May 2016 Chit Chat

George's birthday is in just 6 days!

Okay, starting the new month since it's the 1st in Australia!


I've been watching the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder's meeting online. It's streaming live on Yahoo. Very interesting.

I took a break in the middle and went to the movies but now this afternoon they are discussing a shareholder's proposal regarding climate change. Discussion is very interesting.

LornaDoone - Are you in contact at all with Theminis? She's been gone for so long, I keep hoping she's alright and just hasn't got time for COH, but I'm really concerned. If you know anything, please pm me. Thanks.

Oh no need to PM. She's fine.

She had a rough year last year but now she's concentrating on her kids and life.

Her brother recently passed and that has been difficult but her kids help her remember all the good in her life and they keep her strong.

Very kind of you for asking. I'll let her know.

Thanks, Lorna. I'm so sorry to hear about her brother. Losing someone so close is always hard. Please pass along my condolences to her. I'm sure the kids are keeping her busy. They've always seemed like a pretty lively bunch.

Not long before she stopped posting she said she was going in for some tests. That's partly why I was so concerned. Not to pry, but is everything ok on that score? Just wishing her the best and missing her voice here on COH.

Major ditto! Missing her a lot!


In fact, missing quite a few of the "oldies".  I hope they're all okay - just got tired of George and/or his marriage.

Yes, some were very active here when I joined COH and are very quiet now. I hope it's just because we all have a 'real' life beside...

Last night was Walpurgis night in the Harz mointains where I live. It's a very busy night since all the witches rendezvous in the Harz mountains and dance there...
I think I remember that Bill Murray and Bob Balaban went there three years ago when they shot 'Monuments Men' nearby. 
I've been there a few times when I was younger, it somehow turned into heavy drinking...

Witches night 


some question maybe you know.Usely we have movie filming or know what George do going on may months.Now I only know Money Monster and maybe Como.Any thing in schedule for future?

He is due to be at the Canne film Festival in May.

I think Canne opens May 11? Does anyone know for sure. Isn't Money Monster opening the festival?

We do know that George is in pre production for Suburbicon which begins filming in the fall if all is on schedule.

Woody Allen's movie is opening the festival. Money Monster premiere at Cannes May 12th.

Thanks annemarie. It will be great seeing George and Julia on the red carpet.

Yummy yummy


https://www.instagram.com/girleatworld/

You know what I did during the weekend?
I was in Berlin with my husband, and we went to the Adele concert last night!
It was just fantastic, one of the very best concerts I've ever been to! She really interacted with the audience, there were people from all over the world, she went into the audience, got somebody to jojn her on stage, we sang 'Hapoy Birthday' (her birthday was just one day before George's), and she said that she'd visited the zoo in Berlin with her son on her birthday (didn't say which one they went to because there are two of them - there are plenty of double things in a city which had been devided for a long time). 
We really enjoyed the show!

Yesterday and also today we walked in the city for hours (my feet are still hurting), and I realized how many different languages we heard, from which different countries people came. We had breakfast at an Australian cafe (it was very unusual for us and absolutely fantastic), the waitresses spoke English, hardly any German, at the next table there was a group speaking Portugues so I guess they were from Portugal or Brazil, others spoke Italian. When we walked in the city, we heard a lot of Russian, Polish, French, Chinese and Japanese, Turkish, Arabian, languages I had never heard before - just amazing! I really enjoyed that! (But we were in a district which is very popular for young people to live in and to stay, with lots of cafes, restaurants, bars and nightclubs. So I'm sure it's not like that everywhere in Berlin, but we enjoyed the 'cosmopolitan feeling'.)

Anyway, just wanted to share my feelings with you!

Thanks  nice esperience ! 

Thanks for sharing carolhathaway. That does sound like a lovely, and very grownup weekend! Adele concert. She has such an amazing and powerful voice. How terrific it must have been.

When my kids were younger I would die for weekends like that. Just to be a grownup, enjoy experiences that didn't involve anything kid related. As a parent your day-to-day life is so focused on your children, work and home life. It's great to enjoy little get-aways with your husband or girlfriends. Glad you had fun, fun, fun!

