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On 30.06.2014, Lars Mittank flew with three friends and two school friends to Varna - a port city in Bulgaria, which is located on the Black Sea and borders the health resort Goldstrand to the north.
Timeline June 30, 2014 Photos - Varna and Golden Beach
But for some years now the golden beach is less known as a health resort, but rather as the "New Ballermann on the Balkans", which is why it is often the destination of so-called "men's vacations".
This was also the case with Lars, but this was his first vacation of this kind, normally he made and booked sport, fishing, and diving vacations, but because his friends had already booked the vacation and still had a place available, because the friend who actually wanted to come along didn't get a vacation, Lars decided to take part, because he was on vacation.
Sandra Mittank also wrote the following in her email to me: "I as a mother was very surprised about this kind of vacation because Lars didn't tell me about it."
Lars worked in Wilhelmshafen in a coal-fired power plant ever since he completed his advanced training as a power plant operator.
Wilhelmshafen is about 150 kilometers from his home town Marne, where his family still lives. He loved his job and loved his soccer club Werder Bremen since childhood, which will later be a factor in his life.
Because his father suffered a stroke in 2012, which made him dependent on support, Lars always commuted home when he had time off to be there for his parents and to relieve them of work. He also enjoyed seeing his friends and former soccer mates.
A vacation came just in time - a chance to leave the stress behind for at least a while and recharge his batteries.
So the 6 flew to Varna on June 30th, 2014, and stayed at 4-star all-inclusive hotel Viva.
During the time of the vacations was the soccer world cup and the temperatures were around 40 degrees at noon.
Unlike the others, who spent their time in the hotel room, at the pool, eating and partying in the evening, Lars played soccer on the beach with high school graduates - they later described him as a nice and sociable guy.
Nothing unusual or worth mentioning happened in the beginning, the only thing that the friends noticed was that Lars wasn't eating much.
Many documentaries and amateur detectives pay a lot of attention to this detail and try to derive their theories from this fact - but you have to remember that it was 40 degrees. Temperatures at which one often simply has no appetite.
Besides, only little or nothing is talked about - he still ate soups, salad, and fruit - according to a fruit vendor on the beach, Lars often bought fresh fruit from him. He immediately recognized him when he was shown a photo of him, because he remembered Lars in a very friendly way.
So probably also on July 3rd, when they went to the Mystery of Golden Sands Bar to watch the quarter-finals between Costa Rica and the Netherlands.

The game started at 11 pm. The bar was decorated in a soccer world cup style and on every table were flags of the home country of the visitors.
Lars wore a Werder Bremen jersey that evening and - after having a few drinks - took the opportunity to exchange the different flags with each other.
Actually, everyone understood the fun, except for a group of Bavarian fans graduating from high school, who did not take it lightly and got upset and started an argument, but which could be eliminated in the end. Maybe they also felt offended by the Werder Bremen jersey of Lars or felt called upon to do something about his behavior in quotes.
But the evening seemed to have been good, because they were the last to leave the bar around 04.00.
Timeline July 04, 2014 - 04:00
On the way to the hotel, Tim and Paul wanted to make a detour to McDonalds, which was not far from the bar.
Since Lars generally didn't like McDonalds anymore and was on a healthy diet and was doing a lot of sports, he said that he didn't want to eat anything and would go to the hotel. The hotel was about 1km away from there.
On the way, he was beaten by Russians or Bulgarians, according to his own statements. He later suspected that they were hired by Bayern fans, because they said to him in the bar in the evening that in Bulgaria it is easy to hire someone to beat someone for little money.
He was not injured very much, but he received a hard blow on his left ear, which later turned out to be a torn eardrum.
Timeline 04. July 2014 - Around noon
When Lars woke up the next day, he called his girlfriend and told her about the incident and his aching ear. She asked him several times to go to a doctor and check out the injury and pain that came with it, but Lars guessed that no doctor was open on weekends.
At the same time, he hoped that the condition of his ear was going to improve quickly.
That same evening, they all went out to celebrate together, but the next two days they relaxed more and ended the vacation.
Timeline from July 04, 2014 - evening to July 07 - 12 noon (check out)
On Monday, July 7th they had to check out of the hotel at 12 noon.
Lars was still in pain and thought about the consequences of flying when his ear was injured.
After all, a good ear is important for his job as a power plant worker, which is why his employer also had all employees regularly examined to ensure quality and safety.
And since Lars loved his job, he didn't want to jeopardize it and decided to take a cab with a friend to a general practitioner to have his ear examined.
Timeline 07 July - Lunchtime | visit to the doctor and diagnosis: torn eardrum
The doctor diagnosed a ruptured eardrum and forbade him to fly and gave him a referral to St. Anna Hospital in Varna. The document is available. (It would be good if you could still send it to me)
But before he went to the hospital, they went back to the hotel and talked about how to proceed.
After consultation with the other 5, Lars decided and insisted that they should fly without him and leave him behind since he had foreign travel insurance that would transport him home.
Timeline 07 July - 20.00 | Shuttle picked up the 5 from the hotel and drove them to the airport - Lars took the same cab that was in front of the hotel to St. Anna Hospital in Varna (picture hospital)
Around 20:40 Lars entered the consulting room of the ENT specialist and was examined.
According to Lars, the doctor mocked him quote, a word that Lars hardly ever uses and which had a huge weight with Sandra.
The ENT specialist did not want to understand Lars and did not want to talk to him in English - he refused any communication.
T That's why he was not admitted, but still had to pay a bill of 120 Leva - about 60 Euros.
Lars still got a prescription for the antibiotic Cefzil 500.
Timeline 07 July - 21:41 | The cab driver waited in front of the hospital as if he had guessed that the hospital would not admit him. The cab drove Lars to the first pharmacy
At 21:41 the same cab takes him to the first pharmacy.
But because the prescription stipulated 20 tablets and the pharmacy only had packs of 10 tablets on-site, he had to drive to a second pharmacy - that was around 22:05.
There he got the Cefzil 500, and then he got back into the cab and told the driver to take him to a cheap hotel.
Because it was the summer wedding, every - really every - respectable hotel was already fully booked, which was another reason why the cab driver drove him to Hotel Color.
Maybe the cab driver had some kind of contract with Hotel Color, which promised him a commission if he brought tourists to this hotel - the latter is of course pure speculation, but could be an explanation.
Timeline 07. July - 22:10 | Arrival Hotel Color
At 22:10 he arrived at Hotel Color. It was located in a side street, a remote area.
Lars gets out and because he was thirsty, he thought about going to the open store that was right in front of him, but because several shady men were standing around, he decided not to go. So he gave the cab driver his money and a generous tip and thanked him warmly for his help - this last statement were the words of the cab driver, although it should be noted here that later on he could not be reached by Sandra Mittanks for her research.
He then checked into the hotel and paid by credit card. Lars later told his mother that the young man behind the counter copied it.
He went to his room, later he went to the hotel bar to get some water to drink and wash down the cefzil.
Timeline - 11:00 pm | First call from the hotel
At 11:00 p.m. he called his mother for the first time from the hotel and asked her to charge his cell phone with money - Sandra Mittank followed his request and charged it.
It should be noted that the cell phone he had with him was not a smartphone, but an old cell phone whose battery quickly ran out - he wanted to enjoy the vacation to the fullest and left his new smartphone at home.
This is what Sandra Mittank wrote about this episode:
"He was troubled. He said he had an argument with soccer fans, was hit in the ear, and said that the hospital doctor mocked at him and sent him away laughing. He also asked me to call foreign health insurance, because he wanted to be brought home with patient transport.
We hung up and I registered the case with the foreign health insurance and got a file number.
After Sandra called the health insurance company, she called her son again and told him.
Lars then said that there was something wrong with the hotel, that he had to leave, and that Sandra should cancel his credit card because the hotel had copied it at check-in and he felt strange about this because he had never experienced such a procedure in any other hotel before. When he is back home he can unblock it again, he told his mother.
To clarify this, Sandra called a member of the bank staff. They told her that you cannot unlock the card yourself.
Then she called Lars again and told him what the employee had told her.
Nevertheless, he insisted and added that he still had enough cash.
Sandra Mittank blocked the card.
In the email to me she also added the following:
"My feeling told me that I had to book a bus connection if he was not allowed to fly the next day. So I picked out a bus connection, booked, and paid.
The bus was to leave at 23:30 on 08.07. from the Varna bus station".
So even if Lars wasn't allowed to fly, he would have had the security to have a bus ticket.
Sandra asked Lars to go to sleep and get some strength, as the next few days will be exhausting.
But a short time later he calls her again: "Something is wrong with the hotel.
He didn't say exactly what, but Sandra thinks that he felt bugged and therefore couldn't talk out loud.
Investigations by private detectives and Sandra later revealed that the hotel was very sensitive and you could hear everything from the hallway and its room-makers. Their assumption is that Lars overheard something disturbing or felt that someone heard what he said about the hotel.
At the end of the call he said, I have to get out of here."
Timeline 08. July - At 2:30 am | further call
Between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m. he called Sandra one more time and told her that he was out of the hotel and was being followed by 4 men. He spoke softly because he was hiding from them and, according to his own statements, quote " high up and could fall down.
Shortly thereafter, he hung up.
Timeline July 08 - 3:06
SMS from Lars: "Cefzil 500 what is that"
Timeline July 8 - 3:15
SMS from Lars: "Cefzil 500 what is this"
Because Sandra Mittank still assumed that he was hiding, she did not call him, but booked a flight instead. The flight was scheduled to leave Varna Airport at 16:20 and land in Hamburg at 21:45.
To better understand the course of events, Sandra and the investigators walked the path he probably took at the same time at night, and in their estimation, it could be that the 4 men who were chasing him were trying to rob him because he was carrying an Adidas bag and could be easily recognized by his yellow t-shirt in the dark.
Sandra lay awake all night waiting for news from Lars.
Timeline July 8th - 05:00 am | arrival airport and call Sandra
At some point in the night, Lars was seen waving heavily at the side of the road by a cab driver.
The driver already had a woman in the cab, but he took Lars with him and dropped him off at Varna airport at 05:00.
The cab driver and the woman in the cab reported afterwards that Lars pupils were dilated.
The possible causes are unknown. There are different theories, but all are purely speculative. It could be related to the head or ear injury or could be a side effect of the drug Cefzil 500 or simply he was tense and full of adrenaline from the events.
Shortly after he arrived at the airport, he called his mother and told her that he was glad to be there and told her how he got there.
At that time his cell phone was almost flat and the conversations with his mother were down to essentials, in short, concise sentences.
He told her that he needed money and that Sandra should transfer money to him via Western Union.
Both of them did not know about Western Union until now, but Lars told her that he met a man from Bavaria at the airport who explained Western Union and the process of how to get cash through it.
The man was no longer standing next to him, and yet Lars was able to tell Sandra clearly what he had told him and how Western Union works - so she understood this system even though she had never heard of it before.
From this, private investigators and Sandra conclude that Lars was still clearly in his right mind and not confused - as many Internet detectives often assume.
After Western Union's explanation, Sandra gave him the details of his flight and bus ticket and told him to copy them by hand in case his cell phone went dead. She wanted to give him the Western Union reference number after the visit to the doctor because she had not yet made a referral at that time - she only did this after the conversation. Lars did not tell her how much money he needed, so she set a sum - which was rather randomly chosen - of 500 euros. Here it is often speculated that the sum of 500 Euros would be too specific if Lars had requested it and possibly indicated blackmail, but with the above-mentioned fact, speculation in such a direction is unnecessary.
At the end of the conversation, Sandra told her son to go to the airport doctor and clarify whether he could fly or not.
But before he went to the doctor he said quote: “They won’t let me fly, nor drive.”
Lars said that he looked dirty from the hiding place. Sandra replied that he should freshen up in the bathroom and call back as soon as he got more information from the doctor.
Sandra also encouraged him and said that his ear couldn't be too bad otherwise the other doctor wouldn't have sent him away.
Shortly after the conversation and after Sandra Mittank had completed the Western Union reference, she called him again. She only heard a murmur, so she assumed that he accidentally took the call and was just freshening up in the bathroom.
This was the last call Lars took. She tried again later, but Lars did not pick up the phone.
While Sandra Mittank became more and more nervous and restless, because this behavior was untypical of Lars, Lars made his way to the doctor's office.
Timeline 07. July - 09:00 | Lars enters the consultation room of the airport doctor
The interview and/or examination lasted 42 minutes.
Dr. Kostow took all the necessary information from the passport, looked in his ear, administered ear drops, took a temperature of 37.2 degrees (normal no fever), and wanted to give him tablets, but Lars refused - probably because of his bad experience with the Cefzil 500. The doctor explained to Lars that he could fly because it is not that bad, but he had to sign a waiver before he could fly.
So he gave it to him and Lars signed it. Here is the document:
Lars probably got restless and requested to go to the toilet and left the room and murmur that he would come right back and disappear. The doctor waited until he learned that Lars had left the airport area.
This information, which had not been made public before, puts the stay in the doctor's office in a completely different light.
The airport doctor Dr. Kostow's statements were later made available.
That just now was the reconstruction of the events according to the document and the calls of Sandra Mittank with Mrs Mitrova
In contradiction Dr. Kostov describes the situation as follow
So it was - at least according to the statements of the airport doctor - already a stressful situation for Lars, when suddenly a man in an airport uniform entered the consulting room. Lars panicked, jumped up, and ran off.
However, it must be mentioned here that Dr. Kostow changed his statement three times in the course of the investigation.
Initially, he said that this ominous employee who entered the consulting room was an employee of the airline Lars was supposed to fly with at 4:20 pm and who was looking for Lars.
However, it was only 09:00 a.m., why would someone look for Lars so long before the flight, especially when his mother had booked the flight only a few hours before?
Afterwards, he said that the person who came in was an employee of the airport.
But why would an employee simply enter the doctor's office?
And his last version was that he did not know the person who came in.
Many contradictions, but these were brought to a head when Germany's lead investigator flew to the airport and wanted to question those responsible there.
He was introduced to a man who was said to have been the ominous employee.
Investigations by private detectives found out the identity of the man and checked the reliability of this and it turned out that the person who was presented to the German investigator was not even in Bulgaria when Lars entered the consulting room.
Furthermore, the doctor's statements cannot be verified because there are no cameras in the airport that cover the entrance to the consulting room - in other words, a blind spot.
Sandra Mittank called various numbers to get help while Lars was in the consulting room and ran away, but quote "nobody wanted and could understand her".
Timeline 08 July - 11:00 a.m. | Call to the Honorary Consulate in Varna
At 11:00 a.m. she called the Honorary Consulate in Varna and was connected with Mrs. Mitrova.
Sandra told her what happened, that her son sounded worried and that she urgently needed help.
Timeline 08. July - 12:00 o'clock | Mrs. Mitrova calls back
An hour later, at 12:00, Mrs. Mitrova called Sandra back and told her that Lars had been to the doctor, was looking relatively normal, but was acting restlessly, and had asked the doctor to let him go to the toilet, but then did not come back. The doctor thought he was coming back to pick up his things. But later on, she told Sandra that Lars just ran out, disappeared from the airport, and left his travel bag, ID, backpack, and cell phone behind.
Another point why the doctor's statements do not seem conclusive.
Timeline 09. July 2014 - A missing person's report is prepared in Germany
On July 9th a missing person's report was filed in Germany and at the same time the coal-fired power plant where Lars worked commissioned a private detective and a Bulgarian lawyer who was born in Varna.
The master craftsman Frank from the power plant was on vacation in Bulgaria with his Bulgarian wife. They learned about Lars and immediately went to Varna airport on 10.07.14 and were very abruptly turned away when asked about Lars. They get no information about his disappearance.
Timeline July 17th - The private detective Andreas Gütig starts work in Varna
Timeline 24 July - Sandra Mittank travels to Varna
Timeline July 27th - Sandra, Frank (a colleague who was on vacation with his wife, a Bulgarian), and the Bulgarian lawyer drove to the airport
At the airport, Sandra was shown the security camera footage.
Sandra wrote the following: "I am not crying, even though this is the last time I saw Lars. I am relieved, my feeling tells me that my son knows what he is doing! He is getting himself to safety."
That is what happened to Lars. Furthermore in the video Sandra Mittank portrays the surveillance camera footage of the airport, the different versions of the airport doctor, what she thinks really happened to Lars and why there is still hope (from 21:45 on).

