pilkopumppants28

I am from the north of England in Manchester. Winters in England are horrible and depressing. While it isn't intensely cold and usually above freezing, the ever-present grey skies, wind and rain make it feel much worse. And the winter season seems to drag on forever, even in summer you normally need a jacket to go outside. Whats worse is that many houses in England are quite old so its hard to escape the cold even indoors.

I went to New York in the summer and was surprised. I always imagined the city to have a similar climate to Britain as it is often raining, or cold in the movies but when I got there it was as hot, mostly sunny and unlike the UK, when it rained it came in short thundery showers just like in the tropics.

I have often seen New York blanketed in snow on tv and hear winter is overall colder than England but have personally only visited in summer. Which place has overall worse winters to live in and deal with daily, New York or England? (question for anyone who has lived or spent significant time in both places!)

i used to be friends with both popular students and the nerdier ones at university but surprisingly i found the popular students to be friendlier and more accepting than the nerds who were very cliquey, judgemental, pretentious and didnt like anyone that wasnt a fellow nerd/hipster.

they would always trashtalk the popular students for no reason, bully and exclude anyone that wasnt considered smart enough for them and try to show everyone else up with their intelligence, knowledge of science, computing, video games or music. i never encountered such pretentiousness and backstabbing with my more popular friends so ended up ditching the nerds in the end. its like the reverse of the stereotypical friendly nerds and rude popular people

even in media the nerds are now passive-aggressive, just look at sheldon cooper, the comic book guy in the simpsons or the students from the BT advert!

I live in thailand, working as an english teacher. im 24 years old and dating one of my co-workers who is also an english teacher, she is thai the same age as me, very smart, educated, ambitious with a masters degree and a good job, not the typical bar girl that most of the white guys here hook up with.

my question is with regards to the other westerners i notice in thailand, virtually everywhere i go. my city has a considerable expat community of westerners, but except for a few english teachers most of them are the cliched "old white man- young thai girl" couples, predominantly russian and german but some brits and americans too, most working days for the local industrial estate and visiting the cities go-go bars by night.

my curiousity comes from my interactions with these don juans while im walking round town. one or 2 of all the ones iv met will give a headnod or say hi but the vast majority of the time i see a westerner here im met with the one of 2 looks:-

1- a quick glance and then look away almost with embarassment, hoping i never noticed them, sometimes changing direction, quickly running into a shop or toilet or just turning round to not see me.

2-a long frown or nasty glare

most of the time when im with my other foreign co-teachers it tends to be more of the first look but often i get the second look, especially when im with my girlfriend or on my own.

i understand that these men arent going to be extatic to see me but i dont understand that wherever i go, i seem to be met with glares of discontent whenever they see me. i dress pretty normal for a young lad but have a couple of tattoos. are these men glaring at me because of the way i look, because im young or because they see me as a threat to their young, trophy girlfriends? i arent looking for hi's or smiles or jumping with joy upon meeting another foreigner, just a bit of respect and politeness and the ability to walk somewhere without being made to feel like scum just for being there.

advice from someone who lives in thailand would be great!

taxi drivers (and also bus drivers or white-van-man come to think of it) are supposed to be professional drivers, doing it more than anyone else for a living.

yet everywhere i go the taxi drivers are consistently worse than everyone else on the road, regularly going over the speed limit, driving very aggressively or carelessly, using phone while driving, turning without indicating, not using their mirrors, straddling between lanes and carelessly swinging around roundabouts.

its like taxi drivers have their own set of rules and they dont have to obey the laws everyone else has. so while i would get in trouble by the police for going 1mph over the limit, turning on my signal less than 3 seconds before the turn or simply for being a "young whippersnapper", iv never ever ever seen a taxi driver get in trouble by the police like they turn a blind eye.

of course this doesnt apply to all cabbies, just the vast majority of them in cities around the world!

so i went back to my hometown late last year after a gap year abroad and after having the time of my life, i got really depressed when i returned home. being back in the same place with the same people i left behind, gloomy surroundings, bad weather and bad job prospects drove me nuts.

being unemployed for months through the winter in a town, and country i hated was honestly one of my lowest times in life.

but i up sticks and moved halfway round the world 4 months ago and now live in a place i love with a job i love and a great girlfriend....but after months here i still have bad dreams about my hometown.

in my dream, everything goes wrong here and i lose my job or my girlfriend and have to move back, or i wake up (in dream) to realise my life now is a dream (a dream inside a dream sort of thing).iv lost count of the amount of dreams iv had where im as depressed and unhappy as i was in reality back in my home country.

i feel so happy when i actually wake up to remember my new life is real but cant stop having bad dreams about my old life...can anybody with knowledge of dreams either explain this or know how to stop it?

so iv always hated my hometown in england and everything about it, the cold weather, the gloominess, the bad economy, the people, crime, pollution, everything...

but i up sticks and moved halfway round the world 3 months ago to thailand and now live in a place i love with a job i love and a great girlfriend....but after 3 months here i still have bad dreams about my hometown, like where everything goes wrong here and i have to move back to england, or i wake up (in dream) to realise my life now is a dream (a dream inside a dream sort of thing).iv lost count of the amount of dreams iv had where im as depressed and unhappy as i was in reality back in england...

i feel so happy when i wake up to remember my new life is real but cant stop having bad dreams about my old life...can anybody with knowledge of dreams either explain this or know how to stop it?

