#You often ask me for my sims cards to download | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

raventons · 5 years

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The list of names

*scary music playing* Ok, guys, in the light of American Middle Eastern policy, that has once again brought me to tears, I decided to do something a bit happier (this is me trying to influence my followers to read the news and fight for the right thing and all that jazz). I’ve got a lot of asks recently, mostly from people new to the world of CC, about which creators are the best, so I’ve made this little list of the creators I download and use the most. This is not in any way a complete collection, I might have forgotten someone (and there’s also plenty of creators I haven’t discovered yet). Also, these are all build creators, mainly creating alpha CC. Please feel free to add to this list. Also also, the description I’ve used for the artists are totally my own making, so if you are a creator and feel like I am describing your work in an unfair way, go ahead and punch me in the face. If I was a new simmer, I would check out these creators: Retired: MXIMS - Makes modern, real life furniture with the best quality. Has many downloads left on their website. MINCSIMS - Similar to MXIMS (with some amazing collabs), also with a beautiful talent for doors and windows. Not many objects left in orbit, but google is your friend. DAER0N - Done everything from noodles to palms, but the recent Daer0n I would describe as gold, dark and modern, with 3D modeling skills out of this world. Retired, and much of the old stuff is gone, but some can be found at bloomingrosy. DOX - Similar to Daer0n with a slightly stricter, more wooden approach. The most underrated one of the retired giants. Has some downloads left on their website. ANBS - Super clean aesthetic. Modern, real life furniture. Many downloads left on their website. SLYD - Mostly known as a CAS creator, but has the amazing shoes and bags available as decor. All downloads left on the website. HVIKIS - Wallpapers and wall art. All downloads left on the website. VIIKIITA - Recolors to die for. Not many objects left in orbit, but google is your friend. Active (I think. I hope. I don’t know): ARSBOTANICA - Previously simshamlet. Does really lovely, vintage aesthetic perfume bottles and amazing flowers. SLOX - A personal favorite. Modern, I’d say. And realistic. But often with objects you didn’t even know you needed, that ends up being the main inspiration for the whole build. Like some folded shirts, or a stack of books. 13PUMPKIN - A long with Artvitalex this is the best wood creator in the community. The sets are kind of like “small-lovely-family-home”-style, but can be used in big, modern builds with equally outstanding results. WONDYMOON - My by far most used creator. The most organized one too, I’d say. All sets match eachother, and are easy to find (and are all named by elements, this guy is a rock star). PYSZNYDESIGN - The Kilburn set is to die for. MEINKATZ - Literally replicas of real life furniture, with their history and all. Honestly the coolest thing ever. Also, a really nice person. PRALINESIMS - The best floor and wall creator, hands down. I don’t know if this is really the person I should tag tho, so I’ll tag @cross-design and hope for the best because I honestly still don’t know who is who. I love them both tho. THE TSR GIANTS: SEVERINKA, KARDOFE, UNG999, SIMMAN123, PILAR, ARTVITALEX, ANGELA, DOT, BUFFSUMM, SHINO and NYNAEVE - Yes, a lot of the creators I mention here are active on TSR and a lot of my TSR giants are active elsewhere, but I still, maybe arbitrary, like to put these under the TSR flag because they represent that wonderful vibe of big sets, certain room types and signature colors. PEACEMAKER - a true legend. Some of the CC is borderline MM, but that is what makes them so perfect. They go with both themes. MIO - This is the first creator I downloaded from and they will always have a special place in my heart. Brilliant conversions, flower sets, seating, everything. NOVVVAS - A way too humble person that claims she is not the best in the game, when she truly is out of this world. RIGHTHEARTED - who I have been referring to as neiden my whole life because I am an idiot. TINGELINGLATER - Does a lot of things but blessed all of us with windows and since then I am in love. ANYE - Pinkbox Anye, to be correct. Lovely person. Lovely sets. Unique eyes. Adore this one. FOREVERDESIGNS - Will literally transform your bedroom. And kitchen. And life. BLACKMOJITOS - Build sets and sexy, stunning posters (and a basket every now and then). Also up for commissions, I just noticed. Go throw money at her. She is amazing. KAI-HANA - Has a totally unique style, where everything is alpha, but still has a beautiful, clayish touch to it. Underrated. AROUNDTHESIMS - A bit on the MM side, so if you’re looking for that MM/alpha mix, this is for you. Extremely productive. Does everything and more. CHERRY-SIMS - A part from the CC, this is also the best picture editor I’ve ever seen. I am a huge fan! CONCEPTDESIGN - Did someone say trees? YUMIA - Soft flowers, old school touch, vintage AGGRESSIVEKITTEN - Literally killed half the community with the recent brutalism set, which without a doubt will be voted best CC of 2020. Also, where else would you go for both beautiful, vintage objects AND a tarot card reading? Weirdly obsessed with seals. Makes amazing lots. I love you. DSCO - I gave up trying to spell this creators full name after the sixth attempt. I would describe the CC as cute. But not in the condescending (that I could spell) way. More in a bad-ass-I-need-all-of-these-objects-kind-of-way! KKB - My ignorant and uneducated ass wants to call it Korean, and I am sorry if this isn’t the right way to describe anything. Soft, pastel but at the same time very cool, with rattan and wood. DR GREENIE - Former Green Girl. Mostly MM, but has made some of my most used decor objects. HELEN - Extremely productive. Does everything. NIKADEMA - Has made my favorite sink! PQSIMS - Makes sets. Usually light wood. LUNATICAVILLAGE (2SIS) - Another underrated favorite. Everyone should go here and show as much love as possible! LAVI3ENROSE - A creator that entered my world quite recently. Art deco. Bronze. Gold. And the best wrapped Christmas presents of 2019. DDAENG SIMS - Another giant that recently changed their name (used to be dreamteamsims). FELIXANDRE - The best historical creator (as in making epic shit that would create the most wonderful castle). Sometimes a bit on the MM side with the furniture, and that contrast makes it, in my eyes, even better. SIMCREDIBLE - Sets. Color matching. Often light and modern. I use their decor stones in every single one of my . SOLORIYA - MM creator. But even for us alpha bitches there are wonderful stuff (I think this is the case for most MM artists, I just don’t know so many of them). XELENN - Also does literally everything. One can scroll this blog for hours. OWL-PLUMBOB - Amazing build objects. SANOYSIMS - A long with MXIMS, I’d say this is one of the most “realistic” artists. WINNER9 - To me, this creator is all about the amazing wall art. But of course they make other stunning objects too. Marble tables, anyone? SJAMBOKSIM - My most used concrete walls (and I use concrete A LOT). AIFIRSA - Totally different style from everyone else. Absolutely love this aesthetic. VIVIAN STUDIO - This sounds weird, but their onions are the best object in my game. Don’t judge. HEURRS - A quite new creator who blew my mind with some recent candles and earned my first reblog since 456 BC. Love you. I am forgetting so, so many. Please, I sometimes can’t even remember my own name, so don’t feel hurt if I missed you. PLEASE comment your favorite creators below! Where would you advice new simmers to start looking for good CC? Love you guys!!!

#sims 4 #sims 4 cc #the sims #the sims 4 #creators #sims 4 creator #sims 4 creators #sims 4 cc finds #the sims 4 cc finds #sims cc #sims cc finds #sims4 #thesims4 #thesims

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wildlyminiaturesandwich · 5 years

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It’s time we talk about SimsDom again.

Most of you probably already know who and what Simsdom is but for those that don’t, Simsdom (or SimsDomination) claim to essentially be a CC finds website, which in essence I suppose they are... But don’t get your hopes up for a Lana replacement because they are SO much more than that. And not in a good way.

I know this is an old subject, and most people probably thought it was all over and done with, but Simsdom is still around and what’s worse is that I’ve noticed a growing trend among my fellow Game Changers who create content for Youtuber and Twitch/Mixer of promoting the site by using it to do CC shopping haul videos and streams, which is encouraging their viewers to use Simsdom. I’m not going to name names or point fingers but it made me realise that maybe some people don’t understand just how bad Simsdom is for the community in general, but especially for the amazingly dedicated CC creators of Simblr. And it’s just so disappointing to see people that some many in the community, including myself, look up to promoting this garbage site!

If you’re curious to know why this is a problem, I’ll explain under the cut. If not, keep scrolling... But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

If you visit the Simsdom website (which I’ve purposely not provided a link to because you absolutely shouldn’t visit it) you’ll notice a whole bunch of custom content is available there, more than likely you’ll even find quite a bit from some of your faves like @peacemaker-ic, @nolan-sims, @storylegacysims, @crypticsim, @renorasims, @savvysweet and MANY more. My stuff is even on there as well and if you’re a creator, the chances are high your stuff is too; whether you want it to be or not.

But don’t be fooled, myself and most of the other creators whose content appears on their site did not give permission for our content to be shared on there. In fact, most of us have specifically asked Simsdom to remove our content from their site. I say “most” because there are some people who willing uploading their content there (god knows why). The easiest way to the tell the difference is to look at who posted the content. If you see this:

That content has been shared by a bot, without the creator’s permission and more than likely against their many requests that Simsdom NOT share their content. If it says the name of the actual creator instead of “Exchange”, that creator uploaded it themselves.

You might also ask why anyone would care if their content was shared on a CC finds blog, after all, it means more traffic to our blogs and content, right? First of all, whether it brings in more traffic or not, is beside point. These creators have specifically requested Simsdom not share their content and they have been ignored, disrespected, threatened, and harassed. Simsdom claims that their users make up 30-90% of Tumblr creators traffic, but I call bullshit. I check my Google analytics every single month for traffic coming in to both my Tumblr and Blogger from Simsdom and I can tell you that LESS THAN 1% of the COMBINED TOTAL traffic from BOTH BLOGS comes from there. And when you understand how they operate, you’ll understand why that is.

- UPDATE -

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, they linked 5 creators that they claim meet their crazy statement that their site provides creators with 30-90% of their traffic. So I just thought I’d point out some interesting facts I noticed while looking at those sites.

One of those sites is dead; literally, it doesn’t exist anymore, if it ever even did. Another, @simiracle, is a fellow Game Changer who reblogged this post, so I’m guessing they don’t have support there. And the other 3 are alpha CC creators, none of whom have ever uploaded any of their CC to Simdom, nor have they ever mentioned Simsdom on their sites in any way. However, all three earn money on their own content via either adfly, adsense, patreon, or some combination of the three; my guess would be they wouldn’t be too happy to find out Simsdom is making money off them too.

You see, Simsdom might sometimes link back to the original creators site, but often times they don’t. I’ve noticed quite a bit of the content of my own on their site directly links to the file on SimFileShare, completely bypassing both my Tumblr and my Blogger. This might not seem like a big problem, but what about if the creator has put specific instructions, requirements, or notes on the original download page that if the downloader doesn’t read could result in broken/unusable CC, or worse, a broken game?

- UPDATE -

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, they linked to SimFileShare’s page on SimilarWeb and claimed that I was lying about direct-linking to my files there because their site does not appear in the list of referring sites. What they failed to mention is that that list only shows the TOP 5 sites that link to SimFileShare regularly. There are still 385 other sites that aren’t shown and can’t be seen without having an account with SimilarWeb. Convenient, huh?

I also said they only direct-linked SOME content. With my content it was only about 4 or 5 things out of the 15 or so they have on their site and I didn’t check anyone else’s stuff but I have heard other creators say the same thing. So of course they’re not going to show up in the top 5 if it’s only SOME links.

But wait, there’s more.

Anyone downloading from their website without an adblocker is forced to wade through potentially harmful ads as well. Notice the blue button that says “download” at the top? That’s not a real download button and if you click it, it will instantly begin shoving pop ups in your face claiming you have a system error or that your local law enforcement agency has detected illegal activity from your IP. Yes, I clicked it. There is nothing of importance left on my HDD (it’s all stored safely on an external drive that isn’t connected to the PC at all) because this drive has been slowly dying for weeks and I’m destroying it tomorrow and replacing it with a brand new one, so I decided to take a chance.

