JoeDavola

Well exactly. Only seems like yesterday we were expecting mass graves to be filled. Well we've had protests where lots of people gathered together, and now we have shops and restaurants and cafes with people squeezed together. The bar/nightclub nearest me was open on Saturday night with kids spilling out drunk vomiting all over the shop the usual. No distancing there. No massive jump in cases. And I still don't know anyone who knows anyone who got seriously ill from this. And if after several more weeks of people back to mixing together as above, there isn't a sudden increase in severe illness/death (don't talk to me about 'cases', that means nothing), who is going to accept locking the entire country down again? Well some people will, cause they'll believe anything. But I hope most won't. EDIT: I'm adding the caveat of course that people are all careful with hygene, what they touch, use antibacterial gels when entering/leaving premesis which is all sensisible (even without a virus on the loose) and doesn't involve everyone hiding in their houses.

Went for a walk around uni area this evening. Every restaurant was full with queues out into the street in some cases.

Only stocks I’d have any faith in there are BP and Greggs!

What stocks are you referring to?

Half price sandwich and coffee in Cafe Nero today. Passed McDonalds on the way there and there was a queue out the door and down the street.

A while back either here on ToS one of the posters discovered that there were two property adverts in NI where the houses had the exact same cloud patttern outside them. Basically the EA had photshopped the outside shots of the house to make it look brighter than it normally is NI. It looks to me like the same has been done here.

Just listed.... ....2 bedroom apartment. £575,000: https://www.propertypal.com/apt-1-seaport-house-14-seafront-road-cultra-holywood/645871/photo-25 Recession? What recession?

It's even more ridiculous here in Northern Ireland. My friend works for the software engineering wing of a large American company. Market value of £1.5 billion. They desperately need a couple of new software engineers in Belfast. No jobs advertised yet though. What's slowing things down? The company won't advertise the jobs (for which there is a large very profitable project waiting) until the NI government give them the requisite 'funding' for the jobs, i.e. the bribe that the NI executive is paying these massive companies for each job they bring to Belfast. It's ridiculous.

Yep - been there!

Here at Davola Inc we keep our customers happy by selecting, empowering and trusting people who are wired to deliver customer success. Are you wired to deliver customer, success, Pin? (I didn't make that phrase up: https://www.version1.com/our-difference/)

Money? You're asking for money? Surely you're just grateful for the priveledge of working itself? I mean, aren't you grateful for the opportunity to further your career in a challenging and fast paced environment blah blah teamwork blah blah going the extra mile blah blah fucking blah.....

Sorry, I didn't read the article first time... ....so explains the finance side as she's living with the folks.

OK so I actually watched the video, as I do agree with your sentiment. First impressions was that she seemed like an interesting person, I liked her outlook on life ect. Bonus points for still being a healthy shape in her 50's not that it is relevant to this. Then, of course, cynical Joe kicked in and I'd like to know who's paying for all this - is she doing this on top of working? Or is she on the tax credit train, or did she take some poor bloke to the cleaners in a divorce? Even if none of the above, she still got to buy a house far cheaper than this generation which offers freedom. Even with all that though, having an attitude of being a life long learner is one I admire. If I were to be my best self, it would be to aim not for the highest paying job I could find in my own profession, with the stress and loss of time that comes with it, but to know about lots of different things, yes my profession but also being able to cook and know about nutrition and a bit about exercise, and when I get a house enough about DIY to maintain that, also more about music and writing and various other things. As pretentous as the term sounds I've always like the idea of the 'renassance man'. I see two extremes in my own life regarding this way of thinking. I never get bored if I have time to myself (and not just because I'm shitposting here so much), but I've heard the opinion from my brother and one of my best friends that they're glad they work so much because they wouldn't have a clue what else to do otherwise. That they don't actually like having free time. And when my mate spent the last few years or so moving jobs to the point where he's earning about 60-70% more than he did 4 years ago, instead of thinking about banking that extra money to retire early he's buying a big house that will make sure he'll be working that hard probably till he dies, and all he talks about these days is work. My Dad has been retired for a decade and still drinks far too much in part because he doesn't know what do do with his time. He has more money and a bigger house than he knows what to do with, but in 10 years hasn't had the get up and go to pick up a single hobby e.g. he's an expert joiner by trade and knows a ton about cars so could restore some old cars....but instead he just drinks a bottle of wine every night after dinner and falls asleep all evening. On the other side of the spectrum I have a friend who bought a cheap council house several years back and works 3 days a week. He has so many hobbies and interests that there's not enough time for them even with his short working week. He's never bored and always busy. He knows enough to maintain his own house, buys cheap run down veichles/motorbikes/caravans second hand (for personal / family use, not to sell on....) and spends hours doing them up himself, knows about electronics ect... a while back he casually mentioned that they thought the kitchen needed a facelit....for most of my friends that would be their wives telling them to go and spend 4 figures on a new kitchen. This bloke and his wife re-did the whole kitchen themselves, with him doing tiling and his wife re-painting all the cabinets herself. If most of my mates suggested to their wives they do some DIY they'd not talk to them for a week In addition to learning about these kinda things and being self-sufficient, this bloke's wife has also tried sevel different careers in the last decade, since they have a cheap mortgage she's been able to move on from one kind of job into training for another when she wasn't happy with what she was doing any more. I think overall his outlook on life is closer to how I'd like mine to be. But as per usual, the personal freedom required to achieve this is based on affording shelter.

Money, Frank. You’ve got loadsa money and low outgoings. Most don’t. The situation you described sounds great because it would represent true freedom at an individual level. But that’s completely different to western culture, among the workers anyway, which is to saddle yourself so much debt that your spending the rest of your life paying it off. Get a promotion, increase the debt in line with your increased earnings so even if you hate the job you can’t afford to earn less. Consumption is the national past time and most people’s personal identity, people don’t stop to think about how they spend their days.

It’s usually bunged so I wonder were they not prepared to run the place with slightly fewer customers in it. If they’re waiting for things to return to ‘normal’ it’ll be a fucking long wait.