rarely get the 9-5 as stated on paper, and there are other aspects of the job that are much more fucked up
Not technically an American but lived in America for a long time, also not eligible to claim citizenship anywhere. I hope I’d be somewhat qualified to speak on this
There really aren’t that many countries which are a step up for an American IMO. Probably a good number of the EU/EEA countries, places like Canada/Australia/NZ, and mayyybe places like Singapore and a few more… Fewer if you have a strict limit on English, in that case maybe only places like UK & the Nordic countries; maybe also the Netherlands, but I’ve heard mixed information about language requirements there. This is a pretty short list, so I think you could probably have a passing knowledge of all of their basic immigration processes without spending that much time on it. But yeah you are right, for any expat/immigrant wannabe it usually goes like this:
Winning the “life lottery” (ancestry, asylum, or a literal lottery like the US) -> “Buying” your way in via Golden visa -> Love knows no borders so marriage -> Workers visa, aka getting sponsored to work
The first three obviously don’t apply to you or me TBH, so work sponsorship it is: either international transfer via a large international company (does that happen often for trades people?), or finding a job in your target country. I think others have mentioned this, but since you will likely be immigrating via work, secure a job first. Don’t even think about anything else without a solid job offer. I didn’t follow this advice myself and literally got screwed; I spent several hours learning German everyday during a really busy time of my life, wrecked my mental health along the way due to stress, and never ended up finding a job in Germany in the end… Don’t be like past me
tradesman with a lot of technical skills with some specialized skills in short supply
Probably your biggest asset. Some countries like Canada and Australia/NZ publish their skill shortages, so if your skills are on them you’d be in very good luck. There are subreddits and discussion groups on these topics so I’d look into them
Note that in Australia, allegedly the real job shortage can be quite different from the published list. This doesn’t hurt your chances of moving there per-se, but can make your life difficult after moving in, especially if you don’t have a large amount of savings
Also, I’m not sure exactly what trades you are in (for the sake of privacy I prefer not to ask), but different countries may have different regulations. It is possible that you may not be allowed to work in the EU without local certifications for example. I don’t think it is an impasse per-se, but I’d definitely investigate this beforehand
But anyways, if you are interested why not try and apply for a few jobs first? You never know :D
Neither of us is very good at picking up a new language (lord how I’ve tried)
To be honest… that doesn’t sound very good. Comes without saying that most places expect workers to speak fluently or at least B1 in their native language (which is also required for immigration purposes for most countries), and the English-friendly places (such as Ireland) can have extremely high demand, which can cause other societal complications
I am taking what you said at face value, since I have seen first-hand how much my boss (German) struggled with learning French and had to settle for learning Dutch instead lol. Nevertheless, for most people it isn’t that hard to at least get a passing conversation skill level in a target language in a few years especially with full immersion & government/employer-sponsored language classes, so I wouldn’t completely rule it out just yet! If you’re able to deal with other languages, there are lots of EU countries that have plenty of opportunities; maybe even some more developed parts of Africa would do as well
… do parents count?? I don’t have too many friends, if any at all
Otherwise I indirectly helped a coworker find a BF a few months ago. Yeah I guess that was it
For the most part yeah. I think that’s unironically how I “cheated” my old JLPT exams and got way higher grades than I should. And really high-level Japanese (such as political news, debates, legal matter) are mostly Kanji, and by that point you’d fully understand all the non-Kanji parts anyways so
But in real life you still have to actually say the words out loud…
Yes… Until when you’d have to pronounce it 😭 And then there’s a ridiculous amount of Japanese names that seem to follow no rules whatsoever for their pronunciations. And then there’s online JP users who would put the weirdest pronunciations for Kanjis, sometimes they are so weird that they have to annotate the pronunciation themselves
… Anyways, Japanese is difficult
Native Chinese speaker who is quite decent at Japanese and should in theory find Kanji quite easy, because of Chinese… YES
Not that the other parts of the language is easy, I find the keigo system quite complex so
GrapheneOS on a Pixel 6a. Technically have a few Google apps, but they are only banking/governmental stuff and one gacha game (which I primarily play on a tablet anyway). Too lazy to set up Nextcloud myself, but I do have a VPS I rent… and I used to have a local RasPi running PiHole
I am apparently a bit too uncomfortably close to the exact stereotype OP listed
Well… I might be a special case. Most folks I know don’t acquire languages that easily
What does an “Average American” look like?