These ads, which are on pretty much every page of Simsdom, are what’s called “Ransomware”, and it’s whole purpose is to distract you with fake pop up “warnings” when you click on it so that you don’t realise it’s actually downloading a very harmful file to your computer in the background. It’s designed to be next to impossible to close the pop ups, so that even if you somehow became aware of the download happening, you couldn’t get past the pop ups to stop it before it’s had time to finish downloading and automatically begin running it’s payload when it’s done.

What payload? That’s the scariest part, you won’t know until it’s too late. It could be something as simple as a trojan that will force your PC to mine bitcoins, which is still harmful because these mining trojans are resource hogs and put a massive strain on your CPU. Or a trojan designed to target and encrypt specific files on your computer (usually sensitive ones) and demand you pay a literal ransom (usually either in bitcoin or pre-paid cash) and if you don’t, your files will either be complete erased or leaked.

Or worse still, it could be something even more sinister such as a key-logger; a piece of spyware that is designed to track and log EVERY. SINGLE. KEY. you touch on your keyboard. So every password you use, every online banking key code you enter, all the conversations you have via Discord, Twitter, Tumblr, or any other form of instant messaging, that fanfiction you’ve been working on that you are too scared to show anyone in case they think you’re a pervert, your credit card and bank account number you use to shop online, what porn you look for, even your Google search history (regardless of if you’re incognito); all of it will be no longer private and in the hands of someone who could use it to steal your identity, empty out your bank accounts, charge thousands of dollars worth of goods to your credit card, or expose every little strange thing you do on your computer that you thought no one would ever find out about, unless you pay their ransom.

Scary huh?

Also notice that those Get Famous recolours I made don’t say that they actually require Get Famous? Why is that a problem, you say? For most people it’s not, you see “Get Famous Recolours” and you automatically know you need Get Famous to use them, but what about people who are new to using CC and don’t know that for my recolours to work you need the pack they came from? Yeh, that’s a problem, because that particular download is one of those ones that leads straight to SimFileShare:

It leads directly to the merged file, which is NOT the only file available for download in that set, just the largest. But no one who finds my content on Simsdom will ever know that will they? Nor will they read the part of the download page that clearly states Get Famous is required to use the recolours.

I hear you saying “But adblockers are a thing”. Yes they are, but that doesn’t solve the issue of them linking straight to the file. And also, here’s what happens when you try to download something from Simsdom with an adblocker enabled:

You’re forced to wait 180 seconds before the download button appears. THREE WHOLE MINUTES in which you cannot move from that page or the counter will stop, and it will only restart when you go back to that page and stay there for the entire three minutes. Even Adfly isn’t that gross.

So, all of that isn’t enough to discourage you from using this vile site you say? Well, let me introduce you to the person/people who run the site. There are plenty of examples floating around Tumblr of how disrespectful, arrogant, immature, and disturbing the owner/s are (just search for “Simsdom” and you’ll see) but here’s just a few posts showing “receipts” of what happened to creators when they ask for their content to be removed from the site: Here, here, and here.

They have threatened to doxx several creators, tried to blackmail others, threatened to shut down some people’s sites, and even actually refused to remove people’s content unless they say “please”; as though these creators are six year old children who need to learn a lesson for not wanting THEIR content on someone else’s website!

All of this was said AFTER they made a post on their Tumblr saying they would respect creators wishes to not have their content on their site. I myself had a run-in with them as well but I don’t have the receipts because as soon as they finally agreed to remove my content (after almost 4 days of arguing with them and being threatened several times) they blocked me... and they continue to share my content to this day. That’s part of the reason why my motivation to create has been so low lately; I know its just going to end up over there, locked behind a paywall making money for these disgusting people and tricking simmers into thinking they have to pay to access my stuff.

But back to the story! Once they realised 99% of Tumblr creators — the people they get most of their content from — were going to ask to have their creations removed however, they changed their mind and instead started refusing to remove content. In fact, if you go to their website and use the contact form and choose the option “Remove my Content” they literally ask if you are Tumblr creator or not, and if you say you are, this is what you get:

And that “Our Rights here” link? That leads to this nonsense that literally contradicts itself with almost every single sentence:

“Creations can’t be uploaded without the creators permission... but we do not need permission to share your creations” “Feel free to contact us to ask to remove your content... but actually don’t bother contacting us asking to remove your content because we won’t” “SimsDomination is a free website... We don’t steal any content... *literally has other people’s free content locked behind a paywall and charges people membership fees to remove said paywall*”

And as for the EA terms part... I have news for you Simsdom, YOU are the only one breaking EA’s terms of use by putting content behind paywalls. I’m an EA Game Changer, I have actually read the terms of use AND spoken at length on the topics of earning revenue from CC, and why paywalls/memberships/exclusives are against EA’s terms of use with the Sim Gurus, have you? Didn’t think so.

If you had, you’d realise that we are allowed to earn revenue from our CC by having ads on our blogs/sites provided they aren’t deceptive — you know, like that ad with the big blue button you have that shows up on every single page of your site — and don’t lead to anything malicious, which yours do. I clicked several of the ads on your site and they all either lead to disgusting 18+ websites, started producing ransomware pop ups like I described earlier, or tried to download a mysterious file called setup.exe to my computer (which was most likely a trojan as well). We are also allowed to earn revenue via donations and Patreon early access systems provided the content is also made available for free to the general public within 14 days.

We are not, however, allowed to lock content behind Patreon exclusives, memberships and paywalls such as Adfly; which is exactly what you are doing. Like Adfly, you are not only potentially exposing underage children to 18+ content and risking the safety of people’s PCs, but you are also forcing them to wait to click a link and charging membership fees to avoid having to wait to download said content that isn’t even yours; content that you have been asked REPEATEDLY to remove. That is the very definition of a paywall. It is NOT the same as Pinterest or Facebook AT ALL, they might have ads but they aren’t malicious and they do not force people to wait to view content.

- UPDATE -

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, this is probably one of my most favourite Simsdom lies, because it never changes but it’s so easy to prove false! “Users don’t need to pay to download any content and don’t need to wait to download them” Oh really? Shall we take a look at your site on the old SimilarWeb that you love so much?

How strange. If you don’t make people wait, then why do you need adfly? And if no one has to pay, then why do you need premium memberships to get rid of the ads and wait time you don’t have? Odd.

Also, lets talk Adsense. I never said I had a problem with you having ads on your site; I said I had a problem with the TYPE of ads on your site. If you seriously don’t think your ads are in any way harmful, I’d suggest you take another look at your Adsense, because either it’s been hacked or you seriously don’t know what you’re doing. Oh, but that’s right, “Google will never display suspicious ADs“... Mmm hmm, you just go right on believe that. Yeh, it’s definitely not possible for Google to be hacked... Nope, definitely not.

Also, if you use your Adsense revenue to pay for your site.... what happens to the extra? Because based on your SimilarWeb page I can take a rough guess at how much you earn every month through Adsense alone and there’s no way your site costs that much to run. For that matter, where does all the extra revenue from Adfly, Short.st and this mysterious “other” go? And all the revenue you get from your premium subscriptions that you totally don’t charge people money for?...

Is that fish I smell?

You are not doing anyone any favours here, so stop pretending that you’re in this for anything other than money. Stop sharing content you’ve been asked REPEATEDLY to remove/not share and breaking EA’s and many creators TOUs!

If you’ve managed to make it this far, congrats lol I know this has been long and probably boring but thank you for taking the time to read the whole thing. All this post was meant to do was explain why people should not support Simsdom, and why I’m so disappointed in other Game Changers for promoting it, but it kind of got away from me a little.

Oh well, now you know what Simsdom is and why I will NEVER support them or willingly allow my content to be shared on their site. And if you do decide to still use their site, just... please be careful. My content will always be free and safe to download, just like the majority or CC creators here on Tumblr. Don’t pay for something you can get for free from the original source.

Also, if you’re looking for a Lana replacement (aka a good CC finds blogs that isn’t shady af like Simsdom) check out @maxismatchccworld!

- UPDATE -

This isn��t in relation to anything specific, just the situation as a whole. It seems Simsdom has just removed the search box from their website completely:

I’m sure it was totally legit reasons and not at all because they didn’t want anyone searching for their own content on the Simsdom website. Just like it wasn’t for that reason the last time too...

#VERY IMPORTANT #DownWithSimsdom #Boycott Simsdom

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theteapotofdoom · 4 years

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mrs teapot, I want u to know I know absolutely nothing about Obey Me and didn't even know it existed before following u. and yet, still, here I am, debating on whether or not to download it bc the snake boy is pretty. this man has been living rent free in my head since that one "snake quirk tomura" ask where you compared him to snake boy and I don't even know his name. Look What You've Done

BEHOLD MY POWER >:D

(Also being called Mrs. Teapot is just!!! It makes me go 💕✨♥️❤️💖✨💕❤️ YOU ARE SO SWEET thank you!)

And you are right!!! The snecc boy is VERY pretty!!! I love to see how powerful my boy is, he seduced you just with his looks and his big Tomura energy, such a power move. He really just took his little bag and moved into your head like "this pleases me, it shall be my home" and he isn’t even paying rent. Iconic behavior. He did the exact same thing to me.

As for Obey Me, I would say that it’s worth checking out because it’s a really fun game with cute writing and a lot of pretty selon boys! Leviathan (snecc boy) and Lucifer are my two favorites, but there are five other brothers that are also very good, each with different and unique style and personalities that you might love just as much! (Levi is best boy though, I love this disaster baby).

But you should know that it’s more of a gacha game than a traditional dating sim. It means that although the game is a lot of fun, its main design is to get you to spend money. You don’t HAVE to spend money, you can download the game for free and never buy anything while playing, but the mecanism are like ... you need spend coins/jewels to get a cards of your favorite boys at random, and although you can win these for free while playing mini games but it takes longer ... and other things like that. You also don’t really get to choose one of the boys, you play a general storyline (and often special events like Halloween, Summer Festivals ABD other themes) and you have cute interactions with all of them through the story. It’s really great, but different from a traditional dating sim!

Aaaah I’m sorry for the long explanation! Maybe you know very well what a gacha game is and you just wanted to talk about snecc boy! Sorry if that’s the case! But I still wanted to let you know what kind of game it is before you check it out! I would still 100% recommend getting it because it’s really good and you can have fun without spending any money and overall it’s just a harmless fun game! But in many ways, the game mechanics are similar to gambling and it you never played these before or if you’re young, it can be easy to fall into it! (And if you end up not liking it, you can delete it and enjoy the fan content!)

But yeah Levi great and I’m glad that you love him already because THAT’S WHAT HE DESERVES! He really meets a lot of my standards 1) he’s cute 2) he is a little bit of a bitch 3) but he is very touched starved 4) kind of a hot mess 5) chaotic little gremlin 6) he has water related powers and aesthetic 7) a snecc!!!!

He is very good and very happy they you love him! :D

#obey me #leviathan

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singledarkshade · 4 years

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Can I Return This Gift

Summary: When Gideon's former friend sends her an email on her birthday, she has no idea that it contained government secrets and would change her life forever. The TimeShip Chuck AU no one asked for but I had to write. Author’s Note: I was watching Chuck and somehow my brain came up with this AU. I blame @incendiaglacies completely. Anyway, enjoy. ********************************************* “You know this is your party,” Gilbert said, sitting beside his sister, “For your birthday. Why are you hiding in your room?”

“Because everyone here are all friends of you and Gary,” Gideon frowned, “And none of mine.”

Gilbert frowned in the way only an overprotective older brother could, even if there was only ten minutes between them.

“All the people here have connections. They are able to help you get a proper job,” Gilbert frowned, “One where you’re might actually live up to your potential.”

Gideon clenched her fists in annoyance, this was an argument they’d had many times and she didn’t want to repeat it.

“The last time I had an interview they asked why I didn’t finish University?” Gideon snapped, forcing her annoyance down, “And I can’t lie because they check. They won’t believe I was kicked out for something I didn’t do.”

Wrapping his arm around her, Gilbert hugged him sister, “I know but it’s been five years. I just want you to show part of the ambition you had back then.”

