u/castiellangels

Have a meet and greet tonight (was meant to start at 6.15pm) and I mentioned I am quite busy so that’s the only time I could do. I messaged them earlier in the day to ask about parking and doorbell as they’re in a flat and didn’t have a reply, messaged when I arrived at 6.17pm and now it’s 6.40pm and I haven’t heard anything. Rung the doorbell multiple times, sent a few messages and now I really need to go. Is it okay if I leave and decline the request? The house sit starts tomorrow at 10am so no time for a second meet and greet attempt.

Edit to add: ended up leaving at 6.45pm and sent the owner a message explaining I had to leave due to other commitments and would decline the request due to no meet and greet, as of writing this I still haven’t heard from them (9am on day house sit was supposed to start). Assuming they were in contact with someone else and never messaged me to cancel the meet and greet, from now on I’ll send a confirmation message morning of and if I don’t hear anything I’ll archive.

I’m a solo female hoping to visit for a weekend (Friday to Sunday) and just wondering what would be recommended to visit in the city? Will be staying at a premier inn on the edge so would be getting the bus in as I’ll be driving down from Newcastle and don’t fancy driving in city centres

Thanks so much

I’ve started noticing an unpleasant smell (not a fishy smell, just unpleasant which I can smell when I sit down and in that area of my trousers/shorts) in my lady bits. I used to wash down there with water only when I first noticed the smell a few years ago but in my current rental house share you can’t remove the shower head from the vertical rail it’s on so it’s very difficult to clean unless I did a hand stand. Does anyone have some advice please?

I’m in UK if that helps so currently suffering with the heatwave as well which probably doesn’t help

Hoping to visit for a weekend (2 nights, Friday evening to Sunday morning) at some point as a solo female traveller. I’ll be flying from England into Amsterdam, would you recommend spending my time in Amsterdam (recommendations on what to do please) or travelling somewhere on the Saturday morning to see a bit more of the country?

Would like to do a trip all around at some point when I have more money but for now I can only do a weekend

As a side, I’d like to learn a bit of Dutch before I visit and don’t find Duolingo very good to learn from so has anyone got good advice for learning the language please?

I’m wanting to volunteer at British eventing events to get an idea of what happens on the day and just have a good time getting out of the house more as I’d happily do any of the roles they have available at the events.

I’ve become an associate (free) member so is it really a case of emailing event organisers to ask to volunteer and how long before an event should you email?

Asking on here instead of emailing BE as I’d also like to hear from current volunteers how you find it? Is it stressful or enjoyable and are the other volunteers nice?

Hope this sub is okay to post this in

Recently went on safari to Kenya and purchased an ebony rhino figure and soapstone figure. I was hoping to also find a 3D beaded rhino keyring or a metal rhino keyring with ‘Kenya’ engraved, but didn’t find either. I’ve now got home so can’t go to more souvenir shops in Kenya, is there any site to purchase from which would have something like this? Have looked on Etsy for the metal one, but wondered if anyone had some websites they use to buy please

I’m based in UK if that helps thank you

(If you can’t tell, rhinos are my absolute favourite wild animals)

Does anyone recommend visiting the maasai Mara village? I think it’s some tribe who lets tourists pay to look around from what I understand, just wondering if it’s worth paying for

I’m flying tomorrow from LHR to Nairobi with BA and I am absolutely terrified of flying after going LHR to Malaysia a few years ago. On this flight, Malaysia airlines, I needed an oxygen tank due to a panic attack and both directions I threw up a lot especially when the food came out (think the smell just put me over the edge).

Since then I’m terrified of flying, I have managed short haul to Italy so I think it’s the idea of throwing up at food smell in the cabin along with bad long haul flight anxiety. Has anyone experienced something similar and have any tips for me?

I’m flying to Kenya for a 9 day safari on Wednesday and am a bit nervous about the whole thing even though it’s a family holiday. I hate flying, but my main concern is getting an illness which causes diarrhoea/vomiting. Is it common to get these illnesses or is it quite rare to get? We’re staying in 4/5 star hotels rather than camping if that makes a difference

Also on the long drives between reserves (such as nairobi to samburu) do the drivers stop often so you can go to the loo and get more water? Is there set stops with these facilities?

I’ve had someone contact me about pet sitting where it’d be 3 dogs, 1 tortoise, 2 rabbits, and 2 chickens for 3 nights next Easter. I have no clue how much is reasonable to add on to cover the extra animals, did the m&g the other day and they’re all pretty low maintenance animals (ie feed and fuss). How much would be acceptable to add to cover these?

For reference the client is paying £30 (main dog) and £40 for the additional 2 dogs a night

Currently got a sore throat and have got a jar of honey to have to help. Should I just eat a spoonful of honey or put it into a glass (what volume?) of warm water (I don’t like tea)? How much should I have a day?

What are some good websites to use to find microbiology/bacterial/evolution(? Loosely fits my PhD project I think) conferences? Wanting to go to more but I can’t see any coming up with the societies I’m part of so need a good website to find new conferences, preferably in the UK but would possibly be okay doing a short flight.

I’m running some growth curves of live E.coli WT with different knockout lysates and want to standardise the protein concentration of the lysates so higher growth isn’t due to more proteins.

What would be a good protein concentration to use as I have no clue what would be a ‘normal’ concentration to get? Would 20mg/ml (from BCA assay) be okay or should it be more like 70-10mg/ml (have sometimes got a lower protein concentration in the starting lysate though)?

Edit to add: I had asked my supervisor but he had no clue

I had a repeat client request 2 weeks of cat sitting for November last week, and they specifically booked their holiday around when I was available. They then requested a discount which I said I’d only be able to do up to £20 off but would have to work out exactly how much, before I calculated costs and came back saying I could do £15 as they’re now outside my service area so would need extra fuel to get to work. Added that as a discount on their booking request on my end so not sure what discount it looks like on their side with the extra fee. They quickly replied and said ‘thank you for the discount, we are considering multiple options and will let you know.’ which was much more formal message than other ones they have sent me.

I am now realising I don’t want to do house sitting for 2 weeks and have turned off that option on Rover so no one can book that length, and these people are also gluten-free which I don’t fancy being for 2 weeks either. If I send them a message along the lines of ‘hi, really sorry but something has come up so I won’t be available for house sitting in November’ would that be okay as they haven’t formally booked anything yet? Or should I just suck it up and take it if they do decide to want me to look after their cats? I’m just worried about losing a repeat client to another sitter as I love the two kitties

Sorry for the long post, thought it might need the context

I shut down my laptop and it needed an update so went to the ‘updates are underway please keep your computer on’ screen with the moving circle of dots and it has now been like this for 30 minutes. Normally after a little bit it changes to show percentage complete but it hasn’t got there yet for this one.

The dots are still moving round so is my laptop stuck?

- acer aspire 5(?) with AMD Ryzen 5

I’m interested in moving into an analysis role (thinking more data analysis as I’m more likely to be qualified(ish) for this than finance/business analysis which is why I’m asking here) once I finish my microbiology PhD as I don’t want to stay in the lab but have seen that most roles require knowledge of power BI and SQL. I have started attempting to learn and use for my own data analysis but I tend to stick to the ways I know without thinking about trying it with SQL.

I know someone who is a volunteer data analyst (or something similar anyway) with the RSPB so I wondered if there’d be any volunteer roles like this at other charities where I could learn the skills in a ‘real’ job I can put separate on my CV?