Donna,
you're so right about that!
For about ten years after my kids' birth I just focussed on them, and since they had such a hard start into life (very premature birth) and are handicapped due to that we both focussed even more on them. 
But a few years ago we both realized that this doesn't work anymore. Our health and also our marriage was in danger, and so we decided to find time for ourselves. Last year we went on a holiday for four days - just the two of us - and I can't tell you gow relixed we were after that. So that's something we try to do - to do things we love to do - at least once a year. And fortunately my parents are willing to look after our kids at that time, because it's much more difficult when there's nobody...

But yes, Adele has a wonderful voice, I like her songs, and I especially like her interaction with the audience - it must have been terrific for those who sat next to the two stages because she really walked from one to the other stage and had a chat with fans. She also left the stage because she saw one man who wore a Lionel Richie t-shirt and asked him if he expected him to be there and sing his 'Hello' song. I think not all of the fans got everything she said - she suddenly spoke with a quite strong accent which wasn't easy to understand. I didn't get every joke...

I wonder if she and George ever had a chat during the 2013 award shows - Golden Globe and Oscars...

Maybe

carol, I would think they did get a chance to talk. George seems to chat with everyone.

Hey, how outrageous it would have been to have George doing a karaoke ride-along with Adele ..... like he did with Gwen Stefani? Belting out a few choruses of 'Hello'. I've been back to the Gwen/George video about 5 times. Love it!

Like it me too !! 
This also 

https://mobile.twitter.com/moviepilotnews/status/728689811276472320/video/1

David Miliband, IRC, talks about 'new deal' for refugees


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-36292791

PAN
thanks for the video!
That's really unbelievable to hear about the numbers of refugees they talked about: 16 million displaced people, about 13 million of them spend about ten years as refugees.
In many places in the world that's about 1/4 or 1/5 of their lifetime... And if you think about children: Which perspective do they have after ten years on the run? Many of them without school education... How much potential gets lost, they are just lost generations... And how can these countries ever develop  to reach stability?

Thanks PAN. Carolhathaway, you have to think of the massive repercussions of all these displaced people over time. I saw a report just last week about Syrian refugee children working literally as slave labor in industries in Turkey. Hours on end and no access to education. Making a token wage. There are huge numbers of these children who are approaching their middle school years and don't know how to read. Horrible. What are their futures even if they do make it back to Syria. Many of them possibly harboring resentment and anger over the war, their displacement and a lack of any optimistic future. it does seem like a lost generation in the making.

Absolutely

Interesting graphic from the Daily Fail today.........had no time to read the article but I think this was inevitable..........

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591893/Now-hundreds-migrants-Caribbean-fly-6-000-miles-Turkey-bid-enter-Europe-posing-Somalia.html

Just saw a report on BBC news of Angie Jolie giving a strong speech today about the refugee/economic migrant situation in the world today. She spoke of how every country has to do its share. Countries should show more leadership. She went on to do say the handling of the refugee program has broken down and economic migrants cannot be considered refugees and should not be given the same considerations. Just snippets of what I heard her say in the clip the BBC showed.

Donna,
that's what I meant when mentioning the 'lost generations'. Some years ago I met a man who had stayed at my mother's family farm with his family after WW II. They had to leave their home because that former part of Germany afterwards belonged to Poland. This man talked about that he was ten years old when he first went to school: first there was the war and no teachers, then they were on the run for months, afterwards they stayed in several refugees camps without any teachers...
He then had to learn to be as disciplined as to sit still on a chair and be quiet for 45 min., until he went home for lunch (and he never got enough to eat, was always hungry). So in the afternoon after he'd done his homework (which required a lot of discipline as well) he went outside and tried to find (or to sreal) some food, or helped the farmers with their harvest and get some food. They were called 'thieves', and 'refugee' was a term of abuse. They had lost everything, most of them hardly had any clothes or shoes, their fathers were either dead or PWs...
And this man still managed to continue with his education. His mother worked really hard to make it possible for him to go to school and to university, and when he was 30, he was a doctor!

