For some reason yesterday I was reading about ketchup on Wikipedia, apparently in the UK it was originally made with mushrooms instead of tomatoes, which has got me intrigued. I’m not sure I want to waste a bunch of mushrooms trying to make it, in case it’s gross. But I’ve never seen a commercial version of mushroom ketchup here before 🤔
Interesting, I didn’t know that! I guess it makes sense, tomatoes are native to the Americas so wouldn’t have been in Europe until relatively recently.
Oh wow, I was expecting it to all happen a lot earlier than that! It seems tomatoes were in the UK in the 1500s but didn’t become popular until the 1800s!
My Auntie and Uncle spent 2 years living and working in Malaysia when their kids were about 5ish and 8ish. Awesome experience for adults and kids alike, and also for their young adult nephew (me) who went to visit them as well! Kids attended an Australian school in Malaysia following the Australian curriculum.
We lived in Bangkok for a couple of years before we had kids, we sort of came back here because we didn’t want to raise kids over there. Honestly, thinking about it the hot season there was pretty unbearable, and this was about 10 years ago. It was a big city though, hardly any trees in built up areas made it stifling.
I do fantasize about living on a tropical island near beaches, waves and coconut trees. Don’t think we’ll ever be able to afford that though.
Don’t give up! Price it up, see how many of your kids you need to be doctors! Well, doctors don’t make that much actually. You need a CEO or two I think, of large companies.
I joke, but it’s a real thing where people save up heaps of money then move to a tropical country where the cost of living is low to retire early. A subset of the FIRE movement.
TBH I think most people doing FIRE are young with no kids. There are definitely people with kids doing it (or trying), but I think it becomes harder when you have to pay for the living costs of several people.
I personally try not to spend superfluously, but identify what’s important to me. We manage to save OK, though at the moment we are focused on the mortgage.
I just get bored really easily, then start dreaming up projects or improvements to do around the house. And if I’m bored, I can’t stop thinking about it until I do it, which usually necessitates spending money. It’s a problem, but sometimes the quality of life upgrades are worth it.
I’m a bit like that too! But I try to keep to one area. I will spend on tech if I feel like it would be a fun project or if it lets me do something cool, but when I buy a bike I’m getting a cheaper one not an E-bike (but not so cheap it breaks and ends up costing more). When I buy a car I get the one that gets the job done, not a Tesla.
If I was super into bikes, then I’d spend as much as I could justify on a nice bike, but hold back in other areas. Basically identifying one I’m allowed to splurge on.
We live comfortably but I’ve read a fair bit around personal finance and no matter how much money you make, you can still live beyond your means. So we try hard to live below our means and save the difference, even small amounts add up. I see relations talk about how they are still paying off their holiday on the credit card. That’s something I’d never do, paying for something you don’t need with a loan. I won’t even take out a hire purchase to get interest free money, we can keep using the 30 year old hand me down furniture or save up for new stuff if that’s what we want, but I’d never borrow for it.
This of course comes from a position of privilege. I know some people need to borrow or they will be sleeping on the floor. But I’m not sure I could ever justify paying for a holiday on the credit card.
Ah yeah, we’re similar we don’t really buy anything we can’t outright pay for. I definitely do use my credit card for the meager airpoints it gets, but it’s never an amount that we can’t pay off fully every bill.
If it was a large holiday, I’d consider having it on the CC just for the points, but I wouldn’t book anything I couldn’t already pay for.
We’ve just decided not get any nice furniture or redo the carpet until the kids grow up. They destroy everything anyway 😂 still rocking our free hand me down couch and dining set even though they’re pretty worn and have battle scars from the kids
I definitely do use my credit card for the meager airpoints it gets, but it’s never an amount that we can’t pay off fully every bill.