Varna Airport and video recordings
After Sandra was shown the video of Lars running out of the airport, she asks the people in charge on-site if they can show her the footage of Lars arriving at the airport.
"The video is not available right now," they told her.
I have received all the videos that were given to Sandra for this documentary and I will play them on the side.
But what is important to know is that the video of what Sandra saw at the airport on July 27, 2014, shows video scenes that were not sent to the police seven months later. This means that Sandra saw different scenes than the ones we see here.
She describes the scenes she saw on July 27th as follows: "Lars sprints out of the airport door, stops abruptly, grabs his back pocket, wallet there? Passport? ...orients himself right ...left. On the right is Varna, that's where he was beaten...so to the left, there he sees at the same height about 20m away 2 police cars with uniforms.... on the bus stop and behind them a big heap of sand from the last renovation of the airport, parking lot, behind it a field, then the highway and behind it low forest/field vegetation and then in the back mountains with some houses on the slopes.... .he decides, walks slowly to the police cars to 5m in front of them walks across the street at 11 o'clock and looks behind the bus, which was driving straight backwards slowly out of the car, a screen follows him, is not to be seen and when the bus drives forward, he runs towards the pile of sand, disappears behind it and allegedly climbs over the 2.15m high fence into the field and disappears. (I will formulate it a little better)
So in the video shown to Sandra, Lars seems anything but confused. More like he has a precise plan and behaves inconspicuously so that the policemen don't notice him.
So the video we see is only a part of it and makes the actual facts and condition of Lars look different than he was in reality.
And that's why you can't understand the sentence "I'm not crying, although I'm seeing Lars for the last time. I am relieved, my feeling tells me that my son knows what he is doing! He is getting himself to safety", can now be understood better.
On this statue here you can see that Lars bought himself something to eat: But why is there no video of it? Why is there no video of his arrival at the airport and how Lars was going to the toilet?
So few recordings, although there should obviously be a lot of material, even if there is a blind spot at the doctor's office.
What does that mean?
After Sandra Mittank was shown Lars' video, she was handed the contents of her son's Adidas travel bag.
It was written in Bulgarian, but Mrs. Mittank herself speaks Russian, which is very similar to Bulgarian, so she discovered the Cefzil 500 on the list. It was listed twice, once with 10 tablets and once with 7 tablets. She pointed this out to the lawyer, because the question that arose was: how many tablets of the Cefzil did Lars take. The lawyer confirms that he has seen it.
So it can be assumed that Lars took 3 tablets of Cefzil 500s.
The list included everyday things, like clothes, etc., but also other medicines with the corresponding number of tablets and tablet packages. Lars had taken some tablets from Germany to have a travel first-aid kit with him.
Although Sandra was not handed over the list, but the travel bag.
They left the airport and went directly to the police to file a missing person's report - this took about 4 hours.
When Sandra later arrived at the hotel, she searched the bag. She wrote the following:
"In the evening at the hotel, I check the bag and find out that Lars was - as always - very tidy. He picked up all the receipts from the hotel, the pharmacy, etc. and put them in the bag in a foil.
On the basis of the receipts, which I have all sorted chronologically, one can follow the exact time of his vacation. The only thing missing was the cefzil".
The 2 bills of the Cefzil from the 2 pharmacies were also included. On the 2nd invoice, the name of the drug was not listed. But the tablets were missing from the travel bag, even though they were on the list.
So the next day she went to the airport again with her lawyer and tried to get to the bottom of the matter.
She asks the people in charge where the Cefzil was, since it was on the list but not in the bag.
The man who had given them the list the day before was called in and he brought them the list. However, it was another list without the cefzil being listed.
Sandra writes: "I was appalled. The lawyer as well, who said that he could testify that the tablets were listed the day before.
Shortly after that, it became horribly loud. I shouted loudly that they should stop and that I was no longer interested in these tablets. I just wanted to get out, the situation felt very uncomfortable and dicey. I just wanted to get out. I thought to myself: "There's something wrong here, there's a lot of drama going on here.
Sometime later Sandra dismissed the lawyer because he was acting more and more strangely and was making strange comments about Lars.
Any suspicion she made, he denied and doubted.
At some point he told her to stop looking for her son - contacts of his advised him to stop.
The blisters from the Cefzil did reappear later. Apparently, the Varna police took the drugs, because they were hanging on Lars' file. But what remained was the bitter aftertaste and further questions arose.
It looked like someone wanted to stop a search for Lars, but why?
I know it sounds almost like a conspiracy theory, but the factual situation speaks mostly for such a 'conspiracy' in quotes. Why else, should the doctor change his statements? Why else would the video recordings be cropped? Why else would the lead investigator be presented with a man who was supposed to be the ominous man but was not even in Bulgaria at the time?
More details will be explained to you by private detective Ralf, who is still actively working for Sandra and has been to Bulgaria many times before.
At the end of this section, I would like to give you some food for thought.
The German Foreign Office published the following shortly after Lars' disappearance:
Some German doctors also reported about complex and expensive false diagnoses and unnecessary treatments. In case of non-payment, they threaten to prevent him from leaving the country and to confiscate his passport.
If we remember Lars' statement that he said that they neither let him fly nor drive, we might be able to make a connection to this and the statement seems to be given less due to confusion rather than a real concern.
(Show document)
Lars' health condition
There are several theories about Lars health condition.
But before we go into these, we should briefly clarify what the antibiotic Cefzil 500 is about.
First of all, Cefzil is an antibiotic with the active substance Cefprozil, which is prescribed more often in Bulgaria, but not in Germany, because it is a strong antibiotic with comparatively many side effects.
The question for Lars was "What is Cefzil 500, but for us, it is "What did this Cefzil 500 do to him? Were there any side effects or maybe even drug interactions?
And if so, what were their effects? Did he panic? Did he develop a drug-induced psychosis and hallucinations?
Some studies say that Cefzil may indeed have these side effects, although they are very unlikely to occur.
Doctors in Bulgaria, of course, did not express any concerns when asked if they could think of Lars' behavior being caused by the drug.
German doctors, on the other hand, said that cefzil, or rather the active ingredient cefprozil, is questionable, especially in the dose.
The pharmacist Rada Pechliwanowa from the Bulgarian Pharmacists Association supported the statements of the German doctors by saying, quote: "There could be a connection between the antibiotic and the conspicuous behavior of the patient. However, we are talking about a very rare side effect, which depends on whether, for example, he has taken another drug or drank alcohol".
So in Lars' case, the Cefzil 500 may have had an even stronger effect than it already had and the likelihood of side effects has increased.
So it could be that he hallucinated. And since a person who hallucinates or has a panic attack cannot distinguish feelings and fear from real fear - simply because the situation is subjectively real for him - Lars Mittank's behavior, if seen from his perspective, is understandable.
Schizophrenia/undefinable mental illness
The critical age group for men is between 16 and 30 years of age. This means that the probability of developing schizophrenia is highest at this age.
Of course, this does not apply to all men, but mostly to men who have a predisposition or are predestined to develop schizophrenia.
Predisposition also refers to hereditary DNA.
In my research, I could not find any indication that the Mittank family suffers or has suffered from mental illness, which is why I consider this aspect unlikely.
Before I go any further, I would like to emphasize that this is of course only speculation and it is always difficult to make a proper psychological assessment.
I can only report from experiences of my immediate environment that it is possible to develop a mental illness due to a stressful life and other factors that favor this.
So in this hypothetical example, he was already stressed and not in the best mental condition, then his friends flew back to Germany and he was alone in a foreign country.
As if that was not enough, a chain of events followed that he had not expected and that caught him cold.
He thought he would be hospitalized and transported back to Germany through his foreign health insurance. But as we know, this assumption also turned out to be wrong.
Lars had to find a new hotel, for whatever reason, and this was followed by a panic episode in which he thought he was being followed or was really being followed, which probably triggered fear in him that was equivalent to a fear of death.
Perhaps this concatenation caused him to develop a mental illness. Be it a psychosis or schizophrenia.
Here is a short excerpt from the Wikipedia article on schizophrenia:
"In the acute stage of the disease, schizophrenic people experience a variety of characteristic disorders that affect almost all areas of inner experience and behavior, such as perception, thinking, feeling and emotions, will formation, psychomotor skills and drive.
Often, voices that are not really present are heard (so-called voice-hearing). The delusion of being followed, spied on, or controlled can occur. Furthermore, the feeling of being controlled by others can develop, e.g. through thought withdrawal or thought inspiration. Persistent hallucinations of any sensory modality are possible. Also, social withdrawal, lack of drive, lack of motivation, emotional flattening, and joylessness are often observed.
I don't want to speculate further here either, but what makes this theory of a mental illness more likely is the first theory. So maybe it is a combination of both
However, it can be firmly assumed that Lars only took 3-4 tablets of the cefzil; so the question of whether these could really have had such great effects must be asked.
Nevertheless, the questions that were asked in the first theory remain unanswered and the question of his whereabouts is still unanswered as well.
Even in such a state, one often has clear moments or at least knows where one comes from, partly remembers his past. So why is it that he didn't get in touch with anyone?
Head injury/Torn eardrum
The last probable theory is that Lars did not only suffer a broken eardrum, but also a severe head injury by the blow on his ear, or rather on the head.
Because depending on which areas of the brain are hit by such a blow, character changes, panic, and other symptoms can occur, which are also severe in a psychosis.
Maybe Lars really did suffer from retrogral amnesia, which was triggered by an aneurysm occurring over and over again.
Because the theory of the private investigator you are about to hear is that this aneurysm, when it swells, keeps pressing on the areas of the brain responsible for memory - which is why he forgot where he came from.
But the private investigator will tell you more about this in a moment.
It's probably nothing specific about all this, but rather a string of concatenations and circumstances, what exactly doesn't really matter.
We only know that Lars is probably confused and doesn't know where he comes from anymore.
He will be frightened and socially isolated and will have difficulty communicating. His mother says he has lost his basic trust in people and doesn't dare to ask for help anymore because he seems to have had many bad experiences and his trust has often been broken.
Now one could ask oneself the question, why is there still hope.
I have already described this in the second part, but because this is supposed to be a stand-alone video, I will summarize it again briefly:
Sightings of Lars Mittank
The Facebook page Findet-Lars-Mittank received more and more hints, also in the form of photos, and repeatedly, they pointed out the different pictures publicly, just to say that the pictures were not those of Lars.
But she never let herself be defeated and turned every hint of resignation into energy and used her role as a contact point for all kinds of clues to identify the people in the pictures with the help of her network or at least to talk to them.
For 5 years, they were able to find 15 Germans all over Europe who simply disappeared without a trace, but were still alive and who could have come home with a snap of their fingers.
The sad thing is that none of them wanted to go home. Each of them has voluntarily disappeared without a trace. Each of them wanted to leave their old life behind and live lonely on the streets of Europe.
In 2016 there was another, but this time promising, clue, which did not come from Bulgaria or Europe, but from Brazil.
The man in the picture that was sent to Sandra showed great similarities with her son. She contacted the Brazilian police to get more information about the man.
After impatient, hopeful days, she was disappointed once again.
The man said he was Canadian. Also, the eye color and blood type did not match Lars' own.
But this sighting is the sighting that gives Sandra the most hope.
Because the Canadian, named Anton Pilipa, left his hometown Scarborough, 2012, after he was wanted for attempted robbery. And Anton Pilipa managed to survive 4 years without identity documents and a roof over his head and without mastering the languages of the different countries he traveled through.
He traveled over 10,500 kilometers. Barefoot, hitchhiking, secretly on the back of trucks, all while suffering from schizophrenia.
Anton Pilipa was picked up by his brother and reunited with his family. The mother thanked us very much.

Sources (only the first source is in English and in cooperation with Sandra Mittank):

I am 23 years old, making $6,993/year in Manila as a Social Media Analyst.

