Good luck and hope you achieve your dream. I discovered the Lord Of The Rings films during lockdown which I had tried 20 years ago but didn't have the patience. The hours and hours of behind the scenes footage is just as entertaining as the films and it looks like an amazing place to live. Is it a tough process to move there?
Positive things to come out of the current Pandemic
- Thread starter TopperHenly
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Good luck and hope you achieve your dream. I discovered the Lord Of The Rings films during lockdown which I had tried 20 years ago but didn't have the patience. The hours and hours of behind the scenes footage is just as entertaining as the films and it looks like an amazing place to live. Is it a tough process to move there?
Those films are a great tourism advert for NZ! I did a road trip around the South Island last year and fell in love with the place, and ever since it'd been in my mind to try it (doesn't help I have a friend down there whose already done it and keeps telling me to take the plunge). Like any immigration process it has its complications, depending on what route you want to use to get in, right now I'm still firmly in square one of the whole thing so yet to really see what its like--I can imagine job hunting from the other side of the globe will be tricky.
@Bry_Sinclair Good luck with moving here. I will say the job market is extremely competitive in NZ. I’ve been here three years and I still don’t have a job. But it is a beautiful place and the people are very friendly.
Thank you. My routes in mean that I have to have a job lined up before I can emigrate, so might not be anytime soon that I'll be heading over.
The place is stunning, photos don't do it justice, and the people are the nicest I've ever encountered.
^ You haven't been to Bavaria yet 
We're over the worst part, several promising vaccines are on the horizon. We just need to hold on a little longer, but not as long as we already did.
I've started cooking again after 4 years of eating prepared food - but I stopped dancing, which was my only sport. Finally had the time to watch most of the things on my ever growing Netflix list (I always added more than I could watch before), and finally had the time to lose myself in old PC games again.
Indeed, yes. And I'm sorry to hear of your struggle. I know the feeling.
And as a mental health professional you'll forgive me if I don't find the guarantee of work to come out of this due to people's anxiety and depression increasing and continuing on due to various horrible ways this pandemic has been handled by all sides to be an encouragement.
No. I'm over this pandemic. It was a load of BS to begin with and was treated in contrast to every other flu based pandemic (a coronavirus). The damage will be long lasting.
We went about dealing with it the wrong way. Yes, the vulnerable members of our society needed to judiciously quarantine themselves. And yes, social distancing and masks, while unpleasant, served a greater good without compromising society as a whole. But, the decimation of the economy and the schools was avoidable.
^yes and no.
But we should return to the thread's original topic: another good thing that Corona caused is that Christmas markets got forbidden and instead of them all towns in my region go for especially pretty decoration. It costs little, cheers people up and leads us back from the commercialized celebrations back to the family holiday again. The neighbour town put up a Christmas tree for poor people. They write their wishes on gold stars and hang them in the tree. It's all anonymous: the stars are numbered and only the social service knows what name and address goes with the number. Passers by pluck a star and fulfill the wish, leaving the present along with the numbered star with the social service. I think that's a great idea and my town should have such a tree, too!
A new German study concludes that children are a higher infection risk than originally thought. As they often have silent infections, they spread the virus all the more amongst each other. And they often suffer from late effects of the infection; memory loss and motorical nerve damage seems to be a quite frequent consequence 
About 5% of tested school children were positive, while the average amongst adults is only 0.1-0.2%
As the economical problems concern all industrial nations, I think the overall effect is not that devastating. The relations between the countries remain the same. It's not as if some third world country would suddenly overtake us.
The US are being hit harder on a social level, though, since they have none of the emergency precautions European Countries have (mandatory health-, nursing- and unemployment-insurance for everyone, a minimum of 1-3 months notice to get fired, a minimum of 3 months notice to lose a rented appartment). When someone here loses their job because of Corona, they get all the help they need, including a minimum income and a roof over their heads. That's far more than they get in the US.
