Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
e.g. until September of 1985, Huffer was the leader of my Autobots. I don't remember what excuse I used, but Optimus Prime was always elsewhere until then
And "Shackwave" was always leader of my Decepticons since I didn't have Megatron as a kid.
I bet Huffer was because he was a fellow Truck bot. I had Optimus as a kid (it was the first thing I actually saved up for), but I never had Megatron, Starsceam or another "Leader" type character for my Deceptions, so I recruited Needlenose to be the leader. He was the closest large Jet toy I had to a Starscream. Oddly I did have SOundwave and I think he would've been a fairly good Decepticon leader, I still just had him as a support guy of Needlenose. (I really love Needlenose even now!)

Damn that Sucks. I got my triple shot on Saturday. In Japan they advocate mixing the shots, and I hear it works fine elsewhere s well. Add to that Pfizer seems to be the favoured shot around here, all the seniors (there's A LOT of them) have nabbed all the appointments. I ended up getting a different one this time, Moderna. The first two I had no problem with, but the moderna one, well, aching body all over, headache, felt tired and had a fever. Luckily it only lasted half the following day, but it certainly wasn't pleasant.
Annoyingly in Japan, getting the vaccine shots is full of bureaucracy. You can't get an appointment without a ticket. Once you have a ticket you have to go online and book. If you dont want to go online, then you have to look at certain places (local clinics, but from a main website) to see if they have spots available. Many of the smaller local places will have a message saying they don't (can't) accept bookings through the website so you have to call them. When you call the they are so busy with those phone calls, you can't get through or they just don't answer any more. Going through a mass vacc place is a total crap shoot as to whether or not you get lucky with a booking.
The entire experience is terribly frustrating. I got lucky in that the timing was right. Bagged my ticket, sister in law had a connection through Rakuten (of all places) that set up a place open for three days, I navigated through the horrible website and bagged a booking.

The covid experience has revealed some serious flaws in Japan's "wonderful" health care system. IN that so many places are privately run, coordinating for a pandemic type situation is frustrating for almost everybody. The govt. the medical system itself and the public.

Oh and now the only "protocol" in place against covid is wear a mask and sanitise your hands.

Whew, thats all for now. I'll probably rant about other issues later. Like why are GPs so hard to find here? How am I supposed to know whether my ache is a bone ache or a muscle ache? Why do I have to go and wait for 3 hours to see a doctor? Are Japanese people allergic to appointments? They're always banging on about being punctual so they shouldn't be.

More ranting slowly fades away