08/13/24 - They’re upset if they’re not suffering.
“Only found out when the new semester started that I’ve been fired.
I’m super mad. I’ve been sitting at home for two months now without any pay, just waiting for school to start back up. Even when they sent out the new semester notice, they didn’t say anything about me being fired. I had to ask before she told me.
Is there any way to defend my rights?”
Comments say, “Because you were a backup anyways. But if they’re still hiring for new teachers, that means they’re still short-staffed. Maybe you should think about why the daycare would rather hire new teachers instead of rehire you on again. Maybe your EQ isn’t suitable for complicated social situations like a daycare.”
“Forget EQ, you don’t even have enough IQ to work at a daycare.”
“That is pretty horrible. I’m guessing they didn’t tell you earlier because they hadn’t finished hiring new people yet. If they could get anyone good, they could always fall back on you. And once they had someone, they’ve kicked you aside.”
A video teaching people how to make their own ice cream with frozen fruit and yogurt:
Comments say, “Is this real? I really wanna try it now.”
“Who is always saving these videos but never trying it out like me? XD”
“But it costs so much to do it this way. Fruit is expensive, and you have to buy good yogurt, then wash everything, freeze everything, and break out the food processor.”
“Took my parents out to dinner and they started acting like An Lingrong [character from Legend of Zhen Huan who’s known for her overthinking and insecurity]. What’s up?
I took a 5+ hour train home today, and once I arrived, I took my parents to eat at a seafood buffet. It’s new in our little town, and there’s a lot of variety that all looks good. At first, everyone was happy, but as soon as we sat down, they started acting weird. They just sat there, not moving, completely expressionless (even though they were just smiling).
I was like, “You can go get whatever you want.” And my mom said that nothing looked gooda nd my dad didn’t say anything. There were a lot of seafood that was really fresh. Even if they didn’t like seafood, they had a lot of fresh cuts of beef and lamb, plus other cooked food, snacks, drinks, and dessert. My dad likes beer and this place’s home brew is pretty good too.
But they just kept dawdling, not moving. I hurried them, because the all-you-can-eat is limited time. I went and got some wagyu and lamb chops, and came back to see that my mom got a whole bunch of green beans, raw cabbage leaves, and dumplings from the cooked food area. I don’t really get why she wouldn’t eat the perfectly good meat? My dad got some sweet and sour fried pork , but he took a bite and thought it tasted bad so he secretly threw it away. I thought that wasn’t very polite.
At the beginning, I told them not to get the cooked food because it’s not good, and not to get too much of something. But nobody listens to me. I got some clams for my dad since I know he likes them.
My mom is eating cabbage dumplings while saying in a really weird tone, “I want to try the pizza. I never shell out for pizza normally…I want to try the fruit and yogurt, I never dare to buy any normally…” And I told her, “Pizza isn’t that expensive. Nothing’s gonna happen if you get yourself a slice. Stop doing this. No one’s stopping you from eating what you want.”
And she started in again, “Is this pizza? It’s not good at all.” And I was like, “Pizza is just here to fill you up. Only you would get it at a buffet.” And then I just focused on my food and stopped talking to them. They’re so like An Lingrong.
In the end, my parents barely ate anything at all, and it was so weird. When we got home, they started complaining about how they barely got to eat anything at all, but I was super full, lol.”
Comments say, “Disappointing parents…My parents are like this sometimes too. Other times, they’ll at least try to pretend, but you can tell they’re still being super picky. So they really can’t pretend to be happy parents at all.”
“Maybe it’s because of the way they were raised? I feel like a lot of parents are like this. They’re upset if they’re not suffering.”
“My mom likes to make herself look pitiful too. Don’t indulge her and just point out what she’s doing. You only have to do it a couple of times. It’s not like you can’t afford food, you don’t have to act this way for people to see. Just be a normal person and everyone’ll be happy.”
“According to the Guilin People’s Hospital, spraying realgar water and drinking realgar wine is a tradition during the Summer Solstice Festival. But a lady in Guangxi, Guilin, Ms. Qu, directly added realgar wine to her family’s water tank and well. They used “realgar water” for cooking and drinking every day. And her entire family of seven, including Ms. Qu herself, began falling ill one after another. After going to the hospital, they were diagnosed with arsenic poisoning.
