Believe me, there’s nothing unusual about this building in the Philippines. You can easily find far worse-looking places that the city won’t touch.

Most certainly - only that I don’t worry as much about the curveballs coming. 😉

My 30s were actually my worst, I think (with the exception of my childhood). When I turned 40, it was almost like flipping a switch, but it also coincided with my son being born a year and a half before that. Of course there are new things to worry about, but it’s different, somehow. Things are much better now. ☺️

For some it comes with age, as they gradually give less and less of a shit. Around 40, maybe? Might stem from a mindset of: “You’ve already thrown me all the curveballs you can, world. You can’t hurt me anymore.”

A lot of good points here about pros and cons when considering republic vs constitutional monarchy. I was myself against the idea of monarchy for quite a while, but I realize it’s mostly because I was living in the UK at the time and was exposed to how normal people are treated compared to the upper class. In addition, though the British royal family doesn’t have any power on paper, they have vast connections in all parts of the government and private sector with many ways to influence things. Also, the UK was until recently a two party state, which meant almost total power to whichever party won the election.

Scandinavia doesn’t have as much of a disparity between social classes (even counting royals), and what I see here is that the monarchy provides a stability and continuity that we wouldn’t get with a republic. Anyone can lie, cheat and bribe their way to getting elected president, but when you have a dozen different parties with different policies passing laws with a monarch as an anchor, it works out pretty well.

The King of Norway has a mostly symbolic role in day-to-day affairs. New laws that have been passed by the Storting (Parliament) will have their final approval signed by the King, but this is largely a token approval. The King does have veto power over any given amendment, but if he invokes it, Parliament has the right to vote the same amendment through a second time, at which point it cannot be vetoed. He is the head of the Church of Norway, and also supreme commander of our armed forces. Though command is delegated to other commanders, the King would have a more direct role in questions regarding central command or wartime. When representing our country abroad, he is very much considered a personification of the nation, rather than a representative of the ruling party. Norway’s main reason for maintaining our own monarchy stems very much from declaring independence from Denmark and Sweden, which ruled us for about 500 years.

“Omg, wait, let go! Oh… That’s actually really nice and warm, purrrrrrr…”