I miss having hair
Same. I nearly never wore the pony and only just noticed it after posting this pic. It was peak Nirvana days (and I saw them later that year in Dublin or maybe the next year) and we called that hairstyle an "undercut". Here's a pic from the same trip where it was my usual. I am pretty sure this is on the overnight train from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
You just reminded me of passport control! In those days Ireland issued 10 year passports to kids. I had gotten mine at 7 or 8 so it was nearly out of date and obviously I looked nothing like my passport photo with my 1980's "bowl" haircut. This is pre-laminated passport days where they literally glued your picture to your passport.
Anyway.... we all got a good looking over but the passport control guy must have looked at me, then passport, then me, for what felt like five minutes. No words were spoken. It was very intimidating.
Oh, the other thing that really is burned into my memory is that there was a wedding party in the McDonald's when we went there. Bunch of Western kids absolutely inhaling big mac's and they were having hamburger and small fries. They were so happy and I felt like such a glutton.
It was one of those uncomfortable life changing moments where you are forced to look at how good you have it.
Thank you! I was wondering if I'd made some unspoken mistake.
I honestly feel so privileged to have been there at that time in history. My folks had to scrape the money together for the trip and it was such an incredible experience. I saw first hand the poverty suffered there. It was pretty grim. We were told to bring US dollars (pre-Euro days) and we exchanged them daily because the USD to Ruble rate was changing so fast.
The biggest story from the trip was that one guy got mugged by the police at gunpoint at a Spartak Moscow football game.
The other big one was that we went to the circus one night. Well it involved some fairly hefty animal cruelty so myself and a few others walked out (teachers didn't notice), tried to catch a cab, eventually paid the bus driver that was supposed to bring us back to the hotel to organise one for us and headed in to central Moscow unsupervised and went to the only Pizza Hut in the country (which was near the only McDonalds in the country).
We got back before the teachers noticed. I honestly do not know to this day how that happened.
The stories from this trip are wild. edit: It was a school trip.
I dont have a dog in this fight.
Of course you do. Allowing borders to be redrawn by force isn't good for stability anywhere.
Agreed. I think a huge part of it is down to how many kids are vaping here too. Saw an interview with the Taoiseach (prime minister) and he said 13% of 12-17 year olds had vaped in the last 30 days. Pretty crazy number.
Well I am delighted. €13.1B + the 1.2 in interest represents what will be a bump of 16% of total tax revenue compared to 2023 (€88B total). There are lots of things that money can be used for.
I heard about a guy once, who was a POW, and his friend wanted him to keep a watch for his son so he shoved it way up there.
The reference for the younger among us.
Looks really good. Grabbed it. Thanks!
Are you using a VPN maybe?
I do it too.
For those not in the know: England are facing Spain in the final of the Euro football championship.
What a great twist. I've had solid success with ChatGPT for stuff like that in the past so put your description in and it couldn't come up with anything.
It did give some useful information which I can paste in here if you don't have an account?
Mostly it was asking if you could remember any other detail like character names, setting or even tone of the writing.