Will

Sounds very reasonable! I’m (very casually) looking in the Midlands and at 260k you really don’t get too much even up there. So 5% seems possible but not ideal I guess? Will have to look into this a lot more, thanks for the info. In reality it will probably take us quite a while to find something so we can probably get closer to the 10% deposit by the time we find something to buy. Might be some family help too so that will play a part. Definitely enjoying looking at what’s available though, at the top end of our budget there are some really nice places.

What sort of deposit are you guys being asked to put down at the moment? We’re starting to seriously consider moving back to the UK and if we did I’d probably look to buy rather than rent. Unfortunately my savings got wiped out last year but we’ve managed to build them back up fairly well over the last 12 months. If we were to move back tomorrow then at the price range we’re looking at a 5% deposit would be pretty easy, but maybe with a more realistic time frame we might be able to push closer to 10% - are decent deals available with that kind of deposit?

I always enjoy the Olympics and this one is no exception. It’s nice to finally be in the same timezone(ish) as the event and I’ve been able to have it on while I work and catch pretty much everything I’m interested in. For a country that doesn’t really do sport the coverage here has been fantastic. They pretty much give a full schedule of every sport and I’d say 95% of them are being shown live. There is something stupid like 30 channels showing this stuff here. If you’re using a VPN I’d really recommend watching Singapore’s coverage if there are specific things you want to see. On a personal level this is also a really weird one for me. The Olympics was my ‘target’ when I moved to Japan to have done five years there and the time I’d be thinking about my next adventure. I ended up only doing two years and life took me on it’s own adventure. Moving away 2020 was always a target for a long holiday and then with COVID I’d hoped that this year they would finally sort of be an end point for this whole thing. I guess things never really work out quite how you plan them.

I think it’s like you said previously, a bit of common sense goes a long way. Do I want to be a on a train without a mask on? Not at all. Would I pull it down to speak to someone with a hearing difficulty? Absolutely. If those other things were new and having the same impact as covid then yeah, they probably would be. For sure helping the homeless and doing charity work is great, but choosing not to do it does not mean you play an active part in harming other people. Not having the vaccine might do. I totally agree that people should have the right not to have a vaccine if they don’t want to. I just also think that everyone else has the right to choose not to be around them and exclude them from certain things if they’ve taken that decision with no good reason. I don’t really think it’s the same thing. Religion aside a person can’t control those things but they can control whether they get vaccinated or not. If a religion doesn’t allow you to have a covid vaccine then that sucks, but it’s still your choice. Well yes, it’s definitely crazy if a pedophile has more freedom than someone who hasn’t had a vaccine but you can start making any crazy excuse if you go down that route. Just because one thing is fucked up doesn’t mean other things should be to compensate for it. I totally agree with this but there has to be some sort of sense to coming out of all of this. It’s fine to say we need to get back to normal for people’s mental health but if going back to normal means millions of people sick and thousands dying doesn’t that just get us back to step one? I don’t know what the right balance is but going straight back to normal doesn’t really feel like it’s anywhere near the right thing to do.

The thing is, on a train or a bus your personal space is not going to give you some magical barrier to catching anything. If someone even nearish to you has decided to do what they like and not wear a mask they are putting you at risk. It’s totally idiotic that people are allowed to make their own choice (that will impact everyone) in that situation. As with most things the UK government does, any attempt to create some sort of vaccine passport system will fail miserably. They have no system to link it back to and make so many exceptions with the rules it’s basically impossible to follow through with anything. Over here they’ve made it quite clear that there is going to be different freedoms given to those people who have had the vaccine and under the circumstance I find it hard to disagree with that. Your body your choice is still taken care of here, you’ve made the decision to not help protect society and you will not be able to take part in that society as much as if you had. For those people with (genuine) medical issues you would hope the system in place was robust enough to deal with it properly. It really shouldn’t be that difficult to create the system to deal with those cases. For the personal and religious folk, your beliefs aren’t compatible with society so you are excluded from it. In this situation I really have no issue with that stance. I agree with this, of course. But there seems to be a huge amount of people without the common sense necessary for this to work.

Far more than I’d like to admit in public.

Got a desk mat to complete my WFH setup. Had it custom made by a specialist felt company in Germany and have to say I’m pretty pleased with it:

Here we’re back into full lockdown until the middle of August. Hopefully the vaccine rates pick up during this period and they finally start easing up properly. We’ve just hit 50% fully vaccinated but apparently 100k people in the critical group have not even had their first. I’m really quite shocked by the skepticism to vaccines here and now it’s starting to hold everyone back. I’m definitely not a supporter of the authoritarian rule here but I am starting to think they should use some of them to force this thing through.

Yeah I think doing something a bit different is good and if it can allow different cars/setups to shine then I’m all for it. I feel like the way they’ve done it just makes the race a bit longer with a planned red flag and agree that everyone just let it be as they got to the end. Given they have two direct feeder series following them around I don’t really get why they don’t test with those and then introduce what works to F1. The sprint race formats in those series work well and I don’t really get why they didn’t go for something like that. If they don’t want to “dilute” the perception of the race why not just run a sprint championship as an entirely different thing and make it so that teams have to alternate their lineups in them to get younger drivers some proper racing experience? I reckon something like that would be a great addition to the weekend.

Quite intrigued by this thing. I’ve posted before about wanting to get a PC and I think this will tide me over until components are a little easier to get hold of. Thinking I’ll go for the top end model, stick windows on it and then use it for emulation and a few media bits too. With the dock I think it will be a great option for a living room PC. Definitely doubting my Switch OLED now.

I am! Only because the streaming is terrible here on iPlayer though. The ITV coverage really is awful, I’m not sure if it’s intentional or they just don’t know they’re currently on?

For sure it’s a shame. I can totally relate to those who haven’t seen family in a long time.

That’s definitely a strange one. Generally I’m not a huge fan of Tag Heuer but I quite like the Monaco collection. Quite interested to see what comes out of this.

Isn’t this the risk people take booking vacations at this point in time? I still don’t really understand why anyone would think it’s a good idea to be having holidays at this point in time.

Your keyboard could do with a good cleaning!