A cop once asked me to shake my backpack to make sure there were no graffiti cans in there. Obviously there weren’t.
Now I’m involved a bit in activism get searched on the regular. It’s mostly procedural, I have the privilege of being not really considered a criminal.
I did get the M30. It's delightful but there's one problem - it looks like The Lion King is one of the few games the Retro Receiver has a problem with. Any button presses while holding a direction on the D-pad interrupt the direction on the D-pad. So a roll becomes a crouch and a running jump becomes a standing jump. I've reached out to support, hopefully they can help, otherwise I'll have to return it.
The A12 protest is very willing to coordinate emergency routes, in any case they allow for emergency service passage (this regularly happens), and their location is easily routed around. Overall their impact is less than run of the mill roadworks and not comparable in the slightest to a major event.
It was surreal to read about talk of extremism, social disruption and the calls for corporal punishment (by police), long jail sentences and more, all for a 5-10 minute delay caused by the A12 blockade, when the day after I was helping out at the Egmond Half Marathon there was real disruption, where people really couldn't go places with their cars... not to mention events like the Dam tot Damloop or Amsterdam Marathon that effectively put parts of our capital city on lockdown. No calls for water cannons there.
People might say "Those are not the same!" and that's true - sport events are not a constitutional right.
I used the last of my leave days for the work mandated time off between Christmas and New Years Day. We have plenty, but I used so much for holiday and activism. So I haven't taken the customary full two weeks off and will be back at the office on 2 Jan. Don't mind it, I like the quiet office.
Kéés (Texels Dutch, my wife’s home dialect)