Thelsim

Just started a two week family visit to Singapore. The twelve hour flight was exhausting and everyone was struggling with the jet lag. My kids fell asleep at the dinner table, which was both adorable to see and sad because they were clearly at their limits.
We just had a 12 hour sleep, so hopefully we can start the second day with renewed energy :)
We’re going to need it, there’s a ton of social obligations to keep. It’s been 7 years since our last visit.

Wait, what’s this about fash (I take it you mean fascist?) instance? Am I missing something here?
I stick to my communities so I’m not the most well-informed Lemmy.

Please don’t get me started about the Sailor Moon thing 🙄
I’m the owner of that community and it’s been getting a bit tiresome to see nothing but Sailor Moon stuff come by. I’m not saying anything about it though and hope people will get bored with it and it’ll blow over. In then end it is a harmless phase and everyone is having fun, I don’t want to ruin it for others.
But I’m looking forward to the day that it’ll be as welcome as another beans post :)

That’s true, I didn’t think of that.

They don’t need the BBB though. PVV, NSC and VVD should be good for an 81 seat majority.
But yes, I pretty much expect the coalition to fall within a year or two (should they manage to get a coalition to begin with). The question is who will cause the fall and who will be scapegoated. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ll be positioning themselves for this inevitability from the start.

Bad, the PVVV, a far-right party, won the elections here in Netherlands. I woke up to the news that they won 37 out of 150 seats (2nd largest has 25 seats). Geert Wilders is such a… nationalistic, short-sighted, opportunistic, loud-mouthed, Putin loving… asshole! Sorry, I really need to get this out of my system.
Thankfully they’ll still have to form a coalition with other parties and I really hope they’ll fail. Either that, or they spend a few months in government and show how ridiculously inept they are and let the cabinet fall.

This is so depressing…
I knew it would be bad, but not this bad. Only comfort I can take is in the fact that they’ll have to form a coalition with other major parties. Most of them already flat-out denied working together with the PVV (Partij Voor de Vrijheid - Party For Freedom) but we’ll see how much of that will remain true.
Hopefully the coalition will break and we’ll have new elections in a year or so.

Oh dear, I hope you have a spare?

Took part in a work provided health check, and was pleasantly surprised. My cholesterol levels need to be better, but other than that I’m actually in pretty good shape! It’s nice to get some good news once in a while.
Other than that, I’m in a general good mood. Feel like I’m a bit more in sync between my internal and external self, if that makes any sense :)

It’s cold and wet here in NL, but so far it hasn’t bothered me that much. It’s always cold and wet around here and I kind of like it. But that’s just me.
Our house uses district heating which basically places us under a government controlled monopoly. Prices are not locked into gas prizes. On top of that the government mandated a price ceiling for energy costs. The price of electricity can not be more expensive than €0,40 kw/h for 2023. Not sure how things will turn out when 2024 comes around though.
Best thing for staying warm are warm clothes, of course. A thick cozy sweater is great, maybe together with some fingerless gloves if you get cold hands easily. Oh, and during dark days taking extra vitamin D might help as well. And of course, make your living space as cozy as possible: warm blankets, nice music, maybe some flowers to brighten the place a bit.
Oh and a personal favorite of mine when things get cold, Korean Citrus and Honey tea (Yuja Cha). I buy it premade in a jar. It’s basically a thick marmalade you mix with boiled water. It’s sweet but tastes so nice and warms me up when I’m feeling cold.

Sorry to hear about your truck, I hope it’ll be easy to fix. I can definitely understand the attachment you have to it.
And of course, an obligatory awwwww to your new employee. It did indeed brighten my day :)

Quite an uneventful week for a change. Got painfully reminded that I’ve got a lactose intolerance last weekend, but thankfully that has cleared up.
On the plus side, I got a little basket for all my tea things at work so I can easily carry everything to my desk. I’m disproportionately happy about it for some reason, I guess it’s because everything just fits so perfectly :)
So yes, it’s a week of small pleasures (and one painful torture).

The thing I hated most with social media is that no one really wanted to email anymore.
I used to have several pen pals around the world. We would exchange long mails every couple of days telling each other about our lives. But the moment social media popped up, the one-on-one conversations started to shift to posts with something everybody got to comment on. And on top of that, they didn’t seem very personal anymore. Not like the friends I used to know.
Didn’t take long for those friendships to fizzle out. I’m still quite sad about it.

So sorry to hear you have to go through this. It’s OK to complain and vent, it doesn’t solve your problems but I feel it definitely helps to get it off your chest.
I wish I’d knew how to help you. But unless you live in my home country, I’m afraid I have no real knowledge about any financial assistance plans or anything like that. All I can do is offer you my sympathies and the advice to kick your mother’s son of his butt and put him to work.
But I’m sure you would’ve done that already if it were that easy :)

My week is ok. We celebrated our 14th anniversary last weekend, which was nice. The kids got to stay with grandma and we had a whole weekend to go out and enjoy ourselves. I love my kids but it’s really nice to get away from being a parent once in a while and just enjoy an extended period of couple time.

I experimented with the voxel software and tried to recreate some buildings from the old Dune 2 game. I always liked the designs and figured the pixelated look would make it a nice match.

It’s quite a challenge to make anything round though :) I’m not sure if I want to keep going with this or take my lessons learned and apply them to a different design.

I doubt we’ll ever end up with a future wherein all of humanity is fully united and working towards a unified society. But that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Divergence in beliefs and attitudes can be a healthy thing as long as it doesn’t hurt the individual.
Maybe, in hundreds of years, we might unified enough that we can tolerate and accept each other’s differences. I have no idea what that future would look like, but I’d be happy if we manage to achieve that much.

Thank you for sharing. It is indeed an interesting read.
It’s always saddening to read about what a country’s future could have been, if it weren’t for foreign meddling.

So I just try and uphold my self-imposed quality standards of writing: if it doesn’t add positive quality to the discussion just don’t add it.

I agree. It’s better to give a positive reply, make someone feel good about themselves or lend a sympathetic ear than it is to get into an argument. Downside is that there are plenty of discussions where I would like to weigh in, but can’t think of a good way to do so without making matters worse. I’m not always the best with words and it does tend to end with me writing a long reply but hitting cancel at the last moment.
Thing is, in the end I just want people to be happy to participate and to feel that their contributions are valued. And hopefully that the positive attitude rubs off and it’ll get passed on to others.

It’s become a habit, that’s how we always abbreviate it.
You can also pronounce it as SinJapore, so I guess that’s why? I don’t know, I just follow my partner’s example :)
edit:
Official UN/LOCODE is also SG, so I guess that settles it.