bitofarambler

if you’re talking about the fermented bean curd that I’m familiar with, the flavor is insanely strong.

and despicable, haha.

describing the spiciness of fermented bean curd as superfluous sounds accurate to me.

for sure! I love talking about this stuff.

if you join an online platform with in-place curriculum, then they assign you to classes so the students are already there.

I didn’t want a schedule, so i made myself available to casually chat with ESL learners on an app called palfish.

enough people called me up for me to make a few hundred a month, which is all I needed to travel. dorms are $100 a month in SE Asia, food is 1 to $4 a portion in all of asia, and I was backpacking half the time anyway.

when I landed in a country, I bought the unlimited data-only plan, clicked the “online” button, and then people called me up whenever they wanted to practice their english with me.

that online work was partially to offset using my savings, but i had already taught in person for ~7 years.

with each month of in-person teaching affording me ~3 months of living expenses, i had enough savings to travel for a couple decades by the time i started traveling full-time.

quick note: there’s no competition for ESL students at the teacher level. there are way too many ESL students and not nearly enough English teachers to fulfill the demand. it’s not even close.

both.

I taught in person in China at first, and then after I started traveling full-time I taught online because all you need is a smartphone.

and no, the market is not at all saturated, it is wide open. there are literally thousands of jobs available right now across dozens of countries and online.

if you have any interest in traveling, or you need money, and are a native or fluent English speaker, teaching English is such a great deal.

I’m happy to answer any other questions you have.

it’s a great job.

teach as little or much as you want, save as much money as you want, go pretty much wherever you want, and then chill out the rest of the time.

I taught for several years and am still traveling on the savings a decade later.

if you’re a native English speaker, you can start doing this next week.

every month you teach english generally results in 2 to 3 months of savings.

You’re accessing a system meant to exrract value rather than provide care.

solution:

medical tourism means you choose which country has the medical procedure you’re looking for at the price point you’re looking for.

I get all of my dental work done in Thailand: same technologies, same expertise, better customer service, much lower prices, often 50% lower even at the most prominent international clinics, cheaper if you go to the local clinics instead(many still speak English)

the Thai government heavily invested in medical infrastructure, tech and education 20 years ago and it paid off for both their local economy in terms of medical tourism and for people like me and you who don’t want to pay obscene amounts of money for medical care.

you can check the fees online before you go, and if you have any major dental work to be done, it’ll be cheaper with a round trip ticket to Thailand than it will be in many other countries.

hi, I’ve been living abroad for 15 years or so.

if you want to move, you should move.

most countries have a very low cost of living compared to the US, so you can teach math or English abroad(what I usually recommend for first time travelers who want money) and easily save 1-2 thousand a month in a country like Thailand, which is very welcoming to trans people and has great, affordable medical care.

if you can get any remote programming job that pays more than $500 US a month, you can live abroad and immediately start saving any income over that 500, which covers your own apartment and food for the month.

and it is awesome out here in the world, btw.

you can live and save abroad for a couple years and if for whatever reason you want to go back to the US and buy a house, you’ll have the money to do that.

I’ve helped other people move and would be happy to go into any details you’re curious about.

I say “US Americans” to differentiate while traveling, works well.

easy to say, easy to understand.

correct.

there’s also the maybe more important scientific literature ban that is forcing scientists like those who make sure crops grow correctly in the US out of their jobs because they aren’t able to talk about the gender of the seeds they are breeding.

or the physicists who can’t talk about the “status” of the material they’re using, because that word is banned.

countries don’t want to buy American military equipment anymore because they rightly cannot trust the US, which is a huge loss of revenue.

the disastrous policies already enacted are going to economically and socially hobble the country for decades.

the scientist who goes to another country rather than the US to practice physics, agriculture, anthropology, anything, that’s an entire career of innovation and scientific benefit lost to the US.

and those scientists are already avoiding the us, that’s already happening.

the market numbers are the tip of the iceberg here.

how to make a martyr

I’d like to say that so are zombie films and media.

zombies have become an excuse to dehumanize and glorify justifiable violence against humans at this point.

public baths in Japan got me comfortable with being naked and i wholeheartedly agree that there are some cultural activities like saunas that obligate nudity.

and are far more comfortable when nude, anyway.

that’s usually why those activities are done nekkid in the first place.