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Post by rikita on Nov 14, 2022 18:53:19 GMT
Ukraine does not lack humour whnen communicating with other countries. there is a somewhat similar spot for germany: (for some reason i could find various videos reporting about that spot, but none really just showing the spot)
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Post by rikita on Sept 23, 2022 20:22:46 GMT
my dad and his wife have covid right now, fortunately in both cases mild and already getting better. a colleague also has it, and he has asthma, so in his case apparently not so mild, but i hope he is getting better now, too (in his case, of course, i only knew what little is mentioned at work). all are vaccinated and boostered. and yeah, very few people i know haven't had it yet.
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Post by rikita on Sept 9, 2022 22:55:39 GMT
things from saporishja continue to sound worrisome ...
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Post by rikita on Aug 21, 2022 19:24:00 GMT
I have actually been appreciating the French movie desert in August and did not go to the movies for 3 days. The only problem is that they will open the floodgates in two weeks and then there will be too many things to see. Today, I went to see Vesper, a Franco-Lithuanian dystopian science fiction movie, a genre which will probably not persist. A young teen (Vesper) looks after her paralyzed father in a remote forest area. But he is usually with her in the form of a floating ball that talks. The forest is not remote enough because you would not believe the number of fistfights that take place in this area, I'm not sure why. They all seem to want to kill each other but for some reason nobody dies. In other areas, there is an elite living in floating fortresses or something. I don't know why (or even if) the elite don't like the people on the ground -- we never see them. Anyway, Vesper is involved in "bio-hacking" to get seeds that will feed everybody. I never even understood why they were needed, because the forest looked quite lush to me, even though near the end there seem to be some hostile alien plants that can kill people. How did they get there? Bad people come and kill the father and blow up the house, but Vesper has her seeds and escapes with some sort of blonde android girl who should be there. With other refugees (?) they make it to a big camp in the forest, and Vesper throws her seeds to the wind. What the fuck? I can only imagine that there was a plan to make a series of movies, but I just don't see that happening because this one was too awful. in some parts of Germany, a "Vesper" is a small meal or snack. So, the name sounds really odd to me as a name of a person ...
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Post by rikita on Aug 8, 2022 21:40:44 GMT
yeah, i was also wondering that - but rromani is very different to romanian, so it should be something completely different (all words i find in my dictionary relating to love are completely different, and "my" is something like "mure" or "muri" or "muro") - i suppose it could be something like a rromani-influenced use of romanian words or something like that. but since i can't find any explanation online, it might really just be a form i was just not aware of ...
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Post by rikita on Aug 7, 2022 21:28:31 GMT
Mi Iubita Mon Amour is a fish-out-of-water movie, a genre I like almost as much as road trip movies. It's about a group of young women going on a sort of hen party trip to Romania (not everybody's first choice). The car and all of the baggage are quickly stolen while they're picnicking at a service station. But that is where they meet Nino, a gypsy who speaks French and who takes them home because the police stations are closed at night. He actually lives in Paris most of the time, and all the rest of the family seem to have done so at different times. His life in Paris is not glorious because he often sleeps in the street and he makes a living selling things he has found in the trash or selling cheap beer in buckets at minor music concerts at Place de la République. I've seen these people as long as I have lived in Paris. The Romanian family is not at all delighted to have these unexpected guests, but they warm up little by little. They are being harrassed by someone who lent money for the mother's operation and whom they can't pay back. And of course gypsies are generally considered to be scum in Romania just like in the rest of Europe. Nino falls in love with one of the French women even though he is only 17 (looks older because a hard life just about always makes you look older). Bittersweet moments ensue. The movie was made on an ultra-low budget with a technical crew of just two people: a camerawoman and a sound technician. i suppose i am overthinking things, but i keep wondering if the first part of the title is a grammatical form i am not aware of, a language other than romanian that is just kind of similar, or a simple grammatical error (and if the latter, whether that is on purpose).
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Post by rikita on Jul 3, 2022 19:25:23 GMT
after having read "unorthodox" by deborah feldman a couple of years ago, i started "überbitten" now. just read a paragraph or two though, then didn't have time - but since i am going on vacation in less than a week, i hope i'll have time to continue then.
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Post by rikita on Jul 3, 2022 15:24:56 GMT
yes, by train and ferry and sometimes bus. and yeah, will take the camera along ... still feel unprepared though, so much i still wanted to organize before ...
