Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Anti-Matter Yeah I tried the mixed berry one, Strawberry, and the Pineapple. Some of the pies are a bit too sweet for my taste though.

@NintendoByNature I’ll certainly let you know when I get it that way we can arrange a little co-op.

@ThanosReXXX I'm not against good coloring like that specifically. I have a supply of Ateco colors in big bottles I used to use for various desserts in the past myself, and there are non petro colorings as well. But salted caramel Ice cream is kind of a specific product that comes in a specific color because the color is named for the actual product of caramel.......i couldn't imagine either how or why you would make caramel blue..... That's like red lemonade or purple pasta sauce.... It just makes no sense

It probably tastes decent.... It's not flavor throughout, it's a candy shell. But it's not the salted caramel Ice cream i know....

Yeah i have one of those hand made places. Crazy expensive and only 40-70 minutes away through 25 or so traffic lights! . I love it and go once every 12 to 24 months.... The rest of the time theres Dairy Queen...... Which is non dairy soft serve ice cream. I don't want to figure that out.....

Otoh i haven't been to mcDonald's in probably 7 years. Burger King though in occasion. It may be junk but it's better junk than mcdonalds!

I'm thinking Arby's. Except Arby's is now an hour away and 2 minutes from the best real burger joint left over from the 60s and the best pizza place ever.... So if I'm going an hour that way, I may be thinking Arby's but I'm sure as heck not eating there.

@NotTelevision sweet just let me know

@NEStalgia Well, I can agree to that, and I'm definitely in agreement about the salted caramel thing.

As for non-dairy ice cream: soda or tofu-based, then? Weird stuff, surely. Either way, the shop where I get the hand-made ice cream from, is definitely not crazy expensive. Here, you can get a cone with one soup ladle-sized scoop of soft ice cream mixed with rich whipped cream on top for only €1,50, so around $1.70. And a large cup with three of those large size scoops is only €2.50.

Oh, and agreed on Burger King. Better quality burgers AND fries than McDonald's could ever hope to have, although I do still appreciate the odd quarter pounder. And for chicken-related fast food, I only go to KFC.

@NEStalgia Here you go:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g188590-d677276...
Be sure to read some of the reviews underneath.

Oh, and in case you're wondering: a "banketbakkerij" is a pastry bakery or specialty bakery. Besides ice cream, they also make truffles and all kinds of cakes and pastries.

I'm so tired of people saying 2019 was the worst year for gaming since 2014

• Resi 2
• DMC5
• MK11
• SamSho
• Metro Exodus
• Afterparty
• Valfaris
• Apex Legends
• Control
• Blair Witch
• Disco Elysium
• Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden
• Goose Game
• Bloodstained
• Indivisible
• The Outer Worlds
• COD: MW
• Astral Chain
• Luigi's Mansion 3
• The Link's Awakening Remake
• Deltarune Chapter 1
• Sekiro Shadows Die Twice
• Fire Emblem Three Houses

Did people even play half of these games before just writing them off as mediocre

EDIT: Before you say it, I purposely excluded games like Dragon Quest XI S, Catherine Full Body and Persona 5 Royal because while games like Resident Evil 2 and Link's Awakening are remakes, they deviate enough from the source material in order for them to feel like completely new experiences, whereas those aforementioned three games are just expanded re releases with extra content, but they can't really be considered new games.

@ThanosReXXX well i tend to forget half the cow breeds originated in ned .. i bet everything dairy is cheaper there. But here it's about land premium and regulations. Cows have to justify why they're using the land instead of a corporate headquarters or outpatient surgical center, after all

But wow, that's cheap! Yeah my place charges by the ounce, so it's like $.45/oz. A scoop like that would be about $2-3 or so, plus .75 for a cake cone (1.25 for a fancy cone) and whipped cream an extra .30. roughly. The cup of 3 scoops would probably be about $6. And everyone will praise how it's a nice affordable activity. Welcome to yuppieville. Keep up or else...

Though even supermarket containers that used to be half gallons and are now over 30% smaller are fairly expensive.