Gideon opened her mouth to retort but as she heard Gary outside, she sighed, “Let’s go to the party.”

Zari leaned back in the computer chair with her feet on the bed, “I love your brothers, but some of their friends are…” she shuddered.

Gideon smiled, “I know.”

Zari took another bite of the cake she had stolen from an annoyed Gary, while Gideon unclipped her hair and shook it out.

“Hey,” Zari said suddenly, “Miranda Coburn remembered your birthday.”

Surprise filled her, “What?”

“Miranda Coburn, the bitch that lied and got you kicked out of school has sent you an email,” Zari told her.

Gideon let out a sigh, “That’s unexpected.”

“Not the word I would use,” Zari noted.

Opening it Gideon frowned, “What the hell?”

Zari read the email, “The ship has been boarded by pirates and you have no way out. What do you do?” turning to Gideon she asked, “What does that mean?”

“It’s from one of the text based videogames we used to play,” Gideon said, frowning in annoyance at the memories this was bringing up, “We created our own around a group of time travellers on a ship.”

Zari laughed, “Okay, you’ve always been so cool,” she stretched, “Alright, I have to go. I will see you in the morning.”

Gideon hugged her friend, “Thanks for coming.”

“Would not have missed it for the world,” she smiled, before she climbed out the window leaving Gideon alone.

Brushing her hair out Gideon kept glancing at the computer wondering why, after all this time, Miranda would contact her. She tried to ignore it, but her curiosity was far too strong, and Gideon reopened the email.

“Strap yourself in,” Gideon typed the answer, “And open the airlocks.”

The screen suddenly seemed to melt and pictures flashed before her, Gideon couldn’t look away standing frozen until the screen flashed ‘Download Complete’.

Gideon stared at the screen for a moment before she collapsed in a heap on her bedroom floor.

“I didn’t think you drank that much last night,” Zari noted as Gideon sat with her head on the desk of the AI Crew booth.

“I didn’t,” Gideon groaned against the strange headache she’d had all morning, before sighing and looking around, “Where’s Felicity and Cisco?”

Zari smiled, “The kids are getting coffee to keep going as they come off their energy drink high.”

Gideon sighed, “You know soon they’ll graduate and leave us here as they head to their exciting careers.”

Patting her shoulder, Zari replied, “Time to be the responsible one in the crew.”

Felicity and Cisco appeared carrying their large cups from the specialty coffee place just a few doors down in the shopping plaza.

“Okay, guys,” Gideon said, “We have a computing killing virus making the rounds. It is on Isabel Roschev’s website, yes the porn star, so lonely guy calls are going to be….” she trailed off as the information on the televisions playing around the store distracted her and strange images filled her head along with knowledge she shouldn’t have, “He’s already here,” she murmured.

“Are you okay?” Cisco asked.

Gideon shook her head, “Yes, sorry. Everyone should get back to work.”

As they dispersed Gideon shook herself, it was going to be one of those days.

Gideon sat going through paperwork for the offsite work the team did. It was something she tried not to let pile up, although every so often it was inevitable.

The bell rang and she grabbed it, “Not now, Zari.”

“Should I come back later?” a man asked, surprisingly with an English accent.

Gideon winced realising it was a customer, and slowly looked up to see a man standing with an amused smile on his face. And it was a nice face, with sharp kind green eyes, sandy hair and beard.

“I’m sorry,” Gideon realised she was staring, “What can I do for you?”

He pulled out a phone and passed it to her, “I’m having issues with my phone. I don’t seem to be getting calls and can’t make them either.”

“Oh,” she recognised the model, “Yes, this is a common problem with this type of phone. If you give me a few moments…” she opened the back and pulled out the battery explaining as she worked, “The sim card needs to be locked in place and although it might seem to be in correctly, it isn’t always,” she replaced the battery before closing the case and handing it back to him.

“Thank you…”

“Gideon,” she smiled.

“Gideon,” he said before reciprocating, “I’m Rip. Thank you for your help and not treating me like I’m a complete idiot.”

Chuckling softly Gideon nodded, “Well, that’s what I’m here for.”

“It’s also nice to hear a familiar accent,” Rip told her.

“I was thinking the same,” Gideon replied softly, “I moved here a few years ago to go to school. You?”

Rip shrugged, “I travel for my work.”

“Gideon,” a call came across the floor.

Sighing she said, “I apologise but I’m needed. It was nice to meet you.”

“And you, Gideon.”

As she headed over to help Nate, Gideon turned back to look at where he stood. He smiled before heading out the store.

*********************************************

Gideon wondered how this week had turned out to be so weird. After the email from Miranda, her computer crashed, someone broke in to the apartment trying to steal said computer (where had Zari learned to throw a tennis ball like that) and the odd flashes of information in her head, Gideon just wanted the week to end.

Zari had decided that they were heading out to get a drink and have some fun. Reluctantly Gideon agreed which was why she was heading into Zari’s favourite club. The blasting music surrounded her the moment she stepped inside, and Gideon followed her friend to the bar. Zari pushed her way in, making sure the barman saw her to try to get their drinks before anyone else.

“Can I buy you a drink?” a familiar voice asked from her side.

Gideon turned, “Rip? I didn’t expect to see you here?”

He smiled at her and Gideon felt her stomach flutter slightly, “I wanted a quiet drink, I appear to have chosen the wrong place.” At her confused look, he chuckled, “A friend of mine works here and he’s letting me stay with him until I get a place of my own. I’m just picking up the keys.”

She laughed.

“Would you like to go somewhere for a drink that we can talk?” Rip asked, hope in his gorgeous green eyes.

“She’d love to,” Zari spoke up.

Gideon turned to her friend, slightly annoyed, “I can’t just abandon you.”

“Of course you can,” Zari grinned, “I can see some of the other guys in the corner. Go, have a drink, have some fun.”

Rip was waiting as she turned back to him, “Don’t feel under any pressure.”

“I’d like that,” Gideon said softly.

He motioned her to join him and they headed to a bistro just along the block, managing to get a table quickly and soon Gideon had a glass of white wine while Rip had a scotch.

“I’m glad you agreed,” Rip said, “I don’t know many people in town and I’m moving here so it’s nice to make a new friend. Especially one as smart and beautiful as you.”

Gideon chuckled, “You just want to keep on my good side, so I’ll set up your home computer.”

“No,” he protested before smiling, “My TV and home cinema system actually.”

They talked for an hour or so, Gideon enjoying herself immensely.

“Do you feel like a walk along the strip?” he asked, “You can show me the best places to eat and where to avoid.”

Gideon nodded, “Only if we stop for ice cream.”

“I will follow your lead,” Rip slid off his stool and offered her his hand.

The night was warm as they walked slowly still deep in conversation. She found that she liked Rip. It had been a while since she’d liked anyone in that way, not since Andy.

Hearing footsteps behind them Gideon caught the reflection of a blonde woman and several men walking behind them.

“The ice cream shop is coming up,” Gideon said, confused when Rip wrapped his arm around her waist and propelled her past it, “What are you doing?”

“I’m so sorry, Gideon,” Rip stated as he suddenly produced a gun making her yelp in fear, “But I lied to you. We’re being followed and the people following us are after you.”

“What do you mean they’re after me?” Gideon demanded.

He tugged her along one of the alleys, pulling her back against him placing his hand over her mouth as the blonde and her friends walked past.

“Okay, I need you to listen to me,” Rip said softly in her ear, “I work for Argus and I need you to tell me if you’ve heard from Miranda Coburn.”

“Miranda?” Gideon demanded when Rip let her go.

“Yes, she’s an Argus agent too.”

“I,” she shook her head, “I got an email from her a few days ago.”

“Did you open it?” Rip asked, starting them moving again, “Gideon, this is very important. Did you open it?”

Gideon nodded, “It was just something from an old game we’d made and then pictures.”

“You saw them,” Rip said, pulling her towards the tower building as he suddenly started talking into thin air, “This is Hunter, extraction required.”

“I don’t understand,” Gideon cried, unable to stop him from pulling her onto the rooftop, “What are you talking about? You’re saying Miranda Coburn is a spy?”

“A rogue spy,” Rip replied, “I know you’re scared and I’m sorry, Gideon. I truly am,” he let out a sigh, “I’m going to point my gun at you in a moment and I need you to not panic.”

Confused, Gideon froze as a woman’s voice came from behind her.

“You know,” the blonde who had been following them said, “This was supposed to be a nice easy mission. Grab the geek, get the information and get out of here. But as usual, Hunter you have to get involved in things that don’t concern you.”

“Well we don’t all try just to shoot or punch our problems, Sara,” Rip retorted.

While they were both distracted, Gideon took the opportunity to try and run hearing Rip call her name, she stalled as more information filled her mind.

“They’re going to kill him,” Gideon said.

Rip frowned, “Kill Who?”

“Eiling, the general,” Gideon told them.

Sara frowned, “General Eiling?”

Gideon rubbed her hand over her eyes, “Look, something is wrong with me, okay? I don't know what it is, but something is very, very wrong with me, and I'm remembering things that I shouldn't know.”

“Gideon,” Rip said softly, “Talk to me.”

“I don’t know,” she cried, “For example, there was a demolitions expert in plaza today. That's kind of odd, wouldn't you say? Look, last week the blueprints were intercepted, blueprints of a hotel, that hotel. And then a file of schematics of a bomb was found in Star City. The bomb is in that hotel.”

Sara frowned, “She was working with Miranda.”

“No,” Rip argued, “She opened Miranda’s e-mail,” he turned back to her, “Gideon, those pictures that you saw were encoded with secrets, government secrets. If you saw them, then you know them.”

“There were thousands of them,” Gideon breathed.

“Wait a minute,” Sara spoke up, “You're telling me all of our secrets are in her head.”

Gideon shuddered as the red dot from the gun the other woman held moved to her forehead.

Rip sighed, “Gideon is the computer.”

“What?” Gideon demanded becoming more panicked by the minute, “What does that mean? What’s happening to me?”

Rip moved slowly to her, “Gideon, listen to me. You said there was a bomb. Is there time to stop it?”

Gideon stared at him, “Are you crazy?”

“No,” Sara snapped, “We’re the good guys. We get paid to keep bombs from exploding.”

“I can’t,” Gideon whispered, “I just fix computers. Call Miranda, she’ll be able to do it.”

“Miranda is dead,” Rip stated coldly, “She died sending you those secrets.”

Gideon stared at him horrified, “Miranda is dead?”

“Yeah,” Sara interrupted again annoyance in her voice, “And she's gonna have a lot of company unless you start talking. So, pretty please.”

Rip caught Gideon’s hand making her look at him, “It’s all there in your head. You know this. Can you trust me for a little longer?”

Shakily, Gideon nodded.

Rip turned to Sara, “Let’s go.”

*********************************************

The sun was beginning to rise as Gideon sat on the beach going over and over in her mind what had happened the evening before. Managing to stop the bomb, listening to Sara and Rip argue over what they wanted to do with her. When they mentioned her friends and brothers, Gideon spoke up and told them in no uncertain terms that nothing happened to the people she loved.

“You leave my family alone,” she had stated, “You need me and right now, I’m going home.”

She’d reached the door to the apartment she shared with her brothers before turning around and heading to the beach unable to talk to them right now.

A shadow crossed her, and Gideon turned as Rip took a seat at her side. He handed her a chocolate croissant and cup of tea.

“Thank you,” Gideon said softly, “How long have you been here?”

“All night,” Rip shrugged.

Gideon took a shuddering breathe, “There’s no where I can run, is there?”

“Not from us,” he replied softly.

“I have a computer in my head,” Gideon whispered, “And I can’t understand why Miranda chose me for this. What happens now? Although I can barely focus on anything right now so tell me in small words.”

“Well, you had a long night,” Rip noted, he waited until she’d taken a few more bites and had a few sips of tea before speaking again, “For now, you go back to your own life. We'll protect you and you'll work with us,” he took her hand and held it tightly, “I know you’re scared and I know everything you learned is overwhelming but I promise I’m here to help and protect you. I just need you to do one thing, Gideon.”

