Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Odd report in the paper today of a woman returning home to NS from Ontario last August. Along the way, somewhere around Moncton, she lost her bag, containing $23000, in some woods, discovering it after getting home.

An RCMP search of the area, including police dog, found nothing.

This week, she gets a phone call from police because a Moncton resident found the bag and handed it in and she's reunited with her money.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Quite what was she doing with this sort of amount 'in her bag'? Those of us, like Bristol and I, fully understand that around here, 100 feet/meters from your home you are probably...in some woods! But nevertheless?

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

That was the odd part.

There was no explanation for the money but she had hired someone to drive her to NS as she can't drive herself.

On the way, she had some sort of disagreement with the driver, told her to stop and she got out the car. It seems she then went into the woods and waited for the car to go. Presumably that driver had to drive on and find somewhere to go back to Ontario.

She then came back out and flagged someone down who called police.

Here's the CBC report.

It's slightly different to the newspaper report which suggested she was returning to NS as if she'd been on a trip rather than moving back to NS.

I can only guess at reasons for the cash but maybe it's just as simple as not knowing she could transfer it between banks.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

A senior with mobility issues had been without water for a few days, unable to get a plumber to arrange a call in good time.

A neighbour who helps him out with shopping and doctor visits put something on Facebook and a guy who isn't a plumber but is obviously quite handy decides to visit, stopping along the way to get a couple of coffees for him and the feller.

He discovers the fault but a part needs fixing so he disconnects it, takes it home and does some welding to fix it and then reconnects next day, so the water supply is back but it's only a temporary fix. The senior is emotionally grateful.

Telling a friend about the Senior's predicament, the mate gifts him the part needed (about a $100 cost) and it's installed, good as new.

Lots of other stuff in the report about neighbours (but still strangers) helping people in need. :thumbup:

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

That's a lovely story. Be nice to back to a time when people helped each other without any expectations.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

This is a nice story: https://theovercast.ca/just-when-i-t...n-of-humanity/

(Belbins is a higher end independent grocery store in St John's)

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

The point about charitable giving is that you do it without bragging about it !

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

"Important work for charidee mate"
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-...sm=12&fit=max&

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Isn't that what these are examples of?

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

This is all wonderful heart warming stuff but beware, good deeds rarely go unpunished..😎

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Not his school and not even his town, but the owner of a contracting company (Near Fredericton) heard about damage to a school field and has offered time and equipment at no charge to get it fixed.

"It's the right thing to do" he said. :thumbup:

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I like helping people. Even if it's sometimes for totally selfish reasons! Still helps the other person!!

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

It was seen and it turns out the diner meant to leave $10 and not $70 so the restaurant refunded $60.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

My Sister went out for an Indian with a few friends and accidentally tipped £100 instead of £10. She was intoxicated at the time and the waiter didn't say a thing.

Two weeks later her credit card bill came through and she realised what she had done. She went back to the Indian and they told her to swivel.

Expensive mistake :lol:

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

dog finds lost cat in storm drain

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Kid loses money she'd saved for a horse.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

75 year old Moncton guy attends hospital daily for Radiation treatment and parks his car on a meter in a side street which is much closer to the Oncology department than hospital parking.

Feels funny one day but goes to his hour long appointment only for them to admit him via ER after a routine check of vitals.

He's worried about getting a ticket to add to his other problems. The nurses take turns to go out and feed the meter for the next day or so until someone is able to move the car.

"Our patients already have a lot of weight on their shoulders with things that make their lives more difficult. Sometimes a little 'tap on the shoulder' helps a lot."

:thumbup:

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

A story from Bedford UK. A woman is paying fir her parking but doesn't have enough coins as the machine keeps rejecting them. A man who is usually there begging comes over and uses his coins to pay. "I wouldn't want to see you stranded"

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I feel Canadians are better at it helping their fellow citizens. Thankfully I and most of my friends are not on feacesbook, so I dont see that any of that.