@NEStalgia Well, farmers don't have it easy over here either. Currently, there's actually strikes and protests going on, because the government wants to tax them harder and/or regulate them more strictly, due to the whole C0² limitation debate, and the international rules that we supposedly agreed to...

@ThanosReXXX wow that store and the pricing remind me of how things were maybe 20 years ago here before it went so pretentious. Now something so cheap would be presumed to be junk and ignored. If it's not expensive it's not good! I search for such places. I find them but they're relics from the past that last only until the owners retire. Theyre getting scarce.

@NEStalgia This specific store is already run by a third generation. When I was little, my mom would take me there for ice cream, so I've already known them for 40 years, and I've seen the old man pass it over to his son, the son working with his kids, and now the kids mostly having taken over the business. It's been running ever since 1937, only ever having been temporarily closed down for a while during WW2.

As for the pricing, I assumed you saw this picture:

or was that just your comment on the prices I mentioned?

We do have shops with US prices over here as well, though. But those are more for the exclusive ice cream desserts, you know, like the ones with gold-plated chocolate wafers and so on, or places where they mix the ice cream with fresh bits of fruit and such, but this shop is meant for Joe Average, it has always been a store where everyone should be able to get their pastries, pies and ice cream, so they keep their prices in check accordingly.

And it's popular as well: as you may have read in the reviews from TripAdvisor, there's often a line snaking out of the shop, with people waiting to get their hands on a freshly made cone or cup of vanilla and whipped cream soft serve.

@NintendoByNature I'll take your word for it. I like honey well enough on its own. Hmm...this sounds kinda like the salty/sweet fix I can get with the rare order of French fries and ice cream.

@ThanosReXXX I've just started the book. I more or less know what happens thanks to the movies (I normally read the books of a single novel or franchise BEFORE watching the movie(s) involved, but I did things out of order this time).

Facepalm My apologies, I DID see that comment but missed the second tag and somehow thought the rest was directed at someone else. That was back on Tuesday when I was mid-conference, so I likely just skimmed the post before heading off to the next event. Happy Hour was that evening....

Thank you, thank you, and THANK YOU for sharing those videos! I knew Floor was talented, but man did those really hit home. I think my favorite out of all of those was the Phantom of the Opera video.

That's also an interesting concept for a show. I'm not sure if there's a direct equivalent here in the US as I don't watch hardly any TV nowadays. There are/were some similar shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent (though the latter ranges into much more than music).

As for delayed responses, the only thing truly delayed besides the above was when I checked the Wii. That was about three weeks ago now, I think. I just picked up Batman: Year One last weekend. XD

@Tyranexx Yeah, I was just pulling your leg a bit there.

Glad you liked the videos. The show in general is really great and entertaining to watch, because instead of being a talent show, like the ones you mentioned (which, by the way, are also broadcasted over here, and we also have The Voice), it's just a gathering of some of the country's greatest singers/performers of the moment or that specific year, and they just share stories and music, which almost makes it feel like being in your living room with friends. The setting is very cozy and amicable.

There's also no cup or award, just great artists making great music for each other and with each other.

My personal favorite is the first song, "Winner", but Phantom of the Opera is a VERY close second. The reason why I prefer the former, is because of the reason for the song and the story behind it. Floor sings it for Tim, the guy that she did the "Shallow" duet with, and it is a song he wrote for his brother, who's in a wheel chair because of being born with an open back (spina bifida), but regardless of all the misery and trouble he experienced while growing up, he still stays positive, and that is why his brother made a song for him called "Winner".

But the most touching thing about the whole performance is the rest of the back story. Tim is a bit of a stoic person, and a rocker/grunger by heart. He said when he decided to say yes to the show, that he would certainly enjoy the ride, but he was not going to cry or even get emotional on national TV. And prior to the show, he had announced releasing an album called "Lions Don't Cry" (Dutch people are called lions, because that has been their coat of armor ever since medieval times. You'll also always see a lion somewhere on a Dutch national team's outfit).

Well, suffice to say, that Floor simply took a wrecking ball to Tim's supposedly unbreakable wall, and she made him cry like a little baby. He even mumbled something in jest about his still to be released new album's title now being ruined...