But I guess that required a very strong will, I'm sure there were quite a few who never went to school and hardly know to read and write. I remember about 20 years ago I was working on a project for our local government and developed a new system for our workers who are responsible for 'Parks & Recreation' and 'Public Works'. The workers  needed to write down detailed what they did where and when and which machines and material they used, and most of them, especially the older ones, objected quite strongly, some of zhem really panicked. I didn't understand this until I had a really nice chat with their boss who told me that they opposed it that hardly because they just weren't able to write it down, they couldn't write...
This before had always been beyond my imagination, I had never met an analphabet before - or at least I didn't realize it.
So we simplyfied the form as much as possible, and we also installed somebody at the office who would write it down for them.

I just found an article about Marguerite  Barankitse who received the Aurora Prize from George, she said she would use the money to send kids to school who are in refugee camps in Rwanda... So it's just the same everywhere...

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/16/africa/barankitse-aurora-prize-award/index.html?sr=twCNN051616/barankitse-aurora-prize-award1133AMStoryLink&linkId=24543541

party animal - not! wrote:Interesting graphic from the Daily Fail today.........had no time to read the article but I think this was inevitable..........

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591893/Now-hundreds-migrants-Caribbean-fly-6-000-miles-Turkey-bid-enter-Europe-posing-Somalia.html

PAN,
thanks for the article. It's very interesting and also beyond my imagination that these people really fly 6,000 miles. And I can't really believe that they think our governments believe that they are Syrian or Somalians. Our governments actually are not that stupid...
In our neighborhood we have a Romanies family who claims they are from Serbia although they always have visitors with cars with Bulgarien car plates. And a Bulgarien who lives in our village says that they speak Bulgarian, he's able to understand them. When I asked my husband about that (he had worked at the local Aliens Department for many years) he told me that Romanies from Serbia are allowed to seek for asylum, but Romanies from Bulgaria are not. So they stay here for months until their asylum is denied and are sent back to Bulgaria. And then they return to another town in Germany, and it starts again...
I don't have to understand that, do I?

Carolhathaway - There are always going to be people who try to cheat the system and get things they're not entitled to. When I was a kid my aunt had a business in a poor neighborhood. Above her store there lived two families, each with two children - until the caseworker came from the welfare department - then they each had four children! They decided to share the children in order to get a greater child care allowance from the city! I don't know how they managed it, but they got away with it for years.

I suppose if people are desperate enough - or dishonest enough - they'll try anything.

I was at the BBC yesterday and here is Angelina Jolie's amazing speech on the global refugee crisis and how controls are necessary because it's now getting completely out of hand. Just the sheer numbers tell us that!

I wonder what His Nibs' take on it is and her different view of Angela Merkel.......

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36303688

PAN,
that's a very interesting article! What did Angelina Jokie say about Angela Merkel? She specifically was neither mentioned in the article nor in the 1 min. video of her speech...

Lizzy,
I also know lots of people who cheat on the welfare state as well...
And the prpblem is that since you always just hear of those who cheat on the system, you get the impression that that's the majority although it's usually just a low percentage of all of them... Nobody talks about all those who try to live their lives as good as possible, try to make a living and find a way out of the welfare system because that's nothing to talk about (and stories about them dont sell). But if you have somebody who drinks a lot of alcohol, smokes non-stop and moans that he doesn't get enough money to feed his kids, that fulfills all our prejudices, and so we watch talkshows of reality TV with them.).

Here's the full speech, Carol, but not sure it includes the interview......I've got to the seven minute mark!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py0TkvwIxI8

Two days ago an Egyptian plane disappeared while flying from Paris to Cairo. 
Immediately afterwards experts and ministers reported that it had to be a terror attack (although nobody saw the plane crashing, and the black box isn't found yet). Some hours later it was reported that wreckage was found in the Mediterranean Sea. This had to be denied shortly afterwards.
This morning I read that the plane's radio data transmission had signaled smoke and problems with the flight control system.
neanwhile wreckage was found.

Honestly, why does everybody has to have a reason without really knowing anything? It's obvious that you can never deny an attack or a technical or human malfunction, but can't they wait until they at least know something? It doesn't help anybody if you just spread rumors...

Carolhathaway, sadly that's just the way the world is today. In the past we wondered what malfunction or weather condition could have caused a crash. Now, our first thought is that it was terrorism - and you know that whether it was or not there will be some group happy to "take credit" for the deaths of all those innocent people. What a sad world we live in!

