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Why ??!!...The whinging,moaning,complaining,ranting,letting off steam thread !!

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  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,254
    @Benny, wow, what a thing to happen. Imagine taking the car to the carwash, bird and all. Anyway, I'm glad it all turned out fine for you, the car, and the bird (of course).
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    edited April 20 Posts: 14,678
    320px-Laughing_kookaburra_dec08_02.jpgflower-bird-bird-and-flower.gif
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,343
    You could say that it kookascurried away. :D
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,254
    Dragonpol wrote: »
    You could say that it kookascurried away. :D

    Ornithology. Wow, that's a mouthful.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,343
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    Dragonpol wrote: »
    You could say that it kookascurried away. :D

    Ornithology. Wow, that's a mouthful.

    I think I've invented a new word there. :)
  • echoecho 007 in New York
    Posts: 6,380
    Okay, this just occurred to me.

    The phrase "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"...did this originally refer to the Australian bush?
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,343
    echo wrote: »
    Okay, this just occurred to me.

    The phrase "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"...did this originally refer to the Australian bush?

    You see, it all makes sense.
  • FoxRoxFoxRox
    edited April 20 Posts: 12,521
    Glad it all worked out. I get upset every single time I see a dead creature on the road - just saw a dead bird and a dead squirrel having to walk to work yesterday. The worst was one time when I saw a cat, though, as they’re my favorite animals. I try not to show it a lot in person, but I’m an extremely emotional, fragile person at heart.
  • j_w_pepperj_w_pepper Born on the bayou, but I now hear a new dog barkin'
    Posts: 9,082
    @Benny

    Wow, I'm both surprised and delighted that the bird survived! I can't remember happening something like that to me although I'm pretty sure it must have happened at one time or another over fifty years of driving. My wife and I sometimes talk about another "kamikaze blackbird" while in a car, but fortunately they tend to be fast enough to be out of the way. We do sometimes have songbirds slamming into the windows of our home, with a few casualties, but also quite a number of cases where we placed the "unconscious" bird in a box, safely away from our cats, but with a chance to fly away, and I'm glad to say they mostly did after an hour of recovery or so.
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    Posts: 14,678
    It's another one for the history books. The tale of the kookaburra and the krookedbumpa. 😅
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,343
    I'm sure we could kook up a good story.
  • CommanderRossCommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea
    Posts: 8,331
    @benny glad to see you both went unscaved, that's quite the size for a bird to hit. I've only once hit one, it dove down in a fight with another bird, hit the windscreen at 100kph and was launched very high into the air. I have no idea if it survived or just dropped dead.
    The only thing I find shocking is that you're driving a Renault! You want to start a taxi company or something? I hope the roof is welded properly to the chassis..
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,229
    Benny wrote: »
    This happened to me yesterday, whilst travelling for work...

    i6xx07hp0k3x.jpg
    ewygm1ylwwvp.jpg

    As I was driving down the Forrest Highway this morning I sadly hit a bird at 110kmh. (68mph)
    It wasn’t till I’d finished with my next customer that I realised the bird was stuck in the grill.
    I gently tried to pull the poor bird out with thoughts of where to dispose of its corpse.
    As I eventually got the thing out trying not to seperate the body from the head. I was even more surprised when the bird flew away!
    Bloody thing was still alive!
    It had been stuck there for about 45 minutes. Didn’t move when I was freeing it.
    Scared the living daylights out of me when it flew away.
    Happy to say my heart rate has gone back to normal, and I bought a lottery ticket on behalf of the bird.

    Wow that's scary.
  • GerardGerard
    Posts: 6,021
    I think I'mat the beginning of another period of bad luck. Since march, I was preparing my vacations in Britanny. I had already resered my lodging on Abritel, but today, I received a mail from my lodger who told me that, due to an important incident in his building, he had to close it and couldn't receive me at the date I listed. Which means that I'll have to find another lodging, some three months before going, and that I'll be lucky if I manage to get reimbursed of the sum I already spent. DAMMIT !
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,343
    I know how you feel. It seems to me lately that if I hadn't bad luck I'd have no luck. :(
  • VenutiusVenutius Yorkshire
    edited April 29 Posts: 3,157
    I hear you, lads. Had the same run from last October to March this year. Absolutely nothing went right. Got sick to death of always doing the right thing and it just not working. Constant grind of shoring everything up against collapse, thinking you've got one thing sorted and then another goes wrong. Grrrr... I've had periods like that before and knew that the only way through it is...through it. Plough on. But, God, it gets wearing when you keep doing your damnedest and things still don't go right - and then one day months later, they just do, as if a storm's passed. Almost makes you believe in conjunctions, Saturn Return, and all that! Almost.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,229
    Gerard wrote: »
    I think I'mat the beginning of another period of bad luck. Since march, I was preparing my vacations in Britanny. I had already resered my lodging on Abritel, but today, I received a mail from my lodger who told me that, due to an important incident in his building, he had to close it and couldn't receive me at the date I listed. Which means that I'll have to find another lodging, some three months before going, and that I'll be lucky if I manage to get reimbursed of the sum I already spent. DAMMIT !