NOTE: All currency has been converted to USD (1 PHP = 0.021 USD)
Intro: I hope this gives people an idea of what life is like on the other side of the world, in the Philippines. I’ve also included Ref29’s questions at the beginning to give you more insight into my background. Please know that writing this turned out to be much harder than I had originally anticipated since it forced me to confront several things about me, particularly about my mental health and my privilege. I’m aware that I’m incredibly privileged and have lived a very comfortable, sheltered life, when compared to most Filipinos, especially amid this global pandemic when practically half the country is starving. I’m really nervous to share this with all of you, but please be easy on me as this was not easy for me to do.
Ref29 questions:
Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
Yes, education is held in high regard here in the Philippines, to the point that landing a well-paying job without a bachelor’s is extremely hard, if not downright possible. Parents are also expected to pay for the entirety of college, although, of course, this isn’t true for all. Coming from an upper-middle-class family, I was even more pressured to land a spot in one of the Big 4 universities, which is sort of like the equivalent of the Ivy League here. In the Philippines, college admission involves taking an entrance exam at each college that you’re applying to, so my senior year of high school was spent in after-class prep centers to prepare for this. Fortunately, I was able to major in a pre-law course in a Big 4 university, which my parents fully paid for.
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent/guardian(s) educate you about finances?
My parents had the mindset of “work hard, play hard,” which meant that they worked seven days a week, but compensated for it with week-long family vacations abroad between twice to thrice a year. As I mentioned, this was a very privileged upbringing. They weren’t extremely thrifty, but they definitely instilled in us values like delayed gratification and spending money only if you worked hard for it. They also insisted that my brother and I save at least 20% of our allowances, so upon reaching first grade, we were taken to the bank to open a junior savings account.
Unfortunately, our business has taken a huge hit, due to policies that the current government has, so we’ve had to significantly tighten our belts. We don’t worry about putting food on the table or of being unable to afford basic necessities; however, we’ve had to do away with things like weekend shopping trips, impulse purchases, eating out every week, and international vacations for the past two or three years now.
Did you worry about money growing up?
It’s extremely privileged of me to say this, but no. I didn’t. I come from generational wealth on my mom’s side while my paternal grandfather owns several properties. I was always secure in the fact that if we were ever struggling financially, one of my grandparents would end up bailing us out.
Do you worry about money now?
Yes, I’m currently saving up to go to law school abroad. This will mean repeating my bachelor’s, but this program will open up so many opportunities for me. However, it also means having to save up at least $20,000 to make it work, and I’m still pretty far from my goal.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
I’m not yet financially responsible for myself. My 22-year-old brother, E, and I are still living with our parents, and they’ve refused our offer to pitch in with the bills. They both believe that as long as they’re still working, then it’s their duty to provide for their children. However, this also means that their kids are their retirement plans, which is a very common mentality in the Philippines.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
No, I haven’t.
SECTION ONE: ASSETS AND DEBT
Retirement Balance: All my money right now is being poured to fund my future studies, so I don’t have a retirement balance yet. I don’t know if this is wise or not, and this has been a great cause for my anxiety these past few months.
Savings Account Balance: I have approximately $16,000 spread out across three different bank accounts right now.
Miscellaneous Debt: I bought AirPods from my friend last year, and she asked me to pay her back in installments, so she wouldn’t be tempted to spend all the money in one go. I have approximately $56 left on this, which I’ll be paying next month.
SECTION TWO: INCOME
Income Progression:
This is my first job ever. As I previously mentioned, school is extremely important here in the Philippines. In my case, throughout my elementary and high school years, I was in school from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., and this was supplemented by after-class tutoring sessions and weekend advanced classes. College was basically the same since I decided to take up two minor degrees, in addition to my major, which meant that I took 8-10 classes every semester. So, I didn’t have time at all for a part-time job, which was okay, given the fact that my parents funded my education 100%.
2019-2020: I graduated from university in June 2019 and my parents asked me to start working in the family business. This didn’t turn out so good, though, since they refused to pay me a salary and would guilt-trip me whenever I’d take money from the day’s sales to pay for my expenses. When talks of a lockdown began in February 2020, I began looking for a job that would allow me to work remote since I had an inkling that our business would be shut down. Fortunately, my friend recommended me for an open position in the company that she was working at, and that’s where I’ve been since then.
In addition to my full-time job as a Social Media Analyst, I also started doing freelance work early last year.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: This varies. I’m considered a freelancer in my job, despite the fact that I’ve been with them since early 2020. I think they mostly do this to avoid paying me benefits, which is morally questionable but sort-of legal in the Philippines. So, I get paid a daily rate and am on a no-work-no-pay basis. If I don’t take any leaves for the month, then my take-home pay will be $582.79.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: Again, this varies. In 2020, I believe I averaged approximately $1,200 per month. I don’t know if I’ll be able to hit these same numbers this year, though.
SECTION THREE: EXPENSES
All expenses below are monthly unless otherwise specified.
Phone Bill: This varies, depending on my data usage. Our WiFi doesn’t reach the second floor, so I’m forced to use my data if I’m working or staying in my bedroom. Our phone bills during lockdown were also suspended and have been amortized over six months since then, so I’m still paying this off. Currently, my phone bill can be anywhere from $52 to $83.
Subscriptions: Spotify Premium ($3) – but this is added to my phone bill, thanks to my service provider. I also pay for Babbel ($13) because language learning is my hobby, and I’m currently learning Brazilian Portuguese.
Pet Expenses: I average about $10 for my dog’s food and treats. A trip to the vet for a regular check-up is $8. My local government unit provides certain pet vaccines for free, so we get our shots from them.
Other: My brother, E, and I have privately agreed to answer for the expenses that our 10-year-old brother, L, incurs. So, we pay for his food, school supplies, etc. I budget $15 for him, but I’m not upset if I have to go over this amount. Right now, though, I’m paying for most of L’s expenses since E’s business isn’t doing too hot, due to the post-holiday slump.
DISCLAIMER: Face masks are mandatory, if you’re outside. People also aren’t allowed to go into establishments if they don’t have a face mask + face shield on. Both of these were worn at all times outside my home.
DAY ONE - SUNDAY, JANUARY 10
10:00 a.m. – My cousin and her husband are heading to the shopping mall to run a few errands. I go with them to have my eyes checked as my last prescription was from 2019. The doctor tells me that astigmatism in my right eye has been corrected (thank god) but that my left eye has gotten worse (noooo). I buy contact lenses and have them put in new lenses in my specs. $93
1:30 p.m. – My cousin is a few weeks pregnant and is craving mushroom soup from a particular chain restaurant, so we head over there. I get a burger and offer to pay for my share, but she and her husband refuse.
5:00 p.m. – My parents are very religious and require us to attend Sunday Mass every week as a family. Our church has the recommended COVID-19 measures in place (2-3 people to a pew, contact tracing, etc.), but I’m still annoyed that the Catholic Church here is trying to claim that mass is an essential service that should be allowed to continue, even when it clearly isn’t.
6:00 p.m. – Before heading home, we drop off take-out dinner for my Grandma. She lives alone, so we try to visit her at least once a week. We talk through the gate, though, to keep her safe.
11:00 p.m. – As a social media analyst, my shift is from 12 a.m. to 9 a.m. because I have to take note of all the online traction from the day before. This has worked rather well for me, mainly because I have insomnia.
Daily Total: $93
DAY TWO - MONDAY, JANUARY 11
5:30 a.m. – On Mondays, I have to analyze all social media traction from the weekend, and this has definitely cemented my deep hatred for this day of the week. Fortunately, it wasn’t too terrible this time. I chill for a bit by catching an episode of Friend Zone, a TV series from Thailand that’s sort of like Gossip Girl, except they’re middle-class and have actual jobs.
7:00 a.m. – I wake up L for his classes and begin working on my freelance job. Breakfast is leftovers from Sunday night dinner, so I have Truffle Mac and Cheese, and Garlic Parmesan Chicken Wings. My parents and E usually leave very early in the morning for their respective businesses, so it’s usually just me and L.
10:00 a.m. – I send off my social media reports and watch an episode of Fairy Tail.
1:00 p.m. – My brain is out of creative juices, so I take a nap. Before doing so, I place an order to replenish my toner ($5) and AHA serum ($5). I’m also running low on my fish oil capsules, so I order that too ($6.87). My total comes out to $19.25, due to shipping. $19.25
3:00 p.m. – L wakes up from my nap and I work some more before heading out to walk my dog. It’s cold outside – 28ºC or 82.4ºF. This is how winters in Manila look like!
6:45 p.m. – Dinner is white rice, Steamed Tilapia, and Ginataang Sigarilyas. According to Google, this translates to “Winged Beans in Coconut Milk.” I don’t know if this translation is 100% legit but it’s probably one of my favorite vegetable dishes ever.
Daily Total: $19.25
DAY THREE - TUESDAY, JANUARY 12
2:30 a.m. – One of my accounts is in crisis mode, so their reports are much more finicky than usual. When I feel that my brain is about to explode from reading social media posts, I work on my freelance deliverables.
7:00 a.m. – Again, I wake up L. Tuesdays are hard for him because he has back-to-back classes, and it isn’t long before I notice that he seems a bit overwhelmed. This year has been tough for him because we moved him to a new school and this, plus online learning, meant that he’s had to adjust like crazy. It’s too much for a 10-year-old, I think. I buy him his favorite Iced Cacao milk tea (I think it’s called boba in the States) to cheer him up and order an Iced Matcha for myself ($7.89). We drink our milk teas while having a very healthy breakfast of hotdogs and rice. $7.89
11:00 a.m. – The rest of the morning goes by quickly. I send off my reports, work on my deliverables, pitch to new clients, answer e-mails, and so on. Unfortunately, two of my clients have declined to work with me again since I was a bit late with a few of my deliverables, due to the holiday season. I try to take it as a sign from the universe that I need to slow down, but I’m still pretty sad about it.
5:30 p.m. – I wake up from a nap and notice that my phone bill is due, so I pay ($53.49). I Dinner tonight is Fried Milkfish, Rice cooked with Crab Fat, and Sayote sa Sotanghon, which is basically chayote mixed with vermicelli. $53.49
Daily Total: $61.38
DAY FOUR - WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13
2:00 a.m. – Thank God, my account has ended its crisis mode, so work is a bit more chill. Again, social media traction and freelance work. When I was 15, I thought I’d be spending my early twenties in a high-paying corporate job, wearing cute clothes and going to parties afterward. Instead, I’m spending it in teddy bear pajamas. I blame Gossip Girl and Korean dramas for my unrealistic expectations.
7:00 a.m. – After waking up L and sending off my reports, I spend the rest of the day working on my freelance jobs.
11:30 a.m. – Our live-in helper, J, prepares fried chicken for lunch and I eat it with L. He still has some time left before his next class, so I play a few rounds of Among Us with him. I honestly don’t enjoy the game as much as I make it seem I do, but it’s his absolute favorite and I like having these small bonding moments with my little brother.
1:45 p.m. – My brain can’t take it anymore, and I pass out from exhaustion.
3:30 p.m. – L wakes me up from my nap and I try my best to get a few more things done. Thankfully, my next deadline involves a podcast script on a certain historical event. These are pretty easy to write, although researching them can be a pain in the ass sometimes.
4:00 p.m. – I take a break from work by checking out apartment listings because it’s fun, even though I have no plans to move out. I honestly want to, mainly because my relationship with my parents isn’t that great, and living back home has highlighted that even more. E has it worse, though, and his relationship with our dad has deteriorated so much that they got into a few physical fights during lockdown. While I can afford to move out, E can’t and of course, L is underage, so I can’t take him with me. Right now, I’m bearing the brunt of my parents’ stress and frustration, and if I leave, then it’s likely that they’ll start taking it out on my brothers. So, I don’t because I’m their eldest sister and a huge part of me feels like it’s my duty to protect them. But if worse comes to worst, then I’m ready to shoulder E and his expenses. He only started his business last year, so it isn’t super profitable yet. The post-holiday slump hasn’t been kind to him either.
5:30 p.m. – Dinner is Tinolang Manok, which is a dish that consists of chicken and papaya slices cooked in ginger-flavored broth. For me, it’s a must-eat during “wintertime.” While eating, my parents ask me what my plans are for my upcoming birthday. They’re trying to pressure me to treat the entire family to dinner, but I decline because a) I’m trying to save money, and b) COVID-19.
8:45 p.m. – I take a shower and catch a few episodes of a Chinese drama called “A Love So Beautiful.” Then, it’s back to work.
Daily Total: $0
DAY FIVE – THURSDAY, JANUARY 14
3:45 a.m. – I finish my main job early, so I go and work on some deliverables, but I keep getting distracted by “A Love So Beautiful” that I barely get anything done. Before I know it, it’s nearly time to wake my brother up, and I haven’t accomplished anything at all.
5:00 a.m. – My mom brought home fried chicken from McDonalds last night for L’s breakfast, but I’m so hungry that I steal it. I order the same thing ($5.50) and schedule a 6:30 a.m. delivery to hide my crime. $5.50
7:00 a.m. – I wake up L, shower, and settle in to watch the final episode in the series. I’ve accepted the fact that I won’t get anything done until I find out what happens to Chen Xiaoxi and Jiang Chen.
12:00 p.m. – I must be more torn up about losing two clients than I initially thought I was because I end up crying while working on a deliverable. I lock myself in my room and plan to have a good 10-minute crying session, but this quickly into a full-on breakdown. I never really recognized the impact that my home situation and lack of proper sleep have left on me, but it looks like the emotional toll is too much. I’m also feeling really anxious about one of my long-time clients, who I feel is a bit disappointed with my work lately, and this sends me spiraling even more. I end up crying for a good hour or so. It would have gone on longer, had it not been for L, who knocks on my door and cuddles me for a bit. He can tell that I’m upset, thanks to my swollen eyes, so he offers to treat me to milk tea using his Christmas money. It’s sweet, but I decline.
4:00 p.m. – After working and a quick nap, I put on a Korean eye mask to hide how swollen they are. My dad gets annoyed whenever we cry since he perceives it to be a sign of weakness. I know that he’s completely wrong about this, but I’m too exhausted to argue with him tonight.
5:00 p.m. – Dinner is white rice and Pork Bistek. I don’t know if that has a proper English translation, but it’s basically pork chops and onions cooked in soy sauce and calamansi juice. I’m still feeling pretty lethargic from my breakdown earlier, so I take a cold shower to feel refreshed.
10:00 p.m. – I guess breaking down uses up a lot of energy because I’m starving, even though dinner was only a few hours ago. L is also hungry, so we ask J to buy us Puto Bumbong, which is a steamed purple rice cake topped with margarine, coconut flakes, and brown sugar. This particular stall also puts cheese and condensed milk on theirs. I personally find it too sweet, but L is in love, as only 10-year-old boys who can eat a whole jar of Nutella can be. J uses the leftover money from today’s dinner to pay.
11:30 p.m. – Work is pretty chill today, so I watch an anime called “The Promised Neverland” in-between monitoring social media traction.
Daily Total: $5.50
DAY SIX – FRIDAY, JANUARY 15
12:00 a.m. – Happy 23rd birthday to me! I initially wanted to go to treat myself to a spa to celebrate my birthday, but I canceled my booking because of COVID-19. Hopefully, the Philippine government will finally get its shit together by March, which is when I had my appointment rebooked. I’m doubtful, but hopeful.
7:00 a.m. – I log off for the week and settle in to finally enjoy some no-work bliss. Kidding! I wake up L, take a shower, and work on my freelancing deliverables. Since it’s my birthday, J allows me to decide what breakfast will be and I pick chicken nuggets because I know that it’s something that L will enjoy too.
11:00 a.m. – My lack of sleep this week has caught up to me, and I pass out from exhaustion. Thankfully, I don’t have any deadlines today.
4:30 p.m. – L wakes me up, and we dress for Mass. My parents require us to attend Mass together as a family whenever it’s someone’s birthday. L isn’t allowed inside the church because of my area’s COVID-19 restrictions, so he and E sit outside. I’m jealous because the air is so stuffy inside the church that breathing through a mask and a face shield is a struggle.
6:00 p.m. – We come home and a few of my other family members are there for a...surprise birthday dinner. I’m trying not to feel annoyed at the fact that my parents went against my wishes because I know they mean well, but still. I had planned a quiet night with anime and a face mask to celebrate my birthday, but of course, this won’t be feasible any longer. I’m trying not to let my irritation show because everyone made an effort to be here, but still. Oh well, at least they kept the number of guests below 10, in line with restrictions.
6:30 p.m. – My mom ordered food from a caterer, and we settle in for a dinner of Baked Salmon in Cheese with Green Beans, Braised Chicken with Rosemary and Potatoes, and Ox Tongue with Mushrooms. They’re all pretty good, but I can’t help but dream of the face mask that I had prepared in anticipation of tonight.
11:00 p.m. – I nurse a glass of white wine, and it isn’t long before my aunt and I have managed to polish off the entire bottle. I can’t help but feel a bit sad because only two of my friends greeted me today. I know that I shouldn’t put a lot of stock into birthday greetings because they’re just words, and I know that all my friends are busy with work, and I also know that they’re going through their own mental battles right now because of COVID-19, but still. It sucks.
11:30 p.m. – A friend from Germany asks me if he calculated the timezone correctly, and he wishes me a happy birthday. As a gift, he sends me a video of snow falling out his window. I don’t know if I’m crying because I’m wine-drunk, or if I’m crying out of envy because SNOW or because I’m a teeny bit sad. Maybe it’s all of the above, idk.
Daily Total: $0
DAY SEVEN - SATURDAY, JANUARY 16
2:00 a.m. – Party’s over and all my relatives have gone home. I set an alarm for 4 a.m. because I have an early-morning deadline to meet.
9:00 a.m. – I must be drunker and more tired than I thought because I completely slept through my alarm. I apologize to my client and ask for an extension. I’m hoping that he’s kind to me because it was my birthday the day before; fortunately, he grants the extension.
12:30 p.m. – E is craving Chinese food, so I hop onto Grab (Southeast Asian version of Uber) and place an order from Panda Express. They were only brought to the Philippines in 2019, and lines have been pretty long, so it was only this year that I was able to taste their non-Chinese Chinese food. I pay for our food as a late birthday treat for my brothers and also because I know that E has been denying himself a lot of things lately to have more cash to inject into his business. With delivery, the total comes out to $13. He offers to wash the dishes afterward, which I’m really thankful for. $13
3:00 p.m. – The rest of the day passes by quickly. It’s J’s day off today, so L and I do household chores. While doing them, I catch up with some of my favorite podcasts, including Military Murder and The Asian Madness Podcast. Highly recommend the two of them. And, let me know if you have any recommendations!
4:00 p.m. – I’m trying to work out whether I should buy the new Macbook Air M1 or not. I’ve been using my 2014 Macbook Air 11 since high school, but while this has been great for school, it’s a huge challenge now that I’m spending more than eight hours a day on it. The screen is too small, so my back and shoulders hurt the entire time I’m on it, and the resolution is also too low. A few people from this sub have recommended that I get an external monitor, but I don’t have a home office or a desk. I work on our dining room table because my vanity’s too small. Since we don’t have Apple Store here in the Philippines, I have to make do with a re-seller. Right now, the lowest that a Macbook Air M1 goes for is $1,102. This is something that I can definitely afford, especially since a junk shop has offered to give me $249 in exchange for my old one. But I’m having trouble being okay with buying a new laptop when my current one is working just fine. I know I deserve it after all my hard work and I know that it’ll make working much easier, but still.
6:00 p.m. – For dinner, my parents bring home take-out from a local restaurant. We eat Breaded Tofu, Butter Buffalo Chicken Wings, and Mixed Vegetables. I do the dishes afterward, which takes a long time, because dishwashers aren’t common in the Philippines, and it’s hard to manually scrub oily food.
8:00 p.m. – I work and watch anime in-between.
Daily Total: $13
WEEKLY TOTAL: $192.13
REFLECTION
This week’s spending was unusually high, mainly because of my phone bill and rare expenses, like eyeglasses and contact lenses. I also had way too much food delivered this week, but I felt like treating my brothers since it was my birthday, so I don’t mind that all. My usual weekly spending, however, is somewhere around $10.
But aside from spending, I think that writing this money diary really forced me to confront my privilege and mental health issues, as well as my workaholic tendencies. It’s tough to admit to yourself that you aren’t happy at all, but maybe it’s time to finally face it. I feel like I also have a problem with making big splurges that will ultimately benefit me, so moving forward, I’d like to remember that while treating my brothers is totally okay, I should be kinder to myself too. There’s still a lot of issues that I need to unpack and work through, but hopefully, being 23 will give me the strength to do so.
I hope you enjoyed this money diary from the other side of the world :-) And sorry for any typos. I’d edit, but it’s 2 a.m. right now, and I’m exhausted.