Sighing she asked, “What?”

“I need you to trust me.”

Turning to watch the sun come up, Gideon knew her life was never going to be the same again.

#fic #legends of tomorrow #rip hunter #gideon #timeship #chuck AU

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eldritchsurveys · 5 years

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647.

Do you play Pokemon Go? If so, what level are you and who’s your buddy? >> No, but Sparrow does. I think it’s pretty neat, I’m just not motivated by the things that playing Pokémon with any regularity requires you to be motivated by (and I’m definitely not motivated by any of it enough to go outside for it). Do you ever sit indoors and wear sunglasses or a hat? >> I’ve worn sunglasses indoors, because indoor lighting can be particularly harsh. And I’ll put my hoodie on with the hood up if my head is cold. Are you putting off doing something right now? If so, what is it? >> No, I’m waiting for a download to be done so I can do what I want to do. What’s the most daring thing you have ever done? >> *shrug* Do you know how to read animals’ behaviour? >> I have a vague understanding of the behaviour of most common housepets. It’d be more in-depth if, you know, I cared more.

What would be something that made you think less of a person you just met? >> Unabashed bigotry.

Are you like me and hoard notebooks and pens? >> No. Do you like playing video games? If so, what do you usually play? >> I do. I play MMOs a lot now -- World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 and ESO, particularly -- but my original favourite kind of game is the single-player narrative/character-driven RPG (like what Bioware became popular for). I am also very good at Guitar Hero. Are you sitting in front of or by a window? What can you see out there? >> I’m by a window. It looks out onto the parking lot and the rest of the apartment complex. Are there any coasters on your table? If so, do they have text or pictures? >> We have coasters kind of... strewn about the apartment. I’m the only one who uses them with any regularity, though. There’s one with a raven on it and one with a sugar skull on it on my desk. I think the other sugar skull ones are on the coffee table, if not just... lost to the black hole that sometimes spawns and devours things we could have sworn was just [wherever]. Have you ever sewn a garment? >> No, but I’ve mended and customised garments. Why do you take surveys on Bzoink? >> I don’t, I take them from bzoink and post them here. Do you have a song playing in your head right now, too? >> No. Do you ever dance to the song playing in your head? >> I don’t think I usually do that. How are you environmentally friendly? Or do you just not care? >> I don’t consider myself “environmentally friendly”. I’ve not made much of an effort to be, so I assume I’m as environmentally unfriendly as your average modern-era consumer. I have the ability to care, but right now I don’t have much willpower to, especially since if we’re honest, most of what’s immediately going awry with the various ecologies of the world isn’t my doing, per se, and nothing I did differently would stop it from happening. Back in 2004, were you into that The Sims story craze? >> I don’t even know what that was. How long have you had an online presence for? >> I’ve been online in some form since the turn of the millennium. Don’t you hate it when people answer to surveys with one word answers? >> I fail to see what that has to do with me. I only read certain people’s survey answers anyway. I don’t have time to be reading everyone’s surveys and getting mad about how the fuck they’re taking it, lmao. When paying for things, do you prefer NFC payments or cash? >> I don’t know what NFC payments are. I usually use a debit card. Isn’t it cool how we can google anything, anywhere we are, in seconds? >> It’s very cool. It has its downsides like literally everything, but it’s still very cool and I make great use of it daily. Or do you just never google anything and just ask others to do it for you? >> I’m definitely the type to plug whatever little thing I’m curious about into a search engine. I remember one time back in the NY days there was this ongoing argument between Sigma and Vlad about how Sigma would always google whenever someone had an idle curiosity and Sigma could never understand why Vlad thought that was a bad thing. (Vlad is/was just... remarkably old-fashioned, for whatever reason, and thinks that we’re all slowly going stupid because we don’t have to look things up in encyclopaedias anymore or... whatever. I never really understood her point of view.) If you got a chance to go to space, would you? >> Yes, absolutely, if I was cleared for space travel. Which, let’s be honest, I probably wouldn’t be. Ever watched a cat or a dog sleep and run/twitch in their sleep? >> Yeah. Have you ever had an “adults’ toy”? If so, how often do/did you use it? >> I’ve had one in the past, out of curiosity, but I only used it once. It became a bathroom decoration instead. As cool as they are in theory, toys just... don’t do it for me, for several reasons. Do you read erotic stories or watch porn? (No, 50 Shades doesn’t count) >> 50 Shades absolutely counts, since it’s an erotic story. Shut up. Anyway, yes, I read erotic stories and watch porn sometimes. Do you do your own nails or do you pay for someone to do them? >> I don’t do anything with them, most of the time. Are there any plants in the room you’re in? >> Yeah, there’s a spider plant. Have you ever cold brewed tea or coffee? >> No. What’s something we do every day but they don’t depict in movies? >> *shrug* Do you enjoy travelling? >> Eh. I used to enjoy it a lot more than I do now, but now my sensory issues tend to get in the way of my enjoyment more often than I’d like. Where’s the most beautiful place you’ve been to so far? >> *shrug* What’s something cool about the city/town you live in? >> Hm.

Which body part do you think you touch the most throughout the day? >> I don’t know. What’s your highest level of education? >> I graduated high school. If you were to open a business, what kind of business would it be? >> --- What’s the most important thing in any kind of relationship? >> Don’t ask me. What do you do when you have an itch in a spot you can’t reach? >> Use an object or a wall corner. If you wear lipstick, what’s your favourite colour to wear? >> Plum. Is your style feminine, masculine or somewhere in the middle? >> Somewhere in the middle, I’d imagine, but listing towards masculine. Do you usually carry a backpack, a shoulder bag or something else? >> I carry a backpack or a tote bag most of the time. Have you ever made your own jewelry? If so, what have you made? >> No. Do you wear glasses? >> No. If so, have you ever tried to fix them when they’ve broken? >> --- Have you ever made a friend online who lives in another country? >> Yeah. Are there a lot of dragonflies around your house? >> I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dragonfly around here. I like dragonflies and there’s one flying around the parking lot. >> Sweet, I also like dragonflies but I don’t think this is their preferred environment. Have you ever seen two dragonflies mating? >> Yeah, the first time I saw it I was like 11 and I was transfixed, lmfao. What smell brings back a memory for you? >> *shrug* What’s the best foreign film (and not made in Hollywood) that you’ve seen? >> Oh, I don’t know. What’s a song you just can’t stand? >> *shrug* In your ideal profession, would you need a work uniform? >> I don’t have an ideal profession, but if I did, I’d assume being able to dress comfortably would be one of the criteria for it.

#surveys #survey #random survey

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itshysterie · 6 years

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[2018] Going to Music Shows for EXO

Please do not repost any of this, you can share just by linking the post!

Because many people have asked (and accused me of being ‘selfish’ for not sharing when most of this is easy to figure out via other tutorials), I’m going to make a general “guide” on how to go to music shows for EXO!

As a disclaimer, I can’t give you just one set of instructions, because the requirements, methods, etc. used by SM’s fanstaff can differ even within the same promotion period! So this could be confusing, and it’s still important to be checking the official notices to see what you need to do / what you should bring.

The Notice

Notices are posted on the ‘Notice’ board on the official website, because EXO (and SM groups in general) do not have official fancafes.

The notice will say what time the prerecording is (listing two times if there is more than one - like during comeback week, or if there is a postrecording for the next week), what time fanstaff will give out entry numbers, how you can attend/apply, and what you need to get in.

There is no set time for the notice being posted. During promos it is good to check frequently if you plan on going, or when possible to even be waiting near the venues for music shows the night before, just in case it’s first-come-first-serve (선착순) entry. I’ll explain the different ways of applying below.

Here’s an example of the notice from last week’s comeback for TEMPO at Music Bank.

The Methods

For EXO, it can either be 선착순 (first-come-first-serve) or applications (신청 - 참여 신청 [application to participate], 사전 신청 [prior application]) held through e-mail or Naver Forms.

When it is announced as 선착순 (first-come-first-serve), the line/list cannot begin before the notice is posted. Often fans will wait around the venue where people line up, and the moment the notice is posted, someone will yell out “NUMBER ONE!” (일번!), people crash in towards them, and once a line of some sort is formed the people at the front of the line by that person will start giving out numbers.

When there is a lot of fans waiting around before the notice is posted, this can be chaotic. (Tends to happen when the notice is posted late, so people know it will be 선착순 instead of applications). Sometimes there are no people around yet, and the first person there doesn’t want to be in charge of managing the list, so people will wait in a line until someone who wants to manage the list comes.

The person will generally ask for your name and the last 4 digits of your phone number. This is so when they do name-checks that it is you in line, not someone else. The person making the list will then stay there all night, managing the list/writing down new names, and then holding periodic name checks overnight.

For EXO they tend to do name checks once every 3 or 4 hours, and the final check is around 2 hours before fanstaff come to give out numbers. This can vary, so make sure you listen closely or ask what time the next check is each time. If you are late for a check, even by one minute, you are cut from the list.

After the last unofficial name check, generally fans will stay IN LINE or at least not wander far for the next 2 hours until fanstaff show up. Sometimes they’re early (and sometimes late), and it’s better safe than sorry after staying awake all night.

When it is 신청 (applications), SM often will use e-mail (jokingly called the 멜림 “mail-lympics”) or Naver forms (폼림 “form-lympics”). On both e-mail and the form, the SM fanstaff will compile a list of the number of applicants whose e-mails/forms are submitted first at the assigned time.

The post will say what time applications will happen, and you need to send it exactly at the application time. Even if you do, it’s not uncommon to not get on the list.

For e-mail, they post the e-mail you need to send to, and the format of the e-mail subject line. You have to follow the format exactly or they will not accept your application no matter how quickly you send it. The format occasionally changes (whether they want your full birth year/just the last two numbers, whether they want hyphens in the phone number or not, which order the information is sent in, whether there’s a final backslash, etc.) so it’s important to check the format each time the notice comes up.

An example of the format is :

[1107쇼챔]FULLNAME/YYYYMMDD/###-####-####/

Being the date and name of the show in the brackets [ ], followed by you FULL NAME as it appears on you ID (and EXO-L card), your birthdate, and your phone number. The post will have a section listed as [참여 신청 방법] or [신청 방법], and for e-mails it will have the 양식 (format) listed. ALWAYS check closely! I suggest copy-pasting the format and entering your information.

The body of the e-mail always is kept empty. They will reject your application for even having something written in the e-mail.

SM will then post the list of applicants who were first in their inbox, often late at night, and either it will be 선착순 (first-come-first-serve) among the applicants, or they will assign numbers for entry. If it’s 선착순, follow the instructions above for 선착순. If not, make sure you’re still earlier than the time listed for fanstaff arriving! If you’re late, you will be cut.

For Naver Forms they ask for similar information. Make sure you include your full name as it is on your ID and your EXO-L card, a Korean phone number, and your birthdate. Make sure you do not hit ‘SUBMIT’ (제출 / 확인, depending on the form) until the actual application time!

If you submit your application too early, even by accident, you will not be on the list. You also cannot re-apply, because duplicate applications are also immediately cut.

They will check all of the information asked for. Remember the phone number you put down, because they will ask you either the first four (앞번호 ap-beonho) or last four (뒷번호 dwit-beonho) numbers of the phone number to confirm your identity. It’s best to use the actual number for your phone/SIM card, because in the case of a sudden change in time or location they will send texts out to the number listed.

The Requirements

This is where it gets more complicated, because they will change what you need every day. I would recommend taking EVERYTHING that might possibly be listed if you are not confident in your ability to check the notice in detail.

They will always require -

PHOTO ID (사진부착신분증) : This must be your passport or Alien Registration Card (Korean ID).

EXO-L CARD (EXO-L 모바일카드): The app! It MUST be registered under your REAL NAME with your real birthdate. You also need to be actually on the app, which requires wi-fi / data. It cannot be a screencap. They will check if it’s actually the app!

OFFICIAL LIGHTSTICK (VER. 2) (공식야광봉) : Just this promotions they switched to requiring the 2nd version (white) lightstick. They check if it turns on! Make sure you have fresh/new batteries, and DO NOT leave the battery pack screwed on in your bag! The Bluetooth function will drain batteries even when your lightstick is not on.

