Bluntness... I once lost a friend on KofK because I was joking and she took me seriously. I was even more put off the site when that happened, it's hard to be very active in a community whose people who are so nice it intimidates you :P It actually makes them hard to talk to since you have to try so hard not to be weird and always polite.
The poor net-only-in-the-summer cousin is now in college, doing his Computer Science, and he STILL isn't free even though he's in a whole other country (Dubai, UAE.) because his Skype is supposed to come on by default when he's on his computer and when his mom sees him online she video calls him and says 'Hi, are you studying?'
That's the standard greeting. She's making sure he's on the computer to do college assignments, not to have fun.
Oh, India and China have plenty in common. Both countries have idiotic gender issues. Both educational systems are hella similar, rote-learning and all that. And both countries are meritocracies.

So is this cousin so under the parental thumb that he won't change his Skype settings? D< I wonder what percentage of parents ever realise how obsessive they have become Just the same amount as the nagging wives/mother-in-laws, I suppose :( It becomes so normal that they forget how to do anything else. : /

Oh no they're different jelly. The buttkicker role comes later if needed

If my mom did that I'd auto set to invisible upon log in and sign in once a month to say hi >.>

My aunt has to check on him every single day, and a LOT of politics happens in my family relating to Skype... maybe he wants to be on the safe side. He might be logging in more times than the times he appears online, but I've seen times when my aunt has text-messaged him seeing him online and he's told her he's in class and the teacher might come any minute so he'll chat after he's in his dorm. Don't know how to read into that, but I think it's likely he's being a very good obedient boy :P
Obsessive parents are horrible. And this guy's an only child. I'm not sure if she obsesses over him- a lot of parents do a lot of things to make their kids study as much as possible and they're not obsessive. I think she thinks, since she went through most of her life without internet he can too. She doesn't see the difference: internet wasn't even AVAILABLE to her, EVERYONE was deprived of Net-chan as a consequence. Even if she never exposed my cousin to the net he'd still know that his friends had internet and he didn't, just as an orphan misses parents he's never had.

Yeah, I just wish maybe parents could learn the difference between encouraging their children to learn and forcing them to >< But all adults forget what it was really like to be a kid, so kind of a tall order really.

I don't think it's so much that they forgot, I think it's that they remember and they're trying to make sure their kids don't make the same mistakes. Or that they're trying to not be like their own parents. Or some combination of the two.

My parents always thought I should learn by hearing how things are done, but I'm a learner by doing.
Because of this I have weeded a yard hundreds of times but I still don't know what's a weed and what isn't.

No computer skill at all, especially with the internet can really screw someone up in this day and age, when being online is sometimes how you build the connections you will need to get a job later.
Like without internet I wouldn't have met longcat, and started looking into a job direction I had never thought of.

Poet's gonna be a snek charmer?!

Oh my aunt uses the internet all right, she's a regular Facebooker. She thinks since she's a responsible adult she won't get addicted or use the net to her disadvantage. She also thinks she's 'earned' it, the way teachers think they've 'earned' wearing makeup and huge jewelry by going through our stage of life, whereas we're still going through the stage and have yet to 'earn' it.
People know they gotta learn. My mom is very cute at anything she does on the computer especially her messups :D

Originally Posted by jellysundae

Poet's gonna be a snek charmer?!

LOL!
....I don't get it?

Haha, how can I break this down without over-complicating things ><

Maybe it'll be easier to just link to this thread...><

http://www.menewsha.com/forum/commun...-mene-mod.html

No but that would be a fun job. I already have a scar from a snake as it is.

I DO want to work with animals... and I'm actually tempted to try and get a job at a national park.
Oh gosh if I could work at Mt. Rainier BEST. PLACE. EVER.

I see. Wow. That first picture of a longcat is really pretty.
You don't see many snake charmers around nowadays, since they do stupid things like stitching up the snake's mouth. More monkeys are seen performing on the streets.
I'd love to work with baby pandas! Or grown up sloths!

Stitching the mouth?!? That's horrible!!!

This is exactly why I want to work with animals INSTEAD of people

Yeah, that gets done to fish too : /

...can't remember which or why...something to do with Russia I think, so maybe sturgeon...

Wouldn't it be easier to just develop a light clamp that holds the snake's mouth shut? I mean their jaws aren't exactly powerful... designing something like that would be very easy

Maybe a clamp from the inside. One that can be home-made. Thing is they stitch the snake's mouth but you can't SEE that they've stitched it. If people could see it surely most of them wouldn't pay the snake charmer to see it perform, they'd have to know that there's such a practice for them to discourage it.

Could even be carved from wood. I mean if it can't eat it's going to starve to death too

Yeah, I know. Or they could be trained to just remove its venom... nah too ambitious :P
Snake-charming is dying anyway. And I haven't heard anyone complaining.

Snake charming isn't hard... just don't piss it off.
I've held a wild snake before

Pics or it never happened

A wild one? :O

Couldn't take a picture until I set it back down though. Snakes take both hands after all and I don't have a trained "selfie" hand.

Its face actually looks cute :O Its eyes are like those of stuffed animals!
'Selfie' reminds me of the song. It was one of the stupidest song I've ever heard (which is saying something as I've heard several songs of modern mainstream Indian cinema.)

I dunno... even the worst Indian music video I've seen is better than most of the modern junk I've seen

He was actually rather friendly until someone decided to grab it's tail to make sure it had no rattle. It bit me because it was upset and then went back to chilling in my hand.

That selfie song is funny >< The fact that a lot of kids think it's amazing being a huge part of why it's so funny, because they don't realise that it's totally taking the piss out of them.

That's a pretty snek!