To Plus or not to Plus? That is the Question...
What a weekend! Some time ago, my kitchen sink got blocked, and as a dyed-in-the-wool Westerner and a practical person to boot, I assumed that this was no big deal, as even I had personally cured such ills in places like Cambridge as a student, as well as elsewhere later. But for some reason, the sinks here are liable to blocking; could it be because of the narrow, cheap and nasty (and by the looks of them, easily collapsible) plastic pipework? More, what contribution might the previous occupant, a young female with a small dog and all the mess that might therefore ensue, and who also seems to have left her old hair grips on various parts of the bathroom until they left permanent rust marks adsorbed into plastic and ceramics alike, also have made to the situation? Anyone who is lazy enough to leave shit like that around the bathroom (and this was not the worst case of female bathroom untidiness I have seen out here) probably didn't give a single thought to the consequences of anything she was doing.
Long story cut painfully short: an accumulation of small food particles in the drainpipe leading down from the kitchen sink had led to blockage, something which, back home in Blighty, was a relatively rare event. In previous apartments the pipework was robust enough for me to fix it myself without too much trouble, but of course, the landlord decided to get a plumber in - on Sunday night, no less - at some exorbitant expense to cure the problem.
I was surprised to be told by him , wayyy too close to bedtime, that I should not put chemical cleaners down the hole (I immediately ignored that after getting the washing-up out of the sink and onto the drainer this afternoon), as I suspected that a predictable consequence of a keto lifestyle would be more fats sticking to the inside of said pipe, so a caustic solution sloshed through occasionally would rectify anything that more regular sloshes of acid bleach would not.
(Remember, folks: acid bleach is a better friend than Google. Cleaner, too...)
Before sitting down to write this, I had just got back from the local Daiso store having purchased what I suspect is a better plughole filter for the purpose, as nobody here ever seems to want to spend any reasonable amount of money (let's call it "the expense of quality goods") with the idea of preventing future little problems with equipment which is less likely to fail in its function. But I am letting the acid bleach do its work first...
The biggest surprise, however, after the plumber had gone, the landlord had given me his lecture and my manager(ess) had finally stopped her sequence of late night nagging messages on my cell phone, was the realisation that I had been in this country for literally sixteen years yet not only had people not felt the need to inform me about these matters, there had never apparently been any web page (and many city councils here have their own web presences, of course) which explained it. How is this possible in a place with ultra-modern Internet infrastructure and more online malware than you can shake a stick at? A place where segregation of household wastes had already been practised for years before I even showed up here, fresh off a late-night flight from Taiwan? There's always something hidden out here, and you only find out about it when it's too late; it seems to be an unavoidable part of the foreigner lifestyle.
Anyway, now I have got my gripe off my dubious chest, the reason for writing. As the number of contacts here has multiplied, the number of tokens I am accumulating is rising faster, and so comes the question: Should I sacrifice twenty of those tokens, each month, to go Plus? The reason being that the Boostfeed annoys me and I would be glad to be rid of it, but are there any other good reasons to go Plus on Minds?
Reasonable suggestions are welcome below. Unreasonable responses may be printed and taped up on my bathroom wall. You have been warned.
Errors edited 2019-10-23