If you do not have these you will be immediately cut from the list, no questions asked. You will be cut if your EXO-L card is not your real name, if it doesn’t match your ID, or if it’s a screencap. You will be cut if your lightstick will not turn on or. ALWAYS make sure you have these.

Other varying requirements -

DIGITAL DOWNLOAD RECEIPT (음원, 음원 구입내역) : Often SM only requires you to have the title song downloaded, but always make sure! Generally it MUST be from Melon, MNET, or Soribada, on an account under your real name (they change the sites occasionally, but Melon and MNET are always included). YOU NEED TO HAVE THE ACCOUNT INFO PAGE SHOWING YOUR USERNAME AND FULL NAME, TOO. Make sure both screencaps / pages show your username, and that none of the information on your user information page is ***ed out.

If your print-out is not right, they will let you run to a nearby place to print it and run back. If you do not know print shops nearby I would suggest taking the loss and accepting a lower tier. You will be pushed to the back of the line, but you will not be pushed to a lower tier (often having all the items = tier 1, and it goes down based on which items you’re missing).

ALBUMS (앨범 *** VER.) : When this is included, it is the most recent album. You must have the actual CD, and it’s best to have the case as well. (For ‘Don’t Mess Up My Tempo’ I am guessing they will require the case, because the CD looks the same for all versions.)

!! They OFTEN change which version / the number of versions they want. Some days they might want just one album, any version, other days they might ask for more than one or ask for specific versions. During Monster/Lucky One, some days they would want both Korean version albums, other days they would want the Chinese and Korean version of Monster, and on other days they wanted all four versions. !!

Fanstaff & The Recording

ALWAYS listen to fanstaff. Do not fight with them. Do not break the rules.

Even if you are given a number, you are not guaranteed to get in. The broadcasting stations can sometimes change the number of fans who are allowed in. This is not the fanstaffs’ fault. (It is often fans’ fault, for breaking a rule / being unruly, either while lining up or the week before.)

SM fanstaff has in the past cut all foreign fans from a line, or given foreign fans priority below Korean fans (regardless of residency status) because of one or a few foreign fans breaking the rules. Do not be the person responsible for this.

General Rules :

NO PICTURES, NO VIDEO, NO AUDIO RECORDING. : This includes with your phone. You cannot take pictures inside of the studio whatsoever - not selcas/selfies, and not even of the stage. SM fanstaff is so strict about this that you generally are not allowed to even have your phone out doing other things once you are inside the studio. Remember: A Korean fan might be told off/kicked out, but a foreign fan being caught might not only cause you to get kicked out, it could have bad consequences for all foreign fans. Getting caught by security instead of fanstaff can cause the entire fanclub to be kicked out and banned from the recording.

NO CALLING OUT TO THE MEMBERS. : I know this doesn’t really make sense. You want to cheer and call out and fangirl/boy. But SM is very strict about staying completely quiet except for the official fanchant, even when they’re performing. Between takes you need to stay as quiet as possible, too, even if EXO is on stage. Fans freaking out between takes/on standby can cause delays in the prerecording, and annoys the staff during the recording - too much can cause the broadcasting station to let in less fans the following week, so SM fan staff tries to be safe and just have fans be absolutely quiet except for the fanchants. (You also shouldn’t talk over a whisper even with the people next to you.)

I highly recommend trying to understand at least basic Korean before coming to an SM recording. The fanstaff often will not make the effort to try and speak a different language with you (though it depends on the person, how rushed they are, how rude fans in general are being that day, etc.) If you did not understand or missed something, try to ask the Korean fans next to you in line what has been said.

Fanstaff are there to make sure as many fans as possible get into the recordings, to make sure everything is as organized as possible (which doesnt’ always go too well), and to keep people from breaking rules that would reflect badly on the fandom and on EXO. Don’t make more trouble for them than they’re already having to deal with.

(( A story: At the Music Core recording for Tempo, security put us into the seats, and some girls with higher numbers ended up a bit closer to the front than fans with lower numbers. A handful of fans decided to loudly complain to security/fanstaff [even though other fans were telling them not to], which almost caused the prerecording to be cancelled / delayed, caused way more trouble than necessary, and made the fanstaff cry because they had fought to get as many people as possible into the recording. These fans caused more than 200 who could have gotten into the ‘Tempo’ or ‘Ooh La La La’ recording to be sent home without seeing anything, after waiting overnight. Yes, sometimes it’s unlucky and it sucks when that happens, but don’t ruin things for everyone just because you’re unhappy. ))

#exo #music shows #guide #exo guide #music show guide

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lilithpleasant-archive · 6 years

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i RLY wanna play ts2 rn but of COURSE its throwing a fit

and therefor. so am i.

i rly dont know what to doooooo now im getting the flashing pink scenario in all my hoods, and i was thinking maybe its somehow some cc item or mod throwing stuff off but i generated a new ts2 folder w no cc etc and it was still happening, have there been any, idk windows 10 updates that messed w things recently cause this is honestly so sudden and i havent changed anything significant abt my game in ages like this is so random? and none of the normal flashing pink solutions do anything like ive used graphics rules maker and everything was working perfectly when i first got this laptop a few months ago and i havent changed anything?

and it doesnt seem like it happens EVERY SINGLE TIME i open the game, but more often than not at this point. atm when i load my current hood either the entire thing is flashing pink or it looks fine but my current family has one sim w a flashing pink face in the thumbnail thing when u click on the lot, and their lot crashes the game when i try to load it. it doesnt crash the game if i try to load it when the entire game is flashing tho.

im sry ive been whining and asking for help so much lol but GOSH its annoying it seems like whenever u wanna play theres something stopping you, u feel me.

anyways. if i turn off the shaders most of it stops flashing but the sims in lots will still be doing it n t-posing around the lot and it is very unsettling to say the least.

um some more info, im on windows 10, my sims is on a ssd, i have 32 gb of ram, a nvidia video card uhhhhhh. idk what other info is pertinent so here is my actual laptop n all that fun stuff

this is probably just something im gonna have to troubleshoot myself and try to figure out but, if anyone else has had this happen to them suddenly and figured out what the problem was i would rly appreciate ur comments.

anyway ive recently extracted a whole bunch of items from the game observer and im planning on converting those to ts2, so even if my game isnt working right im still gonna have a bunch of new things for it.

i also have over 100 outlast conversions i still gotta share so pls accept those future downloads as thanks for putting up w all my Game Issues lol

until then i might be posting more ts4 than normal, altho i already kinda feel like im getting bored of it SO. who knows

#xoxod: sims edition

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aoibaratraveler · 4 years

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A Look Back At My Time in Japan! Chapter 5

Fourth and Final Month on Exchange: July

This was a month full of social events both fun and bittersweet!

I started off the month by watching a movie with some of my uni friends. I have no idea what movie we watched but I’m sure it was a good time. The next couple of weeks consisted of mostly dance practice for the pier side festival that was to be taking place at the end of the month in Nagasaki. I joined the JASIN dance team since they were short on members and I thought it would be cool (plus we got a free university shirt for participating), but man was it difficult. JASIN was the international program that brought in exchange students from around the world to Nagasaki University of Foreign Studies and every year they apparently recruit exchange students to represent the school in a dance in the opening ceremony/party on the first day of the festival. I think there were about three or four other universities there. I actually have footage from the event thanks to one of my pals who was an intern at NHK since they televised it (I think I’ve been on NHK in some way, shape, or form at least two or three times but that was the only time that I was able to actually get the footage since I rarely had access to a TV in Japan during my travels *sighs*). Another girl from my exchange group who was super good at dancing and just had great coordination offered to give me some dance tutoring every day after class when I didn’t have work leading up to the event since I’m just born clumsy so it took awhile for me to get the hang of it.

By around the 16th of the month, pretty much all of Japan went crazy; especially my university. Why may you ask? Because Pokemon Go was released in Japan. While North America had access to the game, Japan was a couple of weeks behind so when it was finally released on Japanese servers it just blew up. Seriously, you couldn’t pass a person on the street without seeing them playing the game. It was great. Even R, one of my university buds who didn’t seem too into anime or gaming, downloaded the game before me and was playing. We pretty much spent everyday thereafter playing together, catching Pokemon and trying to compete in levelling up. She, Corn (a nickname for one of our guy friends) and I decided that we would all be team Mystic since everyone else seemed to be Instinct. Honestly, even the teachers joined in on the excitement. I stupidly didn’t invest in a data sim card or portable WiFi during my time in Japan so I was limited to public WiFi when playing but there was enough of it to go around in the city, it was just harder in the suburbs or more rural areas to play. It’s a shame though because while I still play, most of the people that I started playing with have lost interest in the game but I have decided to stay team Mystic even though the bf is team Valor just to hold onto the memory of that Summer. It was a great bonding experience although I did annoy at least one of my friends with my constant playing who never saw the fun in it.

I also spent a lot of my days that month going out after work with my coworkers. It was just a super lively month in general; B introduced me to a small, but delicious local Korean place and there was an izakaya outing almost every other night with my uni friends. I don’t drink but I still enjoy the atmosphere of everyone being silly and just having a good time - plus the food at izakaya joints is always delicious. It was also the birthday of the crazy receptionist that month, M, and while I may not have been on the best terms with her, she was still friendly with B who is friends with me so I still got an invite. We went to a manga cafe/karaoke joint and it was just quite the time. We somehow managed to stay out until 5 am.

Some days after, B and I went on a hike up to Inasayama from the centre of the city. We were able to open up to each other a lot during this walk and just talked for ages. I hadn’t been hiking in a long while and even though I was cycling or walking to university everyday...I seemed to be a bit out of shape for the hike...Once we left the centre of the city and were hiking more rural routes I really felt it whereas B had been used to inclines like this since she lived at the top of a small mountain and had to walk a huge staircase everyday to get home so it was a piece of cake for her. This also took place on a gorgeous day in the sweltering heat and humidity and I seemed to have forgotten to pack water so it was tough, not gonna lie. I also had stopped wearing the hiking boots that I bought specifically for Japan after my trip to Taiwan since it was just a bad purchase, my feet could never breathe and were a sweaty mess after a day of wearing them...sorry TMI! So I was always spending my days, whether hiking or not, in my sandals that I bought in Taiwan. Not the smartest idea, but hey, at least I got a cool sandal tan (xD). Fortunately for me though, with regards to dehydration, Japan has the most vending machines of any country, about 1 for every 23 citizens and each one has water as well as many delicious and sometimes seasonal drinks so I was covered for refreshments. You can literally find these machines in the middle of nowhere and the most random of places. We were taking side streets up residential areas and we still found a couple. By the time we got close to the top of the mountain it all felt worth it. It was so beautiful, with spectacular views and we managed to catch such a nice breeze. I wish I could still go on hikes like that one with B. It feels so nostalgic to think about that day.

I think I mentioned back in chapter one or two that my home stay family unfortunately did not turn out to be so great even though in the beginning they seemed awesome; so I’m going to take a little break from my recollection of July to explain why that was since July was to be the last month that I would stay with them and I might as well get that out of the way. In the beginning, they really made me feel comfortable and happy and it’s a shame it turned out the way it did because I really wanted to have a second family in Japan through them. They didn’t by any means break my exchange experience but it is a slight unfortunate side to my time there. Before I met my home stay mother who was late picking me up on the first of April, my university informed me of how lucky I was to be staying with this family. This was primarily because their house was in the centre of Nagasaki city and close to everything I could need. I wouldn’t have minded at all being in the pure countryside though but oh well. They also said this because apparently my home stay family were veterans in hosting people but had taken a two year break from doing it and I was the first person that they had decided to take on in a while. (I later found out that it was because their last home stay student was this big smelly guy who just never left his room and seemed to watch anime all day, every day. My home stay family often compared me to him and said I was much better while basically bad mouthing him.). I think that after a month of living with my home stay family the novelty must have worn off which is strange that I would have been a novelty to them since they were so used to hosting foreigners but it truly felt like that. All of April was great and they really showed me a great time. From May onward, however, their attitude towards me just dropped. I tried to be as respectful as I could to them and never take advantage of their kindness or ask too much of them so I really don’t know what happened. They just became very neglectful and apathetic towards me. My theory is that even though my home stay mother was a stay at home mother she just had too much on her plate. She was very sociable and if she wasn’t tending to her high school aged daughter’s or junior high school aged son’s needs then she was taking part in some kind of event. Not that I think it should be her job to clean it but their house was always filthy so clearly she didn’t care about that either. Which meant she was outside of the house a lot of the time and wasn’t cooking or cleaning and which would result in the father having to cook, usually just enough for himself and his son. Essentially, if the mother wasn’t home then I wouldn’t get breakfast or dinner--which is what I paid for as part of my home stay package (and it was quite the expensive package).

