Clearing lists

• Went to visit a tunnel on a school visit. The local students actually decorated some of the materials used in the tunnel and went to go put them in place. Some sort of plastic caps to prevent rust on the bolts is what I could gather. Pretty insane what humans can do actually. Organised in some sort of company, get tools from other groups of humans, go to the side of a mountain and blast the fucker with dynamite. Then start drilling into the hole and continue doing so for years all the way under a mountain range until you reach the next city. Mental. Just to cut out travel times and lay new train tracks. Awfully boring journey through the tunnel for whoever is on the train. Just a dark tunnel for 100km

• Laundry catch 22 : machine worked up until the end of September . Now works intermittently. Can’t seem to find the machine model manual on the internet, discontinued apparently. So it’s old. Diagnosed the issue to the locking mechanism. Hm. So either pay someone who knows what they’re doing to come fix it (quick but expensive), try fix it myself (nothing to lose really, it’s broken anyway, only upside really), buy new one (secondhand, probably break after 2 months again, probably same expense), continue the coin laundry (6 euro every 2 weeks for another 10 months ), wash them in the river. Hm. An interesting scam, the need for clothing and social rules to tell us to stay clean —_—. Fascinating.

• Etiquette in eating settings is something which early socialisation seemed to somehow simultaneously go over my head and become deeply ingrained in the brain. The impulse to eat food with my hands is almost always followed when possible except for the times there’s a table and someone I’m not accustomed to present. Very strange, no problem eating like a caveman among people I know a bit but once there’s a lesser known entity involved and a table nearby the brain automatically falls back on some early socialisation. It’s quite odd - is the fear of judgement there or is it risking offending someone or what is the automatic manners about. It’s almost a bit dishonest in some way to hide the reality behind a veneer of prescribed socially acceptable behaviour. I will have to try eating with the hands and examine the result.

• You can avoid all meaningful, effort draining topics/conversations in social contexts by simply making a shitty joke in the opening exchanges. It’s a really useful move which sets the bar in a conversation with acquaintances. Maintains a friendly but firm boundary and you can autopilot the entire interaction after that.

List is finished now. Tomorrow expect the full report of the last week which was somewhat eventful.