Feacesbook.... does strange things to all minds under its spell... Canadian, British, wherever. Look at me, look what Ive done look where I am, arnt I great etc etc. very yawnworthy

I always found in the UK everyone had a large portion of "Im alright Jack" attitude and a tunnel vision protection of their own interests and screw anyone else.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I try to avoid sharing my life on FB. I’ll just share funny things or photos... I hate when somebody posts one sentence cliff hanger comments basically inviting everybody to ask what’s wrong...
I’m occasionally serious but very rarely.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

You see most of what I post on FB but not all of my FB friends do. Some of my posts are only seen by my family and very close friends. I chose who I want to share information with in the same way that we do on here and even in real life.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Hey-ulp!

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....hL._SY445_.jpg

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Same you see everything I post. My favorite are the doggy posts 🐶

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Oh no. Now I understand why they need to post!!!! 😱

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

It has its plus points, and maybe I dont see that side of it as im stubborn and refuse to give in to the social media way of life, Ive seen it cause more harm than good from people that take it too seriously.

I suppose this site isnt too far way from it really....but at least we all have one thing in common on here,....mainly that we are expats living in another country, and so we share experiences of its different aspects....and how they effect us.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

What? Outrageous. Wash your mouth out with coriander.

:rofl:

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I live the social media way of life and have done since the fin-de-siècle. Admittedly, I try not to take life too seriously, but what harm do I risk?

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Agreed that was a bit of a slur on BE!

I do like coriander though.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

You don't think it tastes of soap then? ;)

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

None as such.....I just think it changes people and their behaviour. Most people act very false when they are online, many take social media very seriously.

I have been watching a great show on Netflix called Black Mirror, set in the near future, its about how modern technology or trends can be damaging to society and the way we live our lives.

The way social media is going who knows what it could become and the way it could change peoples behaviour in say 20 years from now....it sort of creeps without you noticing and becomes the norm, this show portrayed this and other modern behavioural habits as a consequence of modern technology very well.... quite throught provoking infact.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Only if you overdose on it. mixed with other spices its great! :thumbup:

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Interesting last few posts..

I earn my living through social media (moderation and engagement) and the thing that irritates me are the mindless comments against specific brands or people, sometimes numbering in their hundreds. The language encountered sometimes is horrendous and I ask myself why they feel the need to spout profanities to get their point across. I often think 'do you really have nothing better or more important to do than post over and over again?'

As for personal Social Media, I keep my FB to a few close friends and family who I am interested in keeping in touch with and keeping track of what's happening in their lives. I've stopped following a few, I disliked one persons endless posts (complete with photos) of what they cooked that day or what they were having for breakfast/lunch/dinner (including the recipe) day in, day out; another posted dozens of times a day 'sharing' or 'liking' posts that I had zero interest in (mainly sports related). I can still see the important stuff, but just not the 'fluff'.

Social media, IMHO, has it's place - but when it takes over lives to the point where people become obsessed with it, I think it's a bit sad. (not including BE of course!)

:)

(I like coriander too :p )

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

At this point I feel I should link to another thread posts number 43 and 44...just in case. :lol:

(although I now see at least one spotted the connection :thumbup:)

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

It's an interesting idea but, having been online for so long, I don't know that I have a different persona in real life than on the internet. I suspect I have become dbd. Some background:

- around 1999 I discovered the Guardian talkboard, then a pioneer in newspaper chat facilities. In that era I traveled constantly for business and something I liked about the board was that I could meet people from it wherever I was. I met the person now known as Souvy by that means around that time. I met very many people in the US and in England, many of whom I still know. One American I met by that means came to live with me in Canada for seven years. I suppose I may have met 300 people in a "go for a beer" kind of way. Only 2 turned out to be absolute nutters.

- while I lived with the American we moved from Toronto to the country and ran a blog on the theme of urban people bewildered by the country. A good number of people wrote to us about topics on the blog and I'm still in touch with some of those.

- I've been posting here for evah and am married to someone I met through this board. I used to go to the meet ups routinely and met a fair number of posters.

- I have a facebook account, many of the friends on there are from this site or work related (I don't bother with linkedin, my clients are all on facebook).

- I have an instagram account as my children, although one is a parent herself, are too young for facebook.

I think it fair to say that I'm no different online than in person and, importantly, very few of the people I met from the internet were different than their online persona led me to expect.