To be honest it felt like they were becoming quite stingy with me which didn’t make sense because I saved them a lot of money. I often went out with my friends and would always let them know when I was going out and didn’t need dinner and then in Ramadan when I spent the month fasting I never needed breakfast so they didn’t need to cook for an extra person for a long time. Regardless, there was one time when they all decided to go out for dinner for a special occasion and said I was allowed to come but had to pay for my portion. So either come out and pay for dinner with them or get no dinner at home and have to buy dinner anyway. It’s not like I was expecting them to pay for me but come on, I paid so much to live with them and they were saving so much money as it is but then were even having me pay for dinner with them? I guess I’m still a little bitter. On some days when it rained or when I didn’t have any plans, which was somewhat rare, they even seemed bothered by the idea that I might want to spend the whole day in the house and would ask if I was planning to go out at all. I went from really trying to be close with them and getting them to like me to just keeping to myself after a while. My little home stay brother who was in junior high didn’t seem to get the memo about being cold to me because in the end he was my only friend in the house and we would often play card games together. Don’t get me wrong though, I did try to at least communicate the food issue with my home stay mother but she acted like she had no idea what I was talking about and that the times that I didn’t get any dinner was because they didn’t know that I was in the house (???). A complete lie because I always informed them when I planned to be outside the house through text (always in Japanese) and when I didn’t say anything then that meant that I was planning to be home for dinner; besides she also never asked or made sure if I was planning to be out.

Throughout July as well, my home stay mother was also just never around when I needed help with preparing to leave in August or would just make up an excuse and say she needed to do something when I needed her help. You see, I was planning to start backpacking around Japan come August and needed to sort out how to get my suitcase from Nagasaki to Tokyo and what to do with all of the things that I wasn’t planning to take with me i.e. donate or recycle. I had done some research on the best method to get my suitcase sent back to Tokyo without incurring any extra costs. When I sent my suitcase to Nagasaki from Tokyo in March it had a place to go to but since I would be backpacking and didn’t really have a place waiting for me at that point in Tokyo I couldn’t just send my suitcase all the way to Tokyo with nowhere to go but I had found out I could send it to a major post office, for example, Osaka city post office, and they would hold it for ten days free of charge before sending it back to where it came from and then I could just send it again to Tokyo from Osaka when I was to arrive in Osaka. It did need a lot of explanation to the post office staff on what I was planning to do and my suitcase was heavy enough already so I had to get rid of a bunch of stuff. This is where I thought my home stay mother would help me. First of all, the Nagasaki city post office was a bit far to be lugging around the suitcase from their apartment so I thought she could drive me there, help me donate some of my stuff and help to explain my plan to the post office staff. Alas, she wasn’t around to help with any of that and I had to figure it all out on my own. Anyway I’m getting a bit ahead of myself because that didn’t actually happen until the beginning of August but I wanted to paint a picture of what my home stay family was like before I mention them again later.

The end of July was super jam packed. On the 27th, I had my last day at the English school that I was working at and it felt like my time there had gone by so fast. My boss made it clear to me how much he wanted me to come back and work for him when I was to graduate. Working for him was quite the experience and I definitely learned a lot about myself as a teacher and about teaching and realised that I really enjoyed it which is why I decided from that point that I was going to work toward applying for the JET programme, but that’s a story for another time. My last shift was really sweet because I had bonded with a bunch of my students so each group of students from the various classes that I taught made me a little farewell card that I still have. I was really sad to be going but looking forward to possibly teaching in Japan again at some point in my future.

The next day was the “graduation/farewell” ceremony for all of the exchange students at my university who were planning to leave. This was also sad but also so much fun because the school made a whole event out of it. There was food and music and everyone was dressed up so nice. I even put together my best outfit which was a flowery crop top hand me down from B and some nice overalls. Looking back on some photos though and by the end of my exchange I became so dark compared to how I normally am. I guess because I was walking to school everyday but I really don’t tan that easily in Vancouver, just shows how strong the sun is in Japan. My home stay mother also made a passing comment (before the graduation) about how it would have been nicer if I stayed whiter...I don’t think she meant to sound racist or anything and I am just doing a literal translation of what she said but I think she was just bewildered at how much I just didn’t care all that much that I was tanning and the fact that I was able to become so tanned and that I never put any effort in to look feminine. It also is not common at all for Japanese women to tan and actually they often try their best to cover their skin from the sun in the Summer since looking “white” or pale is something most girls strive to look like there. Anyway, the ceremony portion of the event was really nice and some of the exchange students who had been there longer gave a little speech. It felt super bittersweet to be saying goodbye to all my friends that I had met there from around the world. I met people from the U.S, the Netherlands, France, Vietnam, and China and we shared so much together whether in class or at some university event. I tried to write a letter to some of the people that I was close to and I ended each one with a little message that is a bit cheesy but why not? This was a landmark event in our lives. I said something along the lines of “this isn’t goodbye but see you later!” because I was planning to see them again and I have already met with some of them since then. Later that evening, B took me up to Inasa mountain to look at the stars, enjoy the night view of Nagasaki and celebrate the end of my studies. It was a lovely end to an eventful four months both at my part time job and university.

The day after graduating was the long awaited dance event of the pier side festival! It was quite the exhausting night and I was super nervous about whether I would dance well at all but it was a success! I was able to dance in sync with everyone else! By the end of it all I was super red in the face from what a workout it was and that it was just super humid. It felt like the whole city was there to watch. It was a little embarrassing because some of my students were there too as well some of my teachers from the university but it was a lot of fun and really cool to be able to represent the university and be in the spotlight like that. It honestly went by too fast. You know that feeling of tension that builds up before you get on a really scary looking roller coaster but then you get on and it’s over before you know it? That’s what this kind of felt like. Either way, a really memorable experience and I’m super glad that it was filmed by NHK and I was able to get a copy. Actually, now that I think about it. I pretty much did everything but vlog/blog when it came to collecting memories of things that happened. I took SO many photos of things, a few videos (both on a really bad and worn out phone) and whenever something was being filmed I always tried to get a copy of it. The second day of the pier side festival was the day I got to fulfil a little childhood fantasy of mine; I got to have my first go at a Summer festival at night in a yukata or Summer kimono and it was a blast! I felt super pretty in B’s hand me down yukata that she gave me which had a pink flowery design on a black background. I walked around with R and Corn and later met up with B, ate at some of the food stalls and watched the pretty fireworks for a good 30 minutes. It was absolutely lovely.

On the 30th, one of the senior American teachers that I had mentioned before who was somewhat in charge of the exchange students threw what was apparently his annual end of the year Summer party at his house. It seemed a tad bizarre to me that all of the Japanese first year students (other years were welcome too) and all of the exchange students were invited to party it up at a teacher’s house to celebrate finishing our studies but oh well. R made me promise to go since she had to be there as well because she was on the culture festival preparation committee or something and apparently everyone in the committee has to go to this party so she wanted me to be there too. I didn’t mind at all, I mean, I had some reservations about it because it was weird but also because I had to be up early the next day but since a couple other friends of mine were going as well as H who said he’d drive us (this teacher’s house was in the proper countryside, middle of nowhere). From what I can remember it was an interesting but still strange night. Several of the students didn’t care at all about drinking at a teacher’s house and people generally let loose. My only problem was a couple of the female first years and one girl in particular who got super wasted and was dressed in heels and was just being really loud and obnoxious but still wanted to follow me and a few others across the street, in the dark, from the house, through a wooded area and to the beach on the other side for some fresh air and to just get away from everything at the party. I was a tad annoyed but mostly concerned that these girls would hurt themselves although no one else seemed to care. I don’t remember much else from that night apart from the fact that we seemed to be there until sunrise. Although my friends and I spent most of it walking around outside and found a really pretty bridge to catch the sunrise. It was a nice way to end a weird night. Although, it wasn’t exactly over. I and the couple of other friends just mentioned, one of which being N, the girl I participated in the dance party with, had committed to being in the Nagasaki Peron boat race, again to represent our university and had no time to go home and rest beforehand since it was meant to start a few hours later at around 9 am. So H, being the sweetheart that he is, stayed up with us and drove us to where the boat race was to take place, parked outside a convenience store and we napped there for about an hour and a half, got some breakfast and were ready to go. I was truly living the exchange life with all these all-nighters that didn’t involve studying. The boat race was a hit as well. I remember being super pumped for it and not feeling tired at all. At some point I memorised a sort of cheer that is said during the boat race and began to basically chant it over and over during the race which seemed to help motivate everyone to row faster. I can confirm that according to a photo that I just saw from the event, I had a blast but looked super goofy.

Boy Drama Part Three: The Finale

Bet you thought this was over! Well, not quite yet. You see I never finished talking about what happened with E and you may think that it just fizzled out...but not exactly. Actually, my ending with him took place from mid/end of June until about the middle of July but since I spoke about Y enough in part 2, I thought I might as well dedicate part 3 to E. It was very strangely just a couple of days after the incident with Y that E messaged me again and pretty much insisted on a second date. He even invited me over to his house but I quickly declined that offer. This was all probably owing to the fact that I had spoken to him at the university just recently about how my phone broke and I panic bought rice to fix it but didn’t know what to do with the rice afterwards and then he offered to take it off my hands. He wanted to eat my phone rice. Well, one less thing that I needed to worry about I guess. Anyway, I was still kinda reeling from what happened with Y near the end of June and having to think about my final assignments, the dance at the pier side festival and wrapping everything up with university but E insisted on a date even though he should have known that I would be busy with assignments being that he was a teacher, but sure, whatever. I agreed to a date for the first Sunday of July but told him that it would have to be a much more casual one since I was planning to get some studies done earlier in the day before meeting up with him. Well, that was the plan. I really should have never agreed to meet up with him because I didn’t even like him anymore but I thought he got the hint that I lost interest and we only had one date that wasn’t really romantic or anything. But he insisted on this date and I didn’t know how to tell him that I wasn’t into him anymore or, well, I just didn’t want to, apart from all the excuses that I tried to give him.

The plan was for him to do his errands that he said he needed to do and that I would study at a cafe for a few hours and then we would meet up at 9pm for a night time stroll and maybe to get a snack or something. That didn’t happen. I cycled up to the cafe at about 5pm and he was there. I was so confused. We had agreed to meet at 9 but he was there. To be honest, I was feeling a bit ill as well and just wasn’t at all in the mood for this creepiness. I asked him what he was doing there so early and he said that he already finished his errands and thought we could start our date early. Um what? I told him that I hadn’t even started studying yet and he said it was ok and that he would join me while I studied. You might be thinking that should be nice, right? A Japanese teacher to sit with while I did my Japanese studies. Nope. I set myself up, and opened my books and instead of starting a conversation or asking what he could help with or anything, he just sat there and stared at me while I tried to finish my homework. Ahhhh the creep factor was strong with this one. I withstood that for all of 10 minutes before I just thought, right, this isn’t working. I packed up my stuff and told him we should go for a walk since I couldn’t concentrate. I remember my mood just getting more and more sour because, I’ll be honest, it was my time of the month and I was pmsing and he just wasn’t helping the matter. We walked around the city and pier and I tried to cheer myself up so that I didn’t seem too mean but I just found him utterly boring by that point. I think at some point he noticed that I wasn’t feeling well or something so he began to fill the silence a bit himself but it wasn’t really working. We decided to go into a supermarket after awhile and get some ice cream. We bought yukimi daifuku which was a brand of mochi ice cream and was delicious so that did help things a bit. Afterwards though, I decided that it was late enough that I could probably get away with ending the night there so I said that I wanted to go home and then he insisted on walking me home and wouldn’t take no for an answer. On the way back, he began to talk about how he can’t wait until I’m not his student anymore and how he wants to be able to be super open with his affection towards me and hold my hand while walking and do romantic things like that. I was too tired to think too much about it at the time but it really should have dawned on me at that point that this guy thought we were a couple. We had been on barely two dates and still hardly knew each other apart from texting for like a month and talking at school but he thought I was his girlfriend.

