alone with Bond

i built up a lot of excitement for the new Bond film. maybe too much so. high expectations mean potential heartbreak when theyre not met. and thats what happened. a few people have asked me "was it good?" and thats a fair, generic question, but its not that simple for me. there is a lot of good and bad in it for me, but more of the latter. yet, based on reviews for most it seems to have been mostly the former with just some minor disappointments at most. so i feel quite alone, like ive been robbed of something. i know im not the only one thats unhappy, ive been to Reddit where the division is clear, but i'd really rather share my thoughts with someone i know. but no one i know has yet seem the film so im stuck dwelling in my sadness by myself. doctor was there to see the film with me, but he is not a fan. on friday we went to see Brent and some common friends at a pub, and a few of them share a bit of my passion for the franchise, so i just urged them to go see the film ASAP. now im waiting if they actually do and we could bond (lol) over the experience. 

ive been meaning to update my pre-settled status to settled now that ive resided in the UK for 5 years. but. i got a new passport while in finland, and i immediately updated the details it in the Home Office system, since the status is tied to a document, but its been a month and Home Office has not yet changed it for me. i cant really update my status while they are processing the document update. Home Office has been in such shambles this year. a friend who is here on a work visa has been wait for the visa renewal since february. he cant leave the country now as technically he has no valid visa. and our situations are not weird exeptions, its easy to check current processing times and confirm that for both, work visas and eu-status document updates, these periods are not too far from the average. then add to that the disgraceful fuel shortage at the petrol stations, gas prices going so high a lot of people will struggle keeping their already cold english homes liveable, empty shelves in the shops, animals being slaughtered en masse as there are no skilled  abattoir workers...     its just crap. now all we need is another lockdown to really kill our spirits. the past few weeks deaths and hospitalisations have been going down though. there were some articles about israel possibly being a warning for the rest of us for whats coming, and time will show, but i think israel's plight might not reproduce exactly everywhere. from what i understood the problem in israel was the combination waning immunity, possibly lower levels of immunity due to 3 weeks between vaccines, and delta which apparently only found its way to israel in the summer. thanks partly to israel's example UK has started giving boosters to vulnerable people as wel as health care staff, UK was also the first one to start with 12 weeks between shots, and delta... well its FROM UK. im sure there is a million other factors. like people moving indoors now that the weather is getting colder and that increasing transmissions. but overall the situation might not actually get that as far as those predictors go. reminds me how controversion the 12 week break between vaccines was at first, seemed like a crazy risque move, and while i (naïvely?) trusted that there is decent reasoning and knowledge behind the decision, it did weird me out that i never saw very good argumentation for it, although i do follow the news on the subject...    but as we now know, they did know what they were doing. i can appareciate that giving boosters makes sense, but at the same time knowing that the developing world is this waiting for their first shots seems crazy and not sustainable. anyway, doctor was invited for his booster the other week when they started handing them out.

the discussion surrounding Sarah Everard's killing is making my blood boil at times. the police suggesting "flagging down a bus", lol. not to mention proper good old fashioned victim shaming and complete obliviousness to the reality of power disparties in situation like where Sarah was in. like, how about sorting out the misogyny from the inside instead of adding to the endless stream of advice on what women should do to stay alive.