Animedragon

Doesn't time fly, it's half-past 2023 already! Looking at that picture reminds me that I know people who are already planning Christmas events!

As someone who is retired I no longer have a job, but here are some of my thoughts about the job I had. The big negative was that it was a customer facing and customer driven job which meant that we were often working to the customers, sometimes unreasonable, deadlines and sometimes had more work coming in than we could really cope with and turning work away wasn't an option. Some customers could be quite demanding and while we did try to explain how long things took to do there were always a few stroppy individuals who wouldn't, and didn't want, to listen. Although thankfully the majority of our customers were polite, understanding, friendly and usually up for a chat and a laugh or two. On the positive side it was an interesting job that I enjoyed doing and being a customer driven job it meant that if there were no customers we had no work to do but generally the work ticked over at a steady rate with the quiet times roughly balancing out the madcap "headless chicken" times. Over the years I worked in a number of different places and, with a very few exceptions, my colleagues were a friendly bunch and we all worked together as a team and helped each other out.

Owning you own home gives you security of tenure. One of the things I've noticed here in the UK is that quite a lot of private landlords are in the "buy to let" market, they buy a house with the intention of letting it out, the theory being that the rental income covers the cost of the mortgage and other expenses. But increases in interest rates are making this idea difficult and some landlords are finding that the rental isn't covering their costs. This results in either the landlord putting the rent up or just deciding to cut their losses and sell up. Personally I can't think of much worse that finding a letter on my doormat one morning that says "Sorry you'll have to move out because I'm selling the house".

Celebration

I've now finished my rewatch of Hyouka which is a highly enjoyable series and definitely one I'll keep on my rewatch list.

Yaw

Erudite

Continuing my rewatch of Hyouka I noted that several episodes took place during the school's cultural festival when the whole school was turned into a fairground and all normal school classes, lessons etc were suspended. I've seen this in several other anime series and not really given it much thought, but this time I thought, to borrow Eru Chitanda's phrase, "I'm curious" so I did some research on the Net. What I found was that the cultural festivals shown in anime are a pretty accurate representation of what actually happens. Then I got to thinking that I might have enjoyed school more if we'd had similar festivals, then I realised that for a whole lot of reasons it would never have happened.

619

Vampire

Somnolent

Useful

While not the first manga I bought it is the first, and only, original Japanese manga I've bought. I got all five volumes from a Japanese bookshop in London and each has a nice glossy full colour card dust jacket. I can't read Japanese but I did find the English translations for each volume on the Net and printed them out. This must have been before the English version was available as I wouldn't have brought them if I'd already got the English version. I did subsequently buy the English editions, I think they came out about a year later.

Dedicated

Welcome to the forum. Pull up a cushion, or a chair if sitting on the floor isn't your thing, and make yourself at home. As to favourite anime, my all time favourites are Clannad and Clannad After Story. My list of other favourites varies from time to time because I like so many series, currently my list includes Card Captor Sakura, Fushigi Yugi, Magic Knight Rayearth, EF A Tale of Memories, Saikano, Yuru Camp and Kanon.

Dextrorotatory

It's cloudy, dull and raining. I knew the warm sunny weather wouldn't last long.... ...our British weather is (in)famous for it's ever-changing nature. Which is why it's the number one topic of conversation.

Fashion

Endangered

Engine

Location

I'm rewatching Hyouka and finding it as enjoyable second time round as it was the first time. I really like the interactions of the two main characters, Hotaro Oreki is focused on what he calls 'saving energy', which most people would define as 'being lazy', however like a true lazy person he will always weigh up the effort required to do something against the effort of refusing to do something. Then there's Eru Chitanda, a bright energetic girl with an insatiable curiosity and desire to know answers to any mystery she encounters. When Chitanda utters the phrase "I'm curious" you can see the terror strike into Oreki's heart as he knows that her insistence, and her sweet smile, will obliterate any resistance he has and that the line of least effort is to go along with her scheme. As for the mysteries themselves, they're not all that mysterious but they are well presented and believable as the sort of mysteries that high school students would encounter.

Restoration

Expulsion