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R U OK?

ruok.org.au

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Re: R U OK?

#41

Post by royletron »

thorin wrote: post #34
royletron wrote: post #11

Single dad - with two boys who delight and terrorise in equal measure. Working in an industry in constant flux, trying to make the right moves and play to my skills. Knowing all along that I am not the best at what I do by a long mile. I've had two years that have often felt horrendous, and that's putting it lightly. I am approaching 40, and have taken a turn for the worse in terms of lock down weight... Weirdly coro…

Also single dad with 2 young kids in the UK. Got divorced last year, so this year has been a challenge for the same reasons you mentioned! Grateful to have work and spend lots of time with the kids although they are back at school now. I'm 44 so my skills are even more out of date!

The first year and a half is the worse for separation with children, at least for me. Trying to be involved in the same capacity, whilst maintaining a job and rebuilding your own life is a lot of work. I was constantly exhausted, often forgetting to eat and drink and barely functioning. There were some friends and family that really came through for me during those first 18 months.

In terms of skills, like I say you just have to work with what you have. Don't imagine you have to be the best at something, but be solid. Let your experience make you dependable and steady - focus on consistency and being the 'calm one'. That's really come through for me in recent years.

Re: R U OK?

#42

Post by throwaway_ruok »

Not okay.

It's a worrying time being a Chinese person. On the one hand, I don't support CCP (hence the throw away); I find the dictatorship very troubling. Furthermore, the growing patriotism and nationalism makes me anxious about the next generation of Chinese.

On the other hand, many people outside tend to treat Chinese people and CCP as a whole, and denounce and dismiss everything we do. More and more people suggest severe measures against Chinese products, even when no evidence of foul play is found. Simply the potential of being malicious is enough to warrant doubts, scrutiny, and dismissal. If this trend continues, I don't know how to live in the west anymore. I can't imagine one day submitting a code change, and my code has to be reviewed by a specialized security expert, because my family lives in China.

Personally, I find no place to stand. The future looks to me like I'm going to be on an island of ideology, where the other Chinese despise me for not being loyal, and the westerners suspect me of being secretly loyal to CCP.

In the big picture, it feels like another cold war is coming, and, that has a crushing weight on me. All I ever wanted is a simple life, stable income, no need for luxury stuff; but if the cold war were to actually start, I don't see how I can build that life.

Hell, even an actual war might be looming, during which I and my family have a significant chance to die, given the existence of nuclear weapon, the effectiveness of the modern army, and the stubbornness of governments. And I just really don't want to die like that; it's so meaningless to die in a war.

I guess I just wrote this post to vent a little. It's something that I have absolutely no control (or even impact) over, but it looms over my shoulder every minute of every day. Every endeavor and achievement of mine pales in face of a global conflict, so I'm exceedingly demotivated to do anything these days. It feels like nothing matters, and everything is going to crumble anyway.

Apologies for bringing so much negativity. I hope everyone else is having a good day.

Re: R U OK?

#43

Post by quenix »

bajsejohannes wrote: post #35

Digression that might be interesting for the HN crowd: The healthcheck for Apache ZooKeeper is simply sending it `ruok` and receiving `imok` if it's healthy: $ echo ruok | nc 127.0.0.1 5111 imok

That’s cute.

Re: R U OK?

#44

Post by phist_mcgee »

prawn wrote: post #32
dandare wrote: post #27

Like so many other products, services and initiatives, this website would greatly benefit from a prominently placed, buzzword-free, ELI5 explanation of what it actually does. Finally I found this in one of the subpages that explains some of it: > Got a feeling that someone you know or care about it isn’t behaving as they normally would? Perhaps they seem out of sorts? More agitated or withdrawn? Or they’re just not t…

It's probably more easily understood in Australia where there's press and some corporate efforts to publicise it. Gives people an excuse to check in on friends who either need support or just want to vent to someone who understands. The founder was prompted by the suicide of his father and then his own mental health battles.

Exactly, R U OK day is now a pretty big thing here, and I would say almost everyone now knows what the day is about. It's got pretty good buy in by the general public which is nice.

Someone on the Melbourne subreddit even baked R U OK cookies and was giving them away to strangers passing by their house. Hopefully made someone's day better.

Re: R U OK?

