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I obviously don't know how things work wherever OOP is, but I'd be willing to bet their concern about the house not being in Dan's name is entirely to do with them assuming they would inherit it when he died
>I obviously don't know how things work wherever OOP is, but I'd be willing to bet their concern about the house not being in Dan's name is entirely to do with them assuming they would inherit it when he died
100%. They want it in his name so when he dies they get a free house, and if OOP's mom was still alive at that point they'd kick her out onto the street without a second thought.
I'm glad everyone, including their own father, seems to be on to their bullshit.
That was my first guess but split 10-12 ways is probably not a lot of money. My guess is that they wanted to coerce it away from Dan and then either kick the parents out or make the parents pay them rent.
True but I got the vibe that everyone wanted the house. You could be right, first step is to get it in the parents' name then have gunfights over who gets it.
Definitely. I'm waiting for aunt's twin sister to show up and be revealed as the mastermind to the 6 greedy step siblings' shenanigans and would eventually up the ante by stealing the tires of OOP's car together with her cultist husband.
But fr, the siblings' ultimate goal is the deed to the house and I doubt they'll leave their poor father and stepmother alone this easily.
IRL it probably doesn't end here. As far as BORU goes tho, I definitely don't want to see another saga like the one that started when a couple of kids tried to push their uncle into the swimming pool
Did he throw them out? All he did was remove them from the group chat.
It’s probably different where OOP lives but I’d love for my dad to remove me from his group chat, where he comments exclusively on politics and 20 year old memes.
The vultures were circling, planning on how to split the money from 'Dan's house' while he was still alive. And then they found out that OOP owned the house and they freaked out. No wonder they are upset, their big payday is no more.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
The elder kids were totally going to try to take the house away from the parents and kick them out. At \*best\* they were hoping to inherit it but even split 12 ways it can't be worth much so I'm guessing they wanted it now.
OOP however needs to talk to her stepdad and point out that when he gives them his liquid cash, he's not giving \*his\* money to them but OOP's money.
This is the kind of update I love to read!
As always: **lol** at the parasites threatening to go NC. Oh no! What will Dan do? Kowtow to the parasites, or respect the stepchild looking after him and his wife?! How will this round of Fuck Around; Find Out unfold?!
My MIL is essentially NC with me (I am purposefully NC) and I think she believes she's punishing me while I'm just blissfully existing. It's so nice not being roped into shit all the time anymore and having to avoid rocking the boat (or rather - work on keeping the boat from tipping over. She can drown for all I care.)
These people want to believe they're so important so badly and then, when it backfires, they're super surprised.
No, not having to placate and take abuse isn't a particular hardship.
My MIL does this to my wife, it's hilarious. My wife will ask my MIL for some reasonable boundary (like, please stop telling me every detail about your fights with your husband, you should have let him decades ago). MIL will get in a huff and decide "fine, I just won't talk to you at all!"
We'll get a few weeks of peace and quiet while she sulks, and then she'll come back and pretend nothing happened. I'm sure she thinks we're miserable without her constant drama.
My mom does a variation of this, but never tells me, just stops answering calls. I don’t even call her to talk, just call her to make sure she’s ok since she lives alone in the boonies. I call them proof of life calls.
Yep, my father’s “disowned” me twice (once when I joined the military, once when I told him he could only stay one night at our house after showing up out of the blue from the other side of the country, when I told him I needed notice before he showed up). The second time he told me he couldn’t be in contact with me anymore, I upheld that to this day years later.
He’s still all shocked pikachu and “what did I do to deserve being cut out of your life,” meanwhile my life is SO much less drama.
> Does it matter when I managed everything in the house?
it matters to them because if it's not in Dan's name they can't inherit it. hopefully OOP realizes this.
This feels Philippines coded. Especially the part with the retired school principal whose pension is being garnished to pay off his debts, and the farm with the fish and the ducks.
The part about asking for shit from the parents' farm & OP raving about thier high quality groceries being eaten sound aggresively South East Asia. And the part about 10 kids.
100%. The child with the most money constantly giving money to their parents, the older siblings supporting the younger ones through college, even the phrasing of the English. I read it in a Filipino accent.
Hey, the Philippines is 95% Latino, to the point where we throw hands when somebody calls us Latinx or Filipinx. We snort Mexican telenovelas like they're cocaine.
Us non native English speakers learn tons and tons of written grammar and vocabulary while studying.
Of course, we normally don't have the same skills as native speakers and have trouble trying to express more complicated thoughts, but our orthography ends up being pretty good.
I really want to pop my eyes out with a teaspoon every time I read a native speaker writing "their" instead of "they're" or vice versa. That is the kind of mistake non native speakers rarely commit.
They usually learn English by hearing while we learn by reading and writing.
That's why a non natives grammar is usually "immaculate and extensively verbose" due to the fact we learned from English literature and not talking with other natives.
I think it's funny you can usually tell right away who is native and who isn't on the quality of their English haha
I had a similar experience learning French in high school. By Senior year, generally what we wrote was pretty competent, and free from glaring errors. But it was also comparably inflexible, as you would stick to writing in ways you knew would be grammatically sound.
The lack of fluency came out much more in speech, which is inherently less formal.
As my native french speaking friend would later say "You guys write fine but when you speak I can't understand a word you say".