You can really see the song hitting home in Tim during the performance, and at the end, you see a little bit of him admitting defeat. If you go to the actual page of the video on YouTube itself, then you'll see that the first two comments underneath it are from Floor and Tim themselves.

Your favorite video also has kind of a funny back story. Henk Poort, who by the way actually was the star of the Dutch version of Phantom of the Opera, said to Floor, when she asked him to do the duet, that he would only agree, if he could also do the song with the entire band, the next time that Nightwish would perform in the Netherlands. Well, she agreed, and in return, he did the grungy bit halfway, as a sort of a precursor to what Nightwish fans would be able to expect...

If you have some more time to kill somewhere this week, then you might want to watch the entire duets episode, because all artists are great:

For clarification's sake, I'll just add the who's who here, so you know what genre they represent and that also kind of adds to the whole atmosphere of watching them going WAY out of their comfort zone at times.

So, without further ado, the list is as follows:

• Henk Poort - Opera, musical
• Floor Jansen - Symphonic rock
• Tim Akkerman - Rock, grunge
• Samantha Steenwijk - Songs of Life/Slice of Life (there's no 1:1 equivalent in English, although blues comes close text-wise, but not music-wise. Songs of Life is all about the sorrows of life and all its facets, both good and bad, and it's typically Dutch)
• Rolf Sanchez - Reggaeton (guy's only half Dutch, lives in the States, and he's pretty famous in Miami and the surrounding area)
• Emma Heesters - YouTube cover artist, singer/songwriter
• Ruben Annink - Pop, country

(I only just now realize that I made a miscount earlier, saying that there's three male and three female performers, when it's actually seven in total... )

And then there's Jan Smit, the presenter and motivator. He's actually also a singer himself, but here, he only stars as the MC and does the interviews and so on.

P.S.

Just in case you didn't know this particular Floor Jansen album yet:
https://floorjansen.fanlink.to/northward

@ThanosReXXX Yeah, the premium stuff is one thing, but I suppose part of the problem is for the most part premium is all that's available here. The "Average Joe" stuff ends up not profitable enough, especially with all prime real estate pricing & taxes, and has been closing rapidly. Businesses need to make mega-profits to keep the lights on....and average joes aren't providing returns on that kind of markup. Supermarkets (for now) are still here with "average joe" stuff, though they've been trying to move more upscale too. Though, honestly, ice cream is one of those weird things that there's nowhere left to actually GET ice cream (other than overpriced containers in a supermarket freezer that always melt by the time you get it home, then never taste right after they refreeze.) There's Dairy Queen's non-dairy soft serve. There's McD's. I suppose that's really our "average joe" stuff. There's the premium place 45+ min away (through the heart of Yuppieville).....I don't think there's actually anywhere else to get ice cream anymore, now that I think of it. Even Cold Stone, the chain upscale premium place that wasn't even that close closed years ago. There was a cool new frozen yogurt (sorry, FroYo - got to get my yoga pants and play the yuppie part) place I loved that lasted all of 2 years. Huh...I hadn't even realized all ice cream is gone (unless you count non-dairy, or sit-down restaurants that will serve you handmade ice cream for dessert for like $7.50 + tip. )

There may be a deli or two that has Hershey's (hard type, not soft type) ice cream. That's usually fairly expensive as well, but certainly not as outrageous as the others.

Pastries....fortunately I do have one 1960's bakery around that's very good and normal priced. The new places are "up scale" have tons of cupcakes (that appear to be the same cupcakes from the week before), have products that I know for a fact were just bought from Sam's Club (Walmart's wholesale club chain) cakes that most definitely were made from cake mix, not from scratch, and high prices to boot (funny thing about rich people. They can't taste the difference between a Walmart cake and something hand made by Julia Child. They just praise whatever is expensive enough and they're told is supposed to be premium.... )

