End Of Year Post 2024

 Let's take a look at what happened in 2024 and how the future looks from today's perspective:

• In December last year, I started learning Indonesian. My progress was relatively slow and I had to learn a lot about language learning to begin with. It's like other things such as dieting or muscle building: First, you have to learn how things actually work before you can start an effective treatment. I also had to unlearn some things that many of us pick up as bad habits or attitudes, like thinking that learning a language is about "talent". So far, I am starting to improve. I have about 1200 word in my Anki deck, and am starting to understand children's cartoons kind of okay. I will sink more hours into listening comprehension and reading before I try to speak.
• Stocks: Broadcom currently sits at 179 dollars after a stock split this year. It is up almost 9 times since I bought it in March 2020, and that's without considering dividends. What a powerful investment. My other investment, Tesla, is also up big.As I write this, it is about to cross the 400 dollar price barrier, which is at or near an all-time high. The weird thing is that this strong move up in the last weeks was mainly due to Donald Trump winning the election. There is no material news regarding earnings per share that would justify the stock price. This leads to a dilemma where I could hold the stock and hope it stays up, or I sell because the fundamentals don't support the share price. At the same time, Tesla announced they believe that the newly unveiled robotaxis will make it to market before 2027, but that's not something they have been very good at predicting in the past. My other investments don't make up a big percentage compared to the previous two
• I'm still at my current workplace and have been there for almost 10 years now. But I feel like my time there is coming to an end. While I can still enjoy home office (50% of all work hours), I feel like it's not a comfortable place to be any more. I could still tolerate it, but maybe I should not overstay my welcome and move on. Perhaps this will happen in 2025 and I hope I don't screw up at my new workplace if I find one.
• I'm in a struggle with weight loss. It used to be easier. I just can't keep doing the right things and fall back into old patterns.

What else has happened this year? Not much, as per usual. There was no huge vacation or anything, but we have been saving money for an extended trip to Singapore early next year.

My expectation for next year:

Finally, there will be a vacation in Asia again. I hope to relax a little and regain my sanity. I also think that there is a chance that I get a new job. After 10 years in the same job, it would seem reasonable to try something new. While I will lose some benefits like home office and not having to do much most of the time, I think it would probably help to do something different, hopefully also something that motivates me and something that is closer to where I live. I am only looking for a part time job anyway.

Financially, I don't expect much from next year. I think if we stay where we are and keep our expenses covered plus a little extra, we can keep things going well.

My goals for next year: Weight loss throughout the year at some point, even if progress is slow. Improving my language skills in Indonesian. Keeping finances well-organized. And making sure that the next years allow for some good memories, because I feel that we are losing a lot of time not making memories.

End of Year Post 2023

 Another TRANSITORY year is coming to an end. Yes, the same story as every year: Saving money for the future. Investing money to have a better life at a later stage. And not much going on that is memorable.

In fact, it is really difficult to remember anything from this year. At the beginning of the year, we were in Berlin to meet some friends and family. After that, there is a big hole in my memory. What I know at the very least is that I have vacation days that I can transfer into 2024, which means that I did not have a lot of days off this year. But, due to extended home office, it almost felt like I didn't work at all. How lucky I feel.

I looked at my plans from one year ago. I got gifted a new phone, which is great. I still don't have a new PC, but that can wait. I don't have a new matress either or anything else in that direction.

When it comes to stocks, I had my first 5-bagger. Broadcom as substantially increased in value in the latter half of this year. It even reached 1150 dollars this month. Up until the end of the first half of 2023, it had never even reached 900 dollars. And to keep in mind, this is the stock I bought in mid march of 2020, when people were scrambling to buy toilet paper.

Not only did my Broadcom shares increase in value by 5 times, the stock has been paying dividends on top of that ever since. And since I bought those shares at a very cheap price, the amount of dividends I receive are quite high, considering how much I get back in relation to how much money I put in. It won't be that much longer until I get back 10 per cent every year on top of the shares being worth more and more.

Apart from that, I bought some other investments. The main theme this year were Australian lithium stocks, which pay dividends and have a substantial amount of lithium reserves they can tap into. This will be important in the future. People tend to think that more lithium mines will open in the future, but this is a lengthy process that takes a lot of time and bureaucracy to overcome. So I'm betting on the big boys right now.

I also took advantage of high interest rates. Right now, it seems that more and more people like to buy bonds before rates sink again, but I already seized various opportunities in the first half of this year. I basically "knew" that inflation would come down again at some point and that the expectation of high interest rates would dwindle.

My wife is working part time (about 50-75% of the hours she had before) and around Easter next year, this should go down to 50% of what was still the case in August. I view this as a positive thing. We wanted to have an easier life, and I believe it is possible to live like this in a frugal way. This is what we are good at and it improves quality of life.

