Not my victory, but Hamburg’s new opera house is now finished and they’ve just started the opening concert. It’s a bit of a sore point around here: the estimated cost was €241.3 million, of which Hamburg taxpayers would pay €77 million, and it was due to be completed in 2010. By the time construction work officially ended on 31 October 2016, the cost had risen to €866 million, at a cost of €789 million to Hamburg taxpayers.
Anyway… here’s the link for the different live feeds if you’re interested.
This isn’t from my personal volition, so maybe this could go elsewhere (tell me where), but the pathology report of my excised nevus or epidermal lesion concluded it was benign. I do not have cancer-face, and never did.
That’s great to hear, hope everything goes well for you too @cleveremi.
We finally got the deposit for our last rented house back today, and sent it straight off to pay for our health insurance. I’ve been putting out fires that I started last year while I was particularly inattentive – somehow I mistyped my yearly salary in a tax declaration and was sent invoices for about 10,000 EUR from the tax office and health insurance*, to make up the shortfall in the amount I actually paid that year. I submitted a new tax declaration with all of the evidence and gave the new statement to the health insurance, which brought the bill down to a much more manageable level. Despite my best attempts at ruining us over the past year, we may actually make it into the black pretty soon!
*Monthly premiums are based on the previous year’s income.
I’m currently apprenticing with a fabrication company that has a rep for kicking to the curb any apprentices who aren’t willing to work hard and keen on learning how to ‘work smart’. They want apprentices who don’t wait for orders but instead take initiative, look for where help is needed and in general make themselves useful. I do my damndest to be such a worker.
A couple weeks ago the head foreman announced that some new apprentices would be coming aboard which meant that some of the current apprentices were going to be cut. He reminded us to work hard (done) and always be on time (uh-oh).
Today was the Cull. I survived.
I see this as both a small victory and an averted ‘Fuck Today’. Feels good.
My best friend from Japan, who I haven’t seen in several years, is coming to Singapore for a business trip which means we can finally have the catch-up drink we have been talking about since the last time we saw each other.
Then, I’m going to join my wife in Indonesia for a week-long holiday that is long overdue. I booked the leave off today and my HR department were nice enough to give it to me, even though strictly speaking I have only accrued two days’ time off so far this year.
My wife is currently in Indonesia because my current job doesn’t pay well enough for me to sponsor her visa, and she has gone through as many tourist visas in the last year as the Singaporean government is likely to grant her. It’s only an hour on the ferry but being apart from her all week is miserable. The prospect of being able to actually spend a whole ten days with her instead of just the weekend is making me feel like all my Christmases have come at once.
This is a Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat post.
My daughter went to college this year. She got into their honors program, which came with a scholarship, plus another prestigious scholarship. Her grades were low her first semester - a little combo of some hard classes, doing things last minute then getting sick, and a wacko teacher for what should have been an easy A. She got kicked out of the honors program, and she is in danger of losing the other scholarship.
We were pretty upset about it, but really not upset about the priorities she has had for herself so far at school. She is making some great friendships, much deeper than her high school ones. And the academic pressure seems to defeat the joy of discovering her own way.
So we sat and looked at her real situation. She tested out of her whole Freshman year. We realized that she’d probably be doing better financially to just finish school early and the honors program was keeping her from traveling abroad as much as she hoped. She can travel abroad through other state schools that are cheaper than hers, still get the credits, and pay the lower tuition. Overall she will save more money than the scholarships provided by completing early.
I’m really glad we didn’t let the disappointment stop us from focusing on what was right for her. She met with her adviser and found out she is on track to graduate early and is done with all the math that was hanging her up.