Then there's Panera.....the nasty chain in every shopping center....."bakery cafes"....more like frozen bread reheating shop that brews burnt coffee beans in a push button dispenser. They put "paninis" on the map....then abandoned the category. They charge like $2.50 for a tiny slice of a bunt cake that looks like a supermarket bunt cake. Or $23 for a whole bunt cake (that absolutely should cost no more than $5.) $4 for a danish. Even the real bakery charges $1.75. Lux people shop there. It's trendy and happening in the now lol yolo! Most people just buy supermarket pastry. They're kind of soggy, and dunked in formaldehyde or something. They take a few weeks to go moldy even left out in July. If it's not July they may last months before they just kind of mummify into a dense, foam-like substance. I hear people praise how you don't need to bake stuff anymore because these stores just have so much wonderful stuff to choose from! They're like $18 for a 6" 1/2" single layer. Yet I swear 10 years ago they were $6.99 for a 10" that was thicker......

@NEStalgia "The "Average Joe" stuff ends up not profitable enough"

Ha, only in America, my friend. Only in America. Over here, it's completely, 100% embraced. It's by the masses FOR the masses, and no one is going to take that away from them, or there'll be hell to pay...

Never come between the Dutch and their comforts and things they're used to. Even entire government cabinets have paid the price for that...

But the ice cream shop in particular, is something of a different category. There's also bread shops, vegetable shops and other food stores like that, which still deliver the same service and quality that our grandparents were used to, and it's all artisan, handmade, hand-grown, hand-baked, whatever.

What with all the stories we've now shared about our surroundings and commodities, it would sure seem to me that you'd feel right at home here, and I'm betting that for the price that you're paying right now, you'd get twice the amount of house over here, if not more.

Either way, you should definitely come visit, whenever you have the chance and the budget to spare. I'll personally give you the grand tour of the place.

@ThanosReXXX (Also, as for "average joes" not being profitable, it is sadly true, unless you're Walmart, technically the biggest retailer that does just that. Business here is all about charging the max the market sustains, and the landlords in stores price the space according to that expectation about the maximum output a store in the area could generate (or a doctor's office...) ) Do you think you'll meet the landlord's pricing by selling quality ice cream at a marginal profit to the average person, or by selling designer $800 hadbags to corporate vice presidents and senior financial analysts if there's enough of them in the area to buy them? Or better, most shopping centers get a 1-3% cut of the gross a store generates. Think 1% of a few dozen $800 handbags a month gets them more, or 1% of an orthopedic surgeon charging $10,000 per procedure against insurance companies with a 10% co-pay? NOW you see the depth of our retail crisis, and why shopping center owners are actively forcing all normal stores out. Then they blame Amazon.)

@NEStalgia You really sound more like you belong in the southeast, cuz we still have all those things. We even still have a Main Street with local restaurants and businesses. Farmer’s market takes a block every Saturday, first Friday of every month is a small festival with vendors and bands. There’s even a shoe repair store. Yet 4 miles from all that is our mall and a Walmart. You may have to drive 15 minutes to get to town proper, but the drive is sprinkled with corn, peanut, and cotton fields.

@HobbitGamer That does sound great. That's technically more rural than it ever was here, but closer to what it was 30 years ago than not. We do have in the denser area an old school town (the town is 200 years old) that has the restaurants, but we're talking up-scale avante garde restaurants and wine bars and such. $25-50 a plate type places. I think there is a farmers market that sets up around there out of a semi in a parking lot. There's a real farm market still in the area...but....of course expensive/upscale pricing (farm is premium, not normal, so you pay much more for food from a farm than waxed stuff in a refrigerator from Chile as a luxury item.) And of course it's permanent gridlock getting there.

4 miles from a Walmart. I never, ever, ever thought I'd say that, but that sounds lovely. I hate Walmart...but in the absence of anything else, I'll take it. My Walmart kind of got screwed. It was far enough already at about 20 minutes out (in the good old days) but then they built Yuppieville on TOP of it, so Walmart is crowded in by office and apartment high-rises, perpetually gridlocked streets on a (now) 6 lane highway encased by 5 traffic lights just to get around the Walmart's shopping center. So basically, it's a Walmart in the middle of an urban grid surrounded by the nuveau riche that would never (ever) set foot near the stink of a Walmart. I imagine they'd close that one (that's not even that old) as soon as they could build another one somewhere else, but there's really nowhere left in the region to actually build one, and wherever one is is prime real estate (which is the opposite of how Walmart works.) There's a Target a fair way past that, and what WAS the shopping district, and now is, but it's all crowded in now and horrendous to navigate.