We got back to my house and I thanked him and was about to leave but he went in for a goodbye hug which I obliged him on but after that went in for a kiss and I kid you not, I ducked out of the way. I don’t know if he thought it was a mistake or something but he tried to kiss me a second time!! And I friggin ducked again. I don’t know what to tell you, it’s like something out of a sitcom. You can’t make this stuff up. I don’t know what he was thinking but after that I quickly said bye again and just ran up the stairs. Later on, he sent me a message saying he had a fun night to which I did not reply. I honestly do not know what part of that “date” he thought had gone successful enough for a kiss or even that he felt any chemistry between us because trust me there was none. *sighs* Why do I seem to attract weirdos? (not including the bf, of course)

A week or two passed after that and I wasn’t seeing much of him at university because I only had him for a speaking class and by mid July those classes were done but he seemed to be acting normal. Well, I thought he seemed fine but one day I got a long text from him calling me a coward and basically saying I was ghosting him and planning to leave without breaking up with him and just stringing him along and just a bunch of things along those lines. That’s right, he said breaking up. I’m not exactly sure if this is the case in general in Japan, the verdict is still out but I think showing a bit of interest and going out on at least one date even though I never specifically said that I liked him and wanted to be his girlfriend meant that I was in fact his girlfriend and I was being a crappy one at that. I don’t know what he expected, we never talked about a future or anything on the date (and a half) that we went on, or through messenger, but I was due to be leaving Japan in under two months and Nagasaki in just a couple of weeks and not planning to return for at least a few years so what did he think was going to happen?? Ah, I still cringe and am still so confused. I replied to him and told him that I was planning to talk to him about the fact that I was leaving and say goodbye (which was a lie but in retrospect I probably should have actually meant to) but that I was busy and that he should have known how busy I was. In the end, I told him we should talk about it in person so I told him that I would cycle over to the school the following day and talk to him for a bit since I had to go there for dance practice anyway. The following day, I did just that and oh my goodness the tension in his office was surreal. I went in and closed the door because I thought he probably wouldn’t want anyone to be hearing our conversation but then he got up and opened it and then just wouldn’t stop glaring at me which made me sufficiently uncomfortable. He sat back down and continued to glare and just didn’t say anything. I tried to open up the conversation and say that I was really sorry if I hurt his feelings and that that wasn’t my intention at all but said a couple of the same things that I said through text to him which was that I was planning to be leaving in just a couple of weeks and didn’t think much would come of our relationship but that it would be nice to remain friends if possible. Nothing. He did not say a word. He continued to glare though which made me unable to look at him and I was just facing my lap the entire time. I tried to apologise more and get him to say something but my efforts were futile and after about five minutes I told him that I had to go to dance practice and promptly left. It was unreal how uncomfortable I was and how creepy he was. I never spoke to him again after that either, I did see him around the university up until graduation though but we made sure to avoid each other.

#studyaboard #studyabroadmemories #hiking #japanesenature #studentexchange #Travelblog #japantravel #boydrama #friends #travel #japanesesummer #japanlife #pokemongo #crazylife #japanexplore #lifeabroad #is this the real life

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mujournalismabroad · 7 years

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Tips for traveling in Europe

Story and photos by Madeleine Sutherland from Edinburgh, Scotland

[Budapest, Hungary]

When I began my trip abroad, I told everyone how much I was going to travel. It seemed like dreaming big at first but now, twelve countries later, I've got a big warehouse of knowledge in my mind I want to share because hey, I did it! I traveled! The problem with traveling a lot is that it puts a thirst in you that's unquenchable. Where to next? I think Australia, probably.

Below is my list of general tips for traveling Europe on a budget.

Hostels

Hostelworld.com: This website gives the best ratings and honest reviews. Any accredited, legit hostel will be on this website.

I usually go for ones with about an 8.4 rating or above. This may sound like a random number, but I've found it's kind of the sweet spot.

Check if your hostel has towels, linens, lockers and locks available before you stay there. Usually, hostels will charge for locks and towels but linens and lockers will be provided.

Airbnb

Airbnb can be a great option when you are traveling with one to three other people! The hosts are usually super kind and will give you tips on how to see sites and get around. Many of my trips were made great by the amazing hospitality I received from Airbnb hosts. The site is also super easy to book on and reviews can be trusted.

The best Airbnb I ever stayed at was in Zürich with Allan and Yvonne. If you plan to go there, look them up! Their home was so welcoming and comfortable and they are the cutest, kindest people. (Allan was a Cards fan, so I knew right away we were in good hands)

Transportation

Public transit is no joke in Europe! Most of the time it is cheap and easy to find and understand. Why the U.S. has not caught up with this does not make sense to me.

Ryanair and easyJet will become your best friends because they are usually the cheapest airlines that do the most flights throughout Europe. Ryanair flights are almost always delayed and easyJet only allows one carry-on bag. They kind of suck, but they get you where you need to go.

Take metros and buses from airports whenever possible, especially in Paris, Prague, Munich, Amsterdam, and Barcelona.

Take trains from cities that are close together. It will cost SO MUCH LESS than flying, and train rides through the country are often very beautiful.

Most city public transit systems are based on trust, especially if it's a metro train without a ticket gate or a tram. I would advise to always validate your tickets or else risk an embarrassing public transit citation, which can get expensive.

[Montepulciano, Tuscany, Italy]

Food and drink

Do not tip in Europe. You are on a budget, and most places expect nothing as a tip. So don't feel bad if you don't! Unless you receive extra-great service, leave it. Most places add a service charge into the bill anyway.

There is no such thing as splitting bills beforehand in Europe. If eating with a group, you will each have to count up how much you spent after the bill comes. Sometimes you can pay certain amounts on card machines, but in many cases, they will only accept either one card or all cash.

That's another thing, always have cash with you. You will end up spending it one way or another.

Don't be surprised if you don't get served right away or if they don't bring you the bill right after you finish your meal. You have to ask for the bill when you want it. Waiters in Europe like to take their sweet time and consider it rude to try to rush you out after eating. Flag down the waiter when you need the bill or tell them in advance if you're in a rush.

If a waiter puts water or bread on your table in a non-U.K. country without you asking them to do so, they are trying to get you to eat/drink it so they can charge you for it. And most times, that innocent-looking bread basket on the table will cost about 8 Euro.

Running off of that, there is no such thing as free water in mainland Europe. Drill that into your head and buy yourself a reusable water bottle. Tap water is all fine to drink in Europe but they won't serve it to you because they want to charge you every chance they get. Take your own water into restaurants in a bag or pocket. (Scotland and Ireland, however, do have free tap water on request. Go Scoty!!)

The drinking age pretty much everywhere is 18. Try new beers and wines and forget about that disgusting Natty Light you've been drinking.

Safety

People who do the following things are trying to get money from you:

Accepting a flower or trinket at a touristy site.

Getting unwanted help using metro ticket machines.

Getting handed free metro tickets.

Getting un-asked-for directions.

Language

Try to learn a little of the language everywhere you go! It will go a long way, especially in Italy, Spain, France and Germany. And it's fun!

Most countries will have things in English. I found that Germany, Austria and Italy really didn't, however. Be ready to Google translate some things.

Being American

For some reason, every U.S. citizen abroad has one thing in common: We kick ourselves for being American when we meet people from other countries. I'm not sure why, perhaps it's the fear of being seen as stupid or ignorant because of our citizenship. My biggest piece of advice is this: If you act like a dumb American, you will be called a dumb American. If you act like a normal, kind human being, then no one will bring up where you're from. There's no need to feel bad about being American. Just try not to be that person who is extra loud or a know-it-all. Every European and Australian I've met has a good view of Americans as people.

Planning

This is especially true in Rome. Book literally everything in Rome beforehand. The lines are so long you will feel sick just looking at them. Don't be the bum that stands in line for three hours to see the Sistine Chapel.

[Lake Lucerne, Switzerland]

Other important things

Be a positive, problem-solving traveler. Keeping a good attitude sounds so basic, yet it's the absolute key to enjoying each trip you take and making sure you don't annoy the crap out of the people you travel with. Complaining gets old SO FAST. Focus on positive things. When you mess up, realize it is normal to do so and that things will work out. Be patient. Be the one to say something good instead of the one to point out every bad thing. You will get tired, hungry, thirsty and your feet will hurt. Complaining won't change those things, it'll just piss off your group.

Wear good shoes and be prepared to trash them. I have three pairs of shoes I've completely torn to shreds on this trip because of all the walking. Do not skimp on good shoes!!! To give you an idea, the main shoes I've worn are my tennies, a pair of black, waterproof Timberlands and a cognac pair of leather Kork-Ease booties. Everyone wears boots in Europe in the spring, fall and winter. You will not regret splurging on a couple nice pairs before your trip. I've heard American Shoe in Columbia sells some really great stuff. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Coats go along with this! Since I lived in Scotland, I needed three different weights of coat. I had a large winter one, a thicker rain jacket and a light rain jacket. I have used all three.

Please drink water. Drink so much water you want to throw up. Okay, not really. But stay hydrated. Get that water bottle.

If you see a bathroom, use it. This is one of the most key things I could ever say. In huge cities like Rome and Paris, there is no such thing as a public restroom.

Get yourself a portable battery. You will use it, I promise!

If you are going to be based in one country in Europe for any long amount of time, consider getting a SIM card from your home country. I found a carrier in Scotland that, by getting a SIM card from them, provided me with 13G of international data for only 20 pounds a month. That data saved me on a lot of my trips. (Sorry mom and dad. I'm only so good at reading real maps)

Download the Google Photos application. It automatically puts any photo you take on your phone onto the application so you won't have to worry about storage for photos as you travel.

Download the XE application to get current exchange rates for any country.

Put your phone/computer in military time. Most if not all travel times and ticket times are listed in military time in Europe.

Try to learn European measurements, including temperature. It will take time, but is a valuable life skill to have.

Lastly, just try to take everything in as best you can. Each travel experience is different, and mine is probably much different from what yours will turn out to be. It's Europe! So have a blast and make as many friends as you can. I promise you, your heart can hold so much more love for human kind than you ever thought possible.

#europe #travel #travelabroad #studyAbroad #mizzou #edinburgh #scotland #Hostel #airbnb #MUJA #switzerland #tuscany #Italy #lake lucerne #budapest

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passportandplates · 7 years

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Sometimes it feels like my new life motto is “do you have Wi-Fi?”

While I love being a digital nomad and wouldn’t trade it for anything, there is one thing that I’m always, always stressing about.

Wi-Fi.

Where is it? Is it reliable? Is it fast? Is it free?

Since ALL of my work is done online, I live and die by Wi-Fi. It’s an addiction. Have they invented internet addicts anonymous yet?

For awhile, I was doing this really fun thing where I would buy a SIM card in every single country I visited in order to ensure that I would always be connected. Not only was this habit expensive, but the data wasn’t always strong enough to withstand Skype calls and uploading large files. I knew something had to give.

So, imagine my excitement when I discovered the TEP Wireless device (aka the Teppy). It’s a portable wireless internet hotspot that lets you take your internet wherever you go. Feed my addiction!

I’ve been fortunate enough to have this TEP device with me on all my 2017 adventures so far. I’ve used it in Egypt, Spain, Estonia, and Latvia. I did buy a SIM card in Spain and Egypt but was easily able to get away with Wi-Fi only in the other three countries.

