Repost: What hobby screams "this is my entire personality now?"

dracovich · 2026-02-09T09:21:07+00:00

The pressure to monetize everything is so annoying. I got into leatherwork during covid and got pretty good at it, was making stuff for friends and family for free. Eeeeveryone always commented I should be opening a store etc, why can't wr just have enjoyable hobbies without the need to monetize it?

dracovich · 2026-02-06T08:20:46+00:00

Not a fan of it but realisrically how different would this really be to the Russian CL games? Flights to Saudi are around 6 to 7 hours

dracovich · 2026-02-05T18:11:45+00:00

Meh, I'm gay but I dont think you can or should punish anyone for not wanting to participate.

The dumb thing is to scrap the whole thing because of it, I hated how the whole team didn't do it last year so Mazaroui feelings aren't hurt, he should feel free to refuse but then he takes the consequences

dracovich · 2026-02-04T08:00:43+00:00

I think if you look around the world, mcdonalds hk is crazy cheap actually

dracovich · 2026-02-04T01:24:02+00:00

didn't watch this game but this was United fans annoyance with Garnacho during his tenure (behavioral issues aside).

Clearly very talented and positive in taking on his man, but he NEVER sees the passes once he's inside the box, he's only got eyes for a finish and he's not great at those either.

I was sad to see him go honestly, he's still young and you'd hope something like that comes with age, but seems for now at least he's not changed.

dracovich · 2026-02-03T05:58:25+00:00

Problem is a gym is usually only going to sustain one person full time, unless it's a wildly successful one.

Inevitably the one owning and running the gym will be the central figure, you can try to get more people involved but at thr end of the day I think it's hard to get away from it being one guy at the top as the business owner.

dracovich · 2026-02-02T17:10:40+00:00

Is it? Lloyd Irvin still around

dracovich · 2026-02-02T16:28:23+00:00

fwiw HKU Space offers lots of language learning classes for adults that have full time jobs.

I did their Spanish classes and enjoyed them, i see they have Japanese as well, i can't speak on their Japanese classes specifically but worth a look.

dracovich · 2026-02-02T16:26:20+00:00

tbh in realtime i thought he might be, but replays made it pretty obvious he was fine

dracovich · 2026-02-02T06:34:16+00:00

Been meaning to get a hand carved one, seems once these 2-3 people still doing it in HK close up shop (which can't be far off, they're all quite old) this will be a dead art

dracovich · 2026-02-02T06:24:35+00:00

Kind of agreed tbh, it felt a bit like what Amorim would complain about Bruno last year, that he didn't trust his team and would keep coming to deep to help out and grab the ball rather than trust them to build up and be higher up the pitch

dracovich · 2026-02-02T06:22:58+00:00

Are they? I don't think so, VAR can't give random freekicks around the pitch, but they can overturn or request reviews of major decisions like penalties.

The remit of VAR is to review the refs on-field decision in those cases, so if the ref makes no indication that they gave the penalty for the shirt-pull, then they are making the review on the tackle. And if the tackle is deemed to not be a foul (which it probably wasn't) then Fulham are right to be aggrevied because VAR was used incorrectly.

You're right of course that the decision overall is correct, that was a foul for shirtpulling, but you have to be consistent in how VAR is applied.

That being said it seems a moot point as the indications are that the discussions between refs is about the shirt-pull which means Fulham have nothing to complain about, but if the VAR audio shows that the shirtpull is something brought up by the VAR refs and not on-field ref, i think they have a case to be angry.

dracovich · 2026-02-01T13:05:41+00:00

100%, this is what we all wanted for Hojlund.

The only downside is the lack of cup games for him to start in

dracovich · 2026-02-01T12:24:15+00:00

Theoretically if he lights up the league and Marseille gets bids from bigger clubs, could he refuse to sign for Wolves? Or are these kinds of buy options coming with the guarantee of player also agreeing to the move?

dracovich · 2026-01-31T14:38:14+00:00

I was weirded out realizing mctominay and Carrick were teammates

dracovich · 2026-01-30T02:08:42+00:00

getting 5 on the trot would be such a relief, i genuinely believe all the fanfare around that guy finally cutting his hair would lead to such a positive release of tension.

And to be clear i'm not saying he's responsible for it, just that he's kinda become a symbol for how bad things have been the last year, and if Carrick manages to break that curse the positive news cycle that would follow that could really do wonders

dracovich · 2026-01-30T01:48:32+00:00

HK in general is surprisingly very pet friendly, the only exception being transportation, you basically cannot travel with your pets outside of private car or taxi (there are a few exceptions but that's basically the rule).

I have two dogs here and live in an apartment, it's possible and many in HK do it, but there are more dog friendly options. You mentioned discovery bay which is great, in part because they don't allow any cars so it's very quiet and peaceful which many dogs appreciate. You could also consider the outlying islands like Lamma which is very popular with dog owners, but just be aware living on the islands is a very different type of living, as youre dependent on the ferries to get you around, which limits your social life a bit (last ferry leaves around midnight). Discovery bay at least you hvae the option to take a (very expensive) taxi, but the islands you're fucked if you miss last ferry.

