Sounds amazing. I work from home and manage my time as I see fit, working hours range from 2-12 depending on current load, so I’m totally on board with maximizing free time if I get my stuff sorted efficiently.

Guess if I cut it further, I would try to get more into gardening.

Henan food is actually quite mild, Hunan is the chilli province. Here it’s mostly stews or an assortment of dough stuffed with veggies and meat in an shapes and forms, from dumplings over pancakes to steamed buns. Allegedly the original baozi came from here, but I’m sure if you research it you’ll find a million origin stories for every province.

Right and I guess if you cite religious reasons, they leave you mostly alone. Alcohol wasn’t as straightforward since I have no reasons aside from health benefits, and then it’s the usual “but once a year won’t kill you” spiel (that I have to go through on every single occasion, even if they drop it ultimately and are happy to have a dedicated driver when the night moves on…).

How many times a year do you generally visit the hometown?

Oh yeah I know both of those dishes, they are excellent as well! Pickled garlic is also amazing, especially on a Friday night if you don’t plan to meet anyone all weekend 😂

How challenging was it to bring across that you don’t eat meat? I have a feeling that would be quite alienating with my in-laws, their whole world revolves around meat.

Nah I actually stopped drinking years ago, luckily they respect that. I’ll have some mild 杨梅酒 in summer every once in a while, that’s pretty refreshing. But other than that I pretty much abstain.

Some smoked beef chunks, the in-laws are beef wholesalers, their game is spot on.

Yours?

Yeah same blue sky here, we only arrived yesterday so I can’t tell what is was before. Windows had been open for 2 years, so we had a nice cover of assorted carcinogens all through the house. Always nice to visit… ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

With my wife and extended family in her hometown in rural Henan. It’s bloody cold and the air quality is absolutely miserable, but everyone is having a good time.

Did you post the exact same text a few months ago, or are there already recycling bots active on Lemmy?

That’s probably a good thing, because they forgot how to code native stuff.

Teams and Outlook as standalone programs are so riddled with bugs, I’ve since switched to using either one through the browser exclusively. In fact I’ve got one screen set to to display nothing but Edge with outlook and teams open, and ignore that shit browser the rest of the time.

Lemmy.ml is run by the actual developers of Lemmy. Political ideology aside, without them, you clown wouldn’t even be trolling anywhere around here.