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I was told by an acquaintance once that the public library in our town disapproves of people taking their books on vacation, but I was never told that first hand so I'm skeptical. It's a small town library though and doesn't have a great selection. It was getting hard to find a book there I wanted to read. I also suspect they may be culling the books they have and are careful about what they acquire. It wouldn't be right wing in this case, but more about getting rid of politically incorrect stuff. What's politically correct is or is not is a matter of opinion however, so I won't pick sides in that battle.

Never thought I'd switch to Kindle, but I did when I realized how convenient it is, especially for travel. No more taking 4 or 5 big paperbacks on vacations. Also now that I'm retired I'm just ploughing through cheap adventure/war/spy type novels. Usually only five or six dollars each.

I'm not sure if that's possible in Canada. Despite politicians promises to not privatize health care, there are various private clinics operating across the country for MRIs and other testing. I suppose it would be possible to pay for private health insurance to have a surgery in the United States, but I'm guessing you can't just sign up for it, go to the States for the surgery, and then cancel the insurance. The current problems in Canada are being used to push for more private health care for those who can afford it.

Got the first and perhaps my only shot of monkey pox vaccine in Vancouver on Thursday. I was going there anyway and was able to book an appointment. But it was taking walk-ins too. The clinic was in a downtown health centre. It was at street level with lots of signs and it was a beautiful day so the door was propped wide open. Obviously no concerns about haters trying to disrupt the clinic or harass anybody. It wasn't busy, but always at least one or two guys waiting. They didn't ask any awkward questions, just, did I read the criteria and did I qualify. The risks the nurse mentioned were contact with clothing and sharing eating utensils, which I found funny, because let's be honest, those aren't the risks I've been thinking about. Anyway, I feel better about travelling this winter. And grateful to the public health unit in metro Vancouver for providing the vaccine to people from out of province. They're only giving one shot for now, but it's a start. No swelling or pain, etc, from the shot.

Thanks for these posts guys. My doctor isn't the best straight up communicator, but I think she's been saying for the past couple of years I almost certainly have prostrate cancer, but it hasn't reached the point of needing treatment. She's also given me the option of going to a big city to see a specialist and she's been sending my test results to a specialist in Vancouver who talked to me on the phone last winter. He agreed with her I didn't need any treatment or more advanced testing at that time. I had a blood test in July and my doctor didn't call so I assume it hadn't changed, but I'm talking to her this week and I'll ask her. It was to good to read these posts to see what the future might hold for me and also reassuring that it can be dealt with.

Google says only “Altruistic” surrogacy" is legal in Canada, appears to be no difference for same sex or single male parents from heterosexual parents. And the usual procedure is to implant a fertilized egg from a donor into the surrogate mother. Generally the surrogate is also the biological mother only when the intention is that she remains a part of the child's life.

I'd rather have rats gnaw on my face than vote for Air Canada as a top airline. But maybe it's just so bad it's a special case. They've been blaming the federal government for all the delays at Canadian airports, and it shares the blame, but I think the bigger problem are the alrlines fault for not rehiring enough ground staff and air crew and overselling.

Gee, no North American airlines in the top 20, that's a big surprise, NOT.

Canada is also ending the vaccination requirement on Oct 1. And people don't have to fill out the pre-entry form if they don't want to. Government still mulling over whether to keep masking on planes and trains.

I may have gone there about 15 years ago. Was it a fancy looking multi-level place?

I thought it was a marvel of engineering and ingenuity when I saw the one in Australia. It works well.

Wow, still there? There was a lot of activity the couple times I went.

There was a cruising place there with an interesting set-up. They had a wall with glory holes. The guys standing there were about three or four feet higher than the guys standing on a sunken floor on the other side so their heads (mouths) were at about the same height as the dicks sticking out through the holes. I quite liked it.

Holy shit, I had a co-worker who did that all time. And it worked, their victim always ended up having to apologize to the provoker.

The first time I visited some friends in Perth, I fell in love with it and wanted to move there. It seemed like a paradise (I live in Canada). On my second visit I developed a more realistic view. But I still believe it would probably be one of the best places in the world to live for me. I really liked the Australian cities. Except Adelaide. I don't know why it didn't appeal to me.