I thought it would be whatever the stereotypes one would get from popular American TV shows… which is not very Asian all-things considered. But I guess the language plays a role too. This is something that is hard to grasp while I was in the US, but Americans as a whole do have a rather distinct English accent that is different from folks from say Britain, Australia, other places where English isn’t the primary language, etc…
Yeah, being in a country since 18 yrs old does something to you… Fun fact about the accent. Apparently most ppl I’ve met in the EU assumed I’m from the US, despite me not looking remotely like an average American
US visa system is a bit… Interesting. Student visas also work for PhD programs, which can last a while. And after the study concludes there’s an option for ppl to extend it by 3 years (OPT). So one could be into their mid-30s and still be technically on a student visa in the US
I also have some passive knowledge of Dutch and German… But really passive though
I think I’d be a good person to answer this. I’ve lived in Houston (needless to say, extremely car-friendly) without a car for almost 2 years; currently I’m living in a city that banned cars within its city center in 2015 which resulted in very visible changes, but the rest of the country is still very pro-car and quite car-friendly
A couple of things that cars benefit everyday life that would be difficult to do without a car. There’s probably more but these are the ones I can think of:
Also I think some positive points associated with cars are doable without cars:
I think this is a matter of the microeconomics concept of “scarce resources”? It’d be lovely if everyone in the US learns at least Spanish. But school can only teach a limited number of subjects, so in the US where most people don’t need to use anything other than American English, it might be argued that it is more beneficial to spend more time on, say, STEM and history, rather than getting kids to learn Spanish/German/Chinese… I guess there are foreign language electives for that reason? They are still highly valuable after all
Besides, learning and teaching a foreign language is hard lol. China used to (I’ve heard rumors that some places changed, not 100% sure) require mandatory English education from 1st grade elementary… social issues with the English teacher expats aside, the English literacy rate in China still looks like that. There are even multilingual countries in Europe where a good number of people struggle to learn/speak the other national languages so… Even if the US wants to do it, it’s not that straightforward
I guess Japanese really doesn’t have in-your-face sarcasm now that I think about it…
Now that you mentioned it, Japanese also has a rather interesting quirk of not having what most people would consider as “swear words”. Read it somewhere that Japanese does have swear words, but they tend to be quite tame, and the words themselves aren’t “taboo” (as compared to just about any swear word in English)
I play a lot of games over steam
If my main concern is playing game with Steam, most mainstream Linux OSes should be fine. If I have to pick one… Linux Mint is very beginner-friendly, and I’ve heard great things about Bazzite too. SteamOS works flawlessly with Steam out of the box (owns Steam Deck, can verify), but I don’t know how easy it is to set up by yourself
If you happen to also like non-Steam games: a lot of them can be added as a custom application/game via your Steam Library, which does most of the heavy-lifting: you only have to specify which compatibility layer to use & sometimes do keymapping. Setting up wine on its own is not for the faint-hearted
I personally use Arch because AUR (a user-uploaded repository, a lot of popular Linux OSes have their own versions) makes it easy to play a lot of FOSS games… but I can’t recommend Arch Linux for beginners
It’s a small brand started by a few Chinese marathon runners, modelled exactly after HOKA. So it’s equally as comfortable at like 1/2-1/3 the price. Only available in China unfortunately…
The main annoyance is that this pair doesn’t have much sideways support, so it’s easier to slip sideways. Probably not a worthwhile concern for most people of course
Also… Durability isn’t a strong suit for HOKA shoes, so I’m not sure if I can really recommend them for daily drive regardless
I just realized that nearly all of my daily shoes were replaced by my dad… who is a semi-professional marathon runner and would go through shoes in months… So probably every 1-3 years, depending on when my parents visit I guess; I think their definition of wearing out is when there are a good amount of rips/holes
My last pair was a pair of HOKA that lasted a year and a half; they are designed for long-distance running and have massive toe boxes (which I need) but are not known for their durability… Dad basically urged me to get a pair of Chinese HOKA knockoff to replace it, got it half a year ago. It’s showing signs of wear but I think it can still go for at least another year
I’ve actually been looking into how music genres/subgenres are defined for the past few months due to the fact that my favorite genre “doesn’t exist” (I’m not joking someone wrote a research paper on this)
I think there are research articles on this if one wants to go into details… Like how certain genres separate. Sometimes there are strict definitions (most techno I think are quite well-defined). But practically I think most ppl tend to enjoy ranges of genres that are close to each other… There are also plenty of genre-blend songs too so there’s that
Also I second for Every Noise At Once, they have some really obscure genres too for detailed comparisons
… This may sound a bit pessimistic, but I think the main thing to look for is whether there are viable ways for one to enter said new country in the first place
Using the Low Countries as an example… For non-EU (or a select few countries) citizens, these three only grant residency permits to people who have a really good reason to be there… I believe they allow things such as having a job, having family, going to university, and some other situations. NL has the DAFT visa, but that’s only for American citizens (I believe?) and is quite difficult to follow-through
Depending on how young… maybe uni would be a good bet? NL has some extremely strong universities. I’m not familiar with the system there though, from what I just looked up looks like they’re quite expensive for non-EU citizens
There are a ton of other things to consider too but at least for me the most difficult part is to get a job in the first place so… everything else (climate, culture, language, …) was an afterthought by that point
Physically, I don’t think so; the main enzyme in saliva mainly digests starch, which humans are not made of
More likely, you’d drown eventually due to not being let out, which would be one of the crazier ways to die I guess, up their with that time when some nobles drowned in fecal matter
Don’t think it’d be more tilting than other games with ~50% win rates. Just one example, Tekken is also ~50% win rate that is nearly completely skill dependent, but on average it involves even higher amounts of adrenaline
Personally the games I found the most tilting are perma-deaths: Minecraft/Terraria’s hardest difficulties, Noita… Losing a 10+ hr run after making one bad decision really gets you. I think I stopped playing this type of games for that reason
Seriously though please don’t tilt. Tilting reduces the fun of the game and makes skill improvements in skill-dependent games slower