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Post by rikita on Jul 3, 2022 15:23:33 GMT
we went to see minions - rise of gru today. it was either that or lightyear, and minions had better ratings. it was of course quite silly and all, but we still had fun. and first time in ages that i saw a movie in 3d.
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Post by rikita on Jul 1, 2022 18:01:20 GMT
currently trying to research whether there are any restrictions to keep in mind for our summer vacation (we are going to sweden, traveling via poland and traveling home via denmark), but it seems there are none. as for vaccinations, so far not much talk here about a second booster, except for risk groups ...
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Post by rikita on Jun 27, 2022 19:59:17 GMT
Ich bin dein Mensch (I'm Your Man) is a rather sweet and sad German movie set in the imperceptibly near future in which a company is testing androids for home use. A research scientist reluctant accepts to test one of them because she needs the money, but she is totally against the concept and gives her android Tom a really hard time. But he is programmed to put up with anything... i haven't seen the movie (though i did read it mentioned quite a bit) - but i thought it was interesting that in the English title they use "man", because my association with that would be, just seeing the title, "man" as in "male person" and really i'd kind of think of "man and woman" as in a couple, while "mensch" of course is "human being" and the german title thus sounds very different to me ...
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Post by rikita on Jun 2, 2022 20:06:26 GMT
here, masks are still mandatory on public transport, so most people wear them there, but not in most shops etc. - at a work meeting, recently, maybe a quarter to a third of us were wearing masks, the rest wasn't (that is, a few were wearing it at the beginning of the meeting but then took it off) ...
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Post by rikita on May 13, 2022 21:55:39 GMT
hm, but when i look at numbers online, it seems belgian and french vaccination rates are only very slightly above the german ones ...
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Post by rikita on May 1, 2022 21:42:12 GMT
overheard two women talking today, one was saying she thinks all that testing is nonsense, as these days, the tests only show positive when you already have symptoms anyway, so no use testing someone who doesn't have symptoms. the other woman said that she knows people who tested positive before they got symptoms. the first one talked about several people she knew that only tested positive after showing symptoms. the second one said that at her school, as they test kids regularly, she knows a lot of kids who tested positive and only developed symptoms later on. the first one said that maybe it is different for kids. the second one named various grown ups she knew who tested positive and got symptoms later on or got confirmed by pcr and never got any symptoms or only very vague symptoms. the first one just wouldn't have it, though - the conversation was friendly and all, but it seemed that because she, personally, apparently did not know anyone who tested positive before having symptoms, that thing did not exist no matter who the other person knew ...
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Post by rikita on Apr 30, 2022 23:05:07 GMT
at work out of about 12 people coming into the office, 4 are sick since beginning of last week, 3 of them work in the same room. i know that two of them (both vaccinated) have covid, don't know what the other two have. on the other hand, there hasn't been an email from school in ages now about covid cases in a's class (instead, we just got an email about a case of head lice) ...
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Post by rikita on Apr 9, 2022 20:45:44 GMT
watched fantastic beasts - the secrets of dumbledore yesterday. first time in ages i saw a movie so shortly after its release (mainly because my brother asked to see it with him). it's not a deep movie or anything, and some parts don't make sense, but the story was better than the second movie i thought, and it was fun to watch, at least for me - i like a lot of cgi and things that are just interesting to look at ... so i had a good time ...
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Post by rikita on Feb 26, 2022 0:35:06 GMT
today saw this article on fb that over 5 million children worldwide lost a parent or caregiver to corona. and there were actually people commenting underneath that children lose parents due to other reasons, too, so what's the big deal, they have to learn that death is a fact of life ... i wonder if those were the same people commenting, who on other occasions go on about how traumatizing it is for children that they have to wear masks to school ...
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Post by rikita on Feb 20, 2022 19:58:35 GMT
same for me - i looked up the opening credits on youtube now, so i see they are similar, but without that, it just seemed like a relatively boring car commercial to me.
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Post by rikita on Feb 19, 2022 13:40:40 GMT
video blocked in germany, too, btw.
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Post by rikita on Feb 18, 2022 17:55:51 GMT
don't know that one ...
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Post by rikita on Feb 18, 2022 17:49:14 GMT
a. isn't here, so i had a combination of random things ... polenta, that i cooked together with a bit of frozen spinach (so the polenta was green and had a bit more taste to it), with large white beans in spicy sauce, and also with a bit of cheese and sour cream ... and a drink i haven't had in ages (prompted by a discussion on a different forum) - a cherry dr. pepper ...