On a more global scale, the war in Ukraine is still going on and probably won't end in the traditional sense for a much longer time. Then we also have a new war. Congratulations to Israel and Palestine for being little babies fighting over a ball. This conflict will never come to a peaceful conclusion. As long as religious beliefs are involved, there is no reasoning that could end this. Also, I view this conflict as some sort of global "social experiment". You know those youtube videos where they enact a scene where either a baby is being abducted or a man hits a woman? This conflict is that on a global level. I'm basically waiting for some big youtuber to reveal that it was all a test: We were supposed to call it out for being a bad thing (people dying, being tortured, innocents suffering), but instead, most people failed the experiment by picking a side.

My predictions for 2024:

• Interest rates will fall eventually. Probably around the middle of the year. This will lead to an economic recovery and a bull run in the stock market. I tend to be a bit cautious and preferably err on the side of pessimism, but I think things are going to go well still.
• The conflicts in the world will drag on, both in Ukraine as well as Israel. There will be lots of talks about how China handles Taiwan, but in the end, it will just be stuff that the news channels will like to spin as doom and gloom to keep people watching
• People will again lose limbs and lives on new year's eve (pick any year in the future), and children will still die of heat exhaustion because they were forgotten in cars in summer. Some things never change.

My goals for 2024:

• Have the kitchen repaired (should happen in January)
• Have the cat's teeth cleaned and have the cat fully vaccinated (first half of the year)
• Save money for a trip to Singapore (whenever that is)
• Invest in stocks that pay dividends
• Save money specifically for future years, in order to "secure" them in case something changes in the way we decide to work
• Find a way to spend the 25 vacation days that I need to spend in a good way

I don't expect 2024 to be a groundbreaking year in any way. The predictions that Tesla stock would reach 8 dollars of EPS were complete bullcrap. Earnings are of course stagnant in this difficult economic environment. And it is already clear that next year will be the same, even if the outlook, like I said, improves. It will take time until this carries over into earnings. The only stock that will really shine will be Broadcom. But that's okay. Things will fall into place eventually.

A Hedge Against Aging

 One of the things I regret the most in life is not investing into the stock market earlier. It has to be said that investing for the first time is probably more stupid than investing when you are an experienced investor (in terms of the decisions you make then), but still, even with some beginner investments, as long as those are long term, you are usually fine in the long run.

Now that I am older an am investing in the stock market, I realise what the power of the stock market is. You can hide that power behind phrases such as "the power of compounding interest" or other fancy words, but there is actually a different way of looking at it. It is a hedge against aging.

It does not protect you from literally aging, as you will still grow old. But what it does do is this: If you don't die young, the longer you live, the richer you get. The more your bones grow weak and your back hurts, the more money your stocks will make for you. As things get tougher and you lose loved ones, at least one thing keeps working in your favour. When other things are declining, this thing gets better. Like fine wine.

If you die young and don't get to enjoy the fruits of your savings, bad for you, but at least you don't have to go through the things that suck about aging. But then again, if at least you can get something positive out of aging, then this is it. You can't manually make the stock market move forward 30 years. It is something you have to live through yourself. But the good thing is that you can let that happen "on idle". You still live your life as the main character of your own movie.

If I had invested at least some money, let's say 1000 euros per year, into the stock market for every year since I was old enough to do so, that money alone would have compounded nicely and done great things for me up until today. Not even considering the next 30 years.

Sadly, most people don't understand this superpower, and the people who would benefit most, newborns, are rarely gifted this power by their parents, who spend their money on other things.

If I actually live to see the day that I turn 70, I hope that my investing strategy was good enough to look back on my investments proudly. Of course I could also screw it all up because it's the Truman Show after all and maybe the viewers want to see me suffer. But maybe not.

The next years are basically planned for me. I know when to sell, how much to sell, and what not to sell. It's all about how things are going to play out. I don't have the slightest clue. All I know is that the last years, going back to 2017, were me catching up with time and putting an effort into investing, when between 2012 and 2016, when I already had a brokerage account but didn't understand compounding, I wasted a lot of time. And before 2012, well, there were other priorities back then.

My investing strategy is risky, as it is very concentrated, but I have to cut a few corners because I don't want to simply be able to pay the electrical bill with my dividends. It's not enough. More than that needs to happen. But I at least have time on my side, because I am not in a hurry. So no, not interested in digital currency or rich over night schemes.

As I write this, I'm waiting for my Broadcom stock to pay me a nice dividend. Thanks to all the suckers who sold me their shares in the middle of March of 2020. It's been a nice quadruple since then, even excluding dividends.

The Amazing Power of the Passage of Time

 In the past couple of months, I spent a lot of time asking questions to Chat GPT - an AI software that has incredible powers in answering questions using language. This has helped me a lot in figuring out things, especially about things that you don't know how to google.

So if I have questions about phenomena that I have experienced, but can't find the right words, I will use this Artificial Intelligence to explain if there is a word for a phenomenon and then ask why I might feel a certain way, why things are the way they are, or to explain in simple words what a certain mental concept is like.

One thing that has fascinated me for a very long time is the concept of time itself. The way in which we perceive the passing of time, and how an event can feel "like yesterday" but still be decades away in the past.

