all houses have somewhat similar configuration - so called "service" room at the first floor, main room and kitchen on the second and sleeping rooms at the third. So "service" room can be used perfectly.
here we have land-related issues sometimes, not pleasant but not particularly bad too
like every house must be separated by some 70 centimeters wide gap
and the gap is normally owned half by half by both owners
however some owners are assholes and bribe authorities so that they get the whole gap in their possession
this does not really change anything but in the future when the house is rebuilt one must make house smaller to keep those 30 centimeters from the border of the gap
and the bad guy gets his house 30 centimeters wider
in fact we have an issue like this now and the thing is finding its way to the court now... It is not that easy to work out unfortunately, because there's law that one owner can purchase the strip of land between houses but only by receiving a written consent of all owners of all land which is connected to the land concerned. Apparently no one gave this guy a consent so he likely forged one and this is a serious crime.
@alex in fact it is impossible to pass through the bureaucracy without the permission letter so there must be some which is either forget or "lost". In any case I think we will win the case or at least make the guy pay badly in bribes (and likely get caught) again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Transitional_Authority_in_Cambodia this was about the first time things got stable enough
and that's 93
(this wikipedia page seems to be a little biased)
"This article has serious issues. This deployment was the most extensive in the history of the UN at the time, and really laid the groundwork for future transitional administrations. The only effect of the mission that is listed is the spread of HIV? This needs MUCH more work"
@alex in short I rode the train which have no separate booths and about a half of the occupants were military going home. Those guys have no brakes and little respect to others so it was scary at times. Interestingly guys from Dagestan which is on Caspian sea (not russian but also coming with military) protected me on by their own initiative. Not sure why they did it.
@Rilakkuma probably the same reason we have regular Israeli-on-Israeli interactions down here. People come out of compulsory service and want to blow off steam, so they come to NZ/Oz on holiday but their attitudes are still "fun is beating up subhumans", which leads to many backpacker hostels running quiet "no zionist" policies.
Periodically we get bursts of whining about anit-semitism, followed by articles about the crimes and complaints. Which are almost always committed by recently ex-military people. So we get that kind of "stop them harming civilians" behaviour from other Israelis purely in self-defence.
Oh, any "happy rocks" to you too :)
/and/
I'm a kinda classic liberal on that issue... I want to support the existence of Israel, but the more I learn about the country and the more I interact with people from there, the more I find it problematic.
Not helped by being a kiwi, we founded our country by going in and starting a fight with the locals too (with a similar "gift" from Britain giving the land to us, even), but then... we have a treaty now, and peace (in the sense that the remaining conflict is either through lawyers or individualised and handled by Police rather than air strikes)
things around Israel are complicated. I used to work in Israeli company before and have met many Israelis as well as have been there
it is very hard to have single and unambiguous opinion about Israel, but in short I liked it. People there were at times annoying but in general very hospitable and nice.
for some reason I perceived Israel as sort of Western country before going there. In fact it is not Western and as soon as this misunderstanding is clear things are much more logical.
btw guys from Caspian sea were muslim.
my father told me when he was in soviet army during soviet occupation, Dagestani muslims and balts tended to keep together. Probably some sort of solidarity over being occupied by Russia against their will.
btw Australians in Japan have similar image to Israeli post-military people in NZ ;)
in Hokkaido in particular
but who cares anyway, they are in a similar situation - got to touch the snow in a complete wilderness far from home.
@Rilakkuma there is that. I know if they tried to put me in an army I'd want to get a long way away from it :)
We have fairly diverse jewish communities in Sydney, ranging from the insane orthodox (no, really, they managed to buy "air rights" over some public roads to hang some kind of spiritual barrier around a community) through to the hated-by-other-jews anti-zionist ones. Fun times if you get involved. The whole "where you have three jews you have four opinions and five political parties" joke is more of an observation :)
I shared a house with a gay, vegetarian, orthodox jewish guy for a while. That was bizarre :)
I was born in the city which had about 50% of population consisting of Jews.