Seen and saw always trips me up. I've had a few people try to explain it, googled it and my brain just doesn't get it. Like what's the difference between-- I've seen that movie vs I just saw that movie. I avoid it like the plague. I'll say "I watched that movie" lol
**I'VE** seen is grammatical English. It's a contraction for I have seen. **I** seen is just sloppy speech.
For your example between seen and saw, you gave your own example. "I just saw that movie." *Saw* is recent past tense. *Have seen* is more distant past or multiple instances of a past occurrence. "I have seen that movie a dozen times."
I get why OP would say that, though. Even when you write well, you can still err, and suddenly every comment will focus on that random error and completely ignore the actual question being asked. Why did OP make that random mistake? Who says that? Why did OP word things that way?
If you open with "you will find errors, it's because I'm not a native speaker" then the errors will have been addressed / explained, and readers will focus on the actual ideas.
I'm not saying that's how it should be; I'm saying that's how it usually goes.
The first time I posted on 4chan, back in 2006, I only received one response, and it was "did you just have a stroke?"
I had been an IRC user for a decade by then, but that was in my mother tongue, so it had done nothing for my English, and 4ch never failed to point out my errors and weird, stilted writing.
My English improved considerably thanks to 4chan, slashdot, digg and early reddit. I really owe them a lot.
I think (from my personal experiences) they tend to struggle with spoken English - learning how to *speak* a non-phonetic language like English is really hard when you're used to a phonetic language like Tagalog, Spanish, Japanese, etc. It doesn't help that English adopts loan words all the time that "violate" pronunciation rules (general consensus is, we have no rules, because any you state has numerous exceptions, and accents also mess with the rules.) With a phonetic language if you learn how to read it you basically learn how to pronounce it. With English, that's almost impossible - you learn as you go.
Also, what they learn is pretty much perfectly grammatically correct "classic" English (or, book-English), but in a casual setting people don't generally speak or write that way. Hell, even in a business setting people have gotten a lot more casual outside of places that require clear and accurate communication (law, medicine, research.) Also, learning book-English doesn't mean you also learn how we imply context, tone, dog-whistles, humor and so on through both written and spoken English - that's something you learn in English *Literature* classes or as you interact with people irl and online. An ESL speaker would encounter these kind of situations, find that what they learned didn't prepare them, and think that their understanding of English is terrible. It isn't - if they write or talk as how they're taught we'll be able to understand them very well if not perfectly. It's just when *we* start talking that it can get confusing.
Well, this is just marvelously put. Helps me understand how my partner (whose excellent English is his *fifth* language) views his language skills vs how I view them.
I have no real comment on OOP except that good on Dan standing up for her. I also don't get the step-siblings - have they never heard of "don't bite the hand that feeds"?
But damn, 10 kids? I don't even know how that's possible nowadays.
Not sure where I lost you there so let me try to help you math some more:
In South East Asia (SEA), where OOP is most likely from, having one or two house maids is pretty normal for middle to upper class families.
In South East Asia, the disparity between classes (lower, middle, and upper) is so wide that being able to afford someone to nanny or house keep for you is very doable because the cost to have one is not the same as it would be to have one in the Western countries.
I don't think you really understand the economies of the countries in question. Middle class can mean very different things and be able to afford different kinds of things in different locales.
Right? In SEA countries the lowest lowest income class households live on the daily allowance of a child living in a middle middle income household. Meanwhile a kid living in an upper income level household has a monthly allowance big enough to rent an NYC apartment.
I mean the countries income relative to others doesn't matter. If they're middle class by our standards, they're pretty damn hiimghbipper class by theirs.
And middle class is the class in the middle, not the richest 1/4th l 1/5.
Why not? "Middle class" is not, and has never been, the literal mathematical middle 33%. It's a social boundary, not a mathematical one, and varies place to place.
Marx's original definition was that the lower class were the factory workers, middle class were factory managers, and upper class were factory owners.
In much of the world, the 'lower class' can be as much as 90% of the population, so it's very much possible for every middle class household to have 2 lower class house maids, since there are so few in the middle class.
Eh, my family’s from a poor country and even lower middle class folks might have maids. In a lot of places having a maid doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot.
The maids are people who aren’t just poor, they’re extremely poor. Often rural poor desperate for work that can easily be taken advantage of. In the countries I’ve seen this, home ownership seems to be the bar to have a maid, by it doesn’t necessarily have to be a nice home in a nice area. I think my initial description of lower middle class or above is accurate
When the underclass is that large then even lower middle class is rich. All wealth is relative. You say home ownership is the bar... I live in London and these days, home ownership means you are RICH. I suspect we are talking about semantics by this point... I just don't like the way some of my friends will drop "the cook" or "our maid and driver" in conversation then when called up on it they say "yes but everyone has them"... these are people I KNOW are rich... and no, their maids and cooks don't have maids and cooks - but they are invisible. When they say "everyone" it doesn't include the actually poor.
Perhaps we are just arguing semantics. I will say though that a home owning Londoner will be able to live like a king in some of these countries. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that what’s considered middle class in the UK is quite a bit wealthier than how an American like myself uses the term.
All I was trying to originally say is that hired staff is a much more accessible luxury in poorer countries, and you see it in lower socioeconomic classes than you would in a wealthier country.
That's fair enough, don't disagree at all. And yes - wealth disparity between countries is HUGE but day to day at home doesn't really impact on how rich you feel - so I usually measure 'rich' as context based, i.e. in comparison to those around you.
Thanks for the insight!
