mike carey

Thoughts and prayers.

I expect Rod could do the latter!!!

With the caveat that I live in a society where tipping is not the norm, I have the view that an escort sets their rate and that's what I expect to pay. I see a tip as something that I pay if I think they are charging below the going rate for the market, or if they astound me with the experience.

That is true, but these sorts of developments happen organically, new words are not created, they just happen. 'They' has been used to replace a singular usage since Shakespeare's time at least, and nobody rejects the use of 'you' in the singular.

And I haven't even messaged you, lol! I would NEVER meet you. Unless I was in Los Angeles.

I'd suggest it could work for all age groups, the better to see you for some, the quicker to have you out of their sight for others.

Exhibit A, Australia. Now, that's not quite what we did, but close. WA had its border closed for most of the year, but the other states opened and closed them depending on the prevalence of disease. Sometimes they shut out entire states, often they did it by region or local government area in the state. Australia is different to the US in that the states are physically separate to a greater extent, and outbreaks tended to be in capital (ie biggest) cities, not in the areas near borders. NZ is now treating each state as a separate entity, and from Monday will be open to Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT, but unlike interstate travel here we'll need a negative test before departure. The difference between us and the situation you face is that restrictions are removed fairly quickly, and that happens when the state with the outbreak removes its local restrictions.

@gallahadesquireand I have chatted here a few times, he is older than me but far more adventurous, but now it's his birthday and I couldn't be more pleased than to wish him many happy returns of the day (and returns to the scenes of his crimes when the world opens up again).

Harsh but fair.

I stand corrected. (Emirates also flew there, but via Sydney.) As a Canberran, having to take a domestic connecting flight is not something that worries me, but it does some people. I was aware of the WLG service as it replaced SQ's previous SIN-CBR-WLG flights.

@josh282282would it be too cynical of me to suggest that some doctors know that the time each appointment takes is unpredictable and liable to last longer than the blocked time, so they not too concerned about missed appointments because they help get them back on schedule? (I'm not disagreeing with your objection to escort deposits, or anything else you said, to be clear.)

@RadioRobnot a big deal, more a curiosity, your post above appeared in my unread list yesterday (I know it's the same one not a delete and repost because I had liked it!), but showed up again when I logged on today. Earlier I had seen unread posts that were older, and I knew I had cleared my unread list for the time at which they were dated, but wasn't sure if I had seen them before or not. I guessed at the time that it was a reflection of the new search engine reindexing the data base, or perhaps picking up items that the old software had somehow missed (I was going out on a limb and assuming that the unread posts function uses the search engine to find that content). Even if you choose not to investigate it or even comment (either of which I would understand and accept) it will be interesting to see if it recurs and if so how often.

I'd add another comment to ease the concern that digital certificates could be gamed by forgers. I'm reasonably confident that public health records show where different batches were used, so a forger would need to match a real batch number against a location were that batch was injected into arms, and that location would need to match where the holder of the certificate lived. Not impossible, but not easy either.

I haven't spent much time in Auckland, but it recently topped the Economist Intelligence Unit's most liveable cities list (the top 10 were all in Aotearoa, Australia, Japan and Switzerland). Being liveable isn't the same as interesting or exciting for tourists, so status on that list isn't relevant to the topic of this thread. Of the main cities in the country, I like Wellington the best (from what I've seen). Like Auckland, Wellington has a scenic harbour, but Auckland is pretty flat, while the capital is hilly, which I prefer (not the only reason, I hasten to add). Christchurch is nice too. Both cities are half the size of Auckland. If you're retiring there and planning to travel internationally, long-haul flights from Aotearoa operate only from Auckland (Wellington and Christchurch have non-stop flights to Australian cities, and there was a direct Singapore Airlines fright from WLG-SIN via MEL).

That's hilarious. I've been more the revenge saving, and realising the things I spent money on before I didn't always really need.

The thoughts that animate my doctor-related imaginings these days were not even the faintest of inklings at the time, but it occurs to me that Dr Kildare and Ben Casey might well have had that effect if I had been so inclined at the time. And more recently, David Tennant as The Doctor ain't half bad.