There are many powerful implications when it comes to the passage of time. Especially in combination with the power of human memory. There is a concept that Chat GPT explained to me as "temporal orientation" or "temporal" awareness, which describes a person's ability "to place events and memories in chronological order and to understand the passage of time."

Some people seem to be able to assign certain memories to a specific calendar year from very early on, but to me, it really started when I was 12 years old. That was the year when I became strongly aware of time, the year I was in, and the ability to reflect on a year that has passed and take mental notes of some of the more meaningful events that happened. That was in the year 1995. Of course I do have memories from before then, and I can assign SOME memories to specific years, but most of the time these memories are assigned to a year by some sort of association. For example: It mus have been the year 1994, because I was in 4th grade and I had that teacher, so it had to be that year.

But from 1995 on, I no longer had to construct a memory from these circumstances, I could just remember the events themselves.

One thing that has amazed me since the age of 12 is how time passes and how the perception of time passed changes over time. When I was 12 years old, an event from 1982 would have been 13 years ago, one year before I was born. As I am writing these lines, an event from 1982 is now between 40 and 41 years ago.

It feels strange because, while there is a grey mist surrounding my earliest years, I can at least recount many of those 40 years. I can come up with logical explanations as to why 40 years have passed since an event, and why it was "only" 13 years ago when I was 12 years of age. But when I think back now, 13 years seems like a laughable period of time. I think back 13 years and believe it was yesterday.

Another amazing thing about time: It is very impactful. 10 years are an enormous amount of time that impact many things in life. 10 years is an eternity in investing. You could 10x your money in 10 years without gambling, if only you invest in a fast-growing company that is not too massively overvalued when you start investing. 10 years can also make a huge difference to your looks, although there are periods in your life when your looks won't change much within 10 years at all, but other times your physical appearance will have changed drastically. So not only do 10 years matter, it also matters which 10 years you are talking about.

To some degree, it can even be scary to think about the passage of time. To give some examples: When I was a child, Christina Ricci played a young Wednesday Addams in the Addams Family movies, and now she plays an adult woman in the new Netflix series about Wednesday Addams. Aaron Carter was a child star as a singer in the late 1990s, and last year he died as a drug addict in his mid 30s. Or think of child actors such as Edward Furlong or Macaulay Culkin who are now more or less run-down middle-aged guys with mental health problems.

It leaves you wondering: Where am I going?

One of the weirdest thing, I suppose, is that fact that we (at least some of us) are very focussed on the past, but don't think too much about the future. I can't recall ever asking myself "where will I be in 2020?". The only thing I ever remember was thinking about the year 2000. But that was only because of the turn of the millenium.

What is also crazy is that I have had this blog since 2005, so I have a long library of blog entries to look back to.

When I make my "end of year posts", I only refer to an ending year,usually not a series of years. But in reality, I often think in decades. So when I am in a year, I think back to myself and ask myself the question: What happened 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago? Even before I was born.

So different things will come up in my mind: Childhood video camera footage, Sega video games, having to do a school internship, have trouble at work a decade later, and so on. Different stages of life, all connected by being on a year with the same number at the back.

And that's how all the memories rack up.

By the way, one of my biggest regrets and also my biggest pieces of advice if one had a child: Make them start a journal. Don't let that opportunity go to waste. You don't have anything left if you don't write down memories.

Other things relating to time would be to record things on video from an early age (video quality is better than ever) and to start investing very early, even on behalf of a child.

Time is very precious.

End of Year Post 2022

 As I write this post, Tesla sits at a new 2 year low. So in other words, all the shares I bought within the last two years were more expensive than they are now, or in other words, I lost money on paper.

The main question about all this is: Will the stock recover? I'm a relatively pragmatic person when it comes to that.There is a lot of talk about Elon Musk going insane, having extreme political views and hurting the Tesla brand, basically chasing customers away. I don't know how much of that is true, but there is one thing that I hold as a very strong belief: Earnings matter.

I don't care WHY earnings are down, if they are down. There were some bullish youtubers predicting super hot numbers for Tesla from the beginning of the year, and then when there were China lockdowns, these people argued that the "fascist" chinese government with its zero covid policy was to blame. Well, who cares why Tesla produced less vehicles than they could have produced? These are the same people who cheered Tesla on for building a production site in a country that is capable of such measures. You can't have the good things without the bad things. That is why, again this time, I don't care if it's Elon's fault, or the woke people's fault, or the mass media. If Tesla does not reach 7$ per share of earnings in 2023, it's a miss in my eyes. Whether that's china's fault, Elon's fault, lithium's fault, I don't care.

Speaking of investing: I have to admit that my obsession with Tesla got the better of me and I am now even more invested in Tesla this year compared to last year. Even now that Tesla is way down, more than 90% of my portfolio is in TSLA. I still have (and will continue to hold) my Broadcom shares that I bought in mid March of 2020. It turns out that this is a gift from heaven, and Hock Tan is an amazing CEO.

