Heh Ox in the military.

Officer talking: "what ever you do, do not release the napalm over civilian areas marked on your map as blue..

Reporter: "..And later in the news, a Belgian soldier is wanted for mass murder. Apparently he deployed napalm on several villages that were housing the refugees of war."

Don't worry. The Belgian military doesn't have money to buy napalm... or fuel for the bombers to drop it.

It's true. The worst I could probably do is accidentally setting off a mine during a demining mission, or crashlanding an Antonov on your house.

Rofl writing is tempting but then I'd have to be motivated and I'm bad at that... hence it has so far taken me 3 years to do a 1 year home-learning web design course As for art... always been a dream of mine but I'm too self critical. Of the 100s (if not 1000s) of pieces I've done there are maybe 5 I actually like And they still have faults.

What you need to do is join the military in a time of peace. Or go into some really specialised section; my dads old boss used to train horses and the cavalry for the UK army. Of course they're only used to parades with the royal familly these days so it was a pretty cushy job on the whole!

yea, when ox joins the military, there will be no time of peace now will there

Just had to laugh at the thought of Ox in the military. Then I think about the FF count in L4D.

As for my crappy job. Well today I have literally hundreds of faxes I needed to send out. What does my company do? They took away my fax from PC, so I had to stand at the very old, more of a personal style fax versus business fax, most all day. Now tomorrow I will get to scan all those in, versus just one step if they didn't screw me again. Might I add they traded the modem for a graphics card for the previous rants double monitors.

Oh well, I guess they get to pay me to scan tomorrow. Hope they didn't want any REAL work done. /sigh.

Get a back problem from standing there all day then sue them!

bah, America is too work friendly... at least Texas is. You can't sue jobs and win here.. plus you'll never get hired again if you try. These companies do so many completely illegal things it's amazing... but what's worse is they get away with it. It irritates me quite a bit.

Lol, man, sometimes I'm happy I don't work over there. At my current job, I can take a sabbatical after a year or so in service (nearing that) and bail, all the while certain my job will be waiting for me when I get back. Apart from stuff like extended parental leave and travelling around the world for a year, a lot of people use it to start working in another job (often abroad), figuring "well if this doesn't work out I can still go back". It wasn't until recently that I realized that you actually get a freaking allowance while you're on sabbatical too. I mean, it's not a fortune, but more than enough to cover your monthly living costs.

Sabbaticals ftw.

that's absolutely ridiculous. Work somewhere for a year and you can basically take a year off? And still get paid? Without fear of being fired? I'm amazed europe even has an economy any more.

That really is ridiculous, what the hell Ox?! I think we're allowed something like 6 months of sick leave in a row without fear of being fired, after that your employer is allowed to give you the boot (coz let's face it, if you're off longer than that you're probably never gonna come back) and other than that... well that's about the only 'good' thing.

Lmao; I'm sorry guys, it's not my fault! I actually did a double check online and what I said was right on the money. Basically:

- you can request a sabbatical at any moment from your employers (who have the last word in the matter), but as a civil servant you have an automatic right to a sabbatical provided you worked for an uninterrupted period of 12 months. They HAVE to comply. (haha)

- in case of a 'normal' sabbatical (ie no caring for ill family member, extended parental leave etc) you can request for 3 to 12 months of sabbatical. Must be requested 3 months before the start of it and, if you want to extend it, 3 months before the end of the sabbatical

- you will receive a fixed 'wage' during. For me, it'd be 380€ a month (or 530 $ or 330 £) This can be slightly higher if you have kids, but doesn't depend on your normal income. It's always the same fee. I think they drop with 5% once you extend over the initial max of 12 months too.

- you can also take sabbaticals on part-time schemes. This can go be 1/5th, 1/4th, 1/3rd or 1/2. You get fixed allowances for those absences too.

- you have to live in Belgium, a EU country or Switzeland during (lol)

- you can perfom paid work during your sabbatical, with some restrictions.

- you cannot be fired during this period. This protection lasts up to 3 months following the end of the sabbatical. Should you get fired during this period, the actual 'date' of being laid off will start after that time.

- the first 12 months of your sabbatical are counted as fully worked months for your retirement fee. So it doesn't affect it.


There you go. I bet Satis is cleaning his shotgun right now and booking a ticket to Belgium to destroy this evil communist empire. Seriously though, you can get away with a lot of shit here provided you work for a government or so. Even the private sector is pretty well protected compared to other countries. My mum has 30 years of service in a retirement home, and should they fire her (for non-urgent reasons, which would be theft, rape, violence ) they need to pay her like 4 years of wages or let her work off the 4 years. So yeah, not gonna happen.

That doesn't mean I never think "wtf" either. At my job, there's a guy who's about 50 years old. His wife was a manager at some major company and passed away 10 years ago (cancer). So he gets some sort of widower's pension, a pretty big one given his wife's wages then. Of couse, he can't get the full amount if he works full-time so he calculated how much he'd need to work to get the best of both worlds: a (very decent) wage, but not working the days he could compensate for with his widower's pension. Now he's working 2 months twices a year, half-time. And he's often sick for 2 weeks during every 2 months he is here. He doesn't do jack, of course, just works off the 2 months and goes back home for 4 months. All the while, he's probably making about double my wage...not shitting you.

So yeah, it can get frustrating. BUT now I noticed I can take such a sabbatical myself, seeing as I'll be 12 months in service coming August. ROFLCOPTER. Might seriously be worth considering!

Well, whatever, I guess. It's pretty silly, in my opinion. I wonder what kind effect things like that have on your economy. I mean, it makes the price of being a business in the EU much, much higher, which I'm sure boosts prices significantly. Meh, i'd rather companies in the US just follow the rules we have... I don't need any crazy communist crap like that.

Errrg. Happy for you and all but seriously it is NOTHING like that here. Case in point again, I was threatened with my job when my immediate family member died and I needed to attend the funeral.

When I had pneumonia a couple of years back (like pretty bad as it had formed over my heart) I got shit because I was not able to go back to work for two weeks doctors orders. They seriously almost fired me.

Going back to the funeral matter, my mom as no income nor will she again, but she is also not the brightest person, so basically I am trying to settle the estate, while working. It's pretty hard since some of that is trying to get the fund from the government for my mom which has standard business hours. (For the record this is not WELFARE!, but my moms spouse was retired air force, and retirement age so she gets his benefits most likely, on top of their investments and insurance, etc. You know how hard that is to do when you can't take off from work.

Yeah, I can imagine Shiny. I'm having a hard time just going through the motions of finding a new job (writing letters, taking time off, doing interviews and exams), let alone having to deal with emotionally draining issues like that. So I hope you'll be able to cope with it all! And try to involve your siblings, so you don't take all the weight.

I seriously would never want to exchange with you guys when it comes to work comfort or worker rights. I don't see why anyone ever would, really. Btw Satis, the US does have more productive workers than Belgium, but that is for the most part down to them working a lot more hours. In per hour productivity, Belgian workers are outperforming American ones (due to better life/work balance and generally higher education levels). To put it bluntly: the US's economic strength is mostly created on the backs of its employees.

So sure, it's all costing our economy to have these (sometimes silly) rights and protections, but it's not like it's pushing us into the economic abyss or something.