On the average trip there you'd spend about 20 minutes on the road, and another 15-30 minutes waiting for traffic lights. Some lights are 4+ minutes for ONE light and you never get through on the first. it can take 15 minutes just to get on and off your own street round trip if you have to wait for 2 lights. Rather than building all the stores in one place they should be mandating they're spread out so they're locally accessible at any location.

I have a supermarket that in the winter when the leaves are down I can actually SEE it from my driveway. It takes 8-12 minutes to get there. So 16-24 minutes round trip. To get to the end of the street to a building I can see. Most of that waiting at the two traffic lights between. I'd probably be able to walk there faster however even to walk there.....you have to wait for the traffic lights for the crossing.........

@ThanosReXXX BTW, one thing you touched on yesterday was the multi-generational businesses there. That in many ways is the key thing that broke here. Many of the best places that closed (before all the big chains started closing stores too) were family business that when the kids inherited it, they didn't want it. Not even small things. Local chains of pretty big stores (full department stores, big box stores, etc), the kids got it and the first thing they did was sell it for the money. Smaller family things, the kids don't care about the mickey mouse family business, they wan to get an MBA and work for some big multi-national. So the family business exists just long enough to put the kids through college, and then the parents retire and close it. Be it a farm, (if it had land it becomes luxury condos/apartments), or a small services or food/bakery/etc store, and that either becomes a chain or gets flattened and becomes an office/medical. There's no interest in family business and multi-generations taking over now. It's just a tool to get to a corporate job.

@NEStalgia Well, I think that quite a few of us could ask ourselves the question if there REALLY is something that keeps us anywhere specific. Mostly it's just perceived value, pride or comfort, whereas in a situation such as yours, it kinda sounds like you always led a happy life on a farm or completely secluded and peaceful area, but now the government has decided to modernize the neighborhood, and seeing as you ain't moving out, they've simply decided to build the roundabout around your house, including all the high rises that go with it...

At the very least, I'd move state, to somewhere more rural or whatever. @bimmy-lee's town sounds nice, so you might like it there.

As for the whole "for the masses" thing, I've sort of reconsidered some of my earlier statements, and perhaps my usage of Joe Average wasn't exactly appropriate. What it is, more than anything, is the Dutch hanging on to traditions, and old-school practices, and very strongly at that. Like the ultimate form of "if it ain't broke... "

And over the ages, they've found ways to provide almost everyone with these specific products and services for affordable prices, either by simplifying the process, or by limiting the variety. The ice cream salon, for example, while they do offer several types of pastries and pies, and luxury chocolates, the ice cream only comes in one flavor, and that's vanilla and whipped cream, the latter of which is always sweetened over here, by the way.

So, instead of having dozens of flavors and never knowing exactly which flavor you need to keep the most supplies for, they have always just offered that one single flavor. Of course, that's partially due to the store being so old: back in the 1930's, they didn't have all that many exotic flavors in the first place, or it would simply be some kind of syrup dumped onto or mixed into the base vanilla ice cream. And sprinkles of course, but other than that, it was all relatively simple, especially compared to modern day ice cream salons.

Either way, the principle behind it all is that most if not all people should at least be able to relatively easily afford themselves these products with the quality and taste from their grandparents' time. We obviously also have all that cheap budget trash over here in the supermarkets, like ready made cones in all kinds of flavors, ice cream sandwiches with soggy cake, and what ever else is imaginable, but the hand-made stuff is just meant as a middle of the road solution: good quality products for an affordable price.

Oh, and trust me: Amsterdam is as anti-Europe as you could possibly imagine. There's actually quite a few yanks living and working over here...

P.S.

$150 - $200 for a hair cut? I know you were exaggerating, but even so, the real price must also be quite steep, if you take it to that level. Over here, I get a hair cut for around €20 ($21-$22). Women usually pay more, due to all the extra procedures/treatments they often need and/or want.