SJ and Helen's Day Out: Part I

Helen came from her native Taiwan to the USA last week to visit a trade show in Chicago, and then to visit with me here in Massachusetts. For the Massachusetts leg of the trip, she chose a hotel in Foxborough, a town 90 minutes away from me that provides nothing interesting to tourists who are not rabid New England Patriots fans, which Helen is not.

Her hotel in Foxborough was 45 minutes away from both Boston, MA and Providence, RI. Out of those two cities, Helen chose Providence to be the one she wanted to visit.



I was going to suggest that we go to Boston, but then I realized that I have lived most of my life within 50 miles (80 km) of Providence, but I've never once visited it.

If you do your homework, you'll find that every city has at least a few areas of interest within it. Helen sent me an itinerary with these items.

(1) Rhode Island State House
(2) Providence Athenaeum
(3) Brown University
(4) Wrentham Village Premium Outlets

The Rhode Island State House? Really?

I searched through Reddit threads for things to do in Providence, and the Athenaeum was mentioned as being a very old, continuously active library, so that was a possibility. Near to that, but not on her list, is the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, which is highly regarded in the Reddit threads, so I decided on those two as a starting point.

Just before I left on the 90 minute drive to pick up Helen, I texted her this:

All right, Helen. I'm heading your way now. I'll be driving so I won't be able to use my phone until I arrive. See you soon!

I wanted to avoid another spot like the one a few days ago where Helen called me and texted me more than a dozen times while I was in the shower.

Halfway through the drive, my phone started going off, then the text alerts began, then the phone and text alerts alternated. I stopped at a rest area an confirmed that my previous text had been ignored.

Here is where I wanted to quote to you a certain text from Helen, but she has deleted it. The gist of it was that her Uber driver was talking on his phone in a foreign language (i.e. not English) and that that scared her, and that she didn't like to take Ubers because the drivers were all Black men or foreigners. The irony of her being scared of foreigners was apparently lost on her.

I fought with myself for a good three minutes about whether or not to just turn around and go home and ghost her forever after, but I've been working very hard on breaking my habit of ragequitting from challenging scenarios, so I drove on.

Look, some form of bigotry and/or racism is alive and well in every country on Earth. We spent our first 96,000 or so years as a species living in isolated, fearful tribes, where people who didn't look or speak like us were legitimately dangerous. It's hard to get that deeply embedded instinctual fear out of our systems in only 4000 years or so.

But we can at least make a ****ing effort.

One of he things with Helen—I found this out soon afterwards to my dismay—is that for the past year or so she's been faithfully watching American right-wing cable news channels, and their ideas have captured her imagination.

I don't want to talk politics here. That always enshittifies any non-political thread. Let's just say that I later found it tiresome having to respond to Helen's occasional canned right-wing talking points disguised as questions about the USA.

When I got to the hotel, Helen was at the check-in desk, arguing about a $20 refundable deposit on the room. I tried to give her a friendly hug, but she grabbed my arms and blocked me.

Publicly rejected by someone I wasn't interested in. Check. Taiwanese are not huggers; I should have remembered that, except that I've gotten drunk with a few who were.

Off we went on the 45 minute drive to lovely Providence, RI. I had researched and found the highest-rated parking garage downtown, where it's only $10 all day long, right near the Rhode Island School of Design (henceforth RISD).

I got us parked, and Helen realized that she had left her purse at the hotel. She wanted me to drive back to the hotel to get it.



The RISD campus is very pleasantly laid out, like many city colleges, and I enjoyed the walk through it. Helen asked me why there were so many beautiful American women around. I deadpanned that I hadn't noticed, but that the non-scholarship students at RISD have the means to ensure good health, good cosmetics, elective surgical alterations, top-notch dental work, and fine clothes.

She didn't buy that. I don't know why she didn't, exactly, because I can only understand about one third of what she says. Helen's knowledge of English is excellent; she has a master's degree in teaching English, but her accent is tough, and she speaks very softly, and she won't speak louder, even when prompted several times.

We walked to the Athenaeum library and I paid the $10 suggested donation for the two of us to go in. It was hot, no AC, and there were just books and faux-marble busts of literary figures; which is good enough for me, but Helen wanted to leave within literally one minute. I was fine with that; I don't mind throwing a little money at libraries.

All right. I have to head to work. I'll have to make this a Part 1 of 2 and finish it eventually.

Part 1 of 2? I was hoping for 5 parts. Oh well. Popcorn gets stuck in my teeth anyway.

the text on my next never purchased custom t-shirt
still no clear decision if the buttons are located front or back, left or right
suppose it all depends on how you unbuckle up for a sword fight

Oh wow, everything about Helen is quite unappealing. Yes I finally get it.

Thanks, CowboyCold! Two is just the estimated number of parts, could be more.



Well done. I like the rhyming scheme.

