Yes you are obviously biased and yet you seemingly made most of your wealth from asia. You maybe spent too much time in communist china to become seemingly materialistic. Me and my wife climb mountains with doggy and camp in a small tent to see sunrise that only efforts can result without paying a cent, while you enjoying the 5star suite down the hill and rubbing shoulders with other confortable oldmen. You think i am stupid for not wanting to spend cash and sweating my ass while i see you are dumb for coming all the way to the mountain to stay in an airconed room and playing with manmade artifacts. No wonder you said your not physically fit. After padding your bank account, you are completely satisfied and stay home enjoying life runoff from 40s, i find freedom to search for a new and more fulfilling path and doing a science master to stress myself and remind myself how little i have achieved. Your attitude is exactly what i find backward and stagnant in spain, so there is nothing to agree on from the start
Well, I´m more into pushing big weighs than climbing mountains, and wouldnt need to run in front of little asian boy who dreams himself a mix of Elon Musk and Richard Branson while on a janitor budget - I wouldn´t need to steal his wallet either - . See pics in link below, we have different taste in sports as well, which is fine, but taking the night bus on a spanish route and sleeping in low end AirBnb makes you neither fit nor an explorer, just a bitter cheapstake. Besides Madrid is not quite a mountain to climb, i think you would have increased your budget you wouldn´t have such a shitty experience. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/barons-journey-to-single-digit-bodyfat.329163/page-45
I sometimes do spend, like squandering $10k/week in maldives to be willingly trapped in a small island and get ripped off left and right..because my wife kinda likes that exp once in a while. I find it more fun camping in lefkada for a few hundreds though. do you like canada? from what you have said and little i know, it seems that canada is a good place for you? I do plan to eventually go back but probably to live in quebec
Funny, never been a tropical island fan, and being stuck on a small island for 1 week sounds like torture. Haven´t been to Canada yet, but don´t doubt the lifestyle is great there, if immigration was easy in Canada, Australia or New Zealand we´d have looked into it more closely - I sure found Australia and NZ very pleasant when visiting. But plans are to sort out this visa issue for Mrs and stay for a (long) while in Madrid. Besides the administrative hassle - which might end up chasing us away, if we are faced too often or too long with similar situations- Madrid is pretty cool. Again quality of life and health standards are much higher than OP implies and daughter´s sports school so far is beyond expectations, with a bunch of european and world class athletes training in the same group. If she can´t keep up with the training we´ll be keener to leave as well. Talking about fitness, Madrid youngsters are quite fit, they may spend less time than their East Asian cousins studying science and struggling with the sad and stressed nightmare East Asian cultures made of their childhood, but definitely not playing sports. Not too worried about academic performance in International School here, and If we moved it would be to another EU country first (I like most of Western Europe)
figuring where to spend the new year week snowboarding, either hokkaido, zermatt+cortina ampezzo, or whistler. never in europe before so zermatt sounds good, but a little difficult for doggy to take long flight to milan and as a cheap guy, i don't wanna take a direct flight costing 3x one-stop flights
Well, they went nowhere in 10 working days, actually it seems in Barcelona things are worse than in Madrid as they haven´t even managed to get an appointment for the kids who are EU citizens ( disclaimer 1 : that´s info from LuisHK´Mrs who has been discussing with the other couple Mrs, and ime there are often things lost in translation in similar cases. Disclaimer 2: this couple is now on business overseas, not sure how hard they tried to get the appointment ) But happy to say in Madrid I managed to get the kids residence permits just before school started and an appointment for non EU citizen Mrs around the same time, even managed to get all her application documents properly for the appointment, which is not exactly as easy as reading the requirements online, so she got her temporary residence permit, which includes a couple of numbers necessary for a bunch of stuff including public health insurance if I understood properly. It is supposed to take up to 3 months for the application to be accepted than to be able to take another appointment at the police and go get her 5 years residence permit but hopefully (!) we are through the trickiest part of the process. About lawyers, poor news again, I forwarded a few questions to the young one, who is allegedly specialized in tax rather than immigration but was assigned to me by the law firm, he is supposed to help out and contact the right department when needed. Actually he doesn´t even seem to be able to read documents in Spanish, he came out with 2 pieces of advice from reading the application requirements that were both BS. Talk about useless, happy after going through the process for myself than the kids I was confident enough to decide his advice was best ignored, but were I not, I would have wasted more time and money. Would be hard pressed to advise any lawyer or gestor around here. Again the process is easier for EU citizens than non EU citizens. Worth of note, for soccer fans, La Moraleja is the residence area´of many Madrid soccer players, I needed help at the coffee shop as besides Modric, Benzema or Zidane, I would probably recognize none of them, but some of those guys´ kids are Junior´s school and classmates, now let´s hope the boy won´t fall into heroin before his 12th birthday as Blueraincap warned will happen if he keeps on playing outside with migrant kids. if one could use OP´s feedback about Spain as toilet paper, we´d be on the way to save the Amazon. It´s no secret soccer players live and send their kids to school in that area btw. I`m not crazy about soccer but find it pretty cool, and being elected the best player in the most popular sports on earth blows my mind.
"Happy New Anus" That was awkward... turns out typing without accents as I usually do switching between 3 languages on my phone on a single keyboard doesn't work out well in Spanish to wish Happy New Year. Got actually a little worse later on... Also at 6.30am on Jan 1st someone used my spanish debit card to order some stuff on apple website. Original way to send their best wishes... 2nd time in 6 months I got issues with unauthorized payments here and within a week of driving a new car someone had stolen the front license plate. All small issues but time wasting. Feliz Año Nuevo anyway, don´t forget the accent !
Schools and universities closed in Madrid starting Wednesday. Stressful period here, leaving despicable Mainland China yet witness western way of life taken to the sewers by Chinese influence. Portfolio wise it´s rough as well. On the bright side day to day life hasn´t changed here yet, although from Wednesday it should get a little worse. Restrictions initially announced for 2 weeks, but who knows how long they will end up. As long as the gyms stay open and we´re not quarantined or very sick it still sounds bearable.