I bought my leaf in 2024 used from Smart Cars Weiland in Pittsboro. It had 17k miles on the odometer and I paid 18k with some financing.
Highlights of the LEAF
The Nissan LEAF, launched in 2010, pioneered the mass-market electric vehicle (EV) segment, becoming one of the world’s best-selling EVs by offering affordable, zero-emission transport.
It evolved through two main generations, starting with modest range (around 100 miles) and basic tech, then adding larger batteries (up to 60 kWh), longer range (over 200 miles with LEAF PLUS), e-Pedal, and ProPilot Assist for improved driving and safety, solidifying its role in daily commuting worldwide.
My parents would always buy coconut milk for curry dishes.
My father being British would make Indian Currys while my mother was fond of Thai curry. Coconut-fried rice was also a staple of many meals.
The fats in coconut are beneficial for health, and the pulp is a good source of fiber for digestion.
Fresh Fruits
Apples and Oranges, Bananas and Berries, Seasonal Melons and exotic fare. Fresh fruit is always kept in ready supply.
A great alternative to sugary foods and full of vitamins, you cannot go wrong with fruit. As they say, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
But make sure you brush your teeth. All that natural sugar will rot your teeth if left unchecked, and will summon doctors of dentistry.
Canned Salmon
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, salmon was a staple of the region for many groups including First Nation people’s. The Chinook and Sockeye in particular played a big role in the culture and lives of the people.
I can remember school trips to Native-American museums in Washington, totem poles, and visits to the reservation in Yakima. My parents would often say, I was conceived on the Res.
Living now in North Carolina, the salmon here is predominantly Atlantic and especially pricey. Canned Alaskan salmon however is inexpensive by contrast. The cans are tall and hold a good amount of fish, enough for multiple meals.
Canned Salmon was the first food we fed our family cat, Mei Mei. She eats dry food now that she is older, but occasionally, we will give her a fishy treat from out the can.
Rice
Our grain of choice when it comes to cooking, sometimes mixed with bulgur or buckwheat. Rice pairs nicely with most dishes. Sometimes the Rice is the primary focal point of the meal as with fried-rice and rice-balls.
As mentioned earlier, Coconut-fried rice is a nice Thai dish. My mother enjoys cooking East Asian foods like Korean Bulgogi, Japanese Miso Soup, or Chinese Egg-Drop Soup. Rice often accompanies these dishes as a side and staple.
Frozen Veggies
Stir fry is probably the most common way we eat our vegetables, seconded only by tossed salads.
The pre-made stir fry mixes in the frozen foods section at the Food Lion grocery store seem to be shrinking, but we still buy them. I recall the bags were a couple pounds each back in the mid 2000s, but now they are often less than 16 ounces for the same price.
They have also begun to include sauce packets in the bag that take up space that previously help more veggies.
What we cannot get at the grocery store, we buy from local farm stands, or grow ourselves in our backyard garden. We sometimes also go to the Farmers Market.
Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?
In the course of my attendance of the Tongue Point Job Corps Center in Astoria, OR, I was granted the privilege of reading Martin Luther King Junior’s “Dream” speech, during Black History month, in front of the entire student body and staff.
Astoria’s Tongue Point Job Corps center was one of the first in the nation to open in 1965. Located on a former Navy base, it now hosts 313 students, many of whom live on campus, and 165 staff members.
The Job Corps program originated in 1964 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” established by the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) to combat youth unemployment by providing education, vocational training, and work experience for disadvantaged young people.
At the Job Corps Center, I was a member of the Student Government Association (SGA), representing the third residence as its president. I served for 3 terms in office. I had originally applied for and was elected to the role of Vice President of the dorm.
Mid way through the semester I took over the president role, after the current president had joined the college program and her class schedules conflicted with regular SGA activities.
I would go on to serve as president for the remainder of the term and was twice re-elected to office.
In 2007, during Black History Month, a call went out for a student volunteer to make a reading of MLKs reverent speech.
After my application and interview was accepted, I won the coveted role.
I read the speech numerous times, listening to and watching recordings, to familiarize myself with Dr. King’s manner of speech, his inflection, and voice.
My own voice is often colored by the British English accent I picked up from my father. I practiced speaking in the manner of a preacher, replicating a soulful black southern accent to better convey the words of MLKs speech.
Martin Luther King Jr.
In February, before the entire assembled student body and staff, I gave my reading.
Public speaking was never my strong suit, but I felt empowered that day. Constant practice had lent me confidence and strength.
I believe that day marked the pinnacle of my time at Tongue Point. It was the culmination of my efforts to improve upon myself as a person and a future member of the workforce.