Yeah, well, I'm no George Clooney, either. The point is that we're not compatible, and it's nobody's fault. The tragedy is that the person who is smitten is unable to see it that way.

It's a pretty common spot, but it's never easy to deal with.

Me: I've had enough of a workout for now. I got my ass kicked at the table yesterday. I was rivered hard twice and nothing went right.

I'm taking today off, football promo be damned. My mental game is more important, and it's not where it should be today. So this week will be Mon. Wed. Thur. Sat.

I'll catch up with the tally after Monday; I don't feel like posting it now.

Speaking of workout Suited, do you exercise outside of the aforementioned walks you take??? My recommendation : even something as little as 20 minutes of exercise before you head out to the casino, does absolute wonders for energy levels/concentration throughout your 8-10h sessions. Disclaimer :

Anyhow, just my 2 cents and I hope it does not come across as overly preachy friend... All the best bro

seems correct not forcing a specific poker attitude without full commitment to it in the moment
zen and the art of mental cycle maintenance

In today's Chautauqua, I want to talk about the importance of taking a day off.

That's good advice, Dubnjoy000; however, I don't really enjoy exercise, and as I've mentioned before, I only have one security guard to get me in the habit of doing things that I don't like to do. For the next few months, he'll be working on getting me to work 40 hours a week. After that rut is filled in, then it will be time to look at breaking the inactivity habit.

Feeling better. Back to work today.

“Everybody will eventually run worse than they thought was possible. The difference between a winner and a loser is, that the latter thinks they do not deserve it.” – Irieguy

I am not a lucky man; never have been, but on Monday I got to the point where my shoulders were drooping every time I flopped a set (note to self: possible tell to address later), which was 3 times during that session. I lost heaps on all 3 sets.

I will not post the running tally again until my poker results swing back into the positive. Who knows how long that will be? The only way to get back to that point is to return to the tables.

I'll be back at it again tomorrow.

When I enter run-bad hell, I tell myself that I can't try to win, I can only try to play correctly. But three dead sets may mean you need to discuss your life with a theologian.

it's the poker gods way of saying you need to post helen electric boogaloo

also, i am guessing helen is much less of a "want a green card" and much more of a "want a husband"


most taiwanese i know are pretty indifferent about re-unification with the mainland, in fact, a lot of polling indicates that while the majority prefer maintaining the status quo - if given the choice between unification or not (assuming it happened without any hitches which is a big assumption hence why they prefer the status quo) they are pretty evenly split between rejoining china or declaring they are not china - fun fact, taiwan is not the actual name, just what we call it to avoid confusion, the actual name is "republic of china"

they are also pretty wealthy and as shown by her vacationing in the usa she's obviously not busto so there's none of that hunger green card incentive

so i'm guessing the most likely factor is she's too old for a local to consider for marriage and too picky to marry a local for whom she's not too old - hence why she's going after you

you may want to read this - my guess is this is the real reason but it's easier for her to tell you about the chinese sword of damocles instead of "i'm too old for someone from taiwan to consider marrying me"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_n%C3%BC

Taiwan is an interesting place, but England's claims to reunification with Ireland are much much stronger than China's claims on Formosa.

i remember when irie posted this, and i also acknowledge how much i apply the same mindset to everyday life outside of the gambles

I did work in Taiwan many years ago. I had a great time. Had interesting sexual encounters with Mongolian whores. Always worth the money.

England is a rathole. Too bad the Germans didn’t completely blow it back to the Middle Ages.

that's funny because mongolian hookers is very much a thing in the mainland as well - now we just need a tr about the presence or lack of mongolina hookers in england and ireland and the circle will be complete


same with russians to the point that any russian female would never tell people she was from russia because if she did the first thing out of the guys mouth would be "oh how much do you charge"

I did meet a couple of Mongolians in HK, and they have a reputation of being good in the bedroom. No hookers though as far as I know. Most hookers in HK are from Philippines, Indonesia, the mainland or African countries. Not that I would know, lol. Also don't really wanna make this political but my impression of Taiwanese and their political stances are quite different from rickroll's. Let's just say we probably agree that the vast majority of mainlanders are strongly in favor of unification, even moderate ones. Propaganda works.
My opinion is probably biased though as I mainly talked to Taiwanese that are visiting HK, and can speak English, so that's not an unbiased sample. I've visited Taiwan a couple times, great place, but it would be better if you can speak Mandarin on a conversational level. Same as Korea, Japan and their languages. Also all cash games illegal. Tourneys allowed.

I've been to Taiwan several times, and I've always come back as an admirer of the Taiwanese people. They are a highly-educated, productive, generous, unselfish and level-headed people.

Many of their antecedents left the mainland 75 years ago with Chiang Kai-shek, who was little better than a corrupt, authoritarian warlord holdover from China's imperial past. And yet, after Chiang, the people transitioned fairly quickly and with little unrest or persecution into a healthy, working democracy, all in the face of the mainland's constant totalitarian threats to their existence.

