u/ElvisGrizzly

Hearing why Hank finally left wasn't a surprise. The surprise was it not happening sooner Ol' Top. But getting to see Bobby finally find his thing was great. And it makes sense. His extensive meat training. The pride of showmanship. The way to act with strangers that's a little much in regular life but perfect for customer service in dining. And finding out that he went to Lucky and Luanne's house for the Saudi Arabia years was just one more nod that those two had a good life, even if we don't get to see it. Which makes me happy.

I used to be globalist, then I stopped traveling so much for work. So I decided to try and find the easiest way to get back there again. That's how I found the Wink Hotels.

They're a recent addition to Hyatt, as I understand it - added just this year. They even still have their previous points program website up. Best description of their brand is similar to the Tru hotel brand from Hilton. It's accessible and colorful, a lot of focus on common spaces.

An overnight comes with a free breakfast that has fresh fruit and freshly made eggs. Nothing amazing, but they nailed the basics pretty well. Also the kind of social events and regular night food specials that seem to be the norm for places like this.

Tips:

• What I wish I'd known was that stays of 10 days or longer would get me the long stay rate and knock another couple bucks off each night. I was doing Sunday to Friday stays just to make sure that the points posted and also to go somewhere for the weekends. Ultimately, though, I call that a wash, for the most part. There's a lot of cool places to see in Vietnam, and you can use any of these hotels as the jumping off point to get around there.
• Because it's a new in the Hyatt system, the points and nights seem to post a little more slowly and occasionally get stuck altogether. Which has involved me using the Hyatt chat line 72 hours afterwards to when they were supposed to have gone through.
• The food menu at these places is a little limited outside of the breakfast hours, but surprisingly, the prices are not that much worse than nearby restaurants. That said, when I wanted something that wasn't there, I just generally used GrabEats to get it. Which is much cheaper.
• Because it's so new in the Hyatt ecosystem, none of the hotels are available on points. But this would be one of the rare cases where even if they were using the lowest Hyatt level of 3,500 points, it would still be cheaper to pay the cash price at some of these places by a significant amount.

Overall, if you can remote work or take the time to do it, yeah, I'd say this is a pretty great way to get your global Snipe if you can get here. I've done the Wink Da Nang Center, I've done the Wink Tuy Hoa and I plan on doing the Wink Can Tho before my visa is up. All under 40 bucks a night at their max. but I suspect winter prices are a little higher.

So basically, I've been sitting on these all year and couldn't figure out the right time and place to use it. And eventually I said, "you know what, I'm paying a hundred bucks a month for Claude. Why don't we see what he can do about it?"

I used the edit hotels map from Award Hack to ID the cheapest general rates for the hotels they'd identified as the cheapest in Asia (and that I could get to from where I was). Once I'd picked the top two or three, I had it use its Expedia and Booking connectors to run the top back to back stays across July and August and find the cheapest four day run. What it came up with was a four day run at the Mondrian Hong Kong at the end of July.

So then I booked the following:

$540.19 for the first 2 night stay at the Mondrian
$461.02 for the second 2 night stay at the Mondrian

Then Claude had found prices that were about 100 cheaper for each one. So using the Chrome connector it filled out the price match guarantee. And that refunded me -$96.11 for the first night and -$82.01 for the second night.

Then the edit credits of $250 a night kicked in.

Making my total out of pocket 323.09 for four nights at the Mondrian. With free breakfast. And 200 bucks to blow on cocktails at Avoca, TimeOut's readers choice bar award winner. (Which I am hoping is at least four to six drinks.)

Could I have done this without Claude? Sure. I have in the past. And it's taken me the better part of a weekend. This? This was setting co-work in motion and waiting for the win.

If the plan is to make the coupon book of value so difficult I never use it all? Well get ready to tell it to the robot Chase. He LOVES this stuff.

So I think I might have a novel in me. But I think to get there with a crappy first draft I’d need to be a certain kind of buzzed every day for a couple hours. AND with low overhead. Where is that anywhere in the world? So far the only place I can come up with is Thailand, which isn’t as cheap as it used to be. Anywhere else?

My Ayn Rand is my one
My Chip and Dips are two
My strikes for infidelity are three
MY KNICKS IN FOUR

I'm considering it and wondering 1 - what are the dosage matches (I'm at 14mg rybelsus) and 2 - what has your experience been so far?

Ken literally brought up - as part of his campaigning for the gig - that NOT releasing the last autopsy was a mistake. Which means whatever's in there must be pretty bad in some way that he or top donors don't want seen. My guess? One of three things

1. More Biden age stuff we knew (but now corroborated by someone besides Jake Tapper) - As in dozens of party mid-levels going on record to say they knew Joe was not there anymore and asked people to take action months before they did. And obviously nothing was done. So that kind of clear timeline with multiple folks co-corroborating will obviously add to the "old guard is the worst" narrative while also inflaming the "WE SHOULD HAVE STOOD BY JOE" blueanon crowd on threads. =

2. Kamala stuff we didn't know - As in some huge failing in the campaign structure (likely the 'sister/basic chief of staff' in charge of things she couldn't fire and who has been implicated in pre-campaign pieces). Or something new. And here he doesn't want to be the white guy seeming to blame the woman of color middling candidate who had only limited time to run because of the old man prez with hubris and no common sense.

3. Israel and Gaza - That there would be some sort of complete agreement from activists on the ground, especially younger ones, who said "yeah Gaza pissed everyone off we needed to knock doors and we need to recalibrate on Israel." Which with a certain high level donor class is basically like shouting Candyman in the mirror three times.