PM (don’t @ me I know) and the Tar Train to Tendie Town

Done with this life

My family started in a trailer in a poor part of my city. First my parents had my sister, and then me a year later. My parents never married, but they tried to make it work for me and my sister's sake. They made it into an apartment, and then eventually worked their way into beginning to pay on the house my mom still lives in today. Up until I was about 10 years old, my father and mom stayed together in this house, and it was the definition of hell. Screaming/fights almost every day. Sometimes my dad would start it, sometimes my mom would, sometimes me or my sister. My dad has thrown me across the room, slapped and punched my mom multiple times, (my mom is 5'2', my dad is 6'3'). He has issues, some from his own father dying while he was young, some from using/selling coke and weed and drinking. My mom told me when I was young (maybe 7-8 years old) she was raped by two men in her home state of Oklahoma, and I don't think I really processed it well as a kid. Her dad also died while she was young, he fell to his death on a construction site.
Me and my sister both have mental health issues nowadays, but she did make it through four years of college, which is more than either of my parents or me did. I personally have really bad anger issues and anxiety, PTSD from close range shoot outs and robberies. I struggle daily with depression and suicidal thoughts almost every day. I sold weed at a pretty decent level for a long time, 6-7 years. I started around 16 when I realized my parents didn't really have the money they were giving me for my weed/drug habit. 20 or so dollars every day was adding up and they would tell me. My mom was a manager at a Texas roadhouse around when I was 8-9-ish years old, and she ended up getting in between two drunk guys that were in a bar fight and she got punched in her neck. She ended up getting a $50,000ish settlement, but had to have multiple surgeries and will pretty much always be in pain and will always have metal in her neck to the point where she can feel it when its raining outside. My mom has never been great with finances, so that money after bills went by very fast. She did use probably 20-30 grand of it on a new truck. An brand new F-150. Remember she's 5'2" lol. That was definitely a mistake, and I think she knows it, but I've never been good with money either. My father has always been broke, to the point where he would ask my mother for money for his own weed and bills. I'm not sure where my dad lives now, last I heard it was in the mountains in North Carolina. He left the house when I was around 10 like I mentioned earlier. He went to his moms house for a while and then moved out. His mom took care of us a lot of nights that they couldn't because of work or other things. She's the sweetest most Christian grandmother you could imagine. She had four kids, and then as I mentioned her husband (my dads dad) died of a heart attack while they were all still young. I can't imagine the pain, I'm sure it messed my dad up pretty bad. I think these things are important to understand though, because they help me see why they were always so mad and upset always.
So in comes when it started getting hard. I had almost no friends in elementary school, I remember getting a "red card" in maybe second grade for punching a kid in the back, yes the back, lol. Because he was literally just talking to a girl I had a crush on. I never really talked to girls then, I would just decide I had a crush on them. In second grade. Lol. He didn't even hit me back, he was kind of just like "What the fuck?" And then I just walked away until a teacher came up to me that's all I remember. I've always been a kind of small and skinny dude, and I especially was back then. In middle school I started making some friends but I was always annoying them because I was always asking to hang out and to come over to their houses. I remember my bus route used to go through the nicest neighborhoods on my side of the city, I'm talking retired NFL player nice. they make my moms house look like a shack, and I don't know if I realized it back then, but it was making me jealous. The friends I ended up making in middle school were not very healthy friends, we were always the loud and obnoxious ones. I got into a lot of trouble starting around this time, 7th grade. I spent almost half of my 7th grade year in In School Suspension, just staring at wall while "doing" class work. It was also this year toward the end of the year that I got into my first real fight. I was always outspoken, and so was this other guy, but he lived in a super nice house and was from a rich ass family. We had a social studies class together, and one day, I'm not even sure how it started, he started making jokes about my mother working at chick fil a. She got that job after her neck was healed up just enough to get a job. She had to get a job, as she was my house's income. She loved and still loves that job, she's a manager now. But back then and how he made fun of her in front of my whole class while my teacher just didn't do anything about it, I was just so mad. So I told him I was going to beat his ass and after class (and more trolling me) we met next to the side of the school and a huge crowd gathered to watch. A lot of people, not the whole school, but most of my grade, because we all exited the same door if you rode on the bus. I threw the first punch, missed, he grabbed my neck and slammed my head into the brick wall, I tried to throw another punch, missed, and I just yelled "stop making fun of my mom" grabbed my backpack and got on the bus, Just cried the whole way home, my sister on the bus was just wondering what happened. I've never been good at explaining my thoughts or feelings to people, so most people think I'm even more dumb than I actually am. I didn't tell my family about that fight for years, even though my sister did. I just will never forget it. I even tried to tell people that I didn't lose that fight even though everyone heard about it. I just couldn't come to terms with it. 8th grade I don't have many memories of. I was a goofball, and my grades were really slipping now, even worse than the year before. Most people just saw me as that weird kid who got his ass beat. I think around this time I started to get very, very cynical with my worldview and my attitude. I was always on the internet when I could be, playing shitty games on our homes only computer; a dell desktop, and reading stupid conspiracy theories. Later I would start gaming pretty hard, and I loved watching streams all the way back to the justin.tv days. My dad had a PlayStation 1, and I loved watching him play Call of Duty. It might be my only good memory with my dad, honestly, and he never got to play a lot. The internet and my cynical world view pushed me away from religion, even though my family was heavily Christian. Even before this though, I hated going to church. From a young kid onward every single Sunday was a screaming match between me and my mom about not wanting to go to church. Sometimes she would end up getting me to go, but that was less and less, and before even middle school I just stopped going completely.
So in between middle and high-school I started smoking weed, it made me some new friends and got me into hanging out at a park near my moms house. This park would end up being where I spent most of my next 6-7 or so years. Most people knew it was a druggie park, would call us all "park rats" and make fun of us for wasting our time and money doing drugs. But I gained more memories here than I could ever write down, I probably could make a book out of those memories. There were all ages of people there, some young as me, some mid 30s-40s, a lot of weed smoking teens, a lot of acid tripping hippies, some Xanax/oxy fiends, and even some meth and heroine people. Most days it was just normal people getting fucked up to enjoy their time, but there was always plenty of drama. This park was known not just on my side of town but through the whole city. its kind of tucked away in woods, sits on a lake, and has a small disc-golf course, so you'd even have a bunch of random (probably) sober people show up to play some days, but they usually stayed on their course and away from us, minus a few of them. I started selling weed when my mom started telling me no to my almost daily asks of 20 dollars. I look back and realize she just didn't have the money to support my habits, and I understand now. But once I started selling weed, I realized I could start eating when I was hungry, I realized I could get and smoke weed almost whenever I wanted to. Being at the park always made it easier to sell it too, because people knew to come there to find some weed. I met a LOT of people selling, and I mean a LOT. I started moving up to QP's (quarter pounds) on the front (pay back later) and always found myself 100-200 short on my re-ups, usually just from smoking too much and cutting too many people deals, Like I said never been good with money.
Then the serious shit started happening. I was maybe 17-18 when I was at my weed guy's small apartment downtown one day. I always liked going over there, not only because I knew we'd be smoking a lot, but because me and my plug were close, I looked up to him, and we had a decently similar shitty upbringing. One day, I get a call to come chill downtown at his apartment, even had two of our friends come pick me up from the park and bring me there. Took fat dabs on the way (THC oil/wax) and when I got there he surprised us with sheets of Gel-Tabbed Acid. Strong shit. I took my usual 2 doses, I was known for tripping a lot back then, haven't tripped since this day. It was going to be a "No Traffic" day, meaning no sales in his apartment so we could just smoke and enjoy our time. His girlfriend at the time had arranged a deal between him and 3 people he did not know. A young (17 at the time) girl, a mid twenties white dude, and a mid twenties black dude. What we didn't know until after this, was they had set this up, and once inside (mind you we were tripping pretty hard at this point), the white dude and the black dude pulled a gun on my plug and my plug instantly pulled his and fired back and 20-30 shell casings later everyone ran to get out. This was a very small apartment. I mean very very small, 7 or so people all feet away from each other. I was literally sitting on the floor because there weren't enough chairs for everyone, even before the 3 robbers came in. I ducked behind the chair I was sitting next to. One of the people that drove me there got shot twice, once in the thigh and one through the side of his asscheek, no joke. The white guy who was robbing us took at least one to the chest, and was also crushed underneath us all as we all ran out and flooded the small staircase down, I could not describe to you how twisted and contorted his body was, and I had no doubt he was dead. I ran to find my plug, I'm not sure why, but I saw somehow he had made it all the way to the other side of the street already, and was on the ground. I ran up to him, not wanting to touch him, and told him an ambulance is coming and not to worry, he was laying there bleeding out of his mouth and chest with what I later found out were SEVEN BULLETS IN HIS CHEST. I watched him die, or so I thought. I yelled for someone to call an ambulance and when I saw some random student walking past was doing that I ran away and back to the two friends who had drove me there. They were freaking out, it was a dude and a girl, they were a couple at the time. The dude had just gotten shot two times. His girlfriend needed me to go back in and grab her purse and phone that were left in the chaos, I said no at first, but she begged me so I ran back to the staircase and over the white guy on the stairs who had robbed us, I definitely thought he was dead the way his body looked. I went back up the stairs and into the apartment and grabbed the phone and purse and all I could see was blood and holes everywhere, it was disgusting, and it makes me tear up while I type this. I got back into the car and they drove to the nearby hospital (The guy that got hit twice actually drove, believe it or not) and I got out of the car right before they pulled into the hospital.
I'm 23, and besides these last two years, I have been on probation/in legal trouble my whole life. When I was a juvenile, I was on Show-Cap probation, where a cop would most nights come check and make sure I was at home. A cop would wake my whole household up at anywhere from 10PM - 2AM just to make me show him a card I had and then would leave, almost every night. During the shooting I was talking about, I was on Show-Cap probation. That's why I got out of the car at the hospital. I wasn't supposed to be around certain people or things like guns, legally. I got out of my friends car and walked (still tripping balls) to a McDonalds a few blocks away, sat down, and called a friend, crying the whole time, and I just remember seeing black around the edges of my vision, like I was either dying or falling into a like dark area of some kind, definitely losing it to the drugs at this point. I got picked up and drove back to my moms house, I told the car full of people I was with what had happened and they couldn't offer much aside from positive words but I will never forget at least they came and got my ass quick. That was some real friend shit. I cried and cried the whole way back to my moms, got dropped off, and like clockwork a few minutes later my mom got home. I told her something had happened (but not the whole story yet) and I felt like I was going to be in a lot of trouble. About 30 minutes later, maybe in total 1-2 hours after the shooting, a black SUV pulled up to my moms house.
I had to go downtown, I will say my mom even made me one of the Sur-gel drinks I had been using to pass drug tests to drink during the car ride there. They weren't even trying to drug test me, I didn't ask her to, she was just that cool I guess. I rode an elevator up a huge building and they sat me down with two cops who were pretty convinced this was my doing in some way. They kept asking me why I had been talking to my plug that day and when I said I hadn't, they pulled up my phone logs and texts. So they not only knew about my outstanding legal issues, they also knew I was lying. I really was just lying because I thought just being there was going to violate my probation. They had me on camera every single step from leaving the car at the hospital to walking into the McDonalds. They really wanted to blame me, they even told me my friend (my plug) was dead and it made me cry and cry and cry and cry. In the end, they couldn't hold me there. They forced me to point at a picture line up of people but I told them over and over I didn't know what they looked like and that you shouldn't use what I say because I just didn't know. Whole time during all of this 3-4 hour interrogation, they yelled and screamed at me and at one point left me in the room for maybe 2 hours while I just cried and cried. They were probably just watching what I would do when alone. I was still tripping acid, hard, and just felt like death was all around me. All I could do was cry.
Like I said, they released me to my mother. They obviously had no evidence against me, but one thing that they asked me during the investigation was why was my plugs girlfriend outside talking to the 3 robbers (juvenile girl, white guy, black guy, the juvenile girl ended up getting some lesser felonies but she didn't have a gun or shoot anyone, she just tried to block the exit at first). That was enough for me to put together that she was behind this, set him up to have him robbed. She probably just expected my plug to just give up his shit without a fight, but no, no he would never just do that. Obviously this whole situation fucked me up pretty bad mentally. For weeks I thought my plug was dead. Until one day he literally just called me out of the blue. Told me to come see him at his moms house. I'm telling you, this was my brother. Got in my car and went to go see him. When I got there I tried to hug him but he said he couldn't hug anyone, he lifted up his shirt and it was like a Frankenstein stitching all across his whole chest. If I recall it was 8 bullets that hit him in total. He had to use crutches and a wheelchair to move around the little bit he could. He only has one lung now, and will never move the same. It was a miracle, but no one died during that shooting, not even the white guy robber, who was shot in the chest and trampled over on the staircase. The white guy (I keep saying white guy and black guy just because I'm not trying to give out names, I hate all people equally) ended up pleading guilty and sentenced to 30 something years in jail. The black-guy robber took it to trial and WON. No fingerprints on his taped up shitty little .22 caliber pistol. Jury found him not guilty, and he is a free man to this day. Plug's girlfriend that set it up was never even charged as an accessory, but she did violate her adult probation by being there. As if that's all she deserved. This is a true story, google Fort Sanders shooting, It'll come up. The only reason my name wasn't in the articles was because I was 17 years old at the time. Not even an adult yet.
They subpoena'd me after the shooting to make sure I'd show up to court or to trial. It wasn't until 4-5 years later the black-guy robber had his trial. By this time I had moved up a lot in the selling game, my plug (same plug) had moved out to the west coast to step up his game as well. Had my own house I was renting in my hometown, Knoxville, TN. Nice car, shitty (but real) diamond ring, bunch of shoes and clothes, 2 shitty cars. Tons of memories, good times and bad, important memories in between then and the trial. I've had a lot of friends die that I went to school/smoked with, especially when Fentanyl started coming around. From what I've heard that's a problem a lot of people share, fuck Fentanyl. I have done most drugs, but luckily I was just smart enough to stay away from shit like heroine and meth. (not to say Knoxville powder wasn't dirty, because it was) I just really liked weed, it has always calmed down my bad emotions from my childhood and from the events I've been through, I don't get to smoke a lot anymore, mostly because I am poor again now. Its still Illegal as fuck in my state too, but that's another story.
I declined to testify at the trial of the black guy robber, and they never asked me to testify at the white guys trial because he didn't have one, he plead guilty. I decided not to testify because of multiple reasons, one- I hate cops, and law enforcement. I understand some are actually decent people. But go through a day in jail without food, because they CO thinks you're lying about not getting a tray, and ask me how you feel about cops after. Go through getting kicked out of your high school during your SENIOR YEAR because someone told some teacher you had weed in your car. I got pulled out of class by cops and arrested, and my car wasn't even on school grounds. Cops used to roll through the park I grew up in and would get out and do pat downs on whoever couldn't run away in time. These things and many more have made me hate cops, and yes, I still to this day hate cops. Is me not testifying the reason one of the robbers walked free? Maybe. But I certainly had no new information to tell the jury they didn't already know. Especially if the no fingerprints on the weapon they recovered was the reason they acquitted him. Who knows, maybe me going in there and crying like a bitch or something would've made it the jury see the truth. Either way it does weigh heavy on my heart but even my plug didn't blame me for not testifying.
During and before and after the trial, me and my plug were still at work. This is when I had moved into my house I rented, after living in a shitty apartment. I fully furnished it and everything. Washer, dryer, Ps4, Xbox 1, queen sized bed, the works. Even the little shower floor mat, I loved that home.
Fast forward to early covid 2020, my plug was starting to get annoyed with me. I was always asking him about the next pack coming in, always wanting as much of it as he could get to me, and I was always on him about the quality of it, even though it was always above average and most of the time it was top shelf. He ran into some legal trouble driving through Texas, that and along with a few other things happening in his personal life, work for me started slowing down. I never was good at saving money, I knew I should, I'd always beat myself up for not having money when I needed it, but I just never could change my spending habits. I'm still not sold on the whole "trying to be something you're not" argument because I've never had to fake anything. Most of the people I was around have heard from others what I've been through. At one point people were driving 2-3 hours just to pick up from me. I've been robbed plenty of times and I've robbed others. One things for sure, if karma is real, then I've definitely paid my dues. I haven't been selling now or have been in any legal trouble for the longest stretch of time since I started it all almost 8 years ago. And yes, I am proud of that.
Almost all of the friends I've ever had have either robbed me or wronged me in some way, or I've cut contact for my own issues or reasons. As of today, I have one friend that lives in Ireland, and he's a great friend, but he's got his own life to live. I got evicted for giving a bad check to my landlord, 3 weeks before they did the eviction halting for covid, which is still active today. Unlucky for sure, but my fault nonetheless. Finding somewhere to live has always been a challenge for me because of my lack of provable income. Today I have decent credit, a credit card, and a few thousand dollars I have invested in my Robinhood account that I seem to keep losing and gaining back. I stream on Twitch, but my last stream I just sat and cried for like 2 and a half hours, its still the latest stream on my channel. No one wants to follow me or give me a chance, which I understand, I probably could make it work if I grinded harder and harder at it, its just depressing as fuck to sit there and talk to yourself for hours at the beginning.
Todays' (1/28/2021) events in the stock market made me write this. Me and my mom keep fighting and its BEEN PAST the time I move back out again. No one will lease to me. She wont even stay here until I leave, as of this last week. I'm waiting on my new debit card to get here in the mail, and whether I have somewhere to go or not, I told her I'd leave when it got here, I have been homeless a few times, lived in my car, extended stay hotels, other peoples' couches. Its hard, but I know that I can make it fine. Today I woke up and had $20,000 in my investments, up from $1,100 I started with at the beginning of January 2021. I finally felt a little bit positive about my future at least a little bit, after a very depressing Christmas and January. Then Robinhood and other brokers today cut off buying GME, AMC, and others. I was heavy into GME, having gotten in @ $69 (lol) dollars a share. It was $450+ per share this morning, after a week of mainstream media attention from every social media website, major TV news stations, and billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, that Chamath guy (who seems awesome) and many more. Robinhood and a couple other brokers actually turned off the ability to buy the stock. Literally. All the stocks that were heavy volume "meme stocks" they cut off. I was in GME and AMC, but even Blackberry, Nokia, and others were cut off too. Needless to say, after the whole week of manufactured panic from all of these different sources, this straw broke the camels back. GME at this moment is trading @ 225, and I sold mine when I opened my app and saw it at 155, which was the lowest dip of the day. I came out in the green, I came out making a $1,500 or so dollars. But my portfolio by the time I cut AMC losses went from $20,000 this morning, down to $5,000 as I type this. I have never wanted to kill myself more than I do right now, mostly because this week it felt like I really earned this. I stayed diamond hands (held through the media pressure) through this whole week, only to give up at the end. It will hurt even more if GME recovers from this dip, but It's not because other people are making money without me, its because I could've used that money to move out, get some food to eat, get a new car that doesn't leak through the roof in case I'm living in it here in a couple days. And more importantly, I earned that money. I noticed the momentum before it even touched 40 a share. I've watch DFV's (roaring kitty on YouTube) 5-6 hour livestreams where he was going over the financials and spreadsheets of GameStop back in fucking 2019. I believed in this play and threw the money I had at it, and it should have worked out at least better than it did, I was planning to exit or at least hedge my earnings tomorrow, when shorts have to cover. But when I stepped away to eat lunch and take a shower because of how stressful this morning this morning was, I came back, opened my phone, and I was $15,000 down. So yes, my diamond hands failed. I sold. And while I still had a gain, its not at all what it should rightfully be. I can't even bitch and moan in the Wallstreetbets subreddit because apparently me being a lurker for a year isn't enough because of all of the newbies in there from all of the media attention.
So to finally wrap this up, I feel like I tried my best in this life. I haven't always been a good person, but not once have I thought to myself that I was evil. I'm too nice sometimes, and its gotten me fucked over, and I'd still go back and front friends weed or give them money/weed for free because I'm just not having fun unless people around me are too. Everyone's struggling in their own ways. I do not want to live on this earth any longer. I wrote this to at least explain to everyone what happened to me. And while I left out some very important parts in my life, this should give you a summary of what was going through my mind today. I really have been a good human being these last 2 years. Maybe I'm greedy for not selling earlier today. I was just so caught up in finally "sticking it to the man" and making the best play I've ever made I didn't want to feel like they would win by making us sell. I didn't even come out in the red, but goddamn it feels like I lost everything. I don't want you to feel sorry for me, just learn from my mistakes and take care of yourselves. You have to be stronger emotionally than I was. Move out of the U.S. if you can, its just greed and money that rule here. Maybe nowadays that's just everywhere.
Thank you to anyone that for some reason read all of this. To my dead friends Tad, Pmoney, Cierra, Raegan, Tina, I miss you guys and you better have a blunt for me when I see you all soon, I could really fucking use one about now. Much Love, - Bleezy