It was also an especially poignant speech as I was living proof of the success of that Dream.
Born of mixed race parentage in the predominantly Caucasian Pacific Northwest, growing up, I had had my share of racist encounters in school and society, but it was during my time at the Center that I truly found acceptance.
I was uplifted, moving beyond mere tolerance to actively support, encourage, and help others to grow.
The success of the Job Corps program lies in its fostering of an environment where people feel valued, empowered, and inspired to reach their best selves.
I am reminded of my best self every February and following months are better for it.
I first saw Escaflowne in 1996 on TV in America. I must have been 11 years old.
I didn’t know it was a Japanese animation at the time. I really only became cognizant of Japan during my time at the Job Corps Center in Astoria, OR.
Escaflowne aired on Fox Kids (1990-2002) with 10 episodes before it was canceled. I wouldn’t find out about the cancelation until years later when I discovered the internet.
Escaflowne 1996
I didn’t have the best attention span back then and didn’t take notice that the show had disappeared, and it’s not like they issue notices on kids afternoon cartoon channel’s, “…oh hey, by the way, the shows been canceled.”
I didn’t even really remember the plot, only the first scenes with the dragon slaying and the mecha operation in the first episode. That sealed the deal for me. It became my favorite cartoon.
Later, in college when I was introduced to torrenting by friend and roommate Ian Dumych at Tongue Point JCC, I was able to download and watch the entire series in its original Japanese language with subtitles.
It was both nostalgic and new to me at the same time. Simply splendid.
I considered mentioning a synopsis or plot lines, but I feel that would be a spoiler. I will say, Escaflowne holds an older ascetic among anime and departs from some of the traditional tropes. The shows perspective centers on a female lead, while the trials and tribulations of the male protagonist are seen from her point-of-view.
At the time it was a fresh take storytelling. I understand Fox Kids had made many edits to the dubbed version I saw as a child. Notably, for their young Western audience, they reduced the importance of the female leads role in the show.
If you are interested in checking it out, but don’t have the energy for a full 26-episode anime series, I’d suggest watching the movie, Escaflowne (DailyMotion).
What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?
A couple weeks ago I made the difficult decision to cease providing wiki pages and game art galleries for several mobile titles.
I was under a certain amount of duress after receiving multiple complaints and strong suggestions to make a change.
You may know, earlier this year my YouTube channel GameGirlsGallery was shutdown, most unfortunately. Complaints about the amount of sexually suggestive content present in mobile games, ranging from game art to dialog and plot lines, had built up over the years and ultimately killed the channel.
The reasons for the recent site content removal are the same as those that caused GameGirlsGallery to be removed.
The Top Girl / Apex Girl wiki hosted on fatwalletrefugee accounted for nearly 84% of all site traffic. The remainder of site traffic went to the mobile game art and character galleries.
Top Girl had been initially rated mature, but after being removed from the Apple Store and worries over possible removal from the Google Play Store they released several updates that brought the rating down to Teen.
Despite the artistic changes there was still a good amount of sexual suggestion and lewd imagery present. In fact, I think most regular people, if looking at most titles in the Google Play Store rated Teen, might think the games were for Mature audiences, and not be suitable for the age ranges the ratings board has decided on.
Even playing merge and puzzle games rated E for everyone, I still see ads for games rated Mature, AI dating chat bots, hookup apps, romantic story apps, and Harem anime games.
All this plus the mounting complaints and suggestions of actions taken led me to the hard decision to purge the site of all offending content. I deleted all of the posts, pages, wikis, and site media including images and videos that were likely to receive further complaint.
I was contacted by multiple subscribers afterwards asking where everything went and had to explain the difficulties I went through deciding to stop providing that type of content.
I had in fact been expecting to hit the 1 million page views mark by December this year, a new milestone stone for this site. Prior to the content removal, my average daily site traffic in early November was around 6k views. Sadly, now my average is closer to 450 views per day.
Total Weekly Site Traffic
As you might imagine, my ad revenue has fallen off a cliff. While I had recently received my first payout from WordAds since signing up in March of 2024, I am likely not going to receive another payment for some considerable amount of time hereafter.
The question as to how to recover from this loss also comes up. I still provide guides for family-friendly mobile games. I am in the process of detailing a guide for Fable Town at the moment. I am also expanding the written content for buildings and units in the Puzzles and Chaos wiki.
I used to get good traffic from Google and Reddit for my game guides, but once I began focusing on Apex Girl and Road to Rich, that traffic dropped and the algorithm sent those folks to other resources.
Fable Town: Merge
There is also the Travel and Food section of the site which hasn’t seen much writings since my last trip in 2019. That was originally what started my blog. A trip to New York City to see family prompted me to make kasanje.home.blog and years later I bought the fatwalletrefugee.com domain.