Ms. Qu’s youngest daughter was the most severely ill, with liver function damage and severe bone marrow deficiency, and had to be put in PICU. Thankfully, after painstaking care by the hospital staff, Ms. Qu and her family all recovered eventually and were discharged. Ms. Qu regrets her actions too. She thought that regularly drinking realgar water would keep the evil spirits away and improve the immune system. She never thought it would send her whole family to the hospital.
Doctors explain that the main component of realgar is arsenic sulfide. Heating will break down the oxygen bonds and turn it into the highly toxic arsenic trioxide, which is just arsenic poison. The most common symptom after poisoning is nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, and diarrhoea. Realgar has some effectiveness at keeping pests away, and there may be a small amount of it in some Traditional Chinese Medicine, but you should only take it with a prescription from a professional doctor. Even if you’re only externally applying realgar, you should avoid spreading it across too much of a surface, in case your skin absorbs too much and causes a poisoning reaction.”
Comments say, “Got it. If I ever travel back in time and need to poison somebody, I’ll go buy realgar.”
“But you can use it to make snakes show their true forms [doge]” [A plot point in Legend of the White Snake, a folklore about a white snake who marries a scholar only to show her true form on Summer Solstice because the scholar unknowingly brought home realgar wine.]
“I’m guessing she’ll do it again!”
Question: “Is dinner culture going to be ended by the 1990’s and 2000’s kids?”
Answer: “Probably.
When I first joined the work force, we were out for a company dinner, and everyone else took turns toasting the boss. I saw it was pretty crowded, so I figured I’d fill up first and then make my toast, so I enjoyed myself some lobster. Some other department’s boss saw that I was new and didn’t make a toast to her and got upset, and asked my director, “Is this guy new?” And the director hurried to introduce me, and I put down my lobster and got my cup to toast this manager that I didn’t even know at all, but this dumbass just started lecturing me about how I need to learn how to behave myself at dinner, to have some manners, I need to do this and that because I’m new.
I was just dumbfounded. Dinner had just started. What’s wrong with waiting a bit? How am I disrespecting my seniors? Honestly, I don’t even know everyone in my office yet. How toxic do you have to be to come lecture me as the manager of a completely different department? But I’m a coward, so I still made my rounds.
But after I’ve become an old slicker after a year, aside from the mandatory dinners, I’d just refuse to show up at any others. If people are getting married or having kids or having their birthday, I’d just ask someone we both know to bring my gift. If I don’t know them, I won’t gift anything. Even if my supervisor hints that so-and-so’s dad is this impressive higher up, I’d just tell him that I don’t go to parties of people I don’t know. I don’t know how people I haven’t even met before dare to send me invitations.
Slowly, there are more and more young people, and these types of dinners are getting less frequent too. I hear a young girl born in 1999 joined the department next door, and at a company dinner, she finished eating and just told everyone she was leaving. Her boss got upset and wouldn’t let her leave, and she just said she’d already booked train tickets and had to go home, and picked up her bag and left. The boss was so mad that he didn’t even drink that night. When I heard, I just thought she did a good job.
This year, a 985-graduated doctorate born in 1993 joined my department, super good at his job, but he never sucks up to his higher ups. When there’s a dinner, he says he’s allergic to alcohol, and never joins dinners unless he has to. The old boss who’s about to retire hates him and is constantly fucking with him, but there’s no point. Trying to fuck with him professionally just makes you look like a joke. And the higher-ups are clearly training him for a management position. This old boss can only complain to the other managers about how he doesn’t have any manners and will get screwed over one day. But this doctorate actually gets along with everyone really well without all the showy bullshit.
Once 1990’s and 2000’s kids are in leadership positions, I think this type of dinner culture is going to disappear.
Trash should’ve never existed to begin with.”
Comments say, “Don’t worry, the dragon slayer will become the dragon in the end. You think your boss just likes drinking? No, he likes having power and making other people do what he wants. 2000’s kids will be the same once they have power too.”
“It’s been around for centuries, and you think just a century or two will change anything? How delusional.”
“My boss tells me to drink and I immediately make a bitch face at him.”
“Anyone had pagoda flower jelly? This is a specialty dish from Guangxi, and starts with soaking in limewater. It’s super cool in the summer!”