Apart from these positions, I don't hold much else. I have a couple hundred bucks in a gold ETC, and I am starting to build a position in commodity stocks. I've started with Glencore, then bought Albemarle, then SQM. I believe that battery material miners can be a good investment now that the overall market is down, inflation is high and these rare metals are critical for the transition to sustainable energy. It's also a good alternative to Tesla, as well as a complimentary investment to Tesla ("go long what Tesla is short").

My priority now is to buy income-generating stocks, so dividends are becoming more important.

Speaking of inflation: This year was crazy with inflation. We saw price increases of over 10% depending on what you are looking at. It's crazy. Milk used to cost 1 Euro a couple of years back, now it's 2 euros. Electricity and heating are up, but not as bad as we tought a while ago.

Oh and by the way, we had parity between the euro and the dollar. Crazy times. Usually you could buy one dollar with 0,80 euros or a little more, but that's it.

2022 was a year that was, to some degree, yet another transitory year. But I did get to travel to the Maldives, which is definitely more than just your average uneventful vacation. So that is something about 2022 that I will remember.

I visited my father around Easter, had another Visit from sister in law in May (and again in december, with her mother).

All in all, the main focus has again been saving money, because there has been a tough down market. Oh year, by the way: Russia invaded Ukraine. I thought I should mention that. It was one of the main reasons for the whole inflation thing.

And because of that, naturally, the markets went down, the central banks started raising interest rates because of inflation, that was the start of the whole bear market. Whether we officially call it a recession now or next year doesn't really matter. I have to keep buying shares, and now that I am done buying Tesla I need to look for high-yielding dividend stocks. Preferably in great industries such as lithium. If I have to, I will also settle with more typical dividend investments, depending on where the markets go.

In hindsight, I would have maybe bought a little less Tesla and more Broadcom and lithium stocks. But now that stocks are down, I can't reverse that course. And when Tesla is back up again, sentiment will have changed anyway, so I will probably be stuck with all those shares one way or another.

Going back to the whole 7$ per share story: If Tesla reaches 7$ earnings per share, the stock should trade at a share price of around 300 dollars, give or take. Not 162 dollars, as it does right now.

But then again, there can be a dozen reasons why that won't be the case. I just try to focus on earnings because that is the long term driver of stock prices. That and the growth rate of the business.

Some of the more bullish people forecast 8, 9 or 10 dollars per share, but I think that these people are the ones who are always excited about everything Elon does and will always point out the positive things while never critizising the bad things.

The longer term view should be more exciting, with products like the Tesla Semi and the Cybertruck growing in volumes. But it does not really matter because we don't know anything until the actual earnings show through. It could go either way anyway.

By the way: I don't care about autonomous driving, FSD, robotaxis. That's just people dreaming in my opinion. If something has the potential to work as a lottery ticket and increase your share price by 10x, why would you make plans for what to do with the money? It either happens or it doesn't. There is no need to plan your finances around something that is so unpredictable. You'll have plenty of time to think it trough if it works. Which is something I don't burden myself with.

What are the plans for next year:

• Buying a new phone (yes, still!)
• Buying a new matress (we got the bed but the new matress is not good enough)
• Buying a new PC (unless a tablet does the job - we are at a weird point in time where PCs seem to be replaced by mobile devices, but they don't fulfil all the tasks of regular PCs yet)
• Saving money strictly for dividend income (no more Tesla shares)
• Waiting for an economic recovery

On a positive note, home office at my work place is still possible, although we switched to a 50% rule, where half the work has to be done in person. But I did spend a lot of months this year only really going to work once a week until that came through. So time has been on "fast forward" for a long time.

I'll see you around...

End of Year Post 2021

 Another year went by really quickly. Yes, another transitory year. So basically again like in the last few years, this year was all about the future and preparing myself and my finances for enjoying life a little bit more a couple of years from now.

What can we say about 2021? First of all, the pandemic from last year is still going strong. Covid / Corona lasted longer than previously expected. Last year, the consensus was that we would get a vaccine in late 2020 (we did) and that we would then defeat the virus (we did not). So, even now in december 2021, we still have lockdowns, still wear masks, still have new variants that the vaccinations may or may not help against.

On the positive side, this meant lots more home office for me. Actually, I was scared during the summer days that we would "defeat" Covid and have to go back to normal working environments at my job. But instead, the maximum that I remember is having to go to work for 2 days every week. And even after that, when things got worse, we moved back to total home office. So I enjoyed staying at home.

What happened this year in terms of vacations/fun stuff? Not much. Got a nice visit from the sister in law, so that is something I enjoyed. Apart from that not much happened, just sitting tight and waiting for things to stay normal. My wife went to Singapore without me, which is okay because it would have been a nightmare in terms of covid-related measures that need to be considered. It could have cost a lot of money if things went wrong.

Then of course there is investing. We saved a lot of money between 2017 and 2021. I went through the numbers and they are insane. We put so much effort into saving. And it becomes like an addiction to some degree, because there is always some way to spend the money to invest it and grow it into something bigger. So you are left asking yourself: Why would I spend the money on consumption (new phone, new computer, new vacation) if that money is worth a lot more just a couple of years from now? But there needs to be a balance, or else things go out of control and you dont live life as you should.

