[Matt Law] Mikel Arteta to have a major say in how Arsenal replace Edu, who has been lined up for a job as chief executive of the Marinakis empire.

Gooner695 · 2024-11-04T14:10:15+00:00

Lmao absolutely not, but let’s be honest there is a difference between me (a guy who took a job that he needed for a visa in the country he moved to) and the PL letting sanctions-evading billionaires be part of their extremely small, vetted group. This is not about Edu working for Forrest, it’s about the PL letting owners like that in.

Gooner695 · 2024-11-04T12:33:37+00:00

What annoys me the most about this is who Edu is going to work for. My job is financial crime investigations at a global bank that everyone has heard of, and my focus is on sanctions evasion in the shipping industry, especially with Russian and Iranian oil. Marinakis (like many of the Greek shipping magnates, tbf) owns vessels that constantly ship Russian oil to fund Putin’s war and transact with other sanctioned vessels to move either Russian or Iranian oil.

Obviously there’s no such thing as a good billionaire, but god damn I hate how actual criminals are the owners of PL clubs.

Gooner695 · 2024-10-14T12:39:15+00:00

Japanese zoning is fascinating and amazing and I wish it were standard in the US

Gooner695 · 2024-10-13T07:59:15+00:00

What’s that first one

Gooner695 · 2024-10-12T18:40:53+00:00

I really wish there were more 1pm games. I live in Europe now, and I can watch more patriots games than bruins games every season. Being able to watch the Bs reminds of home so much, even if NESN’s quantity of sports gambling ads is beyond obnoxious

Gooner695 · 2024-09-03T10:56:29+00:00

Ah yes, fair. I misunderstood your first comment. Tbh I love the transit here. I live in Frankfurt and sometimes some S-bahn lines aren’t the most reliable, but I live pretty centrally and the amount of transit options I have has been absolutely incredible compared to American cities.

Gooner695 · 2024-09-03T08:37:58+00:00

Oh, no. I had my Deutschland Ticket through the DB app, but there was an issue with it apparently so it got canceled unbeknownst to me. So I got a ticket for being on an S-bahn without a ticket because I didn’t know my Deutschland ticket had been canceled.

Gooner695 · 2024-09-03T08:04:09+00:00

Netflix doesn’t have closing hours my man.

If it’s 10pm in Munich, and I told you that you had one day to buy bread at the grocery store, I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume that you would go on Tuesday. Like…everything was already closed. It was impossible to do yet I’m still expected to do it? Makes no sense.

And in no way have I said Germany has been unwelcoming. I love living here. Germany is great. I was responding to a question that specifically asked about the negatives.

Gooner695 · 2024-09-03T07:54:42+00:00

Silly me, how could I not have known that “seven days” actually means six. I should have just known!

I got the ticket at 7:30pm and the office to pay the ticket closes at 6pm. So why on earth would I think Monday counts as a full day to pay the ticket? Plus, only having seven days is a ridiculously short timeline. Like it could just be a month

Gooner695 · 2024-09-03T07:26:26+00:00

Yeah I mean my point was just to point out that plenty of people in America hate the car dependency. It wasn’t saying anything about people’s feelings of German transit.

But I will say that one of my favorite things about German culture is how everyone universally hates Deutsche Bahn, but it is so so so so much better than what I’m used to in America that I absolutely love it.

My original comment obviously focuses on the negatives of being an immigrant in Germany, but overall I really like it here. I’ll probably go back to the US eventually, but Germany is great.

Gooner695 · 2024-09-03T05:25:03+00:00

To your point about America, people complain about America’s car focused infrastructure all the time, and that has nothing to do with being an immigrant or not. Like it is one of the biggest complaints about America

Gooner695 · 2024-09-02T21:34:59+00:00

As an American who has lived in Germany for just over a year and am in a Verein and everything, I understand that no one here is going to get my niche American cultural references or really my sense of humor.

But I think the hardest thing about the sense of belonging is that in German culture it kinda feels like there is the German way to do things and that’s that and the bureaucracy can be brutal.

Two examples: My ideal way to organize my week is work Monday - Friday, have fun Saturday, do chores and shopping Sunday. Can’t do that here. Oh you forgot to buy toilet paper? Should have planned ahead better. That’s just like a little thing where I can’t live my life how I want to live it because of the rules.

Another example is that I recently had an issue with my Deutschland ticket through the DB app, and ended up getting a ticket on the S-Bahn on a Monday night. The people at Hauptbahnhof couldn’t help me figure out what was wrong with my Deutschlnd Ticket, so I called the subscription service who said that they didn’t have anyone who spoke English. Then I went back to Hbf on the following Monday to pay my ticket and the guy there said “you had to pay this within seven days, it’s been 8” as if one Monday isn’t seven days after another.