In my humble opinion that's the road the US ought to go, too, in the future since this is only the first of the modern plagues but surely not the last one. Obamacare was one tiny step in the right direction. It's abolishment and the resulting misery for the poorest and most vulnerable is another desaster you have to thank Trump for.
About 5% of tested school children were positive, while the average amongst adults is only 0.1-0.2%
As the economical problems concern all industrial nations, I think the overall effect is not that devastating. The relations between the countries remain the same. It's not as if some third world country would suddenly overtake us.
The US are being hit harder on a social level, though, since they have none of the emergency precautions European Countries have (mandatory health-, nursing- and unemployment-insurance for everyone, a minimum of 1-3 months notice to get fired, a minimum of 3 months notice to lose a rented appartment). When someone here loses their job because of Corona, they get all the help they need, including a minimum income and a roof over their heads. That's far more than they get in the US.
In my humble opinion that's the road the US ought to go, too, in the future since this is only the first of the modern plagues but surely not the last one. Obamacare was one tiny step in the right direction. It's abolishment and the resulting misery for the poorest and most vulnerable is another desaster you have to thank Trump for.
But we should return to the thread's original topic: another good thing that Corona caused is that Christmas markets got forbidden and instead of them all towns in my region go for especially pretty decoration. It costs little, cheers people up and leads us back from the commercialized celebrations back to the family holiday again. The neighbour town put up a Christmas tree for poor people. They write their wishes on gold stars and hang them in the tree. It's all anonymous: the stars are numbered and only the social service knows what name and address goes with the number. Passers by pluck a star and fulfill the wish, leaving the present along with the numbered star with the social service. I think that's a great idea and my town should have such a tree, too!
That's not the topic of this thread, though, so let's move along.
positive thing: working from home. It's nice to be able to iron the laundry during lunch break or to have a warm meal.
It's great my daily commute has become stepping out of bed and walking to the computer desk a few metres away and the £80 a month in travel costs I'm saving but I miss the team and little things like walking to the shops together at lunchtime. My place has never been cleaner though.
^ I'm still working on the latter. But I've never before had no loundry at all waiting to be ironed 
Yeah, this year's done wonders for how much I've spent on gas, and let me do laundry less often. I can't say my apartment's clean per se, but parts of it are cleaner. Without guests, though, I've been a little worse about keeping my living room organized.
I think ideally this year might have pushed me to move my desktop PC out of my bedroom instead of working in the same room I sleep in, but it's not really an option currently.
I think ideally this year might have pushed me to move my desktop PC out of my bedroom instead of working in the same room I sleep in, but it's not really an option currently.
Because of Covid our library now as a really nice outdoor area. They would not have but for it. Also two walks with a few friends that I planned to all our free libraries. There are other things mostly little things, but I try to think of them when I am down about it all.
Having Hubby home a lot more means he's finally been able and/or willing to tackle some home projects. We cleaned out the garage and reorganized it. We had new floors put in about 2/3 of the rooms, and put new faucets in the master bathroom. He touched up the paint on the garage. There's still a lot of things that need to be done around the place but we finally had time to address some of them.
My son and I started to buy and play board, card and dice games during lockdown and once lockdown ended we continued to find time to play them.
I started doing jigsaws during lockdown after stopping doing them about 20 years ago.
We received good stimulus payments from the Australian government. All up my son received about $AUS13,000 in Jobkeeper and extra disability payments and I received $AU1750 on top of my disability pension. We bought a new fridge, my son bought a new iPad, and I bought a new laptop.
I started doing jigsaws during lockdown after stopping doing them about 20 years ago.
We received good stimulus payments from the Australian government. All up my son received about $AUS13,000 in Jobkeeper and extra disability payments and I received $AU1750 on top of my disability pension. We bought a new fridge, my son bought a new iPad, and I bought a new laptop.
I actually enjoy isolation and not having to be face-to-face with other people. I believe that this period has actually been positive for my mental health/general stress level. I saved money and wear on my car from not having to drive 45 minutes each way to work every day. Because my department is essentially shut down, I have been helping out in other departments, learning new things that will make me more indispensable at work.
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