[Barterverse] Wealth of Planets 5: Dreams

RoyalRoad
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Some people have brought up the possibility of other restaurants competing against Rey's McDonald's. But the bigger concern for people in areas without a respect for rule of law isn't a burger war; it's a burger cartel. Like an economic cartel, not a drug cartel. Well… maybe both.
There are many theories on why so many of the human countries that went through peak industrialization during the early parts of the 20th century began to embrace democracy or civil liberties, and began to reject hereditary authoritarianism. One of them is rooted in the very economic nature of industrialization:
A society can't industrialize without basic education.
It is very difficult, not impossible as there are certainly exceptions, but very difficult still, for a government system to allow the level of education required by rapid modernization and still manage to maintain an iron grip on its people.
When the humans introduced a brand-new lifestyle to the galaxy, rulers and governments everywhere loved the products that they brought.
What's not to like? They made wealthy families feel like they were finally living in luxury, and quality of life clearly went up. Maybe they didn't need the labor saving devices as much given that they had servants, but no army of servants could build you a human automobile that went from zero to sixty in four seconds. Or entertain you like the latest blockbuster movies straight from Hollywood.
And many of these rulers did somewhat care for the needs of their people; that's how they kept their regimes going. They would like the ability to produce more food than their people could ever eat. To do so, farmers need to learn to use more advanced tools, which may require training.
They would like the ability to produce consumer goods in factories. They would like to be able to mass manufacture industrial goods. They would like to have engineers innovate and develop new technology to compete on the galactic market.
To achieve all of that, they needed to provide more education for their people. And people who have learned reading, writing, sciences, math, history, or even philosophy tend to start reading and even understanding some fairly dangerous ideas.
They start asking questions like:
"Who makes the rules for everything?"
"How are these beings chosen and what gives them the right?"
And the most dangerous question of all, "why is life so much better on other planets?"
Even before the blockade, the people of Zakabara Second had started asking themselves these questions. And when their genetic cousins on the homeworld were restricting their ability to trade with others for the prosperity they wanted, the Seconders were beginning to find some very uncomfortable answers to these questions.
Gakrek Low Orbit
"Gophor Tower, T-two one-four-eight, request clearance for landing pad," N'har said professionally into his microphone.
"T-two one-four-eight, cleared to approach pad eight," came the equally polished voice of the space control tower.
That was quick. Must be a slow day.
"Grayin, how's it going down there this early morning?" he asked, taking a bold little chance. Although every single space traffic controller in the galaxy tried very hard to practice their personalities out of their voices, he could tell by the smallest husk in the accent that it was her down there.
N'har could almost hear a smile in her voice as she replied, "not bad, N'har. Traffic's light so far. Clear skies, no wind."
Pushing his luck, he said, "I wasn't asking for the weather report Grayin, but thanks. How about you, my pretty Gak friend, how are you doing this fine morning?"
A little pause at the other end made him think maybe he'd gone a little far on the radio, then Grayin replied with a much more casual tone, "pretty good. My big sister and her husband are having a baby soon, and we had a big feast at their place last night. She roasted a whole chicken for the family! We even had some spices from Earth: paprika, pepper, rosemary, garlic…"
"Nice, nice," N'har chuckled, "if you reserve me a good pad next time I come by, maybe I'll bring you a real Earth chicken."
"Shhh N'har you know that's not allowed. We can't just give you a better landing pad, it's all about first come-" she started to recite official spaceport policy.
"It'll be one of those big, fat, juicy rotisserie chickens, straight from the Costco vendors," he continued without missing a beat, "I have a food warmer in the back of my ship, and it's just gonna smell-"
"Alright! Alright, if you come early tomorrow, maybe I can get you pad four," she replied before he could get into a more detailed description of the aromatic and mouth-watering nature of his cargo.
While N'har celebrated the little victory silently on his end, Grayin then asked, "speaking of food, have you heard of the new food store we have?"
"You mean that thing Enrico's been working on with his girlfriend for months?" he prodded, hoping she'd have some unique gossip he could tease Enrico about later. "He keeps asking me to bring things for it."
"Yeah, they just opened for business today," she said, looking out her window at the golden arches down the concrete spaceport near where the trader tents are, "it's called McDonald's… any idea why?"
"No idea. It's a human name. How does the business look?" N'har asked.
"Looks pretty good, they've got a line I can see all the way from here," Grayin said, squinting at the crowd in the distance, "actually, that's a really long line. I'm not sure if it's even open yet."
McDonald's, Gophor Location
It was a really long line. And it had just opened. More than a thousand creatures lined up in several long snaking back-and-forth columns, most of them Gaks. Luckily, the locals had a lot of experience lining up for food thanks to their experience with the Red Cross during the famine so there was no trouble there.
Enrico and Rey were not expecting this many creatures. The main target of the restaurant was supposed to be traders, not locals! In fact, Enrico didn't even remember this many people at the spaceport ever in all his time there.
The cost of a full meal was almost a week's worth of pay for a skilled worker! But they came anyway. Most of them were there just for the experience of ordering a hamburger from the human food store. Seeing the commotion, many of the traders with their spaceships on the landing pad also got in line.
N'har got in line, and asked one of the more enthusiastic Gaks in front of him, "how long do you think this line will take?"
The friendly looking creature looked back at him and replied, "the folks in front have been waiting since last night."
"Last night?" N'har gasped.
"Yeah, but the store just opened a while ago. The line is moving really quickly now," she hastily added, "you'll see. They call it fast food for a reason, right?"
Goripli had never seen a crowd this big waiting to buy from him before. His entire crew had been training for the past couple weeks to fulfill every order within sixty seconds of the customer getting to the front of the line, but to actually have to do it is a whole nother matter.
A new order lit up on his screen, another medium coke. Cup, ice, press the button, wait, lid, put it on the tray, straw. Repeat. He could do this in his sleep.
It wasn't exactly fulfilling work, but having this many people as customers was exciting. And the dream of the new battery operated toaster he was planning on getting after his first paycheck was very fulfilling.
After a while, he moved over to the fries station. Everyone who's ever worked a fries shift at McDonald's knows that it's simultaneously the easiest shift yet with the highest experience ceiling. The actual mechanical task is so easy it's usually the first station new fast food workers get stuck with. You just load the basket with frozen potatoes, dunk it into the oil vat, and when it's done, unload and pour some salt on it.
Once every few days, the oil needs to be changed, but not very often because it's so expensive that some restaurants call it liquid gold.
In the McDonald's handbook, the six enemies of oil are: carbon buildup, air, salt, heat, water, and detergent. The maintenance of the oil vat is a complex task that usually falls upon the manager to facilitate; it very often has a large impact on the profit margin of the business.
McDonald's oil used to be a substance called Formula 47: egregious amounts of frozen beef fat that looked like butter, mixed in with a small amount of the far more expensive vegetable oil. Some even credit the deliciousness of this formula as a big part of the success of McDonald's in the first place. Unfortunately, it was also prone to giving people heart attacks, so over the years they gradually switched to one that was mostly vegetable oil with a touch of beef flavoring, except in India.
Rey had looked at the possibility of bringing this beef tallow formula back given that her customers were mostly going to be aliens who may not be susceptible to the effects of saturated fats, but Chicago rejected it outright on the basis of liability. Oh well.
The most complex part about managing the fries shift for line workers, though, is not the cost of each ingredient. It's being able to anticipate and stagger the cooking loads, so they are fresh and ready right as customers order them. On Earth, this is done with a variety of methods including more recent experimental attempts at using AI. But mostly it's just done by workers checking the parking lot camera to see how many people there were.
Today, this was no problem. Goripli was just making as many as he could as fast as they could be made. The line outside stretched around the corner beyond the food tents. And almost everyone wanted the fried potatoes.
Traders Only
New Thread: New McDonald's opens at Gophor on Gakrek. First offworld restaurant!
Comment: I was there this morning. The line was long, but well worth the wait. I've heard one of my human friends describe one of these to me, but it just isn't quite the same as visiting one in person. 5/5
Comment: The fried potatoes are great. I wish I could give this more stars. 5/5
Comment: Had a full Big Mac meal while waiting for my reactor refueling. Gophor is now my new lunch spot. 5/5
Comment: Did they have the chicken nuggets they do on Earth?
Comment: Superb lunch. 3/5
Comment: I'm a vegetarian seriously regretting my species' choice of dietary restrictions in our evolution millions of years ago. This is not fair. Why don't Earth vegetarian chains open up offworld as well?
Comment: Haha you aliens are just discovering McDonald's and treating it as a gourmet food revolution? What's next? A Denny's on Bohor? Unbelievable!
Comment: Dude, you're making us look bad. Just let them have this one.
Thread restricted to non-human traders due to flame war.
Comment: I might have to actually go try this out tonight. Who's with me?
Enrico took a turn at the registers while one of the shift changes was going on. He hadn't done as much training as the crew, but order taking wasn't that hard. And Rey said it was important that he stood where the aliens could see him, as if to advertise that a human who knew what he was doing ran the restaurant.
The kiosk had plenty of pictures and wasn't designed to be hard, and none of these aliens were having that many custom requirements. If they tried to add a round egg to a big mac, he'd have to look around a bit, but most of the orders were simple.
Hamburger with meal.
Hamburger without meal.
Just the fried potatoes, please.
Would you like this for here or to go?
That'll be 7.25 credits. Thank you.
Move on to the next customer. It was pretty mind-numbing work, and the smile he had to put on his face was quickly becoming a permanent feature-
Enrico looked up and saw the next customer in line, and put on his best smile, "welcome to McDonald's! What can I get for you?"
Rey started the morning working the lobby and kicking herself inside for not getting one of those portable tablets that would allow her to take down orders from the long line stretching out the door. At least she could make herself useful greeting newcomers and making sure that they had someone to go to if there were complaints.
Not that they had any. The novelty of the restaurant, along with the high standards to which her employees trained, took care of that. The only slightly awkward moment was when a Gak child looked at her and asked why all the workers in the restaurant were smiling so hard.
Sometime around midday, she had to take a break, slinking off to the back of the kitchen near the storage area.
Enrico spotted her, and concerned, walked over to ask, "Rey, are you alright?"
Years of saving. Almost a year of planning and hard work. And going to bed in a sleeping bag on a hard mud floor. Her lifelong dream. It all caught up to her at that moment.
For once, Rey just didn't have the snarky words to describe her raw emotions. So, she settled for just hugging him in and dabbing the corner of her eyes on his apron.
He was surprised, but didn't hold her back. Their camaraderie ran far deeper than their official relationship of owner-manager. Returning her wordless embrace and gripping her tightly, he repeated, "I know, I know."
They did it.
Grob and Grood came in during the afternoon. The line still stretched beyond the tents, but a fresh shift and well practiced employees were quickly processing all the customers they had.
Before the opening, the pair had volunteered to be the subject for training for several of their employees, so they knew exactly what to order and what to expect. Several of the workers behind the counter who knew them gave them a knowing nod.
They managed to find a quiet two-person table near the entrance, where they sat, played with their food, and Grob pointed out various parts of the spaceport to his wife, who doesn't come down here often.
"Grob, Grood! Nice to see you guys make it," Rey smiled as she saw them, exhausted but still managing to put some excitement into her voice, "you guys got the usual?"
"Rey!" Grood was her usual excitable self, gesturing around the filled restaurant and line, "this is fantastic! Good work!"
"Thanks Grood. How's the food?" she asked, knowing what Grood would compare it to.
"Not bad, not bad at all. Not as good as my cooking of course," Grood winked mischievously, and then said, "but it's very, very filling."
Rey had been hearing this a lot. For a people whose supply of food was not guaranteed before, this was the best compliment Grood and the locals could have given her restaurant.
Gordorker and his clan showed up as well. It took multiple trips of cramming Gak children into the back, but the new pickup that they'd given Ghili helped. There was no special drive-through window, so she parked in an empty spot right next to the building and dropped them off.
As they entered the line, they started reading the menu off the big sign on the outside of the building. One of the difficulties in running a restaurant on Gakrek was that the lower than Earth levels of literacy made a large menu hard to explain to people. Luckily, there were many pictures, and all of Gordorker's children had learned to read at his insistence.
When it was their turn in line, Enrico saw them and came over. Nodding at Gordorker, he said, "your meals are on us." He typed in a code on the ordering machine and allowed them all to order however much food they wanted.
When they got their meals, they jibbered and jabbered over which item was whose and took in the smell of it all. Ghili and Garns critiqued the bun breads with professional eyes; they couldn't help themselves.
The younger kids loved it. Even though Gordorker and the valley was no longer as poor as he was before the famine, getting a large variety of food was still difficult. They often ate bread and potatoes for dinner. Meat or even other imported vegetables was an occasional treat.
Enrico had a fleeting image in his head of obese Gak children stuffing their face with fast food, but immediately discarded it out of his mind; there was certainly no risk of that on this hungry planet.
He cleared some space for the kids upstairs, so they could all sit together at a table. It was important to keep their future suppliers happy. Soon, they're going to need all the supply they can get.
Garber, the spaceport manager, got in line too. Enrico saw him and gave him his meal free, of course. Looking at the line and prices of food sold on the menus, it became obvious to him that he'd way undercharged the "donation fee" for this lot, but it would be dishonest for him to change it now.
It didn't matter anyway. As long as he could bum some more free meals off this restaurant in the future, he wasn't the kind of Gak to make a big fuss about it. Besides, the food portions were good.
The next restaurant on his spaceport, he thought, now that was an opportunity. After all, these kinds of businesses don't stand alone for long.
Laniers was a trader from the close planet of Olgix. Despite the recent ethnic conflict flare-up between the two species on her homeworld, they were still very much tied together by the space trade.
She liked the food, but that wasn't what really blew her mind. It was the lines out the door despite the prices on the menu. She realized right away that the business model targeted traders, and she suspected it would hold without an issue. Many space truckers were here, and more would come.
There was a lot of money to be made, and it didn't all have to be made here on Gakrek. Other planets could do this too, and the fact that most of the employees in the restaurant were Gak told her that this wasn't a human-exclusive venture.
Laniers sat there at a stool counter seat on the second floor for a while, and she decided that there was nothing about this place that couldn't also be replicated by the Olgs. It was just a big building that cooked imported goods and served them to more than willing customers with an even more enthusiastic crew.
And she was absolutely right. Despite what some humans thought about the aliens due to their initial lack of economy, they were certainly not stupid. If there was an opportunity humans could exploit, it didn't take that long for them to catch on.
Goripli finished his third consecutive shift and collected his free meal. After standing up all day and looking at his customers' food, he was getting hungry. Officially, he wasn't supposed to take any food from the kitchen, but that didn't stop anyone from sneaking a fried potato once in a while during his shift.
It was tiring work, but he knew it was good, honest work that paid a lot. Even on a good day when he was selling bagged soda, he didn't make nearly half as much as Rey was going to pay him today.
I'm going to work hard, Goripli decided, and maybe one day, my children will start one of these of their own.
It was an odd experience, Grayin reflected. The workers behind the counter were all smiling and extremely friendly, far more than any trader or vendor she'd ever met. Which contrasted hard with the speed and assembly line characteristics of every part of the operation that all seemed designed to get her the food she ordered and out of the store as quickly as possible.
Because they were.
As for the food, she almost regretted ordering the triple cheeseburger. It was massive: larger than her paws can hold! And then it came with a box of fried potatoes. And then a drink. They'd said that she could refill her drink, but she was worried she couldn't even get to the drink before she was full.
Was this how normal humans ate on Earth?
For a minute, she just sat at the table, staring out the second floor window at the spaceships taking off and landing in the background, contemplating what sort of culture and resource abundance would produce such a business. What kind of species would encourage such excesses-
"Oh hey, Grayin, you're here for the opening too?"
Grayin turned, recognizing the speaker, and said, "ah Zarko, no I actually didn't know it was opening until I got to work this morning. Just came by after work to see what it's all about."
"Aha. I was invited to the opening by a friend who saw an ad on Traders Only," Zarko pointed downstairs at where his friend was ordering their food, and said, "I've been to one of these before on Earth with human friends, but this is my first time seeing one of these this busy."
"So it's not always like this, for all of them?" she asked, almost disappointed.
"No, well, maybe it's different for each," Zarko conceded, "but this is definitely the most non-human customers I've ever seen in one place. This is a good business. Maybe I should consider opening one like this on Zeep-zep."
"They must make a lot of money doing this," she said as she stared dreamily out the window. She'd never been off the planet, and like many other Gaks, she too dreamed of one day reaching the stars. In this booming economy, if she tried hard enough, maybe her children-
"Oh yeah, if what Enrico told me a while ago about the prices were true," said Zarko oblivious to her daydreaming as he did some math in his head, "this is gonna make them a lot of money."
It did. Far more than they expected on day one. From the customers and feedback they were getting, they didn't need that more data points to know that they had a business, not a fad. The franchise became the most affordable restaurant to have 4.5 stars or above on Traders Only, and they didn't even need to pay for the rating.
"How many customers?" Enrico asked incredulously.
"Just over ten thousand," Rey looked as if she didn't believe it either.
"We're gonna run out of our initial inventory in less than a week! We didn't plan for another shipment until week three!" Enrico almost wailed. He'd learned a surprising amount about the management of logistics just from talking to Rey, and he could operate and make these predictions on instinct now.
"Oh hush that's a great problem to have," she said, "we'll just order more tomorrow. It's not like Earth is running out of fast food ingredients anytime soon even if all of Gakrek wanted to take a turn."
"It certainly looked that way," he said, smiling, "there were many new faces from out of town, and it looked like a whole village from down south came over."
"And our imports are still pricier than we want it to be," he added, "we'll have to get our local production lines going as soon as possible."
"That we will."
She snuggled into his warm chest with her sleeping bag still wrapped around her, feeling him stiffen as she did. Then, after what must have been a minute, he gently brought his arm down around her shoulders and then slowly stroked her hair.
Rey smiled tiredly and fell asleep, dreaming of a very different future than she imagined when she boarded that spaceship. A less lonely one.
Governor Palace, Zakabara Second
Things were not going well.
Mollikutta, the Governor of Zakabara Second, cursed the dark clouds for her bad luck. When she got appointed governor five years ago, she just wanted a cushy job where she just signed off on ceremonial documents all day, gave a speech once a year, and then retired in a spacious country home, leaving enough for her descendants that they may be able to leave this cursed planet in three or four generations.
Then, the humans came.
At first, it was great. Traders flooded the markets in Zakabara with cheap Earth food, many times cheaper than those produced by those backwards proles back on Prime. Her people began to be able to buy other things from the humans, like their well-made and very much affordable clothes and shoes.
Mollikutta did well herself. She started getting paid in credits, which was obviously superior to barter. With all the salaries and bribes adding up, it was even looking likely that she'd be able to retire with enough to buy an older model spaceship!
Some craftsbeings were put out of business, but they eventually found work in the new factories popping up, and the cheap prices of everything softened the blow of their decreased income. Most other people benefited from this influx of goods, and few complained.
Prime quickly issued a directive to stop it all. No more imported food or clothing from Earth. In fact, no more of anything from Earth.
People grumbled, but things could be worse. Zakabaran food was not selling well anywhere else, so their farmers had to sell them to each other and to Second for much cheaper than they normally would. The price of food did not go up that much. More people were annoyed about not being able to buy the goods that were coming from Earth before that.
A black market appeared. The shoes, clothes, and furniture from the humans began to be sold at a higher price. Prices spiraled high enough that alien traders just decided to sell these goods directly to the residents of Second and began doing so without permission from Prime. They also brought food, consumer appliances, and occasionally imported machinery for the new factories that were popping up on the colony. Things were not cheap, but not unreachable to the growing middle class.
This went on for a while. The spaceport authorities were Seconders, and they knew which side of the bread they put their butter on. Traders that were known to land with contraband Earth goods were directed onto landing pads out of sight from the security gate, where they could be ignored.
By the security guards, not by the buyers. Their goods usually sold out in minutes.
As more and more traders saw this, more began "smuggling" goods to Second as well. An unenforced ban on offworld goods was almost as good as no ban. Prices began to drop, and some goods even became affordable. In rare cases, they could even be called cheap. Locals stopped buying as many goods from Prime, but that was their own fault for charging these exorbitant prices! Some human food was starting to get brought in as well.
Then, the Prime rulers had to ruin everything again. They actively started to enforce their draconian rules from space. News began arriving: trader ships were starting to get shot down or inspected in the space over Second, and the shipments stopped coming. Only Prime shipments were being allowed through, and those traders had the audacity to start charging an inconvenience fee for being subjected to the blockade!
To make matters worse, if that were even possible in Mollikutta's opinion, Prime started making less food because they couldn't sell them outside the system. As the surplus went away, food prices were slowly going back up to what they were before the humans arrived.
Now, they were stuck with the tiny variety of goods and food from Prime, which were sold at well above galactic average prices.
Was life still better than before the arrival of the humans? Yes, probably. But now that the people of Second had a taste of consumer goods and the galactic common market, they were not about to stop. They wanted more; they deserved more!
Mollikutta had not been happy with being stuck with this conundrum either, and as the representative of Prime on this planet, she had been noticing dirty glances her way whenever she would go out into public.
At the market. At her daughters' school. She stopped getting invited to social events.
It wasn't even her fault! She begged with Popptaw to allow in some trade from outside, but Popptaw was insistent. They were not going to let their citizens spend their hard-earned credits on mere trinkets and sustenance from those alien traders. It was bad for local factories and bad for the species, she'd say. All goods must go through Prime.
The expensive blockade was also taking a toll on the Primer merchants, and being the geniuses they were, they passed the costs onto the people of Second. Inspection fees became protection fees. Protection fees went up. Popptaw even started levying high taxes on the production of goods! People weren't starving. Not yet. But they didn't have any disposable income either.
Pretty soon, Mollikutta noticed that the dirty looks her subjects were giving way to straight up defiant ones.
This was not a good sign. Things were really not going well.
RoyalRoad
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I am 25 years old make $75,000, live in Northern Virginia and work as a Senior Advisory Specialist