Portfolio update: A lot changed from last year. The concentration is really crazy. 80% of the portfolio is now Tesla. Big risk, little diversification. But the company is doing extremely well and I feel well-informed about them. The remaining percentages are made up of Broadcom (which has tripled since I bought it), Abbvie, Medifast, a little bit of Palantir and my genomics stocks (Crispr therapeutics, Intellia, Editas and Beam).

New stocks I am watching right now: Palantir (maybe buy back more since I sold them to buy Tesla), Rio Tinto (soon a lithium miner), Celsius Holdings (interesting low-calorie energy drink) and perhaps going back to Shopify (again, sold for Tesla). There are always more investing ideas than there is money.

A crazy thing worth mentioning: The portfolio value more than doubled compared to before the pandemic. Now, to be honest, a part of that doubling is that I was not all in before the pandemic, also we kept saving money. So it is not all gains, but also partially savings. But the amount of money we now have is beyond what I dreamed for looking at January 2023, when I turn 40 years old. It is also possible that this number will have doubled some time next year - from January of 2021. It is the crazy power of compounding on steroids.

What am I looking forward to in 2022? Here are some things:

• Saving money for stocks (not as much as before though)
• Buying some necessary items (new bed, new phone, new PC)
• Going to maledives (if covid allows)

The future should be interesting and I am looking at a situation where life should stabilize a little to the point where saving, saving, saving is not the top priority any more. I think we did well and can now enjoy the snow ball effect. It should also be noted that, after saving and investing a lot, there comes a time when any new money invested simply doesnt add up as much as before in terms of percentage added. So what used to be an additional 20% or 10% of money saved up, will over time turn out to be only an extra 5% or less of the total money in our portfolio.

Blown Away - Literally

 There are two things that are certain in life: In summer, there will be news about children who died in cars because it was a hot day and they were forgotten by their parents, and in winter, there will be injuries from fireworks because people just can't learn a lesson.

This year, on the turn from 2020 to 2021, it was possibly going to be different. Because of the Corona / Covid pandemic, fireworks were either forbidden, restricted or the sale of fireworks was limited or outright forbidden.

This meant that a lot of people would not be using fireworks this year, either because it's too complicated to get things going or because they were going to stay home anyway.

But there were already experts predicting that the number of injuries would still be high. Because of the sales ban, many people might be attempting to use illegal or old unused fireworks. This would be dangerous. So people expected injuries, torn away limbs after all.

And man... new year's eve did not disappoint. Just this morning, I read about not only many injuries, including the good old torn off hand, but also two deaths. One of these deaths included a man who got his head "torn off" by fireworks. That's what I call "going out with a bang".

I know it is tragic, but in some way it is also morbidly amusing. The one year when you might expect things to be a little more quiet, people go out of their way to get killed. It takes a lot of skill to kill yourself with a self-made, unapproved pyro rocket. And even if you get killed, having your head blown off is an achievement of its own. On the other hand, I think the media picked up the story in a very grateful manner and really sensationalized it as much as possible.

So in some way it's funny how people just never want to learn from the dangers of fireworks. It seems that there always has to be that yearly tribute of torn off hands and burnt skin, almost like in the old days when people were made human sacrifices to pacify the gods.

I do understand that accidents can happen. But when you really follow the rules, only use safe fireworks, and apply caution, usually nothing too bad should happen.

So, I suppose we'll see how the summer season turns out. How many children will die in heated cars this year? In a number of years, we will hopefully have cars that can detect a child dying inside, so it will take precaution. But until then, lots of preventable stuff will happen.

End of Year Post 2020

 Okay, so the year is over...

The first thing that needs to get out of the way in case I read this 10 years from now: It was the year of COVID. Or Corona Virus, whatever you prefer.

It was one of the most uneventful years for me personally. In March, I was on a vacation in Wernigerode, including a mountain over there. When I came back from that vacation, my workplace was closed and I was told via e-mail not to go to work. Everyone was panicking about a global pandemic.

The stock market crashed, and since I was active there investing, it offered me a good chance to buy stocks at a crazy cheap price. My best buy at that time was a couple of shares of Broadcom, a company that was usually yielding a 3% dividend yield, but when I initially bought in mid March, the dividend yield was at 7%, that's how low the price was. In the end, my dividend yield for that company is at 6% total after a dividend raise, which is nice.

My investment portfolio changed drastically that year. The only stocks from the year before that I still hold at the end of 2020 are BAT, Abbvie and Capitaland. On top of that, I now own Fosun International, Broadcom, Medifast, Tesla and China Maple Leaf Education, among others.

I spent many months at home after this. In total, I "worked from home" from March 16th until some time around July. Even then, I still had "Home Office" twice a week. Something I could definitely get used to. Towards the end of the year, in late December, we were again ordered to stay home, but by that time my holidays had already begun.

I have to admit I don't remember much about this year or the years prior. I remember that I changed jobs in 2015, there was also a migrant crisis that year, and that I went to Singapore. I also went to Singapore in 2016 and 2017, and in 2017 I was in 3 different places for vacation (Ireland, Amrum and Singapore).

