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brianherbert

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I fit this category perfectly when I was staying in Korea over 10 years ago. I ended up being there on a tourist visa on and off for a few years. I never had any trouble as a white foreigner but did have a hard time making Korean friends, only because my Korean was fairly basic and I didn’t work in an office or go to university. However, everyone I met was very accommodating, whether I was in places frequented by foreigners like Hongdae or Itaewon or in my now partners hometown which is small enough that most Koreans couldn’t place it on a map.

I walked into the government office a couple times and tried to find a path to a legitimate visa and was told each time I couldn’t do it. I found that the longer I was staying, the less comfortable I was with my status. If there was a path for me to be a legitimate resident, I may have stayed longer than the 3 years I was there.

This is great. My wife and I spent many hours looking for names that work in both of our native languages / cultures that weren't super common and having a starting point would have been nice.

I took Larium (Mefloquine) for about 7 months while in the US Peace Corps. I had incredibly vivid dreams, all of which I would remember and I also developed depression that went away as soon as I switched off the drug. No good.

I ended up working for a company in another country that didn't have any requirements regarding malaria prophylaxis so I didn't take any drugs. I got malaria and it was god awful for a couple days but got over it quickly. Compared to the side effects of Larium or taking heavy doses of Doxycycline or getting the more spendy Malarone, it was worth rolling the dice.

REMOTE - FULL TIME - Intermediate & Senior Web Developer - Ushahidi http://www.ushahidi.com/jobs/

Looking for someone who can be a senior developer on our core platform team, be a mentor and inspiration to the other developers on our team with a solid work ethic comfortable working with people in difficult time zones. We don’t just need someone who can bang out code, but sometimes that’s required to meet deadlines.

We code primarily on a LAMP/LEMP stack but aren’t terribly opinionated. This position will initially be on our “V3” team which codes https://github.com/ushahidi/platform and https://github.com/ushahidi/platform-client.

More about the position at the jobs link above.

We are a non-profit technology company based in Nairobi, Kenya building open source tools to help citizens, journalists, organizations, governments, and others gather, manage, analyze, and visualize crowdsourced data.

Most recently, our tools have been used to support organizations during the recent Nigerian elections.

Contact jobs+dev@ushahidi.com with your resume.

- Brian

Amtrak Residency 12 years ago

Kentucky used to have Amtrak, the Kentucky Cardinal. It went from Louisville to Chicago and took what felt like 12 hours although not sure I'm remembering that correctly. It was only $30. I had high hopes for that route, that it would open up more options to travel by rail from my hometown.

Smart Air 13 years ago

Maybe they are trying to connect with the expat community.

Hackathons are events where ideas are born and are quickly laid to rest. I'm glad there's some encouragement to work on existing projects, especially on projects that have a civic focus.

I'm going through the whole green card "papers" process now with my wife. Compared to almost every other country, the amount of time and effort it takes to even bring family over is incredibly long and arduous.

All that makes me really look froward to this game. Just the fact that this exists is a great conversation starter to raise some awareness about immigration and ridiculous bureaucracy.

I know this is a different situation but...

I completed half of an MBA program in the classroom (1+ yrs), then moved out of state and had to switch to an online program at another university, both of which were AACSB accredited.

I must say, the online program was much more challenging, from almost all areas like personal responsibility, participation and academic rigor. The only area that could use improvement is testing, where some professors would prefer multiple choice questions, but this is a problem in any program.

Regarding the San Jose classes, I think a lot of undergraduate courses essentially run on autopilot so if a student isn't interested, of course they aren't going to learn anything.

There's no tipping in South Korea (and many other places). You will get excellent service, if not better. Nobody leaves a restaurant or cafe feeling confused and staff never feels cheated. Taxi drivers still get you to your destination without any additional tip incentive.

Besides, if I've paid for something already, why should I give an additional, mostly arbitrary amount?