Daily Slow Chat

5 comments

1. Happy holiday today.

2. So, I had a case of “be careful what you wish for”. My husband was telling me that they’re getting a second-hand sous vide and a vacuum sealer for a friend’s birthday. I said something like “oh, how nice, I would be happy to get such a gift”. And voila, yesterday he came home with a sous vide machine in his hand. It is a proper water bath thing rather than the small ones you attach to a pot. Apparently a friend of a friend had two that he used like once, and was selling them for quite cheap.

   I mean it is nice and everything, but… I have been checking what I could actually do with it. I don’t really eat steak. If I have cheap cuts of meat, I put them in the pressure cooker. I am not going to turn on a whole ass machine just to poach an egg. I could make set custard, but it is something I make maybe once a year.

   I don’t want to go to r/sousvide or something because I know that’s the beginning of an end. I really don’t need another time sink now.

   Maybe I’ll start slowly and make yoghurt or something once I’m not vegan anymore.

3. Today would be my granddad’s 100th birthday if he hadn’t died during the first wave of COVID.

   He was the last person in that generation of my family to die, and hence also my family’s last living connection to WW2 and the Holocaust. And with that, WW2 became what WW1 was when I visited Ypres in my teens: a monstrous historical event you’re supposed to develop a deep emotional connection with, but in reality just feels like another thing you learn about in school history lessons alongside the Battle of Hastings and the Spanish Armada. You’d now have to be at least in your mid-80s to have more than just a fleeting memory of life during WW2, and at least 95 to have actually fought in it.

   Which brings me to another topic of note. You see, my granddad, despite having had major heart surgery, diabetes and a poor lifestyle just generally, still managed to live to the age of 96. I feel like even 20 years ago, that would have been considered a major achievement. The [Queen Mother](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_The_Queen_Mother?wprov=sfla1) was considered almost superhuman for living to 100. But literally everyone from my dad’s side of my family managed to survive well into their 90s, and surviving past 90 is now almost expected for more well-off members of British society who don’t succumb to cancer or some other kind of chronic illness beforehand. A couple of years ago I read a tweet commemorating a famous newsreader who died “at the relatively young age of 78”. It really wasn’t that long ago that 78 was considered a perfectly normal age to die, but now it does genuinely seem on the premature side, especially for a newsreader who’d have been able to afford good care.

   So to try and corroborate my anecdotal evidence, I looked at some stats online and sure enough, the number of British nonagenarians overall has roughly doubled since I was born in the early 90s, while the number of *male* British nonagenarians specifically has actually *quadrupled*. Average life expectancy has increased by around 5 years during the same time period – and if it wasn’t for COVID, we’d have an extra year or two on top of that. We really do live in great times.

4. I’m a little bitter my office is open today since almost everyone has MLK Day off, but the upside is there was almost no traffic on the roads. Spamalot was a wildly funny play, I’d definitely see it again

5. I think the most American thing that happened to me yesterday was going to Taco Bell for a late dinner but having to go inside because the drive-thru window was frozen shut (it was about -15°C outside).

   On an unrelated note, what subject do you think you would do best if you had to take a high/secondary school-level exam without preparation? I think I could do alright with any history or government exam, and possibly I could hold my own in French. My worst subjects would probably be any kind of math(s) or science, and possibly literature.