What is it that you think people do differently online, that's false, that they wouldn't do in a bar?

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I think it's fairly universally accepted that people behave in a very different fashion with anonymity than they do without. I'd probably take issue with 'most' though.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

You have made some very valid points, and even though we have never met in person, I feel that your probably right in what you say to a point....you have embraced the online world and the advantages that come with it, but I still think many (not all) people say stuff to each other online that they wouldn't dream of saying to each other face to face, it removes some peoples social filter, they say whats in their head, knowing there will be no real consequence, its just too easy. Having said that things said online can be very easily misinterpretated, or we can be over sensitive to things said in text as there are no facial expressions, no body language, and no tone of voice to read, so whos right and whos wrong in that case?

Added to this, many people use facebook as a "brag-a-thon", and show case how wonderful they are and what great things they are constantly doing, I find that highly irritating, its so materialistic and false....who cares!!

I think it depends what kind of person we are and how each one of us perceive social media. It appears you have fully embraced it and and use it how it suppose to be used, as a form of communication/information board.

I have always been a person that prefers to communicate face to face, I'm not even keen talking on the phone, and that gives me more sensory perception than talking online. Talking to a person face to face gives me a full sensory perception of that person, and I feel like I know where I stand with them.

Take online dating for example....ive tried it before, and I detest it, everyone lies, everyone is phoney, and you cant really see the real person or their qualities because all your senses are denied, with the exception of a photo that usually looks nothing like them, and this to me is sooo important in choosing a date/potential partner. Its a collection of many little things that attract you to someone, a unigue trait, their voice, their smell, a smile, a laugh, what they laugh at, the way they present themselves, their very demeanor.

Whether I like it or not the cyber age is upon us and its only going to intensify, the online world has brought us many advantages, but at what cost, denying us even more of our senses we were born to use? Its not for me to critisize, it works for many people, Im just not one of those people, the BE chat forum is as far as I will go with it. I have created a complete linkedin profile, as I thought it a necessity in obtaining employment in this day and age, its not worked that great for me so far, but maybe Im not embracing it enough. We are all different. Horses for courses I suppose!

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I agree that people say harsher things online than they would usually be willing to say face-to-face but I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. If someone hates all Londoners I may as well know that from the beginning rather than have them suppress it until very drunk.

Misinterpretation or excessive reaction is a bigger problem I think. Sometimes threads are closed or spats started because a poster didn't realize how a post could be construed when writing it or because a reader inferred something not intended by the author. The one thinks the other is being personally insulting, the reverse view is that the sensitive reader makes even general points into personal insults. There would be less of this, of course, if no one phrased their posts in such a way as to lead the careless reader to leap to the wrong conclusion but where's the fun in that?

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

I met my hubby on line... Kiss.com!

He was actually very genuine from the beginning. He did try to impress me but I think people try to do that at the beginning whether face to face or otherwise. I probably tried to make myself sound like some sex goddess!

He did send me a photo of himself that he thought I'm sure was very complimentary. To this day though, I maintain that he looked like Jasper Carrot!! Yup, I know, am I crazy? lol

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

Similarly to DBD, I got into the online community around 1999 on the Lonely Planet website. They used to have a great bulletin board online called the thorntree, as well as destination specific branches there were a few chat branches which primarily keep the real travel branches 'clean' of chatter. Once they added a PM facility a huge community formed.

Around 1999/2000 I answered a lot of queries about travel in eastern/ central europe, before moving to Botswana, and later becoming one of the few sources of information for Nigeria (I have several credits in the west africa books of that era).

The BBC wiped that out in around 2010 but it had been dying a death for a while, many people who had become friends just continued on facebook. 2 or 3 individual-ru websites sprang out of that too.

I think my online persona became similar to my real one, I'm plenty sarcastic but don't usually call people out or get overaggressive. Interestingly I did get a warning from the blackberry forum earlier this year for an overzealous put down.

Sports forums are usually the worst for online shouting behavior.

Re: The kindness of strangers
 

And politics. The_Donald is awful. The Israel/Palestine folder on the Gruan board was also full of vitriol.