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How to Avoid Jetlag

Avoiding jetlag is pretty simple, just regardless of how you feel, do everything at the correct time for the country you are in. This means being in bed trying to sleep when you feel wide awake, and staying up when you are really tired. A general way of making things easier for yourself is to book longhall flights that arrive late in the day instead of the morning. Even if you arrive as early…

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How UK City Councils Prevent Recycling

Sheffield is one of the worst cities in the UK for recycling. As someone who lives here it’s very obvious the council is to blame and not the people. Even though I really try to recycle as much as possible, it feels as if everything is working against me. Let’s start with big apartment complexes in the city because they’re mostly what I’ve lived in during my time here. There just is never enough…

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I didn't use the Internet for Two Weeks

The title might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s not far off. I’ve been behind the great firewall of China travelling on holiday for the past two weeks which has meant I’ve not accessed any news, social media, entertainment or anything else we have come to get used to online. It’s probably the closest any reasonable person could get to not using the internet. I literally had no idea what…

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China Day 4&5: Xiangyang

There were a lot of interesting things I want to talk about here, but none of them fit well in individual blog posts, so I thought the best way was to just talk about everything in one travel day entry. It was my third time in Xiangyang, so I’m quite familiar with the place and have already visited pretty much all of the tourist spots. It’s also my wife’s chance to meet back up again with her…

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UK Passport Control is a Nightmare

It’s harder to return to my own country than go to another, that in itself is annoying, but it’s even harder for my wife who needs a visa. She of course has one, and is perfectly allowed to re-enter the UK but despite this they still try and do everything they can to make it impossible for her. The main issue on this trip was with accessing her visa, because they couldn’t just give her a card…

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Overtime and Work Life Balance

I was in China until quite recently, and something happend which made me feel quite shocked as our friends (a couple living in Shenzhen) were very kindly driving us back to our hotel near the airport at around 9-10pm, just as we were about to go back to the UK. Workers rights are pretty awful in China. They typically get 5 days off per year if they are just starting, an extra 5 days after 5…

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Still Feeling the Aftermath of Covid Lockdown

There is never really a good time for a global pandemic to hit the world, but for me, I don’t think the timing could have been much worse. It happened just as my second year of University was finishing and I entered into a one year work placement. My degree was Computer Science so the work placement could still go ahead, but that was sort of the problem. Being indoors all day, doing my hobbies…

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Beware of Scams in China

As I foreigner I do feel like scammers see me as a bit of an easy target, so I’ve experienced quite a few in my time. The good news is that since China is a lot poorer than other countries, it’s not likely to be huge amounts unless you get really screwed over, which I never have, but I’ll still talk about everything that happend to me. The first was with taxis. To get in and out of the city, or…

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Being a Foreigner in China

I cannot really emphasise enough how uncommon foreigners are in China. Outside of airports and big city tourist spots you feel like you are the only one. Xiangyang has millions of people, but despite visiting bustling places, I’ve literally never seen a foreigner there. Obviously there are probably foreigners that I’ve missed, most notably visitors from Japan and Korea because there is no way I…

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I Re-read All of Tomodachi Game for this post

Tomodachi game pushes the question of “which is more important, friends or money?” to the very limits. It puts contestants in one of those high stakes gambles where they are trying to get rid of large amounts of debt, and lets the scheming and mind games comence. This is a concept so common that it’s becoming its own genre. It all feels very similar to Kaiji, Akagi, one outs, kakeguri, Liar…

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The Problem With Luxuary Hotels

I was at a luxury hotel in Luoyang recently, mainly because they are actually affordable in China compared to the UK. For reference, a hotel half the price we were in previously was excellent compared to the average UK hotel we visited, so we were expecting greatness. An average rating of 5 stars from thousands only helped to reinforce this. The service was excellent, there were a lot of free…

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You can't Holiday like the Chinese do

I have had an insane few days travelling around Luoyang. We’re heading back home now, which is what brings me to the topic of how people from different cultures approach travel. All of my UK family holidays have been going out once a day to do one thing, then going back to rest for the day. It’s quite common to have a book and read through a lot of it as you relax over the course of the…

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Going through the Great Firewall of China

It’s probably not sensible for me to post an article criticising the Chinese government right before I go to China, so if you’re reading this I am already back, but at time of writing, I haven’t been yet. For those who don’t know, China has a very thorough and difficult to penetrate firewall blocking many websites we are used to in the West. For example most social media is banned, all…

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Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino Book Club

When Keigo Higashino decides to explore a certain theme, he explores it to the extreme. A mother is unable to live peacefully with her daughter when her abusive ex-husband finds her address. A conflict ensues where the ex-husband attacks her daughter, and the mother, in fear of her life, accidently does the unthinkable. But now she needs to hide the body. Thankfully help arrives unexpectedly from…

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The Left vs the Right: Remove Black and White Thinking from your Politics

The us vs them mentality I see in politics at the moment does terrify me a lot. This type of thinking is a technique pulled directly from the cult handbook and is used to encourage devotion to one group as if it could do no wrong, and promote hate towards another. Add propaganda and misinformation into the mix and suddenly you get the extreme hatred we see today. Naturally you blame the other…

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BBC TV Licences are Crazy

Anyone in the UK can watch lots of TV channels with just a TV that is plugged in, but you will receive a letter asking you to pay a TV license. I think at the moment the current amount is £169.50 but I could be mistaken, it equates to around £14 a month which I suppose is similar to other streaming services considering that it is essentially a family plan just for one household. It is against…

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Toilets in China

China has two kinds of toilets, the first is the regular one we are all used to, the squat toilet is the second, and genuinely awful. A squat toilet is simply a hole in the ground with either a flush that takes everything away, or a hose for you to flush your waste manually. You need to squat down to use it, with the only exception being if you’re a man who needs a pee only. These toilets are…