u/30andnotthriving

Saw this clip on a TV debate show between DILs and MILs, where one of the DIL's commented " My husband and I are trying to budget and plan for what car or what house to buy or save up for, but my MIL keeps travelling with her friends to temples and not taking care of the grandchildren... This is the age when she should be at home taking care of her grandchildren, why is she travelling and enjoying her life?"

And the MIL responds with "We've raised our kids, we've married them off, now I'm travelling and minding my own business. Why would I raise another set of kids, I've raised mine and I'm done."

As someone who's seen more than her fair share of "You don't have kids so you're happy while we are miserable" type comments, this was interesting. Even people who've had kids and finished raising them are receiving this kind of comments..

My family will not stop trying, so I asked them of only one thing. Just inform potential people that I'm childfree that's it.

So they connected me with someone who insisted on texting daily, calling regularly and talking for long hours. Ok. Done. Right at the beginning, I reiterated my CF stance. Due to the continued conversations I assumed the other person was informed and did not have a problem. But over a few conversations he kept talking and mentioning he was 'eager to start a family', which is code for 'I need babies even though I'm not the one who's gonna birth them or care for them!!!!'. He would literally text every single day and I am honestly not too much of an extrovert and this sudden over familiar attitude was extremely uncomfortable but I'm under a lot of local and global pressure, so I just managed however best I could.

A few conversations in, I told him it was nice to talk about general things but there are a couple of very important specific things I needed to address to proceed with the conversation. I asked him what his 'non-negotiables' for a married life and for a partner were. His first response was - I want to start a family immediately, but regarding kids I will have a discussion with my partner.

I told him I wasn't interested in having children at all as I had mentioned in our VERY FIRST CONVERSATION. His response again was " I want to start a family immediately but I'll of course have that discussion with my partner if we get married".

The conversation petered out and five days in, no text, no call. Basically ghosting, but I don't really care about the ghosting part.

What I don't understand are these things- What happened when I mentioned that I was CF in the very first conversation? Did they think they could just change my opinion over time? Also, this is a guy who's going to be almost 40, and he's still looking to have kids? How are they ok with them being senior citizens when their kids finish college?! Not to mention the number of genetic defects they can pass on to their children considering the lateness of age.

Also, even if someone was willing to have children at this age, what do they mean they want to start a family IMMEDIATELY? How does someone in an arranged marriage setup expect their spouse to be INSTANTLY comfortable with physical intimacy?

I won’t be anti BJP completely… but Gadkari has to go. He has made it clear that he is not listening to national interests. The opposition is also quiet on this issue considering that they own almost just as many, if not more ethanol plants than the stakeholders of Maharashtra’s vote bank.

That being the case, people need to remind the government that they are elected to serve the taxpayers needs and not their own. The moment a minister becomes anti- causal to the people’s interest, he/ she needs to be removed.

Moreover, does anyone else feel like Gadkari is tanking BJP because he’s not being considered a future PM candidate from the party? Honestly a man with this mentality SHOULD never be considered for the post .

Anyway… just my two cents for the day.

Ek maar do tukda na udane Hindi porattam arambichidadheenga… Tamil person posting in Tamil circle jerk sub

Apparently, the German embassy had emailed me requesting a scanned copy of my bachelors certificate. The deadline marked on it was July 7th. It went into my spam and through sheer chance, I opened my spam folder on the morning of 8th July and immediately responded to the email, with a clarification that it had gone into my spam and hence there was a delay of one day...

Has anyone experienced anything like this? Will this lead to rejection?

Also for those in the application process... PLEASE KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR SPAM FOLDER

My passport wasn’t returned to me after the vfs appointment and it’s been around 6 weeks now. I googled and it says German missions usually return the passport and ask you to bring it back in for stamping if your chancekarte application has been approved. I wasn’t instructed to collect my passport while leaving my appointment at all, it was actually clipped to my application documents and put in a big document retainer. Was your passport returned after the document check at VFS?

Application out of Chennai, India. Any clarification would be helpful.

So my family is a strictly no mushroom family but I love mushrooms and I have been slowly convincing my mom and dad that I want to cook them…

There seem to be a lot of different opinions on cleaning them… so I just wanted to ask… can you wash mushrooms? The ones I get locally do come with SOME mud and black smears on them… so I don’t know if wiping it down is just enough… any advice on cleaning mushrooms (mainly button or oyster) would be useful.

I’ve recently started growing some small plants in my balcony just as a way to stay with nature… and living in the city it feels good to have some thing green to tend to everyday and to get my hands in the soil every now and then.

I kept having this recurring thought of creating a small trough of flowering plants and placing an Adiyogi statuette in it… I actually got a resin Adiyogi statuette from ishalife and then suddenly wondered if it would be ok or if it would be disrespectful to keep Adiyogi in a pot surrounded by plants…

Any input on whether this is ok or not would be very helpful.

Pranam

I may have an opportunity to custom design and order lab notebooks. Bio and chem based work mostly but also computational people would possibly be using it. From the lines to pages to any special features or tabs... Please share what you'd like to see in your dream perfect lab notebook :)

My personal confidence issues aside... I've never felt like I KNOW things. I recently interviewed for a job and when they called me an expert with the skills they're looking for based on my CV review... I felt amazing. They took me through a technical discussion and when I was participating it, I was so happy/ surprised/ enjoying every minute of it. I was discussing this with my sister and she looked at me like I'm an idiot and said "Dude you're working on this for the past five years, of course you know things."

I'm very isolated research wise at my current institute- there isn't a lot of scientific discussion within my group or within my institute as well. I thought maybe if I had more open forums or avenues to such discussions, I would actually feel like I know something.

How/ when did you guys (PhD, postdoc... are there PI's on this sub?) know what you're doing?

I am 34, almost 35. I registered for my PhD when I was 30. I have five years of work experience before that (2 years after my bachelors and three years after my masters) in labs with different research fellowships. I didn't have a lot of guidance while working towards my goals so it took me some time to confidently register for my PhD. Turned out my supervisor is ultratoxic, much like the small molecules I'm working on.

He constantly age shames me. Apart from zero guidance through out my PhD work, I've been struggling with equipment shortage, no conference support, horrible work conditions... But I've taken it all in my stride and I really want to graduate this year so I'm struggling to get my papers out while working on my final chapter, and yes I am panicking about it. Today I went to ask him about some doubts in the flow of my introduction chapter writing and he starts off with "People your age are submitting project proposals and you're coming to me asking how to write a thesis."

If there's PI's out there, please don't age shame your PhD scholars. Its really demotivating. I have gone through (and continue to go through) innumerable personal and professional difficulties. I've survived serious mental health problems and abusive relationships in my personal life to get to where I am. I've spent a year and a half recovering from major surgeries after breaking my left side entirely after getting run over by a rash driver. You might say that it shouldn't affect my professional life, but that's hardly possible... Please don't age shame your PhD scholars.

I know the flair says no advice, but any advice or sharing your experiences is really welcome. Reddit has been a better companion than anyone irl during my PhD work.