iv just made a new facebook profile for my job and it requires me to validate it through an email address, however my main email is taken by my private facebook profile so i had to make a new email address,

however every time i try to confirm my facebook on this new address i recieve no email. iv created 3 different email accounts for the sole purpose of this and none of them work. iv checked my spam boxes, waited days, restarted the computer, tried everything i know but i dont recieve any validating email!

so my parents divorced when i was a baby and both re-married pretty early. as a child i lived with my mother and stepfather and used to visit my real father in a different city every 3rd weekend.i loved visiting my dad, i loved their family and at the end of the weekend didnt want to come home to the normality of my mothers house.

the only problem i had was both of my families trashtalking each other. my dad told me my mother stole his money and my mother told me my dad left her for another woman. as a youngun i just didnt know who to believe.

at the age of 8 both my families started having children of their own so i have many half siblings but no full ones. i still continued visiting my dad as a teenager and saw it as a welcome respite from the nagging of my "normal" family.

while my dad was awesome to me as a child, as soon as i turned 18 he pretty much started drifting away from me, and his true colours started to show as i realised what a terrible role model he really was. i saw evidence of him cheating on my mother when i was a child so realised hed lied to me my whole life. i saw him less and had less contact, it was like he couldnt be bothered with me now his legal obligation to me was finished so he can concentrate on his own happy families with my stepmum.

my mum and stepdad have supported me with everything including my first car, my degree and my job opportunities and im eternally grateful to them but my real dad has done pretty much nothing for me since i turned 18, although hes wealthy, works a white collar job, drives a bmw and takes my brother and sister on 3 foreign holidays a year, he didnt help me a penny after i was a broke and starving unemployed graduate stuck in a council flat in the city with the uk's highest youth unemployment. i didnt want to world from him, just his love and support while i was at my lowest times but he was never there for me, he never even came to visit me.

now im 24 years old and work as a teacher in thailand. im happy with life, have great support from my mum and stepdad and my wonderful girlfriend and i have a job i love but iv not seen my real father in years and it bugs the back of my head sometimes.

i recently tried to contact my sister (on my dads side) over facebook about why hes disappeared from my life but we just ended up arguing. she told me to contact him myself instead of complaining to her but now i live in thailand i cant go visit, phonecalls are really expensive, i dont have his email address so shes really my only point of contact to that family......and to be honest, i made so much effort to please my father and never did so dont see why i should be the one making the effort with him now, he as my father should be the one making the effort, its just simple moral decency when you bring a life into the world, even when theyre adult.

my very supportive mothers side of the family tell me to forget about him but i want answers as to why he left me as a baby and why i was never good enough for him or should i just forget about him?

so my parents divorced when i was a baby and both re-married pretty early. as a child i lived with my mother and stepfather and used to visit my real father in a different city every 3rd weekend.i loved visiting my dad, i loved their family and at the end of the weekend didnt want to come home to the normality of my mothers house.

the only problem i had was both of my families trashtalking each other. my dad told me my mother stole his money and my mother told me my dad left her for another woman. as a youngun i just didnt know who to believe.

at the age of 8 both my families started having children of their own so i have many half siblings but no full ones. i still continued visiting my dad as a teenager and saw it as a welcome respite from the nagging of my "normal" family.

while my dad was awesome to me as a child, as soon as i turned 18 he pretty much started drifting away from me, and his true colours started to show as i realised what a terrible role model he really was. i saw evidence of him cheating on my mother when i was a child so realised hed lied to me my whole life. i saw him less and had less contact, it was like he couldnt be bothered with me now his legal obligation to me was finished so he can concentrate on his own happy families with my stepmum.

my mum and stepdad have supported me with everything including my first car, my degree and my job opportunities and im eternally grateful to them but my real dad has done pretty much nothing for me since i turned 18, although hes wealthy, works a white collar job, drives a bmw and takes my brother and sister on 3 foreign holidays a year, he didnt help me a penny after i was a broke and starving unemployed graduate stuck in a council flat in the city with the uk's highest youth unemployment. i didnt want to world from him, just his love and support while i was at my lowest times but he was never there for me, he never even came to visit me.

now im 24 years old and work as a teacher in thailand. im happy with life, have great support from my mum and stepdad and my wonderful girlfriend and i have a job i love but iv not seen my real father in years and it bugs the back of my head sometimes.

i recently tried to contact my sister (on my dads side) over facebook about why hes disappeared from my life but we just ended up arguing. she told me to contact him myself instead of complaining to her but now i live in thailand i cant go visit, phonecalls are really expensive, i dont have his email address so shes really my only point of contact to that family......and to be honest, i made so much effort to please my father and never did so dont see why i should be the one making the effort with him now, he as my father should be the one making the effort, its just simple moral decency when you bring a life into the world, even when theyre adult.

my very supportive mothers side of the family tell me to forget about him but i want answers as to why he left me as a baby and why i was never good enough for him or should i just forget about him?

what it says on the tin really.

im an english teaching living in thailand (rayong province) with a massive craving for monster energy...the only problem is i cant find monster energy drinks anywhere in thailand, only redbull or m-150....the annoying thing is i see the monster logo everywhere so i know it exists but iv searched virtually every shop in my city and found nothing...i know it can be found in places in bangkok but i dont have the time to travel there as i work full time and would prefer to order in bulk....

any useful info will be great!