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Post by rikita on Feb 18, 2022 17:40:45 GMT
I hadn't seen Christiane F. since I first saw it in 1981 (?). Arte (the Franco-German cultural channel) was showing it, and it is just as raw as I remembered. For those who have never seen it, it is about a 13 year old girl in Berlin who becomes a drug addict and works with her boyfriend (who does guys of course). Plus they have all of their friends doing the same things. It is pretty disgusting, but it is based on a true memoir. The first video releases were censored from 12 seconds to 5 minutes depending on the country, but now the full version is apparently available everywhere. I'm sorry, but seeing 13 year olds doing these things is pretty unbearable. It's funny that I don't really mind when adults are doing such things. there is a new series based on her book on amazon now, i think it got mixed reviews, for being too pretty to look at, too clean - still want to watch it at some point ... i read the book as a teenager (i suppose most people did) - it started out with interviews some journalists did with teenagers that worked as prostitutes at the zoo train station, and they ended up writing the book together with christiane f., then ... some of the drug szene still at the station still existed when i was a teenager (though i suppose it was more distributed to various areas after the wall came down and the station was not as central anymore), i knew a guy who hung out there, he was a junkie (i didn't know him well, though, only talked to him three or four times altogether, and i have no idea what became of him, or how exactly he financed his addiction) ...
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Post by rikita on Feb 17, 2022 18:40:29 GMT
negative again this morning, so i think i am fine now. will still get another test tomorrow or on the weekend, but now it seems most likely i am fine ... will have to find out for a. if she should get a qr code for being recovered (for me, being boostered, i suppose it makes no difference, but for her it might be same status as being boostered - then again, her vaccinations are so recent, might not make a difference, after all) ...
else, numbers here are slowly going down, at last ... and they want to stop most restrictions on the 19th of march ...
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Post by rikita on Feb 16, 2022 22:04:30 GMT
Oh, that’s just not fair! Were the tests you took different types? both were at the same test center. and today i was negative again at the same test center - and i took another test at home, to make sure (also because the one at the test center seemed very hurried today) and it was negative, too - so, another one tomorrow to make sure, but i think i might be fine, now ... No, Rikita!!!! That is just so awful. I guess this means back to isolation for Agnes, as well. How are you feeling? actually, a's school said she can stay, because she had a negative test there (and vaccinated people don't have to isolate even if they are contacts of a person that tested positive) ... and as said above, today my tests were negative again ...
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Post by rikita on Feb 15, 2022 21:04:16 GMT
so, after our negative tests yesterday and celebrating with a walk outside and some ice cream, today i tested positive again ...
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Post by rikita on Feb 13, 2022 20:37:38 GMT
my main issue is that masks make my nose itch and sometimes make me sneeze ... but also during actual exercise i wouldn't like to wear them - if i am wearing one while hurrying up the stairs to the s-bahn, for example, i get very out of breath ...
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Post by rikita on Feb 13, 2022 11:51:19 GMT
the one we go to most often, the concession stand also sells the tickets, but at the others they are open, too - though they also now have the option to order and pay popcorn and other things at this machine, and then just collect it, so i guess less contact that way, and less of a line (but at the times i go, with agnes, it's usually quite empty anyway - except for when we went to see encanto for the first time, and didn't know the new spiderman movie had just come out and there was a huge line of people for that one ... felt odd to stand in the middle of a crowd ...)
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Post by rikita on Feb 12, 2022 21:18:09 GMT
here, we can take off the mask at the movies, as soon as we sit down ... but children in elementary schools wear masks at school (except when eating or doing sport or outdoors) ... a's school is going back to more group mixed activities, though, end of the month things like the school choir and extracurricular groups will start again, i think ...
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Post by rikita on Feb 12, 2022 13:23:02 GMT
Thanks!
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Post by rikita on Feb 12, 2022 13:22:27 GMT
hm, don't know how strict all of them follow the rules, but i'd just have assumed most of them do follow them more or less (except maybe little things like going to the mailbox when you are sure there is no one else on the stairs, or when someone brings you groceries, saying thanks to them when they are one flight of stairs away from you) ... but well, i guess you can't know, they can't really check on it.
a colleague texted me the other day saying to please only come back to the office when i am negative, so i won't infect anyone there - i must admit i felt a bit insulted because that implied i might do otherwise ...
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