1 is bad but it basically is all about core Biden apologists. And they are all old and at some point they lose the Old Guard anyway when the lipitor wears off. I don't think it's that one.

2 is more likely but it would have to be really bad to spike the report. Because it's not like they're worried they'll hurt the candidacy of someone who's going to run again and matter. She's going to get bounced at the first debate if she even makes it to one Iowa fair. Even if she wasn't a bad candidate with worse instincts, she's too tied to enabling a guy who got us into this mess with his befuddled old man instincts and a circus of enablers

3 is, I think the the winner winner chicken dinner. Because that's about the future of the party. The other two are backward looking. That one, if you release it, forces the party to say "yeah we need to move on from blanket backing Israel so long as a crazy party holds the reins of the government there." What's crazy is when he decided NOT to release it, the 'back Israel anyway' Dem consensus was a lot stronger and probably the conventional wisdom. Now it's flipped. So he's out of step with his party on it. Not some of the bigger donors I'm sure but definitely the vibe on the ground in general.

Or am I missing some other possible thing he might be spiking this for?

So my dad used to spend a lot of time in the bathroom. Like he'd take TWO books in with him. And in one traumatic memory, he once made me bring him my leftover birthday party mickey mouse napkins when he ran out of TP. ("NO. Not MICKEY!")

Anyway as a child it left a mark.

So I was determined to spend as little time going #2 as possible. Go in. Do your business, get out. So that's what I did. I worked to develop what I thought to be strong control. To get it out in five minutes tops. With training and straining I thought that's what I'd done and it had continued into my latter adulthood. Especially in public bathrooms, I'd go in, drop one and leave, while shaking my head at the people taking so long to do what clearly was a MUCH shorter operation. All these time wasters, obviously playing with their phones.

Or so I thought.

As part of a promise to get myself checked out after a family member's death, I went overseas (screw you American health prices) and paid for a lot of tests including an endoscopy and a colonoscopy. Turns out I had H. Pylori. That the doctor mused I might have had for at least for a decade. Possibly longer. What's that cause? Among other things, irregular flows in the #2 department.

To treat it I got a very aggressive round of antibiotics. No big deal I thought. I don't love them as they've caused me stomach problems in the past (which I might have taken as a sign but I clearly didn't). But I saw it through to the end this time and finally beat the bacterial colony that apparently had a long term lease in my gut.

Since then I am basically making Wombat level waste bricks (minus the right angles) and it is NOT the process I am used to. Occasionally I've needed to use the handicapped stall when available just so I can have that wall handlebar for leverage.

THIS Is what you people have been doing with your intestines? This WHOLE time?

Well anyway I was wrong. And now I have the time to think about it. Because I am clearly not going anywhere for a much longer portion of my day.

TL,DR: Thought I was great at going to the bathroom. Turned out the bacteria was great at going, not me.

Edit: to be clear, not EVERY one is that bad but more than a few are. Which, again, is proof that the bacteria have been covering for my less than ideal eating habits for a hunk of my adult life. Which is to say yes, now, I'm also working on changing my diet. And I have time to think about that now as well.

Ken literally brought up - as part of his campaigning for the gig - that NOT releasing the last autopsy was a mistake. Which means whatever's in there must be pretty bad in some way that he or top donors don't want seen. My guess? One of three things

1. More Biden age stuff we knew (but now corroborated by someone besides Jake Tapper) - As in dozens of party mid-levels going on record to say they knew Joe was not there anymore and asked people to take action months before they did. And obviously nothing was done. So that kind of clear timeline with multiple folks co-corroborating will obviously add to the "old guard is the worst" narrative while also inflaming the "WE SHOULD HAVE STOOD BY JOE" blueanon crowd on threads. =

2. Kamala stuff we didn't know - As in some huge failing in the campaign structure (likely the 'sister/basic chief of staff' in charge of things she couldn't fire and who has been implicated in pre-campaign pieces). Or something new. And here he doesn't want to be the white guy seeming to blame the woman of color middling candidate who had only limited time to run because of the old man prez with hubris and no common sense.

3. Israel and Gaza - That there would be some sort of complete agreement from activists on the ground, especially younger ones, who said "yeah Gaza pissed everyone off we needed to knock doors and we need to recalibrate on Israel." Which with a certain high level donor class is basically like shouting Candyman in the mirror three times.

1 is bad but it basically is all about core Biden apologists. And they are all old and at some point they lose the Old Guard anyway when the lipitor wears off. I don't think it's that one.

2 is more likely but it would have to be really bad to spike the report. Because it's not like they're worried they'll hurt the candidacy of someone who's going to run again and matter. She's going to get bounced at the first debate if she even makes it to one Iowa fair. Even if she wasn't a bad candidate with worse instincts, she's too tied to enabling a guy who got us into this mess with his befuddled old man instincts and a circus of enablers

3 is, I think the the winner winner chicken dinner. Because that's about the future of the party. The other two are backward looking. That one, if you release it, forces the party to say "yeah we need to move on from blanket backing Israel so long as a crazy party holds the reins of the government there." What's crazy is when he decided NOT to release it, the 'back Israel anyway' Dem consensus was a lot stronger and probably the conventional wisdom. Now it's flipped. So he's out of step with his party on it. Not some of the bigger donors I'm sure but definitely the vibe on the ground in general.

Or am I missing some other possible thing he might be spiking this for?