I've paid tuition twice abroad. Once it took days, multiple forex/bank accounts, and had several annoying surprise fees. The second was in BTC and was settled in five minutes, directly.
It's been said before but the experience is a lot like writing an email versus a letter.
Of course it's a chemical, but still, no. 2 has only 1% of that, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_word_in_English. Yes this has been shared before but I've never seen an actual reference to this word itself yet. I wonder if anyone's memorized it yet.
Dangerously for privacy, a friend's account keeps getting notifications of when my contacts join because the app must have automatically scraped my contacts from my account to theirs when I was setting up their Telegram a few years ago (it was a used phone so all I can think of is I might've used my SIM card to test things out during the process).
Since we can't access this "central" list there's no way to clear them up apart from as they join, one by one.
> (zeitgeists) don't really end up meaning much personally.
Similar story with friends and family who struggled against communism behind the Iron Curtain. Some wish they'd just gotten good careers set up instead.
"Yes, a foreign legionnaire may apply for French citizenship from three years of service.
"It is usually granted, subject to have a good way to serve and have proven its willingness to integrate the French Nation.
"The legionnaire who does not wish to opt for French nationality retains his foreign nationality and is just as much to stay in France at the end of his contract and once he is in possession of a residence permit.
"Obtaining a residence card is consecutive to obtaining a "certificate of good conduct" issued by the command of the Foreign Legion to each deserving legionnaire leaving active service.
Furthermore, the legionnaire wounded in operation may acquire, from right, French nationality (law called "the blood shed")."
This reminds me of a point my physiology instructor worked hard to hammer home in the senior year of my bio degree: do not assign agency to unconscious processes. I forget the rationale for this but find myself reflecting on it often.
Took the train from NY to Settle. Learned to not do it in coach ever again for anything more than a day's worth of traveling. The seats are comfortable (much better than VIA Rail, which I took from Vancouver-Toronto earlier), but the random people getting on a random times, including in the middle of the night, is what got to me (VIA didn't have this so much). Had a very sketchy homeless guy with clearly some mental affliction in front of me talking to himself for about 1.5 days, and two others quietly murmuring on their phones for 5h+, late into midnight or later. I'd also pack my own food because the restaurant car required appointments and the snack kiosk had nothing good or healthy. Both were severely overpriced.
It's unfortunate you can't seem to make too many stops along the way. The company will allow for one, I believe, but as you try to add more the tickets get more expensive. The timing of arrival and the small-town location of many of them just make the option not very interesting for general tourism. I did have a few hours in Chicago which was pretty cool, though I didn't see much and was very put off by the "if you're being shot at then throw your duffel bag at the attacker" videos at the main station. But it was also the middle of winter and like 7-9am or so, so that definitely coloured my experience. Great diner experience though. No one does breakfast quite like North Americans.
Talking with a nice man from California in the restaurant car when I did go the one time I learned he paid as much as me for one of the private room options, just he'd booked a few weeks in advance. I believe he also had access to a shower, which would have been a game changer for me. I booked the way I did though primarily to test out the "worst" option and compare it to better options as I'd make more trips. This was what I learned so far. I'd like to do more though, because this seems like a great way to travel the country.
I was wondering why no one mentioned this. I've bookmarked it to play with more but it seems to address lots of the issues here, at least at first blush.
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
"Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
"But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."