Strangely, I get the feeling that time passes a lot quicker these years. It's important to build more memories. But for the foreseeable future, my focus will be on saving money for investing, so that life gets easier in later years.

Not much else to write about this weird year. There was so much time spent at home that the months flew by without much effort. In some way, it was a good year that way, because I had a safe government job that paid me all the way. I was even double lucky because my contract was for a 30 hour week, as opposed to a 20 hour week that I usually have. I had that 30 hour contract until the end of September, so I benefitted from a lot of free time.

My goals for next year.... well, save money, sit tight and then ease the money saving a little bit. We'll see. In 2 years, I think it will be a little different again when I turn 40. I'm about to be 38 in January 2021. Let's see what kind of year it will become.

When I turn 40 in 2 years, I should start going on vacation again and enjoying life a little more actively day by day and year by year, and not look too far into the future as I do now.

End Of Year Post 2019

My blog is really dying. Only two posts this year.

Ok, just for myself to keep track of what 2019 was like: It was a year of relative uneventfulness. For the most part, I was working my usual job at 75% part time from mid February all the way until December (usually, my job is only 50% part time).

The extra income was very useful in achieving the financial goals that I have for the long term. In that regard, it was a typical year of waiting and postponing stuff - that's the idea behind delayed gratification.

What were some interesting events?

• Meeting Kath at the very beginning of the year - she's part of the old M2M gang and the biggest Marit/Marion fan of all time - so that was meaningful as my own history is all about that M2M stuff
• In the summer, we had in-laws for visit, specifically speaking the youngest sistel in law (spelling is intentional) and the mother in law. We spent a lot of time in Switzerland and Austria with me driving what felt like a space ship (Audi A8 or something with automatic gears and shit), my best memory of the year is probably that lake we went swimming in. Very relaxing
• Bought lots of shares in the stock market and beginning to get a really nice dividend income from them. New purchases included Boeing, British American Tobacco and Capitaland.

Apart from that, the year was relatively uneventful, as mentioned. I'm much more focussed on the future than the present. In my mind, it has been 2020 for a long time already. I'm waiting for more income to go into my stock broker account. There are some more years of saving money ahead, but after next year, I expect things to improve in everyday life, financially speaking. There is a point in time where not only the dividend income makes life easier, but also there is less of a need to keep saving money at an insane rate. That's what I'm looking for.

Goals for 2020: Well, money is a priority, as you can guess. I'm also desperate to lose weight (big fail in 2019) and I'm going to work a 3/4 job again from February on until end of September, if things stay the same. I don't want to spend money on fancy things and I don't plan any trips abroad, because I'm looking at the long-term picture. Hopefully, things will turn out fine.

That's it. See you in one year unless I get motivated to write something here.

Shenmue 2 Sucks - Why I quit

I just have to vent my anger somewhere so I'm going to do it here. I just quit Shenmue 2 - because it sucks.

It has been a while since I "gave up" on a game. Usually I don't play games that you "give up" before they are finished, but this is one of them. Let me explain why I did this.

Why Shenmue 2 is disappointing

Cutting the main character's throat would have been a relief

First a little background history. The first Shenmue game was once the most expensive game ever created. It cost something like  a 100 million dollars to make and was part of the reason why Sega went out of console business and has since only been a software studio.

The game became a cult classic, because of its nostalgic value and the many little cultural references in it. You can even go to the arcade in-game and play classic 80s video games. Stuff like that made the original Shenmue great, as well as a fantastic soundtrack.

I loved the first Shenmue. It was slow-paced, but beautiful and atmospheric. It's not a perfect game, and some people describe it as a fork lift driving simulator  (because a considerate portion of the game has you drive around in one to earn money), but still, it's good for what it is.

Now let me explain how things happened to me. When I discovered the first Shenmue, it was already several years since Sega had gone out of business (so to speak), and the lifespan of the dreamcast console had been over already. I think it may have been 2008 or 2009. I decided to order some dreamcast games because my library was kind of small. I liked the game, the only sad thing was that the second game was never released on the dreamcast, but on a different console that I didn't own.

So I thought I might never play Shenmue 2. Then, there were talks about Shenmue 3 being released, a game that was in development hell for very long. It was only by accident that I then found out that Shenmue 2 (and Shenmue 1) had been re-released for PS4 about a year ago already!

So I bought Shenmue 1 and 2 for 20 euros. A good price, considering you get a great nostalgic game as well as the game that was totally out of reach. I thought it would be great in order to play the whole trilogy as soon as Shenmue 3 would be released later in 2019 or 2020.

The first game was easy to play through. Same thing as back in the old days. Then came Shenmue 2. And Shenmue 2 sucks and it's a big disappointment. Let me tell you why.