Using Teppy in the car!

So, how does it work?

You have plenty of options for TEP coverage. You can order continent-specific coverage, a cruise device, or a global device. The countries TEP operates in can be found here. Ordering one is super simple:

Order a Teppy – Choose your coverage destination, dates, and the number of devices. Note that one device can connect up to 5 devices.

Add in your extras – You can get a battery pack, concierge recommendations (in certain destinations) and insurance for the device. I tested out the Local Concierge when I was in Barcelona and it was awesome! My contact recommended several delicious restaurants and local gems to me and asked her questions for the whole time I was in Barcelona. It was like having a local guide in my pocket!

Choose your delivery and pickup method – You have the option to either mail or pick up / drop off your device. Shipping to the U.S. is free and costs $5.95 to return. TEP ships with FedEx guaranteed next-day delivery, so any last-minute orders can be fulfilled. However, it’s obviously better to order it in advance!

Place your order and pay for your device – It’s $9.95 per day, anywhere they have coverage.

How’s the coverage?

The device uses 3G internet with a download speed of 7.2 Mbps and upload speed of 5.8 Mbps. The connect speed does slow down to 512 kbps after 500MB is used within 24 hours, but you will never be cut off. The normal speed returns to normal the next day. The “slow” speed is still really fast – the only thing you may struggle with is streaming.

I typically spend most of my time in cities and towns, and I almost always had coverage. I didn’t have any coverage in the middle of the White Desert in Egypt, but I also didn’t have cell service out there either so I wasn’t entirely surprised. If you are planning on visiting a particularly rural area, I recommend getting in touch with TEP first before purchasing the coverage.

The only place I couldn’t use my TEP device.

Why should you get it?

I was a little skeptical about why I actually needed this device because “there’s free Wi-Fi everywhere, right?” Wrong. TEP has actually saved me in quite a few pinches on these last few trips:

In Hurghada, Egypt when our hotel only had Wi-Fi in the lobby

In Cairo, Egypt, when the lobby Wi-Fi didn’t work

On an overnight felucca ride on the Nile in Egypt

In Tarifa, Spain, when the Wi-Fi was slow and weak

In Estonia and Latvia, when I didn’t buy a SIM card

There’s a trend here. Wi-Fi is supposedly everywhere, but it’s not always reliable. In fact, I’ve found that it’s unreliable more often than not. As someone that needs to be able to work on the road, questionable Wi-Fi is incredibly nerve-wracking. TEP powered me through many, many work projects over the last few months. If you work at all while you’re on the road, this Wi-Fi hotspot is a necessity.

I’d also recommend the TEP hotspot for people who are traveling in multiple countries during one trip. As someone who has experienced the hassle and expense of frequently switching out SIM cards, let me tell you – having this device is MUCH more convenient.

Note: If you are planning on spending an extended period of time in one country, getting a local SIM might be a cheaper option, depending on the country. However, if you’ll be visiting multiple places and need reliable internet, this beats the local SIM, the roaming plan from home and public Wi-Fi any day of the week.

Anything else?

The device will last 8 hours on a single charge – or 20 on standby. It would easily last the full day when I was out. Other FAQs you might have can be found here.

My review

I personally had a great experience with TEP. There were a few moments where I had some issues with connectivity (mostly in Egypt), but I was able to quickly resolve them by contacting their outstanding 24-hour customer care team. The only time I really, really went off the grid was during my camping trip in the middle of the White Desert…where not even a cell phone signal could be found. I was pretty impressed overall though! Get your own Teppy HERE.

Tell me: how do you find reliable internet while traveling?

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Wi-Fi in Your Pocket: TEP Wireless Review Sometimes it feels like my new life motto is “do you have Wi-Fi?” While I love being a digital nomad and wouldn’t trade it for anything, there is one thing that I’m always, always stressing about.

#Portable wifi #Review

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ajayuikey · 4 years

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For the last two weeks, I’ve been flying around the world in a preview of Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator. Without a doubt, it’s the most beautiful flight simulator yet, and it’ll make you want to fly low and slow over your favorite cities because — if you pick the right one — every street and house will be there in more detail than you’ve ever seen in a game. Weather effects, day and night cycles, plane models — it all looks amazing. You can’t start it up and not fawn over the graphics.

But the new Flight Simulator is also still very much a work in progress, too, even just a few weeks before the scheduled launch date on August 18. It’s officially still in beta, so there’s still time to fix at least some of the issues I list below. Because Microsoft and Asobo Studios, which was responsible for the development of the simulator, are using Microsoft’s AI tech in Azure to automatically generate much of the scenery based on Microsoft’s Bing Maps data, you’ll find a lot of weirdness in the world. There are taxiway lights in the middle of runways, giant hangars and crew buses at small private fields, cars randomly driving across airports, giant trees growing everywhere (while palms often look like giant sticks), bridges that are either under water or big blocks of black over a river — and there are a lot of sunken boats, too.

When the system works well, it’s absolutely amazing. Cities like Barcelona, Berlin, San Francisco, Seattle, New York and others that are rendered using Microsoft’s photogrammetry method look great — including and maybe especially at night.

Image Credits: Microsoft

The rendering engine on my i7-9700K with an Nvidia 2070 Super graphics card never let the frame rate drop under 30 frames per second (which is perfectly fine for a flight simulator) and usually hovered well over 40, all with the graphics setting pushed up to the maximum and with a 2K resolution.

When things don’t work, though, the effect is stark because it’s so obvious. Some cities, like Las Vegas, look like they suffered some kind of catastrophe, as if the city was abandoned and nature took over (which in the case of the Vegas Strip doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, to be honest).

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Thankfully, all of this is something that Microsoft and Asobo can fix. They’ll just need to adjust their algorithms, and because a lot of the data is streamed, the updates should be virtually automatic. The fact that they haven’t done so yet is a bit of a surprise.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Chances are you’ll want to fly over your house the day you get Flight Simulator. If you live in the right city (and the right part of that city), you’ll likely be lucky and actually see your house with its individual texture. But for some cities, including London, for example, the game only shows standard textures, and while Microsoft does a good job at matching the outlines of buildings in cities where it doesn’t do photogrammetry, it’s odd that London or Amsterdam aren’t on that list (though London apparently features a couple of wind turbines in the city center now), while Münster, Germany is.

Once you get to altitude, all of those problems obviously go away (or at least you won’t see them). But given the graphics, you’ll want to spend a lot of time at 2,000 feet or below.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

What really struck me in playing the game in its current state is how those graphical inconsistencies set the standard for the rest of the experience. The team says its focus is 100% on making the simulator as realistic as possible, but then the virtual air traffic control often doesn’t use standard phraseology, for example, or fails to hand you off to the right departure control when you leave a major airport, for example. The airplane models look great and feel pretty close to real (at least for the ones I’ve flown myself), but some currently show the wrong airspeed, for example. Some planes use modern glass cockpits with the Garmin 1000 and G3X, but those still feel severely limited.

But let me be clear here. Despite all of this, even in its beta state, Flight Simulator is a technical marvel and it will only get better over time.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Let’s walk through the user experience a bit. The install on PC (the Xbox version will come at some point in the future) is a process that downloads a good 90GB so that you can play offline as well. The install process asks you if you are OK with streaming data, too, and that can quickly add up. After reinstalling the game and doing a few flights for screenshots, the game had downloaded about 10GB already — it adds up quickly and is something you should be aware of if you’re on a metered connection.

Once past the long install, you’ll be greeted by a menu screen that lets you start a new flight, go for one of the landing challenges or other activities the team has set up (they are really proud of their Courchevel scenery) and go through the games’ flight training program.

Image Credits: Microsoft

That training section walks you through eight activities that will help you get the basics of flying a Cessna 152. Most take fewer than 10 minutes and you’ll get a bit of a de-brief after, but I’m not sure it’s enough to keep a novice from getting frustrated quickly (while more advanced players will just skip this section altogether anyway).

I mostly spent my time flying the small general aviation planes in the sim, but if you prefer a Boeing 747 or Airbus 320neo, you get that option, too, as well as some turboprops and business jets. I’ll spend some more time with those before the official launch. All of the planes are beautifully detailed inside and out and except for a few bugs, everything works as expected.

To actually start playing, you’ll head for the world map and choose where you want to start your flight. What’s nice here is that you can pick any spot on your map, not just airports. That makes it easy to start flying over a city, for example. As you zoom into the map, you can see airports and landmarks (where the landmarks are either real sights like Germany’s Neuschwanstein Castle or cities that have photogrammetry data). If a town doesn’t have photogrammetry data, it will not appear on the map.

As of now, the flight planning features are pretty basic. For visual flights, you can go direct or VOR to VOR, and that’s it. For IFR flights, you choose low or high-altitude airways. You can’t really adjust any of these, just accept what the simulator gives you. That’s not really how flight planning works (at the very least you would want to take the local weather into account), so it would be nice if you could customize your route a bit more. Microsoft partnered with NavBlue for airspace data, though the built-in maps don’t do much with this data and don’t even show you the vertical boundaries of the airspace you are in.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

It’s always hard to compare the plane models and how they react to the real thing. Best I can tell, at least the single-engine Cessnas that I’m familiar with mostly handle in the same way I would expect them to in reality. Rudder controls feel a bit overly sensitive by default, but that’s relatively easy to adjust. I only played with a HOTAS-style joystick and rudder setup. I wouldn’t recommend playing with a mouse and keyboard, but your mileage may vary.

Live traffic works well, but none of the general aviation traffic around my local airports seems to show up, even though Microsoft partner FlightAware shows it.

As for the real/AI traffic in general, the sim does a pretty good job managing that. In the beta, you won’t really see the liveries of any real airlines yet — at least for the most part — I spotted the occasional United plane in the latest builds. Given some of Microsoft’s own videos, more are coming soon. Except for the built-in models you can fly in the sim, Flight Simulator is still missing a library of other airplane models for AI traffic, though again, I would assume that’s in the works, too.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

We’re three weeks out from launch. I would expect the team to be able to fix many of these issues and we’ll revisit all of them for our final review. My frustration with the current state of the game is that it’s so often so close to perfect that when it falls short of that, it’s especially jarring because it yanks you out of the experience.

Don’t get me wrong, though, flying in FS2020 is already a great experience. Even when there’s no photogrammetry, cities and villages look great once you get over 3,000 feet or so. The weather and cloud simulation — in real time — beats any add-on for today’s flight simulators. Airports still need work, but having cars drive around and flaggers walking around planes that are pushing back help make the world feel more alive. Wind affects the waves on lakes and oceans (and windsocks on airports). This is truly a next-generation flight simulator.

Image Credits: Microsoft

Microsoft and Asobo have to walk a fine line between making Flight Simulator the sim that hardcore fans want and an accessible game that brings in new players. I’ve played every version of Flight Simulator since the 90s, so getting started took exactly zero time. My sense is that new players simply looking for a good time may feel a bit lost at first, despite Microsoft adding landing challenges and other more gamified elements to the sim. In a press briefing, the Asobo team regularly stressed that it aimed for realism over anything else — and I’m perfectly ok with that. We’ll have to see if that translates to being a fun experience for casual players, too.

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Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator is a beautiful work in progress – TechCrunch For the last two weeks, I’ve been flying around the world in a preview of Microsoft’s…

#beautiful #flight #Microsofts #progress #Simulator #TechCrunch #work

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dizzedcom · 4 years

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Image Credits: Microsoft

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Once you get to altitude, all of those problems obviously go away (or at least you won’t see them). But given the graphics, you’ll want to spend a lot of time at 2,000 feet or below.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

But let me be clear here. Despite all of this, even in its beta state, Flight Simulator is a technical marvel and it will only get better over time.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Image Credits: Microsoft

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Live traffic works well, but none of the general aviation traffic around my local airports seems to show up, even though Microsoft partner FlightAware shows it.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Image Credits: Microsoft

Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator is a beautiful work in progress For the last two weeks, I’ve been flying around the world in a preview of Microsoft’s…

0 notes