Reddit mentions of A Fine and Pleasant Misery

Sometimes trips just suck. Sometimes you can salvage a bad travel experience with a change in plans, or a change of company, or a chance in perspective. Remember, you don't have to do anything. If you want to just hang out in a cafe and drink tea and read a book, that's OK. You don't have to run around with a GoPro showing everyone how much extreeeeeeeme fun you are having. This is your trip. Do it your way.

Remember, culture shock is a thing. Even if you are curious and open minded, new experiences are taxing. Too many new experiences all at the same time can be exhausting, even if they're all good. Don't be too proud to treat yourself to something familiar if it helps you cope. For most people, unfamiliar food cultures are very stressful, even if you're into it.

I can't tell you how much I appreciated Starbucks in Beijing. I only spent a hour in there, drinking their familiarly mediocre coffee out of their familiar paper cups and farting around on my laptop using their normal WiFi. The other customers were all Beijingers, but they wouldn't have been out of place in a Starbucks in LA or Boston or Atlanta. The employees all spoke perfect, American-accented English. None of the old ladies tried to clout me with their shopping bags. Nobody tried to sell me a mysterious meat thing. No random girls tromped over to take their picture with me. Nobody touched my hair. Nobody screamed at anyone. It was just an hour in a Starbucks, same as anywhere, but it made it possible to laugh my way through an entire week of travel fuckups. I came back from a day trip to find the university casually demolishing the 16-story building where I was staying, with all my stuff in it. I thought it was hilarious.

When you get back, you might enjoy reading about other peoples' bad travel experiences. I really enjoyed I Should Have Stayed Home, a collection of hilarious travel-related shitfuckery edited by Roger Rapoport. You might also like A Fine and Pleasant Misery by Patrick F. McManus. Taking lousy experiences and turning them into comedy is a valuable skill.

Also, it's OK to not have a good time sometimes. One thing that will surely ruin your fun is feeling obligated to have fun. You're allowed to have feelings about the things you experience, and sometimes those feelings aren't the ones you wanted or expected. Sometimes you'll feel blue. I'm sure you know what to do with yourself when you're feeling blue at home. Now, you just have to figure out how to meet that need with local materials.

For me, I look for a quiet (but not too quiet) place to sit with a book and a thermos of tea, where I don't have to talk to anyone. I've managed to find a quiet place to read behind a rubble-pile in Greenland, 30 feet up a strangular ficus in the Andean cloud forest, in an abandoned sauna in Siberia, on a bench at a truck stop in Outer Mongolia, in an ice cream parlor in subway mall in Tokyo, in a Starbucks in Beijing, on the veranda of the only dance club in the Galapagos. The only place I couldn't find a place to read a book and chill was Las Vegas. Fuck that place.

>I think that i should talk more with adult men, but everyone i talk with seems to think only about women and how to pleasure them, so basically a lot of bluepill + cuck + simps...fuck me right? So i now ask you, what can i do to complete my education in what it means to be a man, what quality and skills i should learn, what can i read?

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Wall, whatcha need ta du... is git yerself wuts knowned fer & wade as a "Prime Old Man".*
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Now the thing about such "Prime Old Men" is that ya ain't gonna find em lurkin about no gol durn "gym-nas-ium"... ya might find 'em in sum bar, but theyz usually useless thare, being drunk an all.

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Nah... to git yerself a GUD "Prime Old Man" yer gunna haff to git ta whar theyz akshully out'n'about & DOIN' sumthin... sey huntin' er fishin' er bildin' sumthin, er werkin' ona moto-sickle er unda a sportz-car er sumthin lak thathar... then ya gotz ta git rat in thar en start doin the same thangz theyz doin... huntin' er fishin' er wall, thet thar sorta thang.

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Then... wen ya startz ta screwz shital up, why thay'll cum along and sey sumthin lak: "Hey Bub, anybuddy evar shew yu the rat wey ta build a fahr in the snow?"

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* If'n ya wantsta kno moar aboot "Prime Old Men" includin' how ya gotz to "Prime" 'em ta git 'em goin (udder than screwin shitall up)... wall ya jist gona havta git yerself a copy of da buk wut de abov cums frum cal'd "A Fine And Pleasant Misery" by Patrick F. McManus -- jist bea pree-paired ta laff yer arse off.