Been using Slackware for over 22 years, and don't have plans to stop using it any time soon...
I did throw out the last of my floppies many years ago, though!
335 karma · joined August 31, 2010
I did throw out the last of my floppies many years ago, though!
In other words, slightly obscure, but certainly not unknown. The others, I've never heard of :)
If you look down, you'll see there's a lively market in the street - clothes and household stuff on one side, food on the other, including live poultry when I was there. If you look a little further down, you'll see the tram tracks running down the middle of the street. Unfortunately, the Street View cars didn't catch a tram, but they do run down that street pretty regularly...
Tipping is not a thing in Japan, generally. I've read that it can be considered faintly insulting, given the service culture - you're implying the recipient wouldn't have done their job properly unless you gave them extra money.
http://gizmodo.com/5986031/every-reason-not-to-buy-the-googl...
There are persistent stories of people who've been living here for years doing regular visa runs, but oddly they mostly seem to be stories, not direct experiences. There are also stories of people who got 'caught', in that the immigration officials decided they'd done too many runs and couldn't explain how they were living in HK without working, and were given 2 weeks to clear up and move out. It's a risk...
With a UK passport you'd get 180 days of visa-free stay per entry, with most other 'developed-world' passports you'd get 90 days. The actual rules on what you can do during that stay are quite strict - attending meetings, negotiating/signing contracts, etc. is allowed, but most other work isn't - to the extent that technically you're not even allowed to do voluntary work. That said, nobody is going to bother you if you're here for a few months and happen to be working for a remote client/employer at home or in a coffee shop. It's the visa runs which are the danger, since that's when they can pick you up. May not be a nice thing to say, but being white does help quite a lot.
It's easier to be here as a resident, legally. You get (almost-)free access to government healthcare, and things like banking are much easier, plus of course you don't have that looking-over-your-shoulder feeling.
One standard piece of advice, which definitely doesn't fit everyone but might be worth considering - assuming you and the GF are a heterosexual couple, a civil marriage is relatively simple in HK, and assuming she is working and/or a resident in her own right, that would get you a visa as a dependent. HK doesn't recognise non-heterosexual relationships in any useful way...
An alternative might be Taiwan, maybe not for you, but for others seeking 'Asia' - I do know a Brit who's been living there for years doing visa runs while writing code for people mostly in the UK, and it seems to work for him and his drunken bum lifestyle :)
We will be travelling from Frankfurt to Strasbourg (fast train, 1 change), from Strasbourg to Brussels (fast train, change in Paris), from Brussels to Amsterdam (fast train, direct), and from Amsterdam back to Frankfurt (fast train, direct). Total price for these train journeys, for two people, is €330 - because I booked the apparently hard-to-get cheap fares.
Compared with travelling by plane on low-cost carriers: We will mostly be going from city centre to city centre. We will have power at our seats in at least some cases. We will be free to get up and walk around for comfort. We will be able to bring our own food and drink onboard. We will get to see some of Europe passing by the window. And we will have to be on the platform a couple of minutes before departure time, not an hour or more...
Trains make more sense, in terms of service and cost, over short-to-medium distances. Barcelona to Amsterdam is probably over the line where flying makes more sense. Our Strasbourg to Brussels journey will take around 5 hours, but over 1 hour of that is time to change trains - and stations - in Paris, so I think that still falls before said line.