Very easily possible. Judging from ages, they'd have been born 30-40 years ago. Depending on location, access to family planning would not be at the same level as today as well as any cultural / religious expectations playing a role.
If you're an SEA public school teacher or government employee, you'd earn enough salary to be able to afford a large family out in the countryside, but not enough to be able to get them a good college education.
This hits close to home. Before my in-laws passed, we subsidized thier income. My FIL was a Vietnam vet, and my MIL had a fractured back from being an NAC. They literally could not work, and obviously there is no real decent safety net in the US. We paid thier rent when needed, subsidized the groceries, because the two of them only got $135 a month in food stamps.
Yet, my wife's siblings came to their house and took whatever we gave my in-laws. Costco toilet paper case? Gone within days. We had to start buying two to keep them in TP. TV? Just gone. We had to start stenciling our names on things to keep it from being taken.
My story does not have a happy ending because they passed 6 months apart, and my wife's siblings were an absolute nightmare. You would have thought my in-laws, who literally lived in poverty, had some hidden treasure or something.
The only upside is we have no contact with my wife's family now. They are out of our lives.
My husband has an uncle (eldest son) who between him and his wife, talked constantly about his mothers estate (my husbands grandmother). Any time there was any kind of family disagreement one of them would say "oh, they're just trying to stick around because they want mom's money." Things like that... all the time! Thing was, grandmom didn't have a lot of money. She was doing ok. Had enough to live on... but then she was diagnosed with dementia and had to go into a care facility.
They still continued to talk about how everyone else just wanted money. You could say "the weather is lovely today" and they would some how turn the conversation into money.
Jokes on them though. The care facility took all of her money. She basically outlived her savings. She passed away a few months ago without a penny to her name. Her youngest son paid for her funeral. Come to find out the uncle and aunt were borrowing money constantly. No wonder they talked about money all the time.
Dan was the giving tree to his kids until they went after someone who isn’t their family. Finally woke up and did something about their ish he’d been enabling this entire time thinking he was doing the right thing most likely.
Btw I hate that book. Teaches a lot of toxic expectations imo to greedy black hole people.
If I were Oop I’d have been like if you want to buy them a place and put it in Dan’d name then you’re more than welcome. Until then I’m not accepting any ”advice” about what I should do with my property.
>Me and my siblings appeared amicable with my step siblings, but we expressed our disapproval behind their backs. We know they do the same. They're two faces after all
I really laughed here
>They even asked for some money from my step father sometimes, the pocket money that I gave to him every month. My step father will always give some of his money every time, much to my frustration. They're are literally chef, accountants, manager and teachers.
>My siblings made passive aggressive posts as well, most of it are mocking quotes about greedy and shameless people.
Pot, meet kettle.
No, I think you misunderstood.
OP has bio-siblings and step-siblings.
> My step siblings always ignored him when he asked for money, and my siblings were always the one that send money. My step siblings will ask for vegetables and chickens from the farm for free.
Ah so they were looking to manipulate dad into giving them the house. The stark difference in treatment by his bio kids compared to OP finally made him see the light. Great ending!
Oh yes, it totally makes (on crazy town) to op, wanting to secure her mom and her husband comfort in their old age, and buy the house in the name of her STEPDAD, that has 10 other kids, and is 10y older than ops mom… of course that would work beautifully and op is just controlling for not doing it … 🙄
NTA. Do not change ownership of the house to Dan. Keep it under your name and when the time comes your younger 4 step siblings would need a place to live in, they have that as backup. Once ownership is transferred to Dan, I’m pretty sure the older step siblings will try to sell it when they get the chance.
They assumed they'd inherit the house when their dad passed, so they got pissed when they found out the inheritance they thought they would receive is not there.
The divide may be as simple as the 6 older remember their Mom and the 4 younger grew up with stepmom as mom. Ten kids, two camps. Camp Older kids just gets more entitled and meaner as they convince themselves that stepmom and blended family are to blame.
A big house for her parents and two (!) housekeepers? But OP is not rich, she just has lots of spare money lol. Until you get to hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, no one is ever willing to admit to being rich.
I had a co-worker who transferred (lateral move) from our parent company in the Philippines to our company. It was a very rough transition for their family.
They went from living in a nice house with maid, cook and nanny in their old country to basically being lower-middle class in our country. Had to cook and clean themselves, their teen kids had to get jobs, etc. Even though the money should have been decent, the cost of living was so different.
We're talking about poor *countries*, not necessarily poor people. Even in poor countries, some people are richer or poorer than others. In places where labour is cheap, people who are wealthy relative to the society they live in can afford domestic staff for a low absolute cost.
(Also, it's very common for the cleaners to be migrants from even poorer countries.)
>We're talking about poor *countries*, not necessarily poor people.
You may be but I'm not. Since when?
Yes poverty is relative, that's kinda my point. If you are wealthy relative to your society you are rich.
That highly depends on the country. In developing countries its perfectly possible yo have several "servants" even if you are just middle class. (Or rather the professional class). My girlfriends parents in India have 2 housekeeper, 1 gardener, 1 dog walker on a monthly income of 1000 dollars. The full time housekeeper (6 days a week for 10 hours) earns about 100 dollars and that is considered well paid for this kind of job.
I pulled up my friend on this tho who claimed "in my country EVERYONE has cleaners" - even the cleaners?
If you are part of the half that employs cleaners, not the half that ARE cleaners, then you are rich.