I live with my boyfriend, W., but we do not combine finances. Additionally, I would like to put a content warning here at the top: I discuss tracking food and weight loss throughout this money diary.
Section One: Assets and Debt
Retirement Balance - $19,195 in two 401ks (current and former company) and $18,478 in a Roth IRA (my grandparents set this up and matched the money I made working in high school/college - I'm very grateful that they set this up for me!)
Equity - no equity currently, I rent and do not own a car
Checking account balance - currently ~$5,000 (I try to keep it around this amount)
Credit card debt - $0 (I pay it off every month)
Student loan debt - $9,500 remaining to pay off the loans for my BA in political science (here's hoping I finish it off this year!)
Stocks - $1,190 in stocks from my former company. I also have some miscellaneous other stocks that I was gifted when I was younger and I'm unclear on the value of them (my dad manages them for me)
Savings - $1,500 (it took a big hit while I was unemployed this past summer)
Section Two: Income
Income Progression:
High school (2012-2013) - I worked at a local office supply store making $7.50/hour. I did this for fun spending money a few days a week after school.
College (2014-2017) - I worked two on-campus jobs. The first was as a front desk person at the fitness center beginning at the end of my freshman year; I typically did ten hours a week at this job. The second was as an assistant in our career center, and I did this for the entirety of my senior year; I typically did five hours a week at this job. Both paid $8.50/hour.
Internship (2015-2017) - I studied abroad off-cycle from July to December in Australia, and was offered an internship doing recruitment and operations work at my mom's company after randomly meeting the COO in an elevator and impressing him in a brief conversation. What originally was going to be a five week internship went on to be part-time remote when I was at school, and full-time when I was home for the summer and on breaks. It paid $12/hour and introduced me to human resources and strategy & operations.
Company #1, Job #1 (2017-2018) - After graduating college, I moved to begin working in Washington DC as an associate at a healthcare firm making $40,000/year. I really enjoyed this work and my team, even though there were some times I had to work long hours. I was promoted to a senior associate role after my first six months, which came with a 10% raise.
Company #1, Job #2 (2018-2020) - I decided that, while I liked my role within the company, I wanted to gain client-facing experience. I applied for and moved into a analyst role in a different department at $52,000/year. I was excited about this role because I got to travel and train clients onsite one to three times a month and build up a lot of important business skills. About halfway through 2019, I was told that they wanted to pay me more because they felt my effort outpaced my seniority and was out of the blue bumped up to making $70,000/year. During this role, I was also eligible for up to a 10% bonus based on how my team did.
Unemployment (2020) - Due to COVID-19, my company took a big hit being in the healthcare space. The vast majority of my team was made redundant in June 2020. While a super stressful time, I did get some severance and used it as an opportunity to assess what I really wanted in my next role; I knew I liked being client-facing, but realized I wanted to get back to human resources in some way.
Company #2 (2020-present) - I took my current role as a senior advisory specialist in the fall. I was able to negotiate a $75,000/year salary and a 5% bonus. The work I do is very energizing and rewarding, and I'm hopeful I can stay here for a while and move up the ladder because I like what I do a lot!
Main Job Monthly Take Home:
I make $4380.90 each month after deductions. I get paid twice a month.
Deductions (per paycheck)
· Medical insurance: $29.50
· Dental insurance: $7.50
· Eye insurance: $2.75
· 401k contribution: $156.25 (I plan on increasing this after my student loans are paid off) + 4% company match
Side Gig Monthly Take Home:
I run a book blog on the side, and while I currently don't make any money off of it, publishers often send me advanced reader copies of books! I save a lot of money that way, because I am buying books constantly.
Section Three: Expenses
· Rent: $975 for my portion of the one bedroom apartment that I share with W. I pay slightly more than half because I make more money than he does. All utilities are included.
· Student loans: $500 is the minimum I pay per month because I want them paid off as soon as possible (the minimum monthly payment is about half that). I usually throw extra money towards them when I have a low spend month.
· WiFi and cable: $140.06, which is absolutely ridiculous and I keep saying I'm going to call Comcast and negotiate this down but get lazy and don't. Yell at me in the comments to do this!
· Netflix: $14.88 (I also let my best friend use this)
· Spotify: $9.99
· Hulu with live sports, HBO, Starz, and Showtime add-ons: W. pays
· Amazon Prime: W. pays
· Nail salon subscription: $40 (this is cheaper than the cost of a gel manicure and includes a free gel mani every month plus extra bonuses, which makes this very worth it despite sounding extravagant!)
· Care/of vitamin subscription: $70
· Boxing membership: $179 for unlimited classes
· WW: $15.11 (I'm on a six month deal currently)
· Fitbit Premium: $9.99
· iPhone payment plan: $31.20 (this will end in November for my iPhone 11. I am still on my parents' unlimited data phone plan and have been told I never have to leave, which is a total blessing!)
· Google storage: $2.12
· iCloud storage: $2.99
Additionally, I have an annual payment of approximately $2,750 for my life insurance policy; I have a blend of whole and term life. I am currently not making these payments, as my grandparents created a fund to pay the first several years of premiums as they felt it was important for me to get life insurance at a young age so it could start gaining cash value. I am incredibly grateful for this!
Day One - Tuesday 1/19
7am: My alarm goes off and I am still tired. W. and I cuddle for ten minutes or so before he gets up to make us coffee. We drink our coffee in bed while watching a few YouTube videos from our favorite content creators; the two of us are very into a video game that we play together and consume a lot of content around it.
8:30am: Time to get back into work! We both work from home right now, so we move into the living room together. My inbox is surprisingly empty after a long weekend, so I dive back in to a client request that I didn't finish before closing my laptop on Friday.
9:00am: I have a few morning meetings, so I take a few minutes to get ready. I throw in my contacts and brush my teeth, then get dressed from the waist up in a comfy gray Fortune Ivy sweater and hoop earrings. I make another cup of coffee to keep my energy up.
9:25am: I move into the bedroom to take my meetings. I have a bed tray for my laptop, which makes it feel more desk-like on my bed. I first have a meeting with another member of my team to discuss how we're dividing up a project that we're working on together, followed by two town hall meetings. At some point during my meetings, W. texts me that he ordered an energy drink powder that we've been meaning to try and Venmo requests me for my half ($23). I munch on the last four donut holes we have left over from the weekend for a snack during my meetings and make sure to log what I eat in my WW app.
1:00pm: Out of meetings and in need of a break. W. comes into the bedroom and asks me if I want to go out on a quick walk, which I happily agree to. I throw on Girlfriend Collective leggings, my lucky Rangers sweatshirt, ballet flats, and a freshly washed mask and we head out. After a good 20 minute walk, W. offers to pay for McDonald's for lunch, which is great but definitely not WW friendly. I get a 10 piece nuggets and large fries, and W. gets himself a few burgers. He pays and we take it home to eat on the couch and chat for a few minutes before I have to get on more work calls.
2:00pm: Time for more meetings and project work! I return to the bedroom and call into meetings for an hour, including a weekly meeting I facilitate, and then put my 800th rewatch of Grey's Anatomy on the TV in background while I work.
5:30pm: I log off of my laptop right on time for a Facetime date with my DC best friend, A. We met at my first job and have been close since the minute we met. She just moved into a new apartment and got a new job, so she gives me a tour of the new place and we catch up for about half an hour. After we hang up, I say hi to W. for a few minutes and then go hop in the shower. I do my usual skincare routine (a bevy of Ole Henriksen products, I swear by them) before throwing on comfy clothes and joining W. in the living room.
7:00pm: I throw the Rangers-Devils game on my iPad (I'm a diehard New York sports fan except for basketball) and text my hometown best friend, B., about absolutely nothing while W. plays a video game for a while. I'm not super hungry, so W. heats up leftover tuna casserole for dinner while I just cut up an orange. At some point we mute the hockey game to watch a few episodes of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, our first forray into the Housewives franchise which we've quickly become addicted to. We brush our teeth and make it to bed around 10:30pm.
Total: $23
Day Two - Wednesday, 1/20
7:00am: Usual morning routine: wake up, cuddle, coffee, and videos. I get out of bed to make the coffee this morning.
8:15am: I join W. for a quick morning shower before work starts for the day. I also do my weekly weigh in and I'm down almost another pound! The progress is slow, but that is also the healthy way to lose weight. I mark it down and log my coffee.
9:00am: I text with my mom about today's inauguration while I work. She wants to know if I can hear anything from my place, but besides the occasional sirens, there is no big fanfare yet. I set a reminder on my phone to turn on the news in a bit to listen.
10:45am: I finish up a difficult client request and send it off to their account team. W. gets me a lemon Pellegrino from the fridge for me to enjoy during my 11:00 meeting.
12:30pm: Out of my meetings and we have a new president!!! W. gives me a recap of Biden's speech and I find myself getting emotional after watching the video of Kamala getting sworn in. After wiping away the tears, I throw some chicken, buffalo sauce, and seasonings into our pressure cooker so we can have easy lunches: chicken sandwich and salad for W., chicken quesadilla for me so I can easily measure out how much of each food item I'm using. I log my food and we eat together during a quick fifteen minute break.
2:00pm: After changing out my water bottles (I like to drink out of reusable water bottles over drinking glasses, not really sure why) I remember why I don't like to use this one. I log on to the Hydroflask website and order a 21oz bottle with the sports cap lid ($28.58). I pick a color that's on sale because it's cheaper, find a coupon code for free shipping, and go through Rakuten so I can get 2% cash back. I also figure now is as good a time as any to get dressed since I have to be on camera for my afternoon meetings, so I throw on a camel and black polka dot Papermoon blouse and black Beyond Yoga leggings.
3:45pm: Weekly check in with my manager while I snack on a sliced cucumber. He and I discuss my 2020 review, which he literally had to do for me when I was less than a month in the role, and what my goals for 2021 are. I am setting my intentions on Friday, and I am very excited to think through what I want to accomplish this year. We discuss a few other projects and end a little earlier than expected. A friend of mine is streaming on Twitch, so I put his stream up on the TV while I work on a data project and gift a sub to a fellow viewer ($5.99). I see that someone has put a 4:30-5pm meeting on my calendar for tomorrow, so I have to cancel out of my 4:45 boxing class. Sigh.
5:45pm: I wrap up my work and head out to chat with W. for a bit. We decide to play our favorite video game for a while, so we log in and start playing in duos. We get a win in our very first game! After a while, our good friend N. joins us, so we switch to trios. At some point during what becomes a marathon gaming session, W. makes himself a frozen pizza and I drink the last two Stella Cidres we have in the fridge. Brush our teeth and head to bed around 11pm.
Total: $34.57
Day Three - Thursday 1/21
3:57am: I wake up for absolutely no reason. I hate when this happens. It takes me over an hour to fall back asleep.
7:00am: Usual morning routine, cut a little short for me to get ready for an 8:30 meeting.
10:00am: In desperate need of a break from my work, I log onto Etsy to pick out some cute candles for A. as a little housewarming gift. I have to text her for her new address, which kind of ruins the surprise, but I know how much she loves candles so I do it anyway ($32.86).
1:00pm: I get off of a client call that I shadowed with a member of my team. I have just decided on my focus area, hence why I am trying to get more exposure to the client work here. My teammate and I debrief and agree that I'll continue to shadow the calls that she does with this client so I can see the whole process through.