Keep flying....don't let fear clip your wings....

Fear of anything technical, human, terror....anything....just keep going...keep flying....

you brave 

WWHS - I gave up flying for anything less than an emergency when waiting time in the airport was longer than the flight, when seats got so tightly crammed in that my knees were in my mouth, when unfair added costs upped the ticket price and when each seat on the plane was sold to the highest bidder.

I really hate to find out that the guy next to me paid hundreds less for his seat because he booked it at 4 o'clock in the morning two years ago! Whatever happened to people getting the same product or service paying the same price? Can you imagine any other business getting away with this kind of pricing policy?

Honestly, the last thing on my mind when I consider flying is terrorism. It may cross my mind, but it isn't my main concern by a long shot.

214 shopping days until Christmas... (just thought I'd mention it!!                 )

LizzyNY wrote:WWHS - I gave up flying for anything less than an emergency when waiting time in the airport was longer than the flight, when seats got so tightly crammed in that my knees were in my mouth, when unfair added costs upped the ticket price and when each seat on the plane was sold to the highest bidder.

I really hate to find out that the guy next to me paid hundreds less for his seat because he booked it at 4 o'clock in the morning two years ago! Whatever happened to people getting the same product or service paying the same price? Can you imagine any other business getting away with this kind of pricing policy?

Honestly, the last thing on my mind when I consider flying is terrorism. It may cross my mind, but it isn't my main concern by a long shot.

Lizzy I am in full agreement...x 10 all the above....but in fairness in the US you are spoilt...you don't have RyanAir ....x

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAg0lUYHHFc

WWHS - Thank you! Are these women huge stars over there? They should be! I've never heard of them, but they are absolutely hilarious! That"s the funniest thing I've seen in ages.

(We my not have Ryan Air but we do have airlines that could be their twin. I guess some things are the same everywhere.)

Just read a very interesting article about the upcoming Brexit vote in England. Points were brought up that I had not even considered. Particularly the effects it would have on Scotland and Ireland. Seems that if there was a break from the EU there would be a division between the Republic of Ireland (staying in the EU) while Northern Ireland would be out.

Would any of our UK friends want to share their thoughts?

Mods:

Could you create a non-George political thread for the people who want to discuss political views?  It disrupts ChitChat with garbage that only a few are interested in.

Thank you!

melbert you have asked for a separate thread before. I have no problem with that even though Chit Chat is for everything not about George. Maybe the mods don't agree with you.

Regardless, your comment was rude and insulting .... to me and others here who like to talk about world issues.

Donna,
I absolutely agree with you. If the mods decide to create a separate thread I'd be fine with that, but as long as the 'Chit Chat' is about anything apart from George, I'm going to discuss political and other world issues here.

I don't live in Britain but in Germany, another one of the EU countries, and we've got discussions here as well about leaving the EU, also about leaving the EURO etc. 
I get the impression that many people take all the advantages the EU has, as a matter of course. They don't think about the consequences the Brexit would have on everybody's life. To us who also live in the Schengen Agreement, it's normal to cross borders without being stopped, to pay with the same currency in mkst European countries.

TO LIVE IN PEACE, which us certainly the most important achievement of it all. Some days ago there was a memorial for one of the most horrible battles in WW I, it was in Verdun in France where 100 years ago French and German troups fought for nearly one year, it didn't change anything, and more than 200,000 soldiers were killed.
Two wars led to the foundation of the EU and the UN, and we are able to live in peace for more than 70 years now. If you look back in history, that's a really long time, and none of the previous generations has ever lived in peace for such a long time. 

We don't seem to appreciate this but take it as a matter if course...

Yep, I think Chit-chat has usually been about jokes, wit and often all things fun. 

But in an international world as this forum is, things like politics and geopolitics are bound to come up from time to time. 

Increasingly so at times like these in my opinion, and it would not be a problem to have a different thread.

To be honest, a lot of what is being talked about is a reflection of what George is very much involved in this world now and is very much part of his life and likely to be even more so. This is, if you like, part of what he is.

In fact the discussions almost always evolve as a result of news about his activities in this area around the world and in my view that's a good thing.....

.