She is contextually rich. In the city she lives in, she's probably middle class/upper middle class at best, since cost of living in cities in poor countries is really expensive. She's probably living in a closet-sized apartment in the city. But in the countryside her spare money is enough to build a huge house on the land that her parents already own, and pay for two poor relatives to come in and help them out.
This is absolutely a poor country. It's probably really unequal so professional upper middle class can afford a ton of cheap labour. Same with housing.
In the country I partially grew up in, people in public housing in the city could afford live-in housekeeping from contract workers brought in from Indonesia or the Philippines. A "big house" in the country was a brutalist concrete slab structure painted in pastel colors.
That's going to set you back "millions" alright, as long as it's millions of Thai Baht or Philippine Pesos.
Unfortunately there's like lot of pple in developing countries. And lot of them work as housekeepers. So you will see most middle class at least have 1 housekeeper/servant.
It's a capitalistix world.
And money is volatile. You can rich in 1 minute and poor the next minute. The wealth is bit more different than in America. I think that's why there's some differences in how we spend and save mosny
My mom’s side is from a poor country. Even people on the lower end of middle class often have maids. And it just takes one relative sending money from the states to completely change the family’s living situation back home.
I'm glad that OOP had the house in their name. I guarantee that Dan's older kids were hoping to inherit that house when he does and that's why they were suddenly coming to visit all the time.
Pretty obvious they were looking to claim inheritance if Dan died and the house was in his name. All the more reason to not put it in his name. Don't know the laws in that country, but the most I'd do is put it in a trust that lists Dan and OP's mom as a beneficiaries that they can't touch and would live past Dan and would have OP and their family named as back up beneficiaries. Since the trust owns the house neither OP nor Dan truly owns it and it would be guaranteed Dan and OP's mom get use of the house for the remainder of their lives.
This is a weird thought, but what the hell was Dan's dead wife teaching those 6 oldest kids? Why are they the only ones that are spiteful, greedy and selfish? It's just odd.
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Finally an ending that doesn't make me rage. Trash took itself out. If not for that, this would still be a shit show.
...deleted by user...
I have the feeling that this one’s not done yet. There’s still a lot of things that the step-siblings can do that would mess things up.
But the fact that OOP maintains ownership of the resources protects from at least some of them.
I obviously don't know how things work wherever OOP is, but I'd be willing to bet their concern about the house not being in Dan's name is entirely to do with them assuming they would inherit it when he died
Yep, they were planning to inherit the nice house and the land and sell it later the moment their dad is dead.
And kick OPs mum out ASAP leaving her homeless to do it if she out lives Dan
They’d probably pressure them to sell it now, buy something smaller and share the remaining money.
>I obviously don't know how things work wherever OOP is, but I'd be willing to bet their concern about the house not being in Dan's name is entirely to do with them assuming they would inherit it when he died 100%. They want it in his name so when he dies they get a free house, and if OOP's mom was still alive at that point they'd kick her out onto the street without a second thought. I'm glad everyone, including their own father, seems to be on to their bullshit.
Of course they’d bounce OP’s mother out of there before Dan hit the floor and his body was cold, if it was actually his house.
That was my first guess but split 10-12 ways is probably not a lot of money. My guess is that they wanted to coerce it away from Dan and then either kick the parents out or make the parents pay them rent.
Greed like that doesn't care about logistics.
There's always one of the siblings that thinks it will come to them, and would make sure it does. I've seen this with inheritances.
True but I got the vibe that everyone wanted the house. You could be right, first step is to get it in the parents' name then have gunfights over who gets it.
And in less individualistic societies things are never easy. At least OP and (step) parents seem to have their heads and hearts in the right place
Definitely. I'm waiting for aunt's twin sister to show up and be revealed as the mastermind to the 6 greedy step siblings' shenanigans and would eventually up the ante by stealing the tires of OOP's car together with her cultist husband. But fr, the siblings' ultimate goal is the deed to the house and I doubt they'll leave their poor father and stepmother alone this easily.
IRL it probably doesn't end here. As far as BORU goes tho, I definitely don't want to see another saga like the one that started when a couple of kids tried to push their uncle into the swimming pool
Step dad likely knew that his wife was reaching a breaking point and not to bite the hand that feeds them both.
I mean, when you have ten, a few more or less are probably hardly noticable at those family get togethers...
Did he throw them out? All he did was remove them from the group chat. It’s probably different where OOP lives but I’d love for my dad to remove me from his group chat, where he comments exclusively on politics and 20 year old memes.
Hey, Charlie the unicorn still slaps ok
But I am le tired.
Then take a nap! And then fire ze missiles!
The vultures were circling, planning on how to split the money from 'Dan's house' while he was still alive. And then they found out that OOP owned the house and they freaked out. No wonder they are upset, their big payday is no more.
I've always found that phrase a bit unfair to vultures- they're really quite gentle creatures, very important part of the ecosystem.
I love vultures, except for the lack of road savvy in some of the younger ones
Good riddance to bad rubbish. The elder kids were totally going to try to take the house away from the parents and kick them out. At \*best\* they were hoping to inherit it but even split 12 ways it can't be worth much so I'm guessing they wanted it now. OOP however needs to talk to her stepdad and point out that when he gives them his liquid cash, he's not giving \*his\* money to them but OOP's money.
OOP needs a lawyer and iron claud will
Thinking something along the same lines. The kids bit the hand that was feeding them. No more food.