    Argh! And Brittany is so lovely.
  • j_w_pepperj_w_pepper Born on the bayou, but I now hear a new dog barkin'
    edited May 1 Posts: 9,082
    Gerard wrote: »
    I think I'mat the beginning of another period of bad luck. Since march, I was preparing my vacations in Britanny. I had already resered my lodging on Abritel, but today, I received a mail from my lodger who told me that, due to an important incident in his building, he had to close it and couldn't receive me at the date I listed. Which means that I'll have to find another lodging, some three months before going, and that I'll be lucky if I manage to get reimbursed of the sum I already spent. DAMMIT !

    @Gerard , I am just reading on the website of Hamburger Abendblatt (our regional newspaper, and I'm not posting the link because it is both in German and behind a paywall anyway) that recently, hundreds or even thousands of people got a sudden cancellation for their rented holiday home/apartment in Denmark because Dancenter (the equivalent to Abritel, I guess) had tried a new booking system that had somehow backfired. The article also states that apartments etc. in other countries were affected as well, though it mentions only an example from Sweden.

    Dancenter was taken over by Indian billionaire Ritesh Agarwal a few years ago, and I understand his company, OYO, is expanding in Europe beyond that. Perhaps your experience with Abritel and la Bretagne is also part of this?
  • GerardGerard
    Posts: 6,021
    I don't think that's the case rght here. For all I know, there might have been a fire in the building, or something like that.

    Some update on the situation : I managed to get reimbursed of the sum I already paid, and I managed to rent another flat. But the trouble is, they ask me to pay by bank transfer, something I've never done. I've tried to do it online, but I couldn't do it, so I'll be forced tomorrow to go to the nearest post office to get it done. Before, all I had to do was to pull out my debit card and pay. Here, it's a bit more complicated. Why didn't they offer me the choice of paying by card, instead of going for a more complicated system, I don't know. Anyway, I hope I'll be able to pay for my vacation tomorrow (can't do it today, the post office is closed).
  • j_w_pepperj_w_pepper Born on the bayou, but I now hear a new dog barkin'
    Posts: 9,082
    Gerard wrote: »
    I don't think that's the case rght here. For all I know, there might have been a fire in the building, or something like that.

    Some update on the situation : I managed to get reimbursed of the sum I already paid, and I managed to rent another flat. But the trouble is, they ask me to pay by bank transfer, something I've never done. I've tried to do it online, but I couldn't do it, so I'll be forced tomorrow to go to the nearest post office to get it done. Before, all I had to do was to pull out my debit card and pay. Here, it's a bit more complicated. Why didn't they offer me the choice of paying by card, instead of going for a more complicated system, I don't know. Anyway, I hope I'll be able to pay for my vacation tomorrow (can't do it today, the post office is closed).

    I'm surprised that you never paid by bank transfer. It's been a daily (or at least weekly) thing for me for the last forty years or so, and it really took off once online banking was available. How do you guys pay rent or other regular obligations? Then of course there are also people who do not want to disclose their card number on the Internet. But the main reason for creditors to ask for bank transfer instead of card payment is that card companies (both debit and credit) charge the recipient a certain percentage, and it adds up (and/or ultimately increases the price) if the creditor chooses to accept card payment.
  • GerardGerard
    Posts: 6,021
    All my fixed expenses (rent, transportaion, electricity, phone and the like) are paid by direct debit from my bank account. I have nothing to do, the bank does all the work. For the rest, I prefer to use my debit card (or, more rarely these days, my checkbook) to pay for one-off expenses online. Paying by debit card is, for me, easier than paying by bank transfer. But anyway, the situation has been resolved, the lodger has provided me with the link to an address where I could pay by card, which I just did. Which was the cherry on the top of a very satisfying day (I managed to do everything I planned to do. Not often that happens, really).
  • j_w_pepperj_w_pepper Born on the bayou, but I now hear a new dog barkin'
    Posts: 9,082
    Congratulations...and I wish you a very happy vacation once the time comes!
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,343
    Wasn't it James Bond who once said that holidays are hell? 😉
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,229
    Okay, first world problems, but I wanted to see Cosi fan tutte at the ROH. With Golda Schultz as Fiordiligi, my favourite soprano at the moment. But I would need to spend a night in London, which would add up to how much I'd be paying already, and it won't be something to do with my family as my wife doesn't like opera and my son is a bit young for a three hours show, at night, in Italian. So yeah, I'm kind of hesitating and feeling gutted there's no matinee.
  • echoecho 007 in New York
    Posts: 6,380
    Ludovico wrote: »
    Okay, first world problems, but I wanted to see Cosi fan tutte at the ROH. With Golda Schultz as Fiordiligi, my favourite soprano at the moment. But I would need to spend a night in London, which would add up to how much I'd be paying already, and it won't be something to do with my family as my wife doesn't like opera and my son is a bit young for a three hours show, at night, in Italian. So yeah, I'm kind of hesitating and feeling gutted there's no matinee.