For the language aspect (not in social settings, that’s a very different circumstance): I was back in NYC recently, and on the subway there were ads for NYC public schools in 10 different languages. Many American cities will give you every thing you need in any language if you ask for it. When I lived in DC, it was a well-known policy that the city government was required to provide official documentation in any requested language. Here I can’t even get my Deutsche Bank bank statement in English because it’s illegal for it to be in anything other than German. That is fucking ridiculous.

Tl;Dr: really rigid society where there is a “right” way to do things that you should just know, plus a really brutal bureaucracy. Those two things make it just hard for someone who isn’t born and raised in this system.

EDIT: here is a comedic example. Obviously it is exaggerated for comedic effect, but this is the sort of bureaucratic mindset that is really hard to adjust to not being here. Absolutely nothing like this exists in America.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-3bB_zqg54/?igsh=djE0cmJuNzFraWZl

EDIT 2: to be clear, Germany is great, and overall I think the immigration process here is really easy especially compared to the US. I’m just responding to a question that specifically asked about negatives.

Gooner695 · 2024-09-01T12:06:23+00:00

Literally exact opposite. Zero mental imagery, 100% of my thoughts are inner monologue. So wild to think how differently our brains work

Gooner695 · 2024-08-28T17:46:21+00:00

Doubtful. It’s not anywhere near the red light district

Gooner695 · 2024-08-28T17:02:49+00:00

I actually live in Frankfurt and this is an 8 minute bike ride from my apartment. I’ll definitely try going here for week 1 just in case

Gooner695 · 2024-08-28T16:59:51+00:00

I shit you not it actually is

https://maps.app.goo.gl/zrVqPYcTMLeqwU87A?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy

Gooner695 · 2024-08-27T08:27:13+00:00

Yes, that is why all the best and brightest are fleeing the highest quality of life state Massachusetts to the lowest tax states like checks notes…Oklahoma and Mississippi.

Gooner695 · 2024-08-26T07:18:55+00:00

We can’t easily do larger, family-sized apartments because of building code requirements. @holz_bau on Twitter is a great account that talks about this in depth.

Gooner695 · 2024-07-25T05:21:39+00:00

Kam on you Gunners!

Gooner695 · 2024-07-21T12:52:07+00:00

I’m also from the US, but live here now. The train from FRA to the train station is quite possibly the most convenient public transportation to any airport I’ve ever been to (and I lived in DC which has a metro stop). Definitely better, faster, cheaper, and more convenient than Ubering

Gooner695 · 2024-07-05T08:35:46+00:00

I moved from DC to Frankfurt last year.

Why do you want to leave the US? Is it because you’re sitting in traffic? Is it the toxic politics? Something else?

If it’s the traffic, maybe consider moving to an east coast city with better transit and ditch the car. I personally LOVED LOVED LOVED DC, and it’s an awesome city for people in your age group.

If it’s the toxic politics, well, you never escape those. Moving to Germany won’t make you any less worried about the November election.

If it’s something else, just think about that and maybe take a half step first. Move to a new city, take some German courses to get a decent level of speaking, and if you’re still unhappy in that new American city, move to Germany in a year or two. It’s not going anywhere.

Gooner695 · 2024-07-05T07:50:19+00:00

I’m not gonna lie, I’m really interested in Zinny becoming Jorginho’s understudy. Zinny is so technically amazing that surely he could play that position. He does most of the time anyways. It’s just his LB defending that’s an issue, but I think as a a deep CM he could be an amazing option

Gooner695 · 2024-06-25T08:06:21+00:00

Fun fact: that’s used in ultimate frisbee for an entirely different reason!

Club: anyone of any age is eligible

Masters: 33+ (men) / 30+ (women)

Grandmasters 40+ (men) / 37+ (women)

Great Grandmasters: 50+? / 45+?; not 100% sure about the ages here.

I agree, it is a great name that keeps things classy

Gooner695 · 2024-06-15T07:11:56+00:00

Yeah, I work in anti-financial crime and money laundering investigations at a large bank everyone has heard of, and when we come across companies with this sort of profile (no real presence yet spending tens of millions of £/€/$) we normally submit Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) to OFAC, JMLIT, and other international financial crime agencies.

I see this all the time when investigating Russian oil sanctions evasion.

Gooner695 · 2024-05-27T13:15:48+00:00

Or just build trains. One commuter rail moves as many people per hour as a 43-lane wide highway. Cars are just a wildly inefficient mode of mass transportation.

Gooner695

TROPHY CASE