I recently came across a term edgelord and when I looked it up, it's a person who is exactly what you describe, who goes online with an exaggerated personality meant to provoke or shock others. Maybe it's a thing with a younger people now, although it's certainly not a new thing. They've always existed.

My first experience with Vietnam was making the mistake of getting in an illegal taxi at the Hanoi airport. There were two guys and on the highway into the city they pulled over at a rest stop and demanded that I pay the tourist tax. I would have just paid what they wanted, but I thought they were asking for more money than I had. I realized later it was much less than I thought at the time. So I kept saying I didn't have the money and it got to the point one of them was screaming at me. I was almost shaking with fear. Then the driver pulled back out onto the highway, forced another taxi onto the shoulder, spoke to the driver and told me to get in that taxi and even got my bag out of the trunk. The second taxi was fine until in heavy traffic in Hanoi two girls on a motorbike trying to make a left turn got stuck right in front of us, the driver waited a couple of minutes then drove slowly forward and pushed their motorbike over with his car, they were crying and standing on the street while the driver got out, pushed their bike to the side and took me to my hotel. After that horrible start, my two weeks in Vietnam went smoothly and I had a great visit. Never tried to find a guy, but there were certainly lots of pimps asking if I wanted to go boom-boom with a woman.

A guy I know married a Thai woman about ten years ago and has lived there ever since. He loves it and hardly ever returns to Canada for visits. On Facebook they appear to have a good life, fantastic meals, lots of travelling around the country to resorts and such. During the pandemic they posted photos of staying in beautiful resorts with almost no other guests. He has a Canadian government employee pension and she seemed pretty well set up before they got married. A small business and nice middle class (I guess) house in the country. I've never had a chance to ask him about adjusting to life in a foreign country, but they seem to be very happy together. It's not the older western guy, young Asian woman stereotype. They're about the same age and he's not the domineering husband type, but maybe a little juvenile. I think she's probably a benevolent ruler in the household.

Live in western Canada. I'm retired now and no plans to live elsewhere. Where I am is a nice place to live. I can travel when I want to. Some Americans in a nearby community across the border joke about the "joyous mediocrity" of my town, nothing too polished, nothing too worn out, a sort of triumph of the middle class. In other words, good enough is good enough, it's almost a motto in Canada.

I checked out Prague in Hunqz and saw straight porn actor Luca was listed for Prague. I got quite excited, but checked the reviews and yep it's a fake. I don't know if Romeo would follow up on that if it was alerted.

Actually, I was kind of shocked. I had never seen anything remotely like that. It was only a year earlier and a trip to Costa Rica's Caribbean coast that I learned there was such a thing as sex tourism..... why did that nice middle aged man from Montreal in the next bungalow get a young local man to stay with him? In Koh Samui there were elderly overweight European men in skimpy bathing suits on the beach with two or three Thai girls of indeterminate ages, the ramshackle bars were packed in the evenings with drunk westerners and the local sex workers trying to get their attention and I was with a straight couple from home who had no interest in that scene.

Gosh, I was there once about 30 years ago, it was like Sodom and Gomorrah. Some hot straight Thai male sex workers hitting mainly on foreign women, but gay for pay too.

Yah, it seems to be a thing in Australia. I was in a Sydney bar with a rugby game on TV which I wasn't paying attention to and it was noticed. I ordered another beer while another guy was waiting at the bar for his order and he said to me, oh you're not Aussie, we were wondering why you weren't watching the game.

I'd certainly try to have a lot more sex in my youth do-again if I could have one. I wasn't in denial about my gayness, but it was a complication in the small town where I lived.

The wife and family are probably a big part of his happiness. My sense is that many old men, gay and straight, are not close to whatever family members they have left and are alone and lonely. Maybe the solution is to marry someone younger, as long as there's genuine affection and enjoyment of each others company. One solace of modern life for old men is the amount of pornography that's available. Maybe that sounds sad, but I like it.