    You are exceptionally cultivated.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,229
    echo wrote: »
    Ludovico wrote: »
    Okay, first world problems, but I wanted to see Cosi fan tutte at the ROH. With Golda Schultz as Fiordiligi, my favourite soprano at the moment. But I would need to spend a night in London, which would add up to how much I'd be paying already, and it won't be something to do with my family as my wife doesn't like opera and my son is a bit young for a three hours show, at night, in Italian. So yeah, I'm kind of hesitating and feeling gutted there's no matinee.

    You are exceptionally cultivated.

    Am I? I just love opera in general and Mozart's operas in particular. (One of the reasons why I find Mozart superior to Beethoven is his mastery of lyrical art).
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,343
    Ludovico wrote: »
    echo wrote: »
    Ludovico wrote: »
    Okay, first world problems, but I wanted to see Cosi fan tutte at the ROH. With Golda Schultz as Fiordiligi, my favourite soprano at the moment. But I would need to spend a night in London, which would add up to how much I'd be paying already, and it won't be something to do with my family as my wife doesn't like opera and my son is a bit young for a three hours show, at night, in Italian. So yeah, I'm kind of hesitating and feeling gutted there's no matinee.

    You are exceptionally cultivated.

    Am I? I just love opera in general and Mozart's operas in particular. (One of the reasons why I find Mozart superior to Beethoven is his mastery of lyrical art).

    You are pretty cultured to me. I have listened to some of Mozart's music years ago on an old record player. I did prefer Mozart to Beethoven I seem to recall but I've not seen any of their music used in an opera. I'm afraid I wouldn't have a clue what they were saying or singing in any event as my languages aren't good enough. I really must broaden my classical music tastes. I've meant to try Gustav Mahler some time as he was John Gardner's favourite composer and he often played his symphonies when he was writing his novels.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,229
    Dragonpol wrote: »
    Ludovico wrote: »
    echo wrote: »
    Ludovico wrote: »
    Okay, first world problems, but I wanted to see Cosi fan tutte at the ROH. With Golda Schultz as Fiordiligi, my favourite soprano at the moment. But I would need to spend a night in London, which would add up to how much I'd be paying already, and it won't be something to do with my family as my wife doesn't like opera and my son is a bit young for a three hours show, at night, in Italian. So yeah, I'm kind of hesitating and feeling gutted there's no matinee.

    You are exceptionally cultivated.

    Am I? I just love opera in general and Mozart's operas in particular. (One of the reasons why I find Mozart superior to Beethoven is his mastery of lyrical art).

    You are pretty cultured to me. I have listened to some of Mozart's music years ago on an old record player. I did prefer Mozart to Beethoven I seem to recall but I've not seen any of their music used in an opera. I'm afraid I wouldn't have a clue what they were saying or singing in any event as my languages aren't good enough. I really must broaden my classical music tastes. I've meant to try Gustav Mahler some time as he was John Gardner's favourite composer and he often played his symphonies when he was writing his novels.

    There's generally teleprompters in the side of the stage where you can read it. Cosi fan tutte is great fun and Golda Schultz the best Mozartian singer at the moment imo.
  • CommanderRossCommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea
    Posts: 8,331
    If it isn't Handel, it isn't good. But I think you should definitely go, Mozart's operas are definitely amongst the best (and most fun).
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,229
    CommanderRoss wrote: »
    If it isn't Handel, it isn't good. But I think you should definitely go, Mozart's operas are definitely amongst the best (and most fun).

    I love Handel, but for me the greatest is Mozart. I don't think anyone ever topped his operas or indeed any of his lyrical works. I don't know if the "controversial opinions about anything" thread work still exists, but if it did I'd write there that Beethoven's 9th has a catchy but overrated tune. That's how much I rate Mozart.

    So yeah. I want to see Cosi fan tutte, but it's going to be difficult logistically.
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