New Members: Introduce Yourself!

[mjmjr25]

cdamm is good people, welcome to Racket! And yeah, those party cabs are legit, nice.

[gtmtnbiker]

26 years old, from UK but live in Beijing with my wife. Have been in China either studying or working on and off since 2005 and moved here permanently in 2011.

Neat. What have you been studying and which industry are you working in? How do you like Beijing compared to the UK? Do you miss home?

[SpaceKappa]

Hey everyone! Long time lurker, first time poster here!

I found Racketboy a few months ago and I've loved all the awesome content. I've been a gamer my entire life (I'm a couple months away from 29 years old at the moment!) and while I really enjoy today's games, retro games are where my heart is. I've been drooling over everyone's game collections and setups in the Home Theater forum so long I figured I should finally join the community!

Video games are a huge part of my life - I even met my wife on an Animal Crossing message board! - and as a result I have a lot of irons in the fire. I write for Nintendo Life, Push Square and KINECTaku, and I just started my own retro gaming webseries, The Backlog.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough! I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone, and posting some pictures of my collection very soon!

[Nyukki]

Neat. What have you been studying and which industry are you working in? How do you like Beijing compared to the UK? Do you miss home?

Hey dude,

I studied Chinese Studies, which is mainly Mandarin coupled with Chinese history starting from the Qing dynasty until now along with politics and economics. I work in buy-side investments for a Chinese insurance firm which is pretty exciting, but half the challenge comes from keeping up with our boss' demands as there are so many changes day to day. From what I hear though, most Chinese companies are like that. Some would call it indecisive, others might call it flexible!

Beijing's an awesome place to live, hard to sum up in a few sentences, but I've settled in quite nicely. Obviously I miss my family but other than that not homesick, although fresh air is something we don't get enough of here. Lots of arcades round here and when you ask people, everyone's a big KOF fan, which sucks cause I only played Street Fighter as a kid so I usually get my ass whooped. Otherwise, lots of fun things to do/see/eat in Beijing, I thoroughly recommend it!

[retrosportsgamer]

Welcome new folks! Glad you took the time to introduce yourselves.

[gtmtnbiker]

I work in buy-side investments for a Chinese insurance firm which is pretty exciting, but half the challenge comes from keeping up with our boss' demands as there are so many changes day to day.

Beijing's an awesome place to live, hard to sum up in a few sentences, but I've settled in quite nicely.

Neat. How is the cost of living for you? Do you find that you're able to live a good life with the income that you make? Are things cheap or expensive?

Do you have issues accessing certain parts of the internet due to the firewall or does everyone know ways around it?

[Nyukki]

...cost of living...

I earn OK so can live quite comfortably, but Beijing and other big cities in China are kind of weird when it comes to pricing. Generally, China is cheap for holidaying once you've dealt with the flight, but expensive to live in. An example is, I can go out for a huge meal in a nice restaurant an order loads of drinks and it will cost about a quarter of what it would in the UK (plus, you're getting awesome Chinese food). On the other hand, buying a car or house or washing machine etc. is much more expensive than in UK.

Basically, the cheap stuff is really cheap and expensive stuff is really expensive, not much middle ground. Partially due to there not being much of a middle class, people are largely either very poor or very rich by western standards, though the middle class is growing.

...issues accessing certain parts of the internet...

Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are blocked and recently Bloomberg and New York Times were added to the list for publishing articles listing assets owned by leading communist party officials, but the firewall is easily bypassed with a VPN. They only don't like you challenging the party's authority, so if you're not political, like myself, and don't go running round Tiananmen Square waving a Tibetan flag, you can go about your business just fine. In that sense, I feel free to do as I please here and not like anyone is watching me (although I guess you never know, haha!).

[gtmtnbiker]

@Nyukki - that's very fascinating. I'm always interested in learning/observing other cultures. Thanks for sharing those details and hope you have an enjoyable life in China.

[SoloTek]

Hello Racketboy and its members,

I have been an avid reader and visitor to the site for a while now and just decided to join to join in on the conversations going on. I grew up a gamer and enjoy gaming frequently. I prefer to play games single player rather than with others. This is strange since I was a member of s3 gaming community for UT2k4.

Some background info:
Age: 30
Sex: Male
Race: Humanoid
Status: Married w/ no kids
Occupation: Resident Orthotist former Orthotic Technician
Location: Eastern Iowa (I have cattle for neighbors)

I will post some photos of my collection soon as well as some of my custom bracing that I do for a living for my patients. Below is a taste of some of the work I do and I cant wait for my Residency to end in February so I can make some real money!

Peace!

[Stokins]

Greetings to every single one of you!

My name is Robin, 18 years old, and If I have been known by anything, it's for my imagination and my open-mindedness towards a lot of things. Naturally, I've come to have a close fondness for video games, among other things, for almost all of my life. I've had systems and beloved games come and go, and I've seen how the industry has come to shape itself into what it is today, good or ill, and much has given me warm memories. While recent happenings in my home, with me coming out and all, has given quite a blow to my social life, I've been doing a lot of growing, and so, I felt that now is the time for me to build up my collection and see where it takes me.

So, as you can guess, I'm more or less new to the retro collecting community, but I hope I can do my best to contribute to the best of my ability, and to really get to know you all. If there's anything you'd like to ask about me, feel free to PM me or just ask me here.