Reasons why Shenmue 2 sucks

Shenmue 1 and Shenmue 2 are not too different from one another. Both rely on similar gameplay. But Shenmue 2 is worse because it emphasizes on the more annoying parts and has stupid story elements. Let me explain:

• As soon as you start the game (you can even use the save data from Shenmue 1), you are robbed by a gang and lose ALL your money from the first game. Whatever you brought over in terms of currency is gone. What a fantastic middle finger!
• There is supposedly a place where you can sleep for free at the harbour area where you start the game, however, without even trying hard, I already pass that area on the first day and can never go to that inn because it is "closed for construction" for the rest of the game. What good is a resting place that is shut off on the first day???
• Earning money in Shenmue 2 is harder than in Shenmue 1. You have only two legitimate regular ways of income. You can either carry crates, which amounts to 10 hong kong dollars per crate, but that way you may often end up only with 60 dollars per day. Spending the night at the guest house costs 38 dollars a night, so you hardly gain any money and later on, you need THOUSANDS of dollars to progress!
  The other way of earning money is to assist at the lucky hit stand. This is a game partially based on luck, and even though you may win every once in a while, there is a chance your earnings will be extremely low as well.
  In reality, the best way to earn money is to take all the money you have, SAVE YOUR GAME, and repeat a dice throwing gamble or some other "all or nothing" event until you have tripled or quadrupled your entire wealth, including saving and reloading of course! You know you have a bad game on your hands when the only way to make serious in-game currency is by saving and reloading if you don't get the desired results
• The game is a TERRIBLE series of quick time events (QTE). A QTE is when you suddenly have to press buttons that appear on the screen in quick succession. You need lightning reflexes. These events were already a part of Shenmue 1, but back then, you only had to memorize about 3 movements (left, right, button) in a row, for instance. In Shenmue 2, the button combinations are merciless, extremely quick and you need the brain of a 15 year old to react quickly enough. This game made me feel REALLY old. The worst thing is that I sometimes felt I DID things correctly, but the game still treated me as if I didn't react in time.
• The fighting is quite bad. Even though you have a very sophisticated library of fighting moves, a lot of this is lost when you are constantly backed into a corner and can only save yourself with button mashing. This may be a weird comparison, but in Street Fighter 2, you have a lot less moves but feel much more in control of what you do and WANT to do. In Shenmue 2, I can't even REMEMBER which moves to apply and I don't have the space to use them because I get a fist in my face before I can execute the correct movement.

In the end, here is what happened to me: The longer the game dragged on, the more I lost interest in playing it. At some point, I felt like I just wanted to finish the game to be done with it. I was disappointed already. But then, things got worse. The QTE got more and more complicated, and at some point I thought to myself: If this gets more complicated, I might end up at a point where I seriously don't think I CAN finish the game because I don't have the reflexes / skill / nerve to complete these movements.

And that's what eventually broke the game for me. My willingness to repeat the same cut scenes over and over, just because of ONE button I supposedly didn't press in time, meant that I switched off the game.

The tragedy is that I was already in the final third of the game and would probably soon reached the best area of the game and enjoyed finishing Shenmue 2. But when a game is only a burden to play and constantly angers you, that's when you need to stop.

Shenmue 2 is a big shame, it sucks, it disappointed me big time. I don't know what the developers of the game were smoking when they made it. Look, I don't mind that the game is slow, or a little stiff with the movement, or that the main character is a humorless wooden plank that repeats every statement he hears as a question. I can enjoy a slow-paced game. And I do enjoy what Shenmue actually is deep inside. But let me get one thing straight: Shenmue was never supposed to be this button-mashing nightmare.

Imagine any game you like: Sonic, Mario brothers, GTA, whatever. Now imagine, instead of being at the controls and DOING things, you are suddenly faced with button combinations you are supposed to press in order to survive. If you miss, or are too slow, the previous scene resets and you have to watch a boring cutscene from before. That's Shenmue 2.

How did they screw this up? How? Terrible game with so much good potential. And it's not that everything is terrible. The scenery is good, the story is good, the whole "revenge is not the answer" vibe is great. But the QTE stuff just kills the whole game.

End Of Year Post 2018

This was one of the most uneventful years in history for me.

You can easily see the uneventfulness by checking on how many days of vacation you have left to take off from work at the end of the year. For me, I had half of my days of still to plan when December came, so I only took half of it during the other months of 2018.

I only left the country twice, as far as I can remember. The first time I left was for Switzerland for only a weekend, the other one was a vacation in Tenerife, Spain. My first visit to a southern European country, by the way.

The trip to the island was perhaps the best vacation in terms of beach, swimming and the like for a long time. I especially enjoyed swimming with the fish (not sleeping with fishes, as the mafia says).

Even though it was a little stressful to drive a rental car and get around a place I don't feel too familiar with, I could enjoy the beaches and the sun.

The rest of the year was so filled with uneventfulness that I won't be able to remember much 10 years from now. What I can remember, but will easily forget, is a surgery I had in March, but that's not a big issue, and an injury I had in early November. I had an akle injury and couldn't walk much for the rest of the year.

Apart from that, I don't recall anything... And I also had nothing to write about on this blog. There isn't much to expect for 2019. I don't have huge plans. Right now it's one of these times in life when you just want things to stay okay...

