Minimalism - Online Income - ESL - Japan
Ramsay Ramblings is back after a 10 year absence – woohoo! This is where I clear my head of all the things I want to say, smashed together in a single blog post. Let’s get started: The Covid Olympics Like 80% of Japan, I was opposed to hosting the Olympics in the middle of a pandemic. The Coronavirus outbreak, days after the closing ceremony, is currently the worst it has […]
When I first started taking an interest in Bitcoin, I thought, “Hmm… maybe I could just buy one Bitcoin.†Little did I know that a single Bitcoin costs a year’s salary! A few days, and a little research later, I was gung ho about earning my first satoshi instead. A “satoshi†is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, worth one hundred millionth of a Bitcoin, or 0.00000001 BTC. Apparently, it was […]
During my first few years in Japan, I was fairly proactive in figuring things out for myself. That changed after I got married, though. Time and time again, I deferred anything that required Japanese to my wife. That included booking doctor and dental appointments, hiring handymen for home maintenance, planning family trips, running the administrative side of our English school, and most significantly, managing our finances. Not surprisingly, she reached […]
Here’s a quote from a recent BBC news article: Eurozone leaders have agreed on a comprehensive package designed to shore up banks, including making more than a 1,000bn euros ($1,366bn) available for interbank loans. Notice anything strange about it? That’s right, 1,000bn euros and the dollar equivalent. When I first saw that, I thought it was wrong, it had to be “one trillion”, so off I went try to confirm […]
England has always seemed to be quite advanced when it comes to supermarket technology. They had long, spacious, barcode-reading checkouts when I was 17 and worked in the frozen section of Waitrose. It wasn’t many years later before they introduced hand-held, customer-carried barcode readers so shoppers could check prices for themselves. People buying less then ten items have been able to go through an “express” checkout for years, and all that time, the checkout girls and boys have been allowed […]
I didn’t come to Japan for the money. No, really! I’d love to say I came to experience the culture, learn the language and teach English, but if truth be told, I came for a girl… but that’s another story. So, although I wasn’t here for the money at first, it has become a big reason for me to stay. Contrary to popular belief, I find the cost of living […]