There are also side projects I started but never finished like the FatWallet Forums archives and the Lost Media directory.
Recently, I began redesigning the Travel page and restructuring the page hierarchy for that section. This also involves adding pagess for each US state I have visited and a separate section for my international trips.
My vacation to Washington last month inspired me to travel more locally here in North Carolina. I also was gifted a new camera. It’s an Olympus E-M10 II. There are two swappable lenses, one telephoto and a precision close up, and three batteries.
In the past month I have visited and photographed 6 towns and a state park. I am planning a trip to visit the Outer Banks next year.
Hopefully this move back to this site’s roots will boost site traffic and begin to shift the algorithm back home.
I will absolutely return any merchandise I purchase that doesn’t deliver on its promises.
Whether is distasteful yogurt or a deceptively labeled floor mat. Back it goes. I’ll not spend a dime on dysfunctional product.
2. Not signaling lane changes.
It’s not difficult to flip a lever or hit a switch. A flick of the fingers signals to the world and me in particular that your planning on cutting me off.
That’s fine. I’ll yield, as I am legally bound to do so. But, if you don’t signal, I promise I’ll glower at your car for miles.
3.
Advertising on a paid service.
There shouldn’t be any ads on a subscription or paid service. That’s the whole reason we cut the cord in the first place. Now they’re bringing back advertising for paid services. It’s entirely infuriating.
When I realized I wouldn’t have to see anymore ads if I downloaded programs, I canceled my TV service.
Before streaming services came to be, we were downloading all our media, happily ad-free. Sure it was limited to certain types of content, but I was predominantly watching Japanese and Korean programs, and back then there were no streaming services for that content.
To be clear, I’m okay with watching an ad to access a free service. But not if I paid money upfront.
Fried chicken is a household staple for us. But chicken can get a little dull over time, so my mother has explored with several different recipes to spice things up, quite literally.
With my family’s adoption of the Korean Jesa ceremony several years ago we also started including healthy foods in out diet, like kimchi and pajeon. We have a local Korean grocer in Wake Forest (Han Ah Rum Mart) that we visit on occasion when we have the spare funds.
Another favorite for us is Tteok-bokki, rice cakes about the size of a French fry and consumed in a spicy sweet sauce accompanied by fish cake and sausages.
No meal is complete without dessert and we especially enjoy strawberries either with a nice dollop of Häagen-Dazs ice cream or some pudding or cake.
In the spring and summer my mother will craft homemade ice cream in a variety of flavors. We’ve had cranberry, mango, wolfberry, and orange ice cream.
Another Korean treat is the sweet red bean paste which can be found in Patbingsu (팥빙수) and Bungeoppang (팥빙수) the fish shaped pastry. We bought a shaved ice machine and waffle bowels to make a really nice treat.
My Spidey-sense hasn’t been the best gage for decision making in the past. I’ve come to second guess my immediate feelings and mull things over before taking a plunge.
So, no, I’m not really that trusting of my instincts.
From bad timing in stock market to poor sourcing choices for products to sell, I’ve had my blunders. What instinctively felt to be a sure thing often turned out to be the height of the market right before a plunge.
I have bags on top of bags, filled with swimsuits filling my closet, apparel that will likely never sell.
I’ve also fallen for my share of crypto scams and ponzi schemes. Hard lessons that have shaped, in part, my present predicament.
My best advice, which I take myself, is to get a second opinion whenever and where ever possible.
I did have a dog for a while but he didn’t get trained properly and grew up to be something of an idiot.
You don’t have to train a cat. They work properly right out of the box. No assembly is required.
They have the decency to bury their poo and don’t leave it all over the lawn. Nor do cats treat a litter box as a smorgasbord.
Yes, my idiot dog had a s***-eating grin.
That’s not to say that cats are not without their own set of issues.
I recall being awoken one morning by a kitten going pee in my hair. I’ve cleaned and disposed of many household objects that got sprayed on. I have painful memories of scratches and bites come bath day.
But overall I still prefer a cat to a dog.
I believe a dog topic that has received little attention has been their historical uses regarding race-based violence and chattel slavery in the Americas.
Particular breeds were used to track and hunt down those escaping enslavement. Punishment, while often depicted in media as whipping, often did involve abuses by the master’s dogs.
Law enforcement’s use of police dogs to capture and subdue a fleeing individual is another example of canine violence.
Some of the more popular breeds today have a violent history which I feel deserves more attention.
That’s it for today. Thanks for taking the time to read this and have a great day.
Fat Wallet Refugee 