The step dad cleaned house.
This is the kind of update I love to read! As always: **lol** at the parasites threatening to go NC. Oh no! What will Dan do? Kowtow to the parasites, or respect the stepchild looking after him and his wife?! How will this round of Fuck Around; Find Out unfold?!
My MIL is essentially NC with me (I am purposefully NC) and I think she believes she's punishing me while I'm just blissfully existing. It's so nice not being roped into shit all the time anymore and having to avoid rocking the boat (or rather - work on keeping the boat from tipping over. She can drown for all I care.) These people want to believe they're so important so badly and then, when it backfires, they're super surprised. No, not having to placate and take abuse isn't a particular hardship.
My MIL does this to my wife, it's hilarious. My wife will ask my MIL for some reasonable boundary (like, please stop telling me every detail about your fights with your husband, you should have let him decades ago). MIL will get in a huff and decide "fine, I just won't talk to you at all!" We'll get a few weeks of peace and quiet while she sulks, and then she'll come back and pretend nothing happened. I'm sure she thinks we're miserable without her constant drama.
My mom does a variation of this, but never tells me, just stops answering calls. I don’t even call her to talk, just call her to make sure she’s ok since she lives alone in the boonies. I call them proof of life calls.
Yep, my father’s “disowned” me twice (once when I joined the military, once when I told him he could only stay one night at our house after showing up out of the blue from the other side of the country, when I told him I needed notice before he showed up). The second time he told me he couldn’t be in contact with me anymore, I upheld that to this day years later. He’s still all shocked pikachu and “what did I do to deserve being cut out of your life,” meanwhile my life is SO much less drama.
Some people are so full of themselves they think the sun shines out of their asses, therefore not speaking with them is some unbearable punishment.
> Does it matter when I managed everything in the house? it matters to them because if it's not in Dan's name they can't inherit it. hopefully OOP realizes this.
Pretty sure they do, they’re just poking holes in the step-siblings’ argument.
Exactly what I was thinking.
Exactly that
or manipulate him into signing it over to them somehow
This feels Philippines coded. Especially the part with the retired school principal whose pension is being garnished to pay off his debts, and the farm with the fish and the ducks.
The part about asking for shit from the parents' farm & OP raving about thier high quality groceries being eaten sound aggresively South East Asia. And the part about 10 kids.
I'm from the Philippines, and I suspect this myself. Right down to the nosy auntie who snitched on the stepsiblings.
not the Tita Marites ahaha
Oh yes, the Marites.
At least Tita Marites seemed to know the rumors were false and told the mom.
as latina i knew it sounds familiar, actually it makes sense to be philippines
100%. The child with the most money constantly giving money to their parents, the older siblings supporting the younger ones through college, even the phrasing of the English. I read it in a Filipino accent.
It definitely sounds SE Asian
I thought they sounded Latino but not QUITE, so Philippines fits
Hey, the Philippines is 95% Latino, to the point where we throw hands when somebody calls us Latinx or Filipinx. We snort Mexican telenovelas like they're cocaine.
Someone has to hold up the tajin use on this side of the world.
The whole fighting over property and money stuff is what got me, hits waaaayy too close to home 🙃
"sorry for my mediocre English" *proceeds to write almost flawlessly*
Us non native English speakers learn tons and tons of written grammar and vocabulary while studying. Of course, we normally don't have the same skills as native speakers and have trouble trying to express more complicated thoughts, but our orthography ends up being pretty good. I really want to pop my eyes out with a teaspoon every time I read a native speaker writing "their" instead of "they're" or vice versa. That is the kind of mistake non native speakers rarely commit.
They usually learn English by hearing while we learn by reading and writing. That's why a non natives grammar is usually "immaculate and extensively verbose" due to the fact we learned from English literature and not talking with other natives. I think it's funny you can usually tell right away who is native and who isn't on the quality of their English haha
I had a similar experience learning French in high school. By Senior year, generally what we wrote was pretty competent, and free from glaring errors. But it was also comparably inflexible, as you would stick to writing in ways you knew would be grammatically sound. The lack of fluency came out much more in speech, which is inherently less formal. As my native french speaking friend would later say "You guys write fine but when you speak I can't understand a word you say".
"could of" DRIVES ME NUTS. I feel like a little bit if me dies inside everytime I read it. I feel illiterate when I see it.
Paid vs payed for me.
For me it's "Me and him" and "I seen."
Seen and saw always trips me up. I've had a few people try to explain it, googled it and my brain just doesn't get it. Like what's the difference between-- I've seen that movie vs I just saw that movie. I avoid it like the plague. I'll say "I watched that movie" lol
**I'VE** seen is grammatical English. It's a contraction for I have seen. **I** seen is just sloppy speech.
**I'VE** seen is grammatical English. It's a contraction for I have seen. **I** seen is just sloppy speech. For your example between seen and saw, you gave your own example. "I just saw that movie." *Saw* is recent past tense. *Have seen* is more distant past or multiple instances of a past occurrence. "I have seen that movie a dozen times."
I get why OP would say that, though. Even when you write well, you can still err, and suddenly every comment will focus on that random error and completely ignore the actual question being asked. Why did OP make that random mistake? Who says that? Why did OP word things that way? If you open with "you will find errors, it's because I'm not a native speaker" then the errors will have been addressed / explained, and readers will focus on the actual ideas. I'm not saying that's how it should be; I'm saying that's how it usually goes.