And they achieved all this with little help or praise or even recognition from the other democracies of the world, who've always been afraid of the inevitable diplomatic and economic backlash from the mainland.

Hell, even today Taiwan has to send their teams to the Olympics under the moniker "Chinese Taipei," an insult to their hard-held freedom and sovereignty. Can you imagine if the Olympic Committee tried to make Ukraine call themselves "Russian Kyiv"?

As much as I admire Helen's people, I have zero romantic interest in her. It doesn't matter why she's fallen for me. It's not going to happen.

Well, sorry to correct here a lil bit, but basically Taiwan was an absolute and devastating totalitarian strongman dictatorship which was little better, arguably worse, than mainland China until the late 80s. After that they transitioned better to a real democracy than pretty much any country in Asia (this is a pointer here and not further discussed how the real power structure is "On the surface democracies" like Korea or Japan) but reportedly, it was with help of western allies, mainly the US, who realized it looked kinda bad that they were openly making the case for freedom and democracy in the world and OTOH backed this totalitarian dictatorship for the single reason of that they were opposed to the communists.
Also the main reason they are called ROC is they claimed all of China, and that was quite vast by their definition, from Wikipedia

yeah my interaction with taiwanese are through the lens of those living on the mainland (there were multiple taiwanese at every company i worked for in beijing) and through visiting taiwan but also through the lens of someone who speaks fluent mandarin and they knew i was living in beijing

i've found chinese to be among the most agreeable people in the world where you can spout extremely right wing stuff on tuesday to them and they'll nod their heads in agreement and then on wednesday you spout contradictory stuff that's extremely left wing and they'll again nod their heads in agreement

it's especially visible when you see them interacting with others when you realize the objectively overweight or unattractive foreigner from a 3rd world country will get the same blanket praise I'd get (almost verbatim) regarding how handsome they were and how amazing their country was etc etc


it was especially annoying whenever we were doing business with a foreign firm because even though my own work had nothing to do with it, i'd usually get looped in on those meetings anyway and they'd see them lie through their teeth about everything



just a huge culture of playing everything close to the vest and at all times appearing kind and flattering


ie i know fully well that they only view this vendor as a stopgap until our own system is up and running only want a 3 month contract with a max budget of 10k per month before they'll move on to do things internally - but then they'll tell the vendor they envision a long term contract and hope to just test the waters momentarily and then if things work out well they'll up the size of the contract tenfold or something silly like that

even worse when it's time to rundown the contract, they don't cancel it, they instead just cease payments, because hey, they may continue to provide those goods and services for another couple months before they realize we're actually not going to pay them again

inevitably they'd reach out to me and ask what was going on and i'd always feel trapped in a difficult situation where i didn't want to get fired but also didn't want them to continue wasting resources on this and to cut their losses so i'd word in a way that would appear to a non-native speaker to be a neutral response but hopefully a non-native speaker would be able to parse what i was really telling them



i'd often get people from the us tell me "oh we're going to start sourcing x from this factory in china" to which my standard response was "that's great but you need to send someone relatively high up the food chain to visit them in person when you sign the contract and also to make a habit of visiting fairly regularly as well because it's essential that you develop a personal relationship with them that is ongoing where you drink and whore together and form the kind of bonds they require to not just decide to casually screw you over at the first opportunity"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_28_incident

kmt mainlanders were extremely brutal to the locals upon their arrival

chiang was arguably worse than mao (which is a big reason why popular support in the usa during the civil war was in fact for mao) and his son continued to lead the one party totalitarian state after chiang's death - only after the death of the son did they transition to being a democracy in 1987

the father/son duo executed over 4k political dissidents and imprisoned another 140k and travel to the mainland, hong kong, & macau were forbidden

taiwanese refer to that era as the white terror

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)

to give you an idea of the staggering amount of taiwanese political dissident who were killed, they only had a population of 8 million in 1950 and 18 million in 1987

let's say an average of 15 million

that's 0.03% of the country executed for political reasons - that doesn't feel like a lot but the united states is 0.07% convicted felons

furthermore, nearly 1% of the population was in jail for political reasons

so basically everyone would have known someone either directly or indirectly who was in jail for dissidence and quite a few would also know someone who was executed for that crime as well

mainland china had a lot of terrible things happen in their early history as well but taiwan was no picnic

Chiang was bad news. I mentioned that. But, as you folks pointed out, I also glossed over the people's subsequent struggles to throw off his legacy. That doesn't make their success any less remarkable.

Let's not give the US too much credit for fostering a democracy in Taiwan. We've had a lot more failures on that front than successes. A country only throws off its authoritarian yolk when its people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for that cause, and that sacrifice is only a necessary component for democracy, not a sufficient one. They still have to best and get rid of the bad guys, and then resist the insidious momentum to become the bad guys once they get a hold of the power.