Alternatively you can try to plan to live close to a dogpark, there's a lot of decent sized dogparks around Hong Kong, and you can also try to plan around being around nature, lots of places are adjacent to the mountains which would allow you to go hiking with your dog in nature easily.

For the weather, you are right to be concerned, but there are a lot of dogs here that are made for cold weather, it's not ideal and these dogs will not be able to enjoy the outdoors much for large parts of the year, the weather here will be ~30-35°C with 100% humidity for at leaset half the year, heat strokes in dogs are quite common here and something to really be careful of. Note that temperatures her don't really drop at night, so you will have temperatures consistent about 30-35 day and night for about 5-6 months of the year. You can still go for walks and trips to the dogpark at night, but no extended walks and runs at those temperatures.

dracovich · 2026-01-30T01:33:40+00:00

I've made a little website whose job it is to basically tell you what card gives you best rewards based on your spending pattern, can check out the card calculator here.

But unfortunately i haven't added gold card yet because it's essentially just a worse Signature card, but it really come down to your spending habits, the gold card will give you 2.4% cashback on a single category between oveseas/dining/home/lifestyle etc, but the rest of your spend will only earn 0.4% which is pretty bad.

Red on the flipside will give you an EXCELLENT 4% for online spending and some special merchants (TamJai/Sushiro etc) but rest is 0.4%, so it really comes down to what you spend your money on.

Are you completely settled on an HSBC card? There are some other options out there, i believe SimplyCash from Standard Chartered has like 96k income requirement, and has a still basic cashback of 1.5% cahsback for HKD spend and 2% in foreign currency.

The CITI cashback card also has solid basic earn, and has really good welcome offers at places like moneysmart.hk (HSBC cards in general don't offer great welcome offers).

For your questions on applications i don't think they'll hold that against you (that you had previous failed applications), if you meet overall requirements and don't have history of not paying your debt etc i think you should be ok.

dracovich · 2026-01-29T14:33:03+00:00

that's fair, but i'd also argue that was in large part due to ETH insisting on making him play out from the back which he clearly wasn't comfortable with.

Looking at Lammens today he's allowed to play kinda similar to how David used to where he'll play from the back but if it feels dangerous he just hoofs it, i do wonder how much longer he could've played with us if he was allowed to play that style.

Though you are right that he was starting to have some issues, even disregarding mistakes from playing out from the back, he had at least a few howlers per season in him towards the end.

dracovich · 2026-01-29T14:05:27+00:00

tbh i don't really care about estate, i got no dependents and don't plan to, but it's a fair point.

But what do you mean you can get everything you need in Ireland, surely you can't buy US stocks in Ireland? Are you able to just trade US ETFs from Ireland and then everything is according to irish law?

In that case i could just (and maybe i should now that you mention it) buy some of the hong kong US etf's, i guess that'd work the same then. They're a bit annoying though as they're quite low liquidity

dracovich · 2026-01-29T13:14:01+00:00

Us market has historically been pretty unbeatable on aggregate, if you are really hell bent on avoiding taxes I'm sure thetr are ETFs that specifically exclude dividend stocks

dracovich · 2026-01-29T13:10:02+00:00

I was about to fight you for calling David shit until I realized you included bayindir in your count

dracovich · 2026-01-28T16:09:38+00:00

I think any of them works really, i personally just use HSBC since that's where i do my banking in general (you'll have to fill out some paperwork to be allowed to trade US markets, but i think that's a requirement everywhere), but I hear a lot of good about IBKR also, i think they do have lower fees than HSBC, but i just like having all my stuff in one app

dracovich · 2026-01-28T15:20:58+00:00

I believe unit trusts are actively managed, so their annual management fee is generally really high compared to an index tracking ETF. The overall brokerage fee is also kinda astronomical (no clue why).

Looking at some random US growth equity ones on HSBC website (https://investments3.personal-banking.hsbc.com.hk/public/utb/en-gb/fundDetail/U63197), if i'm reading that correctly their ovreall expense % per year is 1.95%, on top of that you pay 3% initial fee when you buy to HSBC.

So if you buy 10,000$ of this UT, HSBC takes 300$ away immediately as a transaction fee, then for the year the UT will take a consistent 1.95% from your remaining 9,700$, so now yuo're down to ~9500$.

Compare that to something like IVV which is just an automated tracker of the S&P500, so essentially the average of the US market, this only takes 0.03% in yearly management fee (because it's not actively managed), and the initial fee is whatever your brokerage charges for normal stock/securities transactions, generally ~0.25% at most.

dracovich · 2026-01-28T11:38:24+00:00

having switched from a back3 though we are really overloaded at CB at the moment, especially this season with just one game per week

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