“Oy!” “Wut?” Just chat (The Return of)

My brother told me about a dinner he went to in Tokyo. The restaurant was so hard to find, their official directions were to go into a findable store nearby, and have the shop keeper call for a guide. He went into the store with another white guy, the shopkeeper looked at them and said the name of the restaurant as a question.

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I spent a week in Tokyo back in 2019 (legit among the best 10 days of my life), and one of our trips to… the tech area… Akibahara, I think… involved a trip to a fantastic little cafe that was buried on the third floor of a laundromat up completely unmarked set of stairs…

Lemme see if I can find a picture…


It was great, by the by. Absolutely worth the “This may result in our murder”-ness of finding the place.

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Not quite the same but growing up (pre-mobiles obvs), our home phone was 1 digit away from both the local police station and a taxi firm. The amount of times we got calls in the small hours of the morning was ridiculous. Dad used to just answer and say ‘we’ll send someone right out’ and go back to sleep.

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Good to know! Who knows how I would have attempted to use this dice tray if there were no instructions…

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I picture the poor overworked bod on the Dice Tray Tech Support Hotline saying “Look, could we just put in a slip of paper?”

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Don’t try and roll on the long side too. Short side only.

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I don’t expect everything to be made to the sort of tolerances required for sensitive scientific instruments, but even so…


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So happy that EEAAO cleaned up at the Oscars. It was the best movie I saw last year by a MILE, I left the cinema talking about Oscars. Very pleased.

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Ohhh the days of dialing… our landline (used to be just our telephone number) in the house we moved in when I was 16 was very close to a restaurant by the beach (Restaurante La Oliva). We used to get plenty of calls for reservations. Sometimes people would try even three times in a row, and even though I felt tempted more than once to fake it, I never accepted anybody’s details and told them they were wrong every time…

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Should have said: Diameter 1 inch - ish…

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My work phone number was once xxx npa-2888. The town switch board, which was also police and fire non emergency, was -2000. I got a fair number of wrong numbers, most of whom hung up when I announced the company name (AT&T, the phone company to those old enough). I had a couple people get mad at me. And one old woman who was horribly distraught about loosing her glasses. I had to calm her down, and then called someone in the city planner’s office and conferenced them together.

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So were we. I am usually more for the type of movie that doesn‘t make it near the Oscars (called „Popcorn Kino“ here) but EEAAO was an all around enjoyment. Also nobody seems to have slapped anyone this year. Nice.

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Got a voucher for 10€ at Philbert. Found myself not wanting to look as there’s nothing much I want

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Hopefully with all the awards, EEAAO might finally get a physical release over here.

I got a blu ray of it for Christmas, but it turned out to be the US version (despite what Amazon said) so I can’t play it :frowning:

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My BGA subscription ran out. And instead of auto-renewing like last year it says it didn’t go through with my bank. Now I have to cancel and resubscribe at a higher rate. I confirmed with support that this is how it works.

The old price is not meant to go on indefinitely. It was an offer to extend the old price for a short time longer for our loyal customers. We did not mean for this to be interpreted as forever. As credit cards expire and customers need to resubscribe, the price will increase for everyone.

The higher rate is still a good deal but it is a 20% increase in price and I feel tricked. The message on BGA reads like it is my fault or my banks fault for the subscription not renewing…

I will resubscribe. But I will need a few weeks to get the note of bitterness out of my brain.

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Feels like everything I do these days is complain… meh. Can someone tell me what Parcelforce is? Seems to be some British entity. Package tracking ends with „adressee has been advised to collect from depot“ I have no such notification. The Postal Code is mine but I do not know anything at all on how to proceed… I have no idea which German counterpart they are working with.

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Parcelforce is a British courier, part of the Royal Mail. More or less a rebranding of the old Royal Mail parcels service.

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As I get to play more games face to face again, including some like Rallyman GT that I’ve played a lot on BGA, BGA feels increasingly like a second-best option. Even a synchronous game is less fun and social than the real thing.

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If you have an actual tracking number, it should be possible to try it with the usual local suspects — parcelforce uses the unified international system, which most couriers don’t.

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17track and ship24 should be able to figure out which courier the number applies to.

Use this a lot for figuring out US/Chinese shipping.

With the RM “cyber incident” it was the only way to tell my parcel was moving.

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