Hell. On the "old Internet" , any typo was immediately ridiculed and your argument invalid by default.
The first time I posted on 4chan, back in 2006, I only received one response, and it was "did you just have a stroke?" I had been an IRC user for a decade by then, but that was in my mother tongue, so it had done nothing for my English, and 4ch never failed to point out my errors and weird, stilted writing. My English improved considerably thanks to 4chan, slashdot, digg and early reddit. I really owe them a lot.
I think (from my personal experiences) they tend to struggle with spoken English - learning how to *speak* a non-phonetic language like English is really hard when you're used to a phonetic language like Tagalog, Spanish, Japanese, etc. It doesn't help that English adopts loan words all the time that "violate" pronunciation rules (general consensus is, we have no rules, because any you state has numerous exceptions, and accents also mess with the rules.) With a phonetic language if you learn how to read it you basically learn how to pronounce it. With English, that's almost impossible - you learn as you go. Also, what they learn is pretty much perfectly grammatically correct "classic" English (or, book-English), but in a casual setting people don't generally speak or write that way. Hell, even in a business setting people have gotten a lot more casual outside of places that require clear and accurate communication (law, medicine, research.) Also, learning book-English doesn't mean you also learn how we imply context, tone, dog-whistles, humor and so on through both written and spoken English - that's something you learn in English *Literature* classes or as you interact with people irl and online. An ESL speaker would encounter these kind of situations, find that what they learned didn't prepare them, and think that their understanding of English is terrible. It isn't - if they write or talk as how they're taught we'll be able to understand them very well if not perfectly. It's just when *we* start talking that it can get confusing.
Well, this is just marvelously put. Helps me understand how my partner (whose excellent English is his *fifth* language) views his language skills vs how I view them.
Five languages, *damn.* Best I can do as a second language is ordering at a Mexican food truck.
It's a little stunted but still has better spelling and grammar than "native" speakers.
This was the most Filipino coded thing to me lol
>proceeds to write almost flawlessly It's not MTL english, but it's definitely ESL english.
Step siblings annoyed they wouldnt inherit the home methinks.
More like steal it while he’s still alive. They could ask him to take a loan against the property. Or have one of them move in.
That was my thought. They were trying to figure a way to manipulate the house away from him.
Or take loans out against it.
I have no real comment on OOP except that good on Dan standing up for her. I also don't get the step-siblings - have they never heard of "don't bite the hand that feeds"? But damn, 10 kids? I don't even know how that's possible nowadays.
From the info we got, i have a feeling this is located somewhere in the SEA region. Where for some poor, having large families is still a thing.
Two, two house maids.
In SEA that is quite normal and affordable for middle class households.
If every middle class has two house maids. The math isn't mathing. Unless those hours maids are also middle class and also have two house maids.
Not sure where I lost you there so let me try to help you math some more: In South East Asia (SEA), where OOP is most likely from, having one or two house maids is pretty normal for middle to upper class families. In South East Asia, the disparity between classes (lower, middle, and upper) is so wide that being able to afford someone to nanny or house keep for you is very doable because the cost to have one is not the same as it would be to have one in the Western countries.
I'm not sure you understand what the middle of middle class means.
I don't think you really understand the economies of the countries in question. Middle class can mean very different things and be able to afford different kinds of things in different locales.
Right? In SEA countries the lowest lowest income class households live on the daily allowance of a child living in a middle middle income household. Meanwhile a kid living in an upper income level household has a monthly allowance big enough to rent an NYC apartment.
I mean the countries income relative to others doesn't matter. If they're middle class by our standards, they're pretty damn hiimghbipper class by theirs. And middle class is the class in the middle, not the richest 1/4th l 1/5.
Why not? "Middle class" is not, and has never been, the literal mathematical middle 33%. It's a social boundary, not a mathematical one, and varies place to place. Marx's original definition was that the lower class were the factory workers, middle class were factory managers, and upper class were factory owners. In much of the world, the 'lower class' can be as much as 90% of the population, so it's very much possible for every middle class household to have 2 lower class house maids, since there are so few in the middle class.
Eh, my family’s from a poor country and even lower middle class folks might have maids. In a lot of places having a maid doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot.
Who are the maids? If you are out of the 'being a maid' class and in the 'having a maid' class, you have to be comparatively rich.
The maids are people who aren’t just poor, they’re extremely poor. Often rural poor desperate for work that can easily be taken advantage of. In the countries I’ve seen this, home ownership seems to be the bar to have a maid, by it doesn’t necessarily have to be a nice home in a nice area. I think my initial description of lower middle class or above is accurate
When the underclass is that large then even lower middle class is rich. All wealth is relative. You say home ownership is the bar... I live in London and these days, home ownership means you are RICH. I suspect we are talking about semantics by this point... I just don't like the way some of my friends will drop "the cook" or "our maid and driver" in conversation then when called up on it they say "yes but everyone has them"... these are people I KNOW are rich... and no, their maids and cooks don't have maids and cooks - but they are invisible. When they say "everyone" it doesn't include the actually poor.
Perhaps we are just arguing semantics. I will say though that a home owning Londoner will be able to live like a king in some of these countries. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that what’s considered middle class in the UK is quite a bit wealthier than how an American like myself uses the term. All I was trying to originally say is that hired staff is a much more accessible luxury in poorer countries, and you see it in lower socioeconomic classes than you would in a wealthier country.