3:00pm: Out of another team meeting and exhausted from work. My 4:30 meeting cancels, and I'm bummed for a few minutes because I cancelled my boxing class to be in that meeting. But my mood turns around almost instantly - I got off the waitlist for the 6pm class! I text W. so he knows, and he asks if I can make him dinner before I go because he doesn't want to wait until I get back to eat. Fair enough. I agree and get back to work on my data project.
3:30pm: I get an email with the return label for my Fitbit. I've had it for a year and it randomly started giving me a rash on my wrist, so Fitbit is reimbursing me the total amount I paid for it. Customer service at its finest! I send the label to my Fedex store for pickup tomorrow, since I don't have a printer ($0.52).
5:30pm: I wrap up my work for the day and throw on Old Navy active leggings and a tank, tie back my hair, mask up, and head out the door to the boxing studio. It's endurance day and we do eight minute blocks instead of six, so I am dying by the time class is done. After class, I go to Target to pick up a few miscellaneous items we need: half & half, white vinegar, and chocolate peppermint stick Luna bars ($10.64). I mobile order and stop by Chipotle on the way home to grab a dinner of crispy chicken tacos and chips and guac ($16.23).
7:30pm: I stop by the concierge desk on my way back into the building to grab packages I have waiting and to catch up with my favorite concierge. She is a delight to talk to, but busy tonight, so I don't stay too long. Once home, I devour my tacos in about four minutes and then shower before putting on the Laker-Bucks on the iPad while W. plays video games. We migrate to the bedroom after halftime to finish it and are both exhausted that we fall asleep immediately after.
Total: $60.25
Day Four - Friday 1/22
7am: Usual morning routine. After watching two videos, W. announces that he isn't feeling well and is taking a day of PTO. I get him tucked comfy into bed with a movie and start my work day early. I put Grey's Anatomy on the TV while I work.
11am: I am hungry after powering through work all morning, so I place an order for a cheese pizza from Wiseguys ($21.99). A nice quick walk will feel good.
11:30am: I mask up and head out to pick up the pizza, stopping by CVS on the way to get a Red Bull for W., a Diet Coke for myself, and a bottle of Benadryl because I ran out ($27.27). I eat a slice of pizza while watching a bit of a Twitch stream before getting back to work. I also spend some time texting with B., as well as my older sister, C.
1:30pm: Back to back calls. When they're over, I check in on W., who unfortunately only feels worse. He decides to try and nap, and also informs me that he wanted to watch a Marvel movie so he added Disney+ to our Hulu subscription. He pays for that, but I'm happy we'll finally be able to watch those shows we've been missing out on!
4:30pm: Done with my projects and decide to call it a little early today. I appreciate that my manager doesn't particularly care if we stop early when all of our work is done, and I need to go to the Fedex store. I listen to one of my curated Spotify playlists (a lot of Halsey, Taylor Swift, Joan, and Flor are on this one) while I walk there to pick up the label I had printed. As I walk out of the store, several of my music friends start texting me - Halsey cancelled her summer tour. I am bummed because I was supposed to travel and go to several shows with friends. I make a mental note to start cancelling hotel reservations and request my Ticketmaster refunds tomorrow.
5:30pm: Manicure time! I've started doing gel manicures every other week because I have a horrible nail biting habit and this is the only way I can stop myself. I catch up with my favorite nail tech and the salon owners over a glass of sparkling rose. Today we do a nude-pink polish with black and white polka dots. When that's done, I also poke around at the beautiful jewelry they sell and pick out a pair or multicolored acrylic bow earrings. My subscription covers the manicure, so I only have to pay my tip (25% of the service cost) and for the earrings ($24.87). I text W. to let him know I'm on my way home and he asks if I can pick up NyQuil for him. I pop into CVS on the way home to get it ($16.94).
7:30pm: W. and I have a quiet evening, bouncing between a few TV shows and basketball games. We call it an early night and go to bed before 10. Wild Friday!
Total: $91.07
Day Five - Saturday, 1/23
8:30am: I wake up feeling pretty well rested. W. is still sleeping, so I get out of bed quietly and head out to the living room. I answer a few work emails that came in last evening, including a stretch project to present some webinars later in the year! I used to facilitate webinars in an old role of mine, so I'm looking forward to flexing that muscle again. I also submit my Ticketmaster refund requests, cancel some hotel reservations, and peruse my favorite auction website. I spy my dream Louis Vuitton bag (Speedy 40 in canvas and leather) at what could be a steal. I do some mental math at what would be the max I would splurge on it and set a max bid. I'm currently winning and text B. with excitement.
9:45am: W. texts me that he's awake but still not feeling well. I crawl back into bed for some snuggles and ask him what he needs. He wants bagels, so I agree to go out to pick them up if he pays for them. He orders a BEC on an everything bagel for himself and a multigrain bagel with butter for me. I throw on black Girlfriend Collective leggings, a Halsey tee, and my Adidas superstars, grab my mask and jacket, and head out the door. It's a little chilly, but it feels good. It's a quick turnaround to get back with the bagels. W. and I eat them in bed while watching some Real Housewives.
12:00pm: We're still in bed. Oops. We transition into watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and W. orders us some Popeye's to eat throughout the day: 12 piece spicy chicken, biscuits, fries, mashed potatoes, and a large Diet Coke to split. We will heat up leftover Popeye's for lunch someday this week. I embrace the fact that this is not going to be a good WW week for me, and remind myself it's okay to be human and have some indulgent weekends. Progress, not perfection!
5:00pm: W. dials into his weekly virtual D&D session and I decide to solo queue my video game for the evening. I debate having some wine, but decide the fast food was probably enough for my stomach and that I don't need to add alcohol into the mix. W.'s session wraps up around 9:30, so we chat while I clean the apartment a bit before taking a quick shower. I towel dry my hair, toss on some weekly skincare (eye cream and a fancy serum that I'm not really sure what it does, it just makes my skin glowy) before settling into bed.
Total: $0
Day Six - Sunday 1/24
3:00am: I wake up congested as can be. I get two Benadryl and a Zicam from the bathroom, lay back down, and pray for sleep to come.
9:10am: Well, I guess sleep came. I missed the start of the booking window for upcoming boxing classes, but luckily there are still openings in all the classes I wanted. I'm trying to up my workouts, so I decide to try the Wednesday morning class as well. Maybe I'll like being a morning workout person?
11:00am: W. and I both decide to call our respective moms. My mom and I try to talk at least once a week on the phone (we also text every day, I just haven't mentioned it, whoops) and we catch up on random bits of each other's lives for about 45 minutes or so. I tell her about Halsey cancelling tour and we're a bit worried, as we're supposed to see Maroon 5 together later in the year after it got rescheduled from 2020. Hopefully by the fall we'll have herd immunity, though I'm not super positive that concerts will happen. I miss concerts :(
12:00pm: I do a bit of apartment maintenance: taking out the trash, breaking down boxes and taking them to recycling, wiping down the countertops, etc. W. comes out to the living room when his phone call ends and we try to decide what we want to do. W. is still not feeling great, which is worrying, but he has no COVID symptoms. He gets a quick telehealth appointment and is assured that he most likely has the cold/head flu thing that is going around and should stay home to not burden the healthcare system. The doctor assures him that me coming/going from the apartment shouldn't transmit whatever W. has and that while he should stay home until he is feeling better, as long as I'm sanitizing and showering often, I can leave. I'm guessing a lot of people are asking that question since the doctor told him that unprompted, and I'm relieved to know that I won't be unknowingly getting someone else sick.
1:00pm: W. and I decide to order Vocelli's for a late lunch/early dinner: bacon and cheddar pizza rolls and a build-your-own stromboli with bacon, spinach, and extra cheese. I have a GrubHub gift card from Christmas so we don't have to pay out of pocket for this meal. We play some video games together until the food gets here, then pause to eat and watch an episode of Shark Tank. When we finish eating, we go back to gaming because there isn't much else to do while W. is sick.
7:00pm: I move into the bedroom so we can watch the Rangers-Penguins game on my iPad while he plays a different video game and I scroll on my phone. My dad randomly calls me, and I'm worried something happened to my grandpa (he's my last living grandparent and lives alone). Luckily, Grandpa is fine and my dad was just jealous that I talked to my mom this morning while he was out running errands. He's adorable. We catch up for about ten minutes before he has to go. When 8:00 rolls around, we switch over to the Wizards-Spurs game since they're finally playing again and mute the hockey game. Both teams lose and I'm a sad sports fan. We brush our teeth and throw on some Futurama to fall asleep to.
Total: $0
Day Seven - Monday, 1/25
7:00am: Usual weekday wakeup routine. When it's time to get to work, W. decides he'll work from the bedroom so he can continue to rest. We order Starbucks (peppermint mochas for both of us, turkey and pesto panini for him, sprouted grain vegan bagel for me) on UberEats and split the cost because we wouldn't normally have it delivered ($14.87). I listen to calls while I work and get dressed in a bright color Girlfriend Collective set and black Forever 21 active tank to try and offset the dreary weather.
10:00am: Out of my first set of meetings and I run the laundry down to the laundry room ($3.25). I listen to a Twitch stream while I work and continuously check on the Louis Vuitton I'm bidding on. The auction ends tonight at 8pm and I'm still winning!
1:00pm: Still working through projects. I have been outbid past the maximum I set for myself on the Louis Vuitton, which is disappointing but I'm sure I'll get one eventually. I can still dream about it in the meanwhile :)
2:15pm: I take a quick break to package up my old Fitbit and place an order for a replacement. It ends up being free because of my full refund; the only cost is not having a tracker for a week or so. Could be worse! I make myself an energy drink using the powder that we ordered earlier this week to fuel my afternoon meetings with some non-coffee energy.
4:30pm: I throw on my sneakers and mask, grab my gym bag, and head off to boxing. After a few tough client requests today, throwing some punches feels amazing!
5:30pm: Out of class and off to Safeway and Target for some filler groceries. I did a big food shopping last Monday and we ended up doing a lot of takeout, so we don't need much. I get milk, yogurt, frozen berries, ciabatta rolls, frozen popcorn chicken, peanut butter pretzels, and two types of cereal. I text W. to let him know I'm on my way home ($23.70 for my half) and despite the drizzle, it is a refreshing walk.
6:30pm: Freshly showered and time to decide what to do for the evening. I find a movie, Collateral, by doing a reference search for a movie vibe that I loved (Inside Man, if you're curious) but am disappointed to find out it's not available on any streaming service. W. saves the day by telling me we actually own it on DVD but have never watched it, and lo and behold, it's buried in our giant plastic tub of DVDs. Movie night saved! We curl up on the couch and watch the movie with leftover Popeye's.
8:45pm: The movie is done and I'd give it a solid 4/5 stars. While discussing our favorite parts of the movie, we get into a random fight. I find myself getting heated for no reason, take a deep breath, and ask him to explain his side. W. has severe anxiety, and it turns out he had a few anxiety attacks during the movie so he wasn't articulating himself properly. We talk it out and he apologizes; he's made a lot of progress on dealing with his anxiety, but he has a long way to go. Not wanting to end the night on a bad note, we decide to stay up a little later than usual so we can watch some more Real Housewives and feel better by the time we go to bed. Asleep by 11:30.
Total: $41.82
Weekly Expenses:
Food + Drink: $118.71
Fun / Entertainment: $5.99
Home + Health: $68.06
Clothes + Beauty: $24.87
Transport: $0
Other: $33.38
Lastly, reflect on your diary!
This diary was very typical in some ways, and atypical in others. I normally cook a lot more, but with W. being sick I definitely used that as an excuse for takeout, hence why I'm following WW to try and lose weight! I think if I continue to be careful with my spending I can pay off my student loans this year and build my emergency fund back up, so I'm definitely buying less "fun" things in 2021… but if another Louis Vuitton comes around I'll probably bid on it :)