also, the famois Abraham Itzhak Kook, one of fathers of modern Zionism is coming from that city
also Eliezer Ben-Yehuda - the guy who revived Hebrew used to live in the city and in fact started his works on Hebrew there
so that's little special place. This day it is mostly consisting of ethnic Russians with some 20% of Latvians and even less Jews, however with notable population of Roma people as gypsies are called nowadays.
all my gypsy friends never really objected of being called a gypsy. Not sure what's wrong with them now.
once when I was about 16 y.o. a gypsy guy came to us and told his story - he was born in a Romani family, is not educated but is tired of the lifestyle he sustained so he asked us to teach him reading
interestingly he was swallowing books in two years
now he's a happy guy with family and more or less good job
Hi @Rilakkuma. Do you get any of the US reality tv shows about gypsies? There are some in our village - my daughter's acquaintances - who bear out that whole culture. I suspect what people mean by "gypsy" varies by where we are. In the UK it is very negative, very bling, very loud, very in-your-face
I went to the National Museum of Occupation today - bevrijdingsmuseum.nl/basis.aspx?Tid=746. This place basically had the shit kicked out of it in early 1945. Tank battles etc. Fascinating.
Oh, looks like its called Nat Mus of Liberation. But there was plenty about occupation. You have to wonder, this place is just 5km from Germany, just how reluctant there people were in 1939...
Apart from that, the weather has been wet all day, and I had an awful pancake thing for lunch
I can't find the name of the show offhand, I will ask my daughter when sghe comes back. She's into all that stuff....awful
There is one programme about parents who put their kids in for shows....like beauty contests.....there kids ore four or five years old. They take is so seriously.
Yeah I saw something in the paper recently about how one of those, it turns out the mom was dating a pedophile or something and the kid's now in protective custody or some shit.
Let me just say, that crappy TV does not represent the interests or "reality" of the vast majority of Americans!
@freiheit Yeah, they refer to themselves as "traveller"
It is a strange kind of culture, there are trailer parks that they live in, that you don't even know they are there (unless you happen to mix in those circles)
@nhinkle I was the first generation of our family to go to university, that was a so big a deal back then you can't imagine, but I think it is safe to say I'll also be the last. She wants to be a hairdresser...
I mean, as a parent I should be happy knowing that she is happy....except I know it is easier to be happy when you have a decent job/career and don't have to worry about money
Also, by the time she qualifies, all my hair will have dropped out ;)
I don't know what you call your school levels there, but I suppose she's probably just starting high school (secondary?), right? Not too late to change her mind about college and what she wants to do.
But hey, if she wants to be a hair dresser, at least that's a job that probably won't be replaced by robots too soon!
@nhinkle no she does competitive exams at the end of this school year (around Easter 2015), after which she will leave school and start on a vocational course in the Sept.
Those competitive exame are taken by all kids. They're called GCSEs. The brighter kids then do 2 more years at school., then do A-levels (aged about 18). After that, it is a university degree.
Degrees were 3 years in my day, but I think a lot now are 4 years, with a year spent working out - that would correlate to your internship I think
In the UK, secondary education starts at age 12. Althouth that is not consisten throughout the UK.
So, in our school system, age 4-7 is infants, age 8-11 is juniors, age 12-16 secondary, with an option to carry on to 18
But in some places in the UK, they change schools at age 14. I'm not sure how that works, but they still take the competitive exams at age 16
@nhinkle talking of tv again, guess what has just come on Futch tv (or it could be Belgian tv, the language is the same).....Cheers! as in Ted Danson etc.
Huh. Everybody in the US does the same thing up through high school graduation. During your last year of high school you take various exams that may be required to get into college, but different colleges accept scores from different exams. Pretty much anyone who wants to can go to college, but the question is what college you go to. There's practically no entrance barrier for community college, so a lot of people get a 2 year degree at community college, then transfer to a 4 year university.
@nhinkle In the US, sometimes there is "tracking" within the high school between "college prep" and "vocational", but it's definitely not the same kind of strict separation as the UK system (one student could take both metal shop and college prep english, for instance). The whole "tracking" vs "not tracking" thing is kind of controversial...