Same here, we definitely use a credit card, but we aren’t paying interest on it. The one time I messed up and ended up with interest, I got the bank to write it off 😆
We’ve just decided not get any nice furniture or redo the carpet until the kids grow up. They destroy everything anyway 😂 still rocking our free hand me down couch and dining set even though they’re pretty worn and have battle scars from the kids
Haha yeah, we’re the same. When I was younger my parents said the same thing too, they would say they would get a new lounge suite when all the kids left home. When I left home they went and got a new one (I wasn’t even the last to leave so I guess they were just waiting for me to leave), and the day it was delivered I was there visiting and the only one home at the time. I got it inside, put it together, then spilt a coke on it… and of course cleaned it up and never spoke of it 😆
I considered those, but I’ve read some bad reviews. Friend of mine had them all through his house and said none of them lasted more than about 2 years. He’s technical like me so I take his word on them. But, I’ve read good things too. May have to try a set for myself. Don’t throw your receipts away in a hurry.
I did the house half in the Cavius ones and half in the Orca ones (both from Mitre 10). Must have been about 5 of each. The Orca ones mostly died within a year or two, probably the batteries (which are replaceable but I couldn’t find anywhere selling them). One of them was DOA, when I put the battery in it, the alarm went off until I pulled the battery out.
The Cavius ones are still going strong. This was perhaps 3-4 years ago, though some are newer since I replaced most of the Orca ones (actually, I was dumb enough to buy more Orca ones first, because I could just fit them into the existing brackets so I didn’t have to do much work, but then when they died again, that’s when I replaced them with Cavius).
I did some research on smoke alarms the other day, and my conclusion is that they all have bad reviews to some extent. I guess like any electronic, they have a reasonably high failure rate, so it’s probably pretty common for people to have a bad experience (my bad experience with Orca may likewise be a fluke).
Fair points. But as I said, it’s probably worth getting some for my own use and having a bash.
My main motivation with this is to do work me assisting in a house fire across the road from me. I never believed how fast a fire develops. Its fucking scary let me tell you. The more warning you can get the better. My house has a smoke alarm in every room, kitchen, lounge, and garage.
But just as important is having MULTIPLE fire extinguishers around the house. I’ve seen how far they really go in a real fire. You need more than one or two. You don’t want to watch a fireman dressed in full gear with breathing apparatus dragging a hose in through your front door.
That whole episode was a serious eye opener for me. Luckily, quick action meant they didn’t lose their house!
The legal minimum (for rentals) and the fire service recommended number of smoke alarms are vastly different. Like you, every room has a smoke alarm except bathroom/toilet. We have heat ones in the kitchen and garage and regular ones elsewhere.
Thanks for the reminder about fire extinguishers. My plan had always been to buy another every few years so they were different ages, but I’m sitting here with only one in the house because I never got more. I should get on to that.
My smoke alarms have a nasty habit of going off in the middle of the night. I’m in a humid area, wondering if that is the cause or maybe something to do with the HRV pumping different temperature air over them.
Smoke alarms normally say not to install within X distance (50cm maybe?) of a duct. Not sure if that’s because of dust or heat, I know our DVS gets big circles of grime around them from what I assume is grubby ceiling air (even though it has a filter) that needs cleaning every few years. Hard to see if you’re not up close, though.
Humidity might be an issue, because I was silly enough to put a smoke alarm where shower steam would reach (our house has a weird layout) and it would set off the smoke alarm. However, I’ve never heard of just generally humid air being a problem, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t.
Just getting used to it, but once we googled for some clarity on the rules it was good (the rules say “turn” to refer to a round of each player having a turn, as well as referring to an individual player’s turn as a turn. In addition, in a two player game each player plays twice in a round, leading to further confusion about things you can only do once per turn).
I don’t have a sound strategy yet (clearly). It looked a bit complex when setting up but the base gameplay turned out to be pretty straightforward once you got your head around it. I think there may be some deep strategy involved, and not too dependent on luck, which is good. You claim spaces on the board, resource cards, djinns, palaces, palm trees, different types of people (meeples) as well as coins, and have to balance your strategy between them while trying to shoot down the other player’s strategy. Scoring is done via their special score pad because it’s got so many different ways to score, but you only add up at the end.
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