Poor Lane, why does she get a tiny precious stone chunk while everyone else gets huge ones?

I was shocked in a good way about how cool people were about our choices. My engagement ring cost under $1000 and was a 24-karat gold ring with curliecues and a dragon (YES A DRAGON) from a Hong Kong jeweler (we live in Taiwan so this is not so odd). Nobody - really nobody - batted an eye. Nobody judged it, nobody…

Hilarious: I live abroad, and as a permanent resident of the country where I live (Taiwan), I don’t have to show my passport to enter. Just my PR card. Yes, that’s right, I can fly halfway around the world to a small island nation on the Pacific Rim that I am not a citizen of and I DO NOT HAVE TO SHOW MY PASSPORT. I…

“Groomers”? I really hope you mean like dog groomers and not like pedophiles who groom kids.

There was totally a movie from Sri Lanka with a fairly similar, though not exactly the same, premise. A trans man who hadn’t gotten an operation (a bit harder to do in Sri Lanka I would guess) was working in an auto garage, hiding the fact that he was anatomically female, and was married to a woman who seemed to have…

For me I always hoped it could be more equal, and did prefer that, but at times when I was particularly broke kinda hoped I wouldn’t have to chip in because honestly, I just couldn’t afford it. It wasn’t a gender thing...it was an “I wanna go out with you but I am seriously living on carrots and lentils” thing. I sold…

I like this idea, except it kinda sorta makes it hard for broke people to ever ask anyone out. If you can’t pay for the whole date, you just can’t ask, and you could miss out some great dates. (Some people feel awkward asking someone out for a cheap or free date).

“In the end, when you add up the blowout, the manicure, the wax, the new dress, and the lipstick, you might as well have paid for a five-course meal.”

- - this is pretty fair if you actually do all of those things. When I was dating, however, I would happily go out on dates wearing no makeup whatsoever, brushing but…

No, I had always tried as well. I actually preferred it - it showed true egalitarianism. But nobody ever let me!

...and if there is no bus?

You have a bus. Great. Not everyone does.

Yeah, but my point was how do *people* live their lives - not just people in college towns. But also people not in them. You replied to that comment, so it’s totally in bounds to wonder about the people your response leaves out.

Public transportation doesn’t work if it doesn’t exist. In my hometown (a smallish town a few hours from New York near a smallish “city” that’s really an overgrown town) there is ZERO public transit. How can I judge something that doesn’t exist?

How can one get food at a grocery store if there is no bus to the grocery…

Not every town is a college town, and not every town has trustworthy people offering free rides.

So what do you do in those 30 days if you can’t cycle and can’t beg rides?

...and if you have no one to beg rides from?

My personal experience growing up in a small town in the US is that no, there aren’t bus systems, even bad ones. The university town down the highway had a rudimentary bus system and walkable downtown, but my own town and the others near it did not. And you couldn’t even…

I’ve always wondered what people who don’t live in certain few major cities do if they lose their license. Not that I think licenses shouldn’t be suspended for drunk driving etc - of course they should. But how do you, like, do your life? What with the craptacular state of “American public transit”* and all?…

Grad students don’t get to apply I guess? That would pay my tuition. All of it.

This assumes that the woman has no discernible standards.

I had assumed that no, even paid users got robo-messages from bots, things like “lovelygirl69 is interested in you *wink*” and you could pay for credits to respond, but after you did, you got nothing back, because...it was a bot.