#45

Post by b0rsuk »

throwaway_ruok wrote: post #42

Not okay. It's a worrying time being a Chinese person. On the one hand, I don't support CCP (hence the throw away); I find the dictatorship very troubling. Furthermore, the growing patriotism and nationalism makes me anxious about the next generation of Chinese. On the other hand, many people outside tend to treat Chinese people and CCP as a whole, and denounce and dismiss everything we do. More and more people sugge…

I live in Europe. China is often hard to understand and seen as a monolithic block. In Poland if something doesn't make any sense it's common to say "it's Chinese to me". The language, especially the characters, is probably the biggest barrier. I vaguely know that China contains a bunch of peoples and languages, regions with distinct cultures. But very little beyond that.

People fear what they don't understand. I think you could make a difference if you made it easier for outsiders to learn about China and Chinese. You don't need to start a blog or a youtube channel. Just point out some existing ones which give foreigners a decent idea about China. Or maybe some movies which illustrate (aspects of) China pretty well and are still accessible to typical Westerners. No, it won't work for people on the street. I don't have a solution for that.

Re: R U OK?

#46

Post by a5withtrrs »

throwaway_ruok wrote: post #42

Not okay. It's a worrying time being a Chinese person. On the one hand, I don't support CCP (hence the throw away); I find the dictatorship very troubling. Furthermore, the growing patriotism and nationalism makes me anxious about the next generation of Chinese. On the other hand, many people outside tend to treat Chinese people and CCP as a whole, and denounce and dismiss everything we do. More and more people sugge…

The world is a strange place right now and I often wonder if the people of generations past felt equally out of place in the various turmoils of their time.

Disinformation, willful ignorance and mass manipulation by anyone that can control the discourse of online communities is taking over the web that I grew up using and loved.

I fear all countries are slowly trying to become more isolationist at the expense of the rest of the world and the global community.

I have may friends with ties to China and they are like you, they don't support the CCP, but having family over there still means they feel like their hands are tied behind their backs.

I hope you find a way to fight for what you believe in and that you and your family stay safe throughout.

Re: R U OK?

#47

Post by wombatmobile »

bb123 wrote: post #16
ManlyBread wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're living in Europe then that's something that you just need to accept, the pay is nowhere near anywhere the pay in the US, I think in my country it caps at something like 60k$ per year and that's if you're really good at what you're doing.

I recently came to the same conclusion, but also realised that there is a lot more to it than just pay. Generalising here but switching for a similar role in the US will mean: * No more free healthcare * Much less PTO * _Significantly_ less parental leave for you and your partner * Less pension/401k contributions (typically) * Generally longer hours and a more intense working culture * Probably a higher cost of livin…

The architecture, politics, arts, demographics, culture, and small talk are different too. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how you feel about each of these things, and what you make of your experience. If you have children, note that the education system is different too.

Re: R U OK?

#48

Post by petercooper »

There's a similar thing in the UK which has seen some promotion on the radio and the press generally: https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/asktwice

Unusually it's targeted more at men. The idea is that you need to ask the question multiple times as men are allegedly more likely to say "yeah, I'm fine" the first time, so you need to ask a second time to apparently ensure a truthful response.

Re: R U OK?

#49

Post by 082349872349872 »

b0rsuk wrote: post #45
throwaway_ruok wrote: post #42

Not okay. It's a worrying time being a Chinese person. On the one hand, I don't support CCP (hence the throw away); I find the dictatorship very troubling. Furthermore, the growing patriotism and nationalism makes me anxious about the next generation of Chinese. On the other hand, many people outside tend to treat Chinese people and CCP as a whole, and denounce and dismiss everything we do. More and more people sugge…

I live in Europe. China is often hard to understand and seen as a monolithic block. In Poland if something doesn't make any sense it's common to say "it's Chinese to me". The language, especially the characters, is probably the biggest barrier. I vaguely know that China contains a bunch of peoples and languages, regions with distinct cultures. But very little beyond that. People fear what they don't understand. I thi…

Anyone have recommendations for where to start browsing https://youku.com for someone with nearly nonexistent language skills?

For instance, I still haven't run across a chinese lockdown clip equivalent to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BEPFJh4A9M yet I'm sure they must exist.

Zweig's The World of Yesterday captures his views on being caught in similar situations, in early and mid-twentieth century europe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24235877

Throwaway_ruok, try to stay positive and take care of your family and friends. It's better to worry about things we have a great deal of influence over than those which we do not.

    涸辙之鲋
    塞翁失马
    相濡以沫
    积少成多?

Re: R U OK?

#50

Post by Gymkana »

This reminds me of an interesting difference in language semantics when I moved from the UK to the Bay area. In the UK it's normal to say "alright?" as if to say hello. I found people would respond "why wouldn't I be?" or something along those lines as if they looked like they weren't OK. It interests me as I find in the UK we are less likely to talk about feelings than in the US.
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