The old system was based solely on how many posts you had made, the new one uses a point system based on posts, likes etc given and received amongst other things. That said, I'm not losing any sleep over it, it is what it is. There is a new gallery under development that uses a different part of the software's capability rather than the standard forum part that the Legacy Gallery uses.

You and me both!

As @keefersaid, thoroughly worth a visit. Fun fact, there's a statue of a white Australian in there. (It's of Peter Norman who was the silver medallist in the 200m at the Mexico City Olympics. He is depicted along with Tommie Smith and John Carlos.)

Indeed, Americans are not permitted to cross one of their land borders even now. (And I can no longer go to New Zealand, at least for the next three days, they have imposed a short quarantine border closure for the whole country.)

There will be a lot of catching up to do, and the among denizens of this forum are some of the people I want to see again. So, my inclination was to put the USA first, but the reality is I'm likely to be able to travel to a limited number of SE Asian countries first, so a short break in Singapore looks good (if I don't go to NZ first). Although I'll be vaccinated and not overly concerned about the virus itself, the Covid situation is likely to affect the travel experience in many countries for some time, so what my overall preferences are for where to travel could well be upended when travel is again possible.

It could be. Ireland isn't in Schengen, but people from the rest of EU27 would be entitled to go there. The issue would be whether Ireland had a quarantine requirement. Flights DUB-LON don't require passage through passport control as they are within the UK-Ireland common travel area (although non-nationals of the two countries would need to have their passport with them). UK, or to be specific English quarantine requirements (if any) would still apply to people who had been in prescribed countries in the previous 14 or however many days, but arriving from Ireland there may not be a check on arrival to attempt to enforce them. The authorities would have to get lucky (or the traveller unlucky) to detect someone as being in breach of the regulations. If there is no requirement for travellers from CZ to quarantine, there's probably no need to use the DUB workaround. As we're discovering again over the last couple of days, passport and quarantine rules apply as separate layers of restriction. Australians and New Zealanders have the automatic right to travel anywhere in the two countries (passports only needed to travel between them) but each Australian state and territory, and New Zealand controls the quarantine rules for travel between jurisdictions. Before travel we need to check on the rules, so for example, travel from NSW to NZ is not permitted right now, but is from the rest of the country. Your friends will probably need to do similar research on travel to the UK.

The UK was never in the Schengen Area, and there were always border and passport controls on entry (except from Ireland). As I recall British border formalities are conducted at the stations in Paris and Brussels, and Lille (don't know about AMS but I assume not). Most, if not all EU countries probably still have visa-free entry, but not the right to do so (as do Australians, and presumably Americans among others).

I'm not reluctant in the slightest. It's just a matter of arranging to have my first shot, and it will be AZ, that's the only one available to me now. I'm not worried about AZ, I know that the risk of disease is higher, and the clotting syndrome is extremely rare but easily treatable. I hadn't seen any reporting on the gender of people who suffered from the clotting syndrome. There have only been two deaths here, both women. One was 52 and the other 48. If the older were post-menopausal, she could easily have still been on HRT which would conform to your hypothesis. From the reporting I've found this afternoon, an early report here cited two of the eight cases that week were men, and in a report on the early German experience 28 of 31 cases were women (although the cohort receiving the vaccine were health care workers who were mainly women). That would tend to suggest women are more susceptible although not uniquely so. In any case, since I wasn't concerned about the vaccine, evidence that men can't or are less likely to have a clot doesn't change my calculations.

The vaccine stroll-out here has been appalling, but in its speed, not necessarily the medical principles behind it. The TGA approved the AZ vaccine when it had become clear from UK experience that the results were better if the second shot was later than the originally prescribed three weeks. Now that a vaccine single shot is proving less effective, even in preventing serious disease, against the Delta variant, that is being questioned, and the current approval guidelines of 12 weeks may be reduced to speed the rate of full vaccination. I haven't had my first shot, not because I can't but because I haven't negotiated the process to book an appointment. AZ is not recommended here or people under 60 here, because of the clotting issue, that will have made it easier for me to get the AZ jab.