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Well, McDonald’s play areas began as a big branding effort. Shutterstock, via @mcdonalds 75 of the Craziest Facts About McDonald’s. Originally Published: July 02, 2020. You bring the kids. We’ll bring the party. Fun for kids and stress-free for you, we’ve got parties down to a science. For Happy Meals, cake, decorations and party favors, just talk to your local McDonald’s manager. MCDONALD’S is shutting down all kids’ play areas in the UK over coronavirus fears. It comes as cases of coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, have jumped to 1,543 in the UK with 55 deaths McDonald's Closing Dining Areas, Play Areas Amid Coronavirus Pandemic . The company said all company-owned restaurants will close seating areas, effective at the close of business on Monday. McDonald’s is joining the ranks of companies revealing plans for reopening.. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, McDonald’s closed the dining rooms to its corporate-owned stores in mid Find the best McDonalds With Play Areas near you on Yelp - see all McDonalds With Play Areas open now and reserve an open table. Explore other popular cuisines and restaurants near you from over 7 million businesses with over 142 million reviews and opinions from Yelpers.

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McDonald's reveals plan for reopening dining rooms, Play

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PM (don’t @ me I know) and the Tar Train to Tendie Town

Introduction:

But wait! You say. Aren’t cigarettes a dying industry?

FINANCIALS: or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the stock: