Simgaroop's Simlish Pondering

MEXICO CITY – Mexico took even more drastic action to squelch a swine flu epidemic, ordering a suspension of private business activity and nonessential federal government activities, as the World Health Organization ratcheted up an alert, warning that "all of humanity" is threatened.

In a televised address, Mexican President Felipe Calderon praised "the heroic work" of doctors and nurses and asked his countrymen to literally stay in their homes between May 1 and May 5, saying "there is no safer place to protect yourself against catching swine flu, than in your house."

"In recent days, Mexico has faced one of the most serious problems in recent years," Calderon said Wednesday night. He brushed aside criticisms that his government's response was slow, stressing several times that authorities had reacted "immediately."

School in Mexico has already been canceled until May 6. During the shutdown, essential services like transport, supermarkets, trash collection and hospitals will remain open.

Calderon said authorities would use the partial shutdown to weigh whether to extend the emergency measures, or "if it is possible to phase out some" restrictions.

Considering what's been going on in the city during this week, this didn't surprise me. Most of us were actually expecting this shutdown. Now the question is whether it'll last until May 5th, or if it'll be prolonged for more days. Will schools be reopened on May 6th? I really don't know, because the Secretary of Education said they can't go back to work until every school in the city (at least) has enough resources to clean the students hands every hour.

Even if I go back to work next Wednesday, I suspect activities will be restricted to just the mere academic ones inside the classroom. We'll probably have to wear the masks at all times (how am I going to convince my kid to keep his on?) and we'll barely do anything because cleaning the hands of 25 five-year-olds every hour will take forever.

*Sighs* April 30th is our National "Children's Day", where we celebrate both the current kids and the ones that still reside within ourselves :D. Sadly, this year the celebrations will take place inside our homes. We were originally going to have a picnic and a "water party" at school, but that's a plan long gone.

Although I was feeling restless inside my house the past couple of days, I'm now feeling better. Perhaps I'm getting used to this situation. You'd laugh at the amount of cleaning supplies we have at our entry: clorox wipes, alcohol in gel, lysol and, of course, the face mask for the few times we've left home to go to the supermarket. Everytime we come back home, we wash our hands, rub them with the alcohol and clean the door with a wipe (we also take them with us to clean the shopping cart too). I feel like Howard Hughes :S.

And I hate wearing the stupid mask. I feel silly (even if everyone else is wearing one too) and paranoid, and it's so hot right now that it makes it harder to breathe. I've seen around communities like ONDT that some people are now photoshopping masks to their LJ icons (sort of like they did with the grey hat when Obama became president).

I'm sorry, it's probably because I'm in a bad mood right now, but that kind of mocking pisses me off so much that I refuse to look at those communities anymore :/.

And that's my current life, in a nutshell. Gotta work on my story update right now.

Take care.

So here I am, reporting live from my room on this fourth (or fifth?) day of domiciliary arrest due to the swine flue virus. According to my neighbor, some people around the block are beginning to go insane from boredom and stress, so the most important thing is to remain calm and to not obsess with the situation.

Therefore, my televisor and radio are grounded until further notice, because obviously every single TV show and radio program in the country is dedicated to what else? The swine flu. It's tiring, really.

So far, no flu symptoms for me! I think that means I'm officially safe from the virus for now. As long as I follow the prevention measures that the media keeps drilling into our minds all day long, I'll be fine.

Nothing else to report, so let's change the topic.

I made some hair re-textures. Yay, boredom! One for males and one for females:

According to the local news, there were no damages from the earthquake we had at noon today. The worst was that some people fainted or felt ill from fear, but that was it.

We're fine at my place. We barely felt the earthquake, and we only noticed that it had happened when a police car passed by our door announcing that the "Danger had passed and to please go back to our homes to continue our house arrest".

The WHO has raised the pandemic alert from level 3 to level 4 in my country, but as far as I know, it doesn't imply a change in the situation for the citizens, just more awareness from the scientific community to develop either a vaccine or an accurate way to diagnose the swine flue as soon as possible. Honestly, the news say so many things all the time, with so many different versions that it is hard to keep up with them.

At home, we're fine. Just extremely bored, which makes us check the news yet again and increase our paranoia :P. I've just gotten an offer from some dormitories called "Dobie" at Austin, so I'm browsing through their website to see how they are. I was planning to go to Austin on May to check out some places to live, but with this situation I don't think they'd let me leave the country on the risk I might bring the virus to other places.

This is the part where I admit that a huge part of my fear came from the fact that before the announcement on Thursday night, and obviously ignoring this threat, I was all over the city with one of my siblings, doing some random errands. We were in the public transportation, walked up and down some bridges to cross the avenues, walked by some construction sites (they are building a new highway to commemorate the Bicentenary of our Independence on 2010), in particular where they installed the latrines (you can imagine the odor).

In short, I was exposed to a lot of risky places on Thursday, so there was (still is) a chance I caught the swine flu and I'd be carrying it at the moment. As the days have gone by, the fear has decreased, because according to the news, the flu symptoms develop three or four days after initial contact. Today's the fourth day, so if by tomorrow I have not suddenly developed a cold or fever, that'll mean I'm safe. *crosses fingers*

I'd also been playing a bit. I'm working on the mall I mentioned the other day and I have some preview pictures, but those will be posted in another entry. In a minute :P.

"MEXICO CITY – Churches stood empty Sunday in heavily Roman Catholic Mexico City after services were canceled, and health workers screened airports and bus stations for people sickened by a new strain of swine flu that experts fear could become a global epidemic.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrardo said two more people died of swine flu overnight in the overcrowded capital, and three other deaths are suspected to have been caused by the strain. Another 73 more people were hospitalized with influenza, possible swine flu.

City Health Secretary Armando Ahued said most of the fatalities involve victims who only sought medical help after the disease was well advanced and urged people to seek urgent care

President Felipe Calderon has assumed new powers to isolate people infected with the deadly swine flu strain that health officials say has killed up to 86 people and likely sickened about 1,400 in the country since April 13."

According to a televised message from our President, which was transmitted just a few minutes ago, the officials are still discussing if they are going to also close down public transportation or flat out stop all the economic activities in the city. It all depends on the evolution of the swine flu epidemic in the next 72 hrs (<-- I'm pretty sure this sentence is made of grammar fail, but today's one of those days when my English just plain sucks).

It was confirmed last night that schools and Universities will remain closed until May 6th.

The good news is that a. This disease is curable if it's diagnosed on time (what the media is not telling is that from the 1384 confirmed cases in México, 924 have been released from the hospital) and b. There are drugs to attack it in my country (in particular the Tamiflu).

But this is still a very serious issue and that's why they are being so strict with all the closures, to prevent things from getting out of control.

As for me, things are still the same around here. My parents arrived last night from a long trip out of my country and were pretty worried about us, because the international media was being a a tad pessimistic about our situation. I don't blame them, the city feels eerie and it lacks its usual noise because the streets are deserted. This silence is distracting, to say the least.

MEXICO CITY – The schools and museums are closed. Sold-out games between Mexico's most popular soccer teams are being played in empty stadiums. Health workers are ordering sickly passengers off subways and buses. And while bars and nightclubs filled up as usual, even some teenagers were dancing with surgical masks on.

Across this overcrowded capital of 20 million people, Mexicans are reacting with fatalism and confusion, anger and mounting fear at the idea that their city may be ground zero for a global epidemic of a new kind of flu — a strange mix of human, pig and bird viruses that has epidemiologists deeply concerned.

And it's just being announced that schools will be closed at least a week.

That means, no work for at least a week for me :(. And according to the news, they are still evaluating if they will eventually declare a full quarantine in the city.

There are no more masks available on stores. We don't have masks, so we're going to search for some today because it's being advised to not leave home without them.

I won't lie to you, I'm also scared :(

I'm dreading posting this entry, despite being completely sure of what I have to say.

I've been pondering about this for the last couple of months, and I guess that stress and the load of work that has fallen over me during this week finally pushed me to make this decision "official".

The birth of Generation Six will mark the end of The Broke Legacy.

You've probably noticed that I've been pulling all the "big levers" throughout Generation Five, trying to close as many plots as possible. My original plan was to conclude Strangetown's story (because I was eventually running out of characters) and move on with another Neighborhood (in this case, Belladonna Cove and a bit of Veronaville for Gen 6).

But considering the huge changes that'll take place in my life in just a few months, I'm afraid I'll no longer have the time (nor the energy) to focus on a story as demanding as this one and I definitely do not want to end up abandoning it in the long term.

I, at least, owe my readers a proper conclusion for the Broke's adventures.

I'm aiming to finish this story before I move to Texas in August, but knowing me, it'll probably take a little bit longer. I've always known how I wanted to end the Legacy, so I guess I'll just move it from Gen 10 to Gen 6.

But it sure as heck won't be a rushed ending. I'm currently planning out how I want things to flow to that point, but I'll still let my sims guide the story, as I've always done.

Once I'm done with The Brokes, I'll still be around, of course. Having a hobby is healthy, after all, so I'll continue making my silly content and posting short stories now and then (some of them with the Twin Town characters).

And I'll most likely continue playing with my Legacy sims, but instead of registering everything they do as I've done until now, I'll post drabbles about their descendants if something funny or cute happens in my game.

So that's, in a nutshell, what I've planned for my loved hobby in the near future. This is not a flouncing post, and be sure that even if I stopped playing the Sims altogether, I'd still be around, for I enjoy being part of this community so much, and I'm thankful of what it has given me these last two years (new friends and my long-lost love to create stories).

- Simgaroop.

I've discovered that building "themed lots" is extremely fun and relaxating. Right now, I'm working on a matching lot for Belladonna High, where the students and their families can hang out and do some specific shopping. I've just finished the "shell" of the mall (which will be one of those open air shopping centers), so now I'm gonna start furnishing and decorating the interiors.

So far, I've planned a hair salon, an H&M store (gotta make use of that stuff some time!), a bridal shop (story purposes), a fast food court and a cinema. But there's still some space left and too many ideas to fit in it. By the way, this is going to be a functional community lot, the kind you just place in any neighborhood and can send your sims to without need of someone owning it. I know there are some options that won't work unless a sim owns the business (like all the craftables and bakery), so if I set one of these stores, it'll work only as deco for pictures.

It's probably gonna be a bit heavier in CC than my earlier lots, because I want every store to be unique on the inside (and I've just found some neat maxis match store sets), but as always, I'll first try to furnish it with as much Maxis content as possible, then use recolors, then free custom content and just in case there's no free equivalent available, I'll use pay stuff.

So I need your input, please. If you were interested in downloading this lot, which of the following options would you prefer?

( Poll and more wip pictures under the cut )

Thanks for your help!

Yup, here's a (very) late Easter present for you, considering it'll be over in 15 minutes (according to my timezone), so I'd better hurry :P.



For more of my hair re textures, please consult the master list here.

So I was looking at my downloads folder and realized I had 1.87 Gb of stuff in one of my subfolders.

And that's just my "objects folder"!!!

WTF?! No wonder my game takes forever to load lately.

So, in an abrupt movement, I deleted all my stuff. No more 80000 clutter files and a gazillion wall recolors I never use.

Good thing I was anal retentive enough to keep the CC for my two lots apart, otherwise they'd be completely screwed up now.

So now, I ask you, my fellow simmers who have managed to keep your downloads folder in a manageable, tiny size: Which are the basic buy and build stuff you have? I think I'll get some Holy Simoly stuff and a few recolors. And that's it, but I'm probably missing something.

So... which are your (Maxis Match, preferably) must haves?

When I'm done with that, I'm going to nuke my clothing folder. But the fact of having to play detective with all those meshes is a huge turn off. Meh, I'm lazy. I can live with the 1.70 Gb of clothes for now... :S