@nhinkle yeah, in the UK there only used to be 20 or 30 universities, which I think are the equivalent of your colleges. But they deregulated everything and now there are probably hundreds. All offering degrees. So again, its where the degree comes from that counts here too
I think its funny to see e.g. the NFL, where these players probably have 2 brain cells, yet have college degrees
@PeteH A lot of states have multiple university/college systems.
In California, we have 3 public higher-ed systems.
There's the "Community College" (aka "junior college") system, which (mostly) does 2-year (Associates) degrees, prepping for transfer to a 4-year university, all sorts of vocational, and usually some general community education stuff.
@freiheit ok, I have heard of places like UCLA, also UCSD I think. Where do they fit in? And isn't there a top college somewhere near San Francisco? I forget its name. Very good rep though
There's the "University of California" (UC) system. That's the prestigious (Berkeley) system of 8 research-oriented universities. If you're going for a doctorate that's where you have to go.
@PeteH SF has the UCSF medical school and across the bay is Berkeley
Berkerley, that's the one. But does e.g. UCLA just complete with all these other colleges, in terms of offering a degree. I mean, obviously a degree from UCLA would probably mean more...
I suppose none of this should surprise me, it's kinda private enterprise to the max!
Then there's the CSU-system, which still does some research, but is mostly focused on 4-year (Bachelor's) degrees with a few Masters degrees.
@PeteH Well, in a certain sense, UCLA, UCSF and Berkeley are all part of the same "University of California" and are really just individual campuses. If you take "English 101" at one of them it's directly transferable between the schools, the degree requirements are very similar, etc... There's a tendency (in the UC system) that an individual campus will have a specific focus, with a few whose real focus is "cover most stuff and get good geography".
I work in the "California State University" (CSU) system.
Oh, also, within a University (like Berkeley), a "College" or "School" is a top-level academic organization that contains individual academic departments.
@PeteH 4-year institutions are "Universities" with "Colleges" or "Schools". 2-year institutions are "Colleges". K-12 (pre-18) are various kinds of "school" (elementary school, middle school, junior high school, high school) with the very first level being "kindergarten" (usually tied to an elementary school)
@PeteH I'm either involved in hiring somebody with enough experience I don't care what university degree they have, or hiring "student assistants" (interns) that attend the university I work at.
Yeah, actually I suppose it is similar here, just with fewer options
I heard something interesting recently, that here are foreign universities (in particular in China, but in mainland Europe too), which have set themselves up as English-language unoversities, in an attempt to attract students to them.
Obviously, they charge less than a traditional UK university.
But for many generations of ex-students in the UK, it is totally alien to think about fees in the same context as university. That is a very recent thing
Basically, the state paid tuition fees, regardless of who you were, or where you went
@PeteH Berkeley used to cost individual students something like $50 per semester, with the rest of the tuition paid for by the state. California's support of the public university system has slowly declined and now what the student will owe is quite a bit more.
Yes I think there was once an assumption that the state would claw back its outlay in a lifetime of taxes, but now they want a bit more accountability!
It's the same here, believe it or not I got a grant to go to university, and left with debts of zero!
(It was only afterwards that I ran up debts!)
I keep thinking of Chelsea Clinton in the context of Berkerley, does that ring a bell?
Anyway @freiheit, I need to go now and cook supper. Real holiday food - pasta, a carbonara sauce, and hot dogs (except they call 'em bratwurst here). Later
@freiheit yeah, that's probably true here too. "Hot Dog" definitely has cheap'n'nasty connotations, but of course everything was a hot do when I was a kid. These were Bratwurst - proper Bratwurst - and delicious.
Most supermarkets in the UK will offer some sort or "wurst" now, as opposed to just calling them "hot dogs".
... the boss's daughter is apparently a whizz at WordPress.
I'm still doing the run-down, have cough so no riding to work for me. I rode an extra couple of km to the next train station this morning and the traffic fumes just about killed me. Will leave it until next week. (it's ~5km from the nearest train station to work, so I am riding that rather than spending 30 minutes or more getting a bus that 5km)
according to GradBoy she is also cute. He went to school with her. In that sense ... GradBoy got his job because he knows the boss, so maybe the boss is more cluueful than raw nepotism might suggest.