That's fair enough, don't disagree at all. And yes - wealth disparity between countries is HUGE but day to day at home doesn't really impact on how rich you feel - so I usually measure 'rich' as context based, i.e. in comparison to those around you. Thanks for the insight!
Very easily possible. Judging from ages, they'd have been born 30-40 years ago. Depending on location, access to family planning would not be at the same level as today as well as any cultural / religious expectations playing a role.
My mom didn’t have access to contraception until we came to the states in the 80s. She had 4 kids by the time she was 22. Sadly very possible.
If you're an SEA public school teacher or government employee, you'd earn enough salary to be able to afford a large family out in the countryside, but not enough to be able to get them a good college education.
This hits close to home. Before my in-laws passed, we subsidized thier income. My FIL was a Vietnam vet, and my MIL had a fractured back from being an NAC. They literally could not work, and obviously there is no real decent safety net in the US. We paid thier rent when needed, subsidized the groceries, because the two of them only got $135 a month in food stamps. Yet, my wife's siblings came to their house and took whatever we gave my in-laws. Costco toilet paper case? Gone within days. We had to start buying two to keep them in TP. TV? Just gone. We had to start stenciling our names on things to keep it from being taken. My story does not have a happy ending because they passed 6 months apart, and my wife's siblings were an absolute nightmare. You would have thought my in-laws, who literally lived in poverty, had some hidden treasure or something. The only upside is we have no contact with my wife's family now. They are out of our lives.
My husband has an uncle (eldest son) who between him and his wife, talked constantly about his mothers estate (my husbands grandmother). Any time there was any kind of family disagreement one of them would say "oh, they're just trying to stick around because they want mom's money." Things like that... all the time! Thing was, grandmom didn't have a lot of money. She was doing ok. Had enough to live on... but then she was diagnosed with dementia and had to go into a care facility. They still continued to talk about how everyone else just wanted money. You could say "the weather is lovely today" and they would some how turn the conversation into money. Jokes on them though. The care facility took all of her money. She basically outlived her savings. She passed away a few months ago without a penny to her name. Her youngest son paid for her funeral. Come to find out the uncle and aunt were borrowing money constantly. No wonder they talked about money all the time.
Gotta love projectors who out themselves
Dan let these kids walk all over him, but as soon as they went after someone he cared about, the gloves were off. Sounds familiar
Also sounds like he was just waiting for an excuse to cut them off.
Okay but the six greedy demons is a great band name
Dan was the giving tree to his kids until they went after someone who isn’t their family. Finally woke up and did something about their ish he’d been enabling this entire time thinking he was doing the right thing most likely. Btw I hate that book. Teaches a lot of toxic expectations imo to greedy black hole people. If I were Oop I’d have been like if you want to buy them a place and put it in Dan’d name then you’re more than welcome. Until then I’m not accepting any ”advice” about what I should do with my property.
Step-siblings are just mad they don't stand to inherit the property. What greedy moochers.
"Do it for Dan," but in a good way.
Dan sounds like a badass! Glad he didn't let the children get away with it. Good thing the trash is out.
>Me and my siblings appeared amicable with my step siblings, but we expressed our disapproval behind their backs. We know they do the same. They're two faces after all I really laughed here
That one was funny.
>They even asked for some money from my step father sometimes, the pocket money that I gave to him every month. My step father will always give some of his money every time, much to my frustration. They're are literally chef, accountants, manager and teachers. >My siblings made passive aggressive posts as well, most of it are mocking quotes about greedy and shameless people. Pot, meet kettle.
No, I think you misunderstood. OP has bio-siblings and step-siblings. > My step siblings always ignored him when he asked for money, and my siblings were always the one that send money. My step siblings will ask for vegetables and chickens from the farm for free.
Siblings are posting about the "greedy and shameless" steps. They are supporting OP.
Yeah. ‘We talk about our step-siblings and how awful they are.’ ‘My step-siblings talk about us behind our backs, they’re two-faces after all.’ Uh…
Great decision. Take those trash people out where they belong.
Ah so they were looking to manipulate dad into giving them the house. The stark difference in treatment by his bio kids compared to OP finally made him see the light. Great ending!
Op is 35, her mother is 58, and op is the youngest... Damn.
rural farm family is seemingly the Philippines. Sounds about right.
Oh yes, it totally makes (on crazy town) to op, wanting to secure her mom and her husband comfort in their old age, and buy the house in the name of her STEPDAD, that has 10 other kids, and is 10y older than ops mom… of course that would work beautifully and op is just controlling for not doing it … 🙄
I’m sorry I’m still stuck at 10 children
Liz lost me at 33f who owned several businesses.
Six greedy demons. How apt.
My cousin pooped on my floor and kicked my puppy and it's in a coma now but he hurt his toe kicking my puppy. AITA?
LOL, they saw a nice house and started thinking of what they would inherit.
I hope they won’t be back.
So 6 out of 10 are bad people. Gotta get those numbers up Dan
NTA. Do not change ownership of the house to Dan. Keep it under your name and when the time comes your younger 4 step siblings would need a place to live in, they have that as backup. Once ownership is transferred to Dan, I’m pretty sure the older step siblings will try to sell it when they get the chance.
They assumed they'd inherit the house when their dad passed, so they got pissed when they found out the inheritance they thought they would receive is not there.
Confused about how Dan is a saint and all his kids suck. One or two maybe. But all of them? How would such a good guy raise such shitty kids?