[It starts with mixing limewater and letting it settle, and soaking some old rice. Then fry up the centres of pagoda tree flowers until they get fragrant, and mix it together with the old rice and let it soak in the clear water skimmed off the top of the limewater for an hour. Then, grind the whole thing into paste and boil it in water to get the right consistency. Then, drip it into ice water to get the shapes. Add some red sugar and eat.]
Comments say, “It looks so tasty! <3”
“I can only watch T_T”
“Please leave me a bowl!”
#14-year-old girl joins summer camp and allegedly gets raped by the camp manager. “According to Dafeng News reports, Chen Yun is from Jiangxi, Anyuan County. Her daughter, Jiang Rui, is 14-years-old today. Two years ago, she found that her daughter has become very quick to anger. After getting a psychological assessment at the hospital, she was told that her child had severe depression. She says that her daughter’s been accepting treatment since then.
March of 2024, considering that Jiang Rui is going to have a very long summer break after her high school entrance exams, Chen Yun thought she’s sign her up for a summer camp. “This summer camp is really famous in town. I asked what she thought and she liked the idea and wanted to go. She said she wanted to train her willpower. At the time, my friend wanted to sign her daughter up too, but her daughter didn’t want to go. My daughter even tried to talk the other girl into it.”
On the 6th of July, Chen Yun sent Jiang Rui to the summer camp 30km away from home. This was a closed camp, and mostly contained fitness training and gratitude education. The summer camp had various lifestyle teachers [who cook food, help with laundry, etc] and coaches, and had about sixty to seventy 6-16 year old kids attending.
“I never thought that a famous coach would do something so horrible.” Chen Yun said. Her daughter claimed that she was raped three times from the 11th to the 15th of July, and was told to eat contraceptive pills by Coach Mr. Wang. Around the 17th, she attempted to escape the camp to seek help from the police but was captured by the coaches. She told the teachers about what happened to her, to no effect.”
Comments say, “What an ignorant parent! Why would you send a kid with severe depression to a concentration camp?”
“Gratitude education? Only uneducated parents believe in that shit. They can’t teach by example, so they throw their kids to a tutoring agency.”
“This training camp was probably being ran by organised crime.”
#Is it more exhausting to have a mortgage or to rent for the rest of your life? “Maybe people who rent don’t feel like they’re living in someone else’s house? That’s the main reason I want my own house, even if I have to build it out of mud myself.”
A compilation of comments, “My husband and I have rented at a lot of places. Actually, most renters don’t feel like they’re living in their own home at all. You can’t buy any big furniture because they’re a pain to move with. You can’t decorate however you want. And you might get told by the landlord to leave at any time, so you have no sense of belonging. And even if you’re just having fun in the development, renters and actual homeowners have a different level of confidence. That’s why I’d rather shoulder the pressure of a mortgage to give myself and my kids a home!”
“I just calculated today, but the money I need to buy a house can support me renting a three-bedroom for 90 years.”
“Honestly, so long as you don’t get married or have kids, you don’t really need a house. You can make it somehow on your own no matter what. Renting is easier anyways, because you can go wherever you want, even completely change cities. Maybe that’s too selfish, but once you settle down in a house, you have to find work from what’s near you which is really limiting. Or else you have to deal with a terrible commute. Not to mention, I don’t wanna live too long anyways. I don’t expect to collect any social security. And being old is terrible, and I’d just be a burden on other people. I’m sure I’d have all kinds of health troubles once I’m old. That would suck.”
“Why don’t you talk about all the people who’ve lost hundreds of thousands on their house? Their down payment is gone. It’s all over other posts. They’re mad as hell. There are people who’ve lost over a million! That’s enough money to rent forever. I don’t believe they’re okay with that. As for renting, of course you can’t rent forever, but I’m always someone who lives in the moment. Just focus on the now and don’t worry about what happens in another few decades. Some people’s houses are already plummeting in value. That’s a problem.”
“It’s about your personal circumstances. If you can afford a house, you should get one, since it is more convenient to live in your own place.”
“You can buy a house in a small town and rent in the big city. Once you’re retired, you can go live out the rest of your life in a small town.”
“It’s true. My husband and I have been renting for 12 years and we’ve moved a dozen times. The landlord could demand their house back at any time, and it’s exhausting to move every time. I don’t dare to buy any big furniture at all, just because of the hassle when moving. We just make do over the years. Your neighbours know you’re renters, so they treat you differently. We finally have our own house now, and no one can be mean to us.”