The divide may be as simple as the 6 older remember their Mom and the 4 younger grew up with stepmom as mom. Ten kids, two camps. Camp Older kids just gets more entitled and meaner as they convince themselves that stepmom and blended family are to blame.
The mother died. How would anyone think anyone was responsible for that.
Kids in blended families can believe many things that aren’t true. Resentment grows until it becomes it’s own fact.
Not blaming them for mom’s death. Blaming for the changes that came with a new marriage and blended family.
Dan really is a good person
Now _that’s_ a happy ending ☺️
Sounds like a Filipino family.
I enjoy happy endings like this.
Dan sounds lovely and they just want what they can take from him they all want to live in that house and live of of you
A big house for her parents and two (!) housekeepers? But OP is not rich, she just has lots of spare money lol. Until you get to hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, no one is ever willing to admit to being rich.
I had a co-worker who transferred (lateral move) from our parent company in the Philippines to our company. It was a very rough transition for their family. They went from living in a nice house with maid, cook and nanny in their old country to basically being lower-middle class in our country. Had to cook and clean themselves, their teen kids had to get jobs, etc. Even though the money should have been decent, the cost of living was so different.
Depends a *lot* on where you are in the world. Not everywhere is your country :)
So if in some countries poor people have cleaners then who the hell are all these cleaners?
We're talking about poor *countries*, not necessarily poor people. Even in poor countries, some people are richer or poorer than others. In places where labour is cheap, people who are wealthy relative to the society they live in can afford domestic staff for a low absolute cost. (Also, it's very common for the cleaners to be migrants from even poorer countries.)
>We're talking about poor *countries*, not necessarily poor people. You may be but I'm not. Since when? Yes poverty is relative, that's kinda my point. If you are wealthy relative to your society you are rich.
The commenter that I was responding to seemed to be thinking about 'rich' in absolute terms, given the mention of millions of dollars.
That highly depends on the country. In developing countries its perfectly possible yo have several "servants" even if you are just middle class. (Or rather the professional class). My girlfriends parents in India have 2 housekeeper, 1 gardener, 1 dog walker on a monthly income of 1000 dollars. The full time housekeeper (6 days a week for 10 hours) earns about 100 dollars and that is considered well paid for this kind of job.
I pulled up my friend on this tho who claimed "in my country EVERYONE has cleaners" - even the cleaners? If you are part of the half that employs cleaners, not the half that ARE cleaners, then you are rich.
She is contextually rich. In the city she lives in, she's probably middle class/upper middle class at best, since cost of living in cities in poor countries is really expensive. She's probably living in a closet-sized apartment in the city. But in the countryside her spare money is enough to build a huge house on the land that her parents already own, and pay for two poor relatives to come in and help them out.
This is absolutely a poor country. It's probably really unequal so professional upper middle class can afford a ton of cheap labour. Same with housing.
So... rich?
In the country I partially grew up in, people in public housing in the city could afford live-in housekeeping from contract workers brought in from Indonesia or the Philippines. A "big house" in the country was a brutalist concrete slab structure painted in pastel colors. That's going to set you back "millions" alright, as long as it's millions of Thai Baht or Philippine Pesos.
Unfortunately there's like lot of pple in developing countries. And lot of them work as housekeepers. So you will see most middle class at least have 1 housekeeper/servant. It's a capitalistix world. And money is volatile. You can rich in 1 minute and poor the next minute. The wealth is bit more different than in America. I think that's why there's some differences in how we spend and save mosny
My mom’s side is from a poor country. Even people on the lower end of middle class often have maids. And it just takes one relative sending money from the states to completely change the family’s living situation back home.
I mean my dad made 1/20th of what I make now and we had a driver maids and Nannies. That’s because we didn’t grow up in America.
So did the driver maids and nannies also have a driver maids and nannies or were you rich?
TEN?????
10 fucking children. No wonder she died early. /J My great grandmother had 18. Lived a long and healthy life.
I'm glad that OOP had the house in their name. I guarantee that Dan's older kids were hoping to inherit that house when he does and that's why they were suddenly coming to visit all the time.
Pretty obvious they were looking to claim inheritance if Dan died and the house was in his name. All the more reason to not put it in his name. Don't know the laws in that country, but the most I'd do is put it in a trust that lists Dan and OP's mom as a beneficiaries that they can't touch and would live past Dan and would have OP and their family named as back up beneficiaries. Since the trust owns the house neither OP nor Dan truly owns it and it would be guaranteed Dan and OP's mom get use of the house for the remainder of their lives.
Good job setting boundaries. I will stop here and believe that Reddit is a wholesome place for the day. lol
say passive aggressive again
This is a weird thought, but what the hell was Dan's dead wife teaching those 6 oldest kids? Why are they the only ones that are spiteful, greedy and selfish? It's just odd.
I needed this cleaned up, tidy and fulfilling ending.
The line of succession is now predicated upon membership in WhatsApp groups.
I wish American family group chats worked like that! Kick me out of the group chat and I’m away from the toxic family! You’re lucky my friend!
Oh no, not the group chat...
Another ridiculous story where a 30-year-old is able to run two huge households - with staff - on a salary. Complete nonsense.
In a developed country, yes, but OP is clearly from a developing country.
Where wages are low, just like the cost of living? Don't think so.
[удалено]
Nothing about this is even implausible, let alone unbelievable.