So maybe that's what I can hope for.

PES Card Collection - Tutorial / Guide / Tips / Walkthrough

As I have noticed before when creating a guide for Underworld Football Manager, I now notice that PES Card Collection also doesn't seem to have a real, thorough guide or walkthrough. So I am creating one myself!

PES Card Collection Tutorial / Guide for advanced players

PES CC title screen in late 2018

The following paragraphs will help you through your advanced game - it is not a beginner's guide but rather tips for people who see themselves playing the game for several months to come. Therefore, I take for granted that you have read the "help" pages within the PES CC app (settings - help). You know what GP and BP is, what Limit Breaks (LB) are, what a refraction ("shiny") card is and you know how the game in general works.

I found useful information online, especially in the neoseeker forum for PES CC (thanks to all the active people there), but I found it rather difficult to browse through hundreds of pages, so I am collecting what I found interesting into one big guide / walkthrough / tutorial - whatever you may call it.

Here are the tips and tricks I will cover:

General tips and tricks for a good long-term game

Recurring events in PES Card Collection

Recurring draws in PES Card Collection

FAQ

Before I start, let me just say that I didn't play this game from the very beginning, but I have played it for more than 3 months and I've come to some conclusions that you may find useful, hopefully.

Let's go!

General tips and tricks for a good long-term game

My "shiny" refraction Busquets card

If you are relatively new to the game (you have played it less than 6 months), it will be very useful for you to know some of the events and draws that you might face. It's part of the nature of this game not to know what's going to happen until the moment a new event or draw is "updated" into the game (usually on a monday morning).

The number 1 tip I can give you straight away is: Be prepared for situations before they come up! Whether it's a special event that requires you to have specific players, whether it's coins you need to access prizes, or whether it's a specific line-up that fits the criteria for an event - be prepared, because it's costly to run after the requirements once an event has already started!

This is the reason why I'm creating this guide / walkthrough / tutorial - I want you to know what you can expect and what you should prepare for. So keep this #1 tip in mind - be prepared!

PES Card Collection is a very vivid game that always has a new event or draw coming up basically every week. As you will see in later parts of this guide, these events or draws come with different conditions or twists. Here are some basic preparations you can make to always be on the safe side (besides having a strong team):

Keep Prime Balls (PB) on stock

If you are an addicted PES CC gambler like me, you tell yourself every sunday:"tomorrow I'm going to take it easy and not rush into the next event with all GP restores and without spending prime balls to achieve a 5 star player".

Then, when the event comes, you are suddenly swept away by excitement and spend all your GP or BP bottles and play lots of matches.

That's not wrong as it's part of what makes the game fun. However, you should always keep in mind the possibility that, perhaps next week, your favorite national team or group of players (defenders, midfielders etc.) will have their own unique draw event.

If you want a guaranteed 5 star player, you may often need 500 prime balls (250 for the first draw, 250 for the second). Even then, you are not guaranteed to have the specific type of player card you seek, as other "normal" 5 star players may also be drawn. So if you are absolutely eager to have a special "striker" card or your favorite country's superstar, prepare yourself to have many prime balls at your disposal.

The way I think of it is usually in double draws - 500 for one guaranteed 5 star, 1000 for 2, and so on. The more prime balls you keep, the better your options, especially when you consider that the 8th or 10th draw may even guarantee the specific player card group you are looking for.

On the other hand, remember that it is possible not to use these 250 PB draws at all and spend the PB in order to resore GP during an event. It's up to you and may even yield more efficient results.

Fun fact: Sometimes, there is an 11 draw with a guaranteed 5 star player even in the first draw (250 balls). Keep in mind that this could occur the very next week! You wouldn't want to miss such a chance.

 Save 3000 Elevens Coins (or more)

Elevens matches should be a part of your everyday routine. These coins come in handy for different reasons. You can buy up to 10 bottles for 50 GP restoration each per week, 2 per day max. You can also trade them for skill items (which have a monthly limit).

However, every once in a while, there is a special Elevents Match event where you battle a special team and can earn special prizes. These cost the regular Elevens Match coins. The biggest reward is usually a 5 star player for 3000 coins.

There is no need to rush into things and earn 3000 coins in only a couple of days. Just keep earning those coins and keep a "no touching" stash for times when the event comes around! There are also other prizes like a 30% 5 star player chance draw, so perhaps you can keep more than 3000 coins, a lot more! Sooner or later, you will use all of them up within hours when the event is active!

Extra tip: Usually, and even outside the event, you can buy a 1000 coins guaranteed medal card. From what I have read on the forums, this is not worth it, as it's often a weak card that you may use for fusions with a 5 star player you happen to own, but if you're unlucky, you don't even have that player or it's not a 5 star player to begin with. For 1000 coins, you can buy a lot more instead!

Save medal players / 3 star players with a 5 star equivalent

Medal players are players that exist for the purpose of being fusioned with their higher-grade counterpart. For example, you may have noticed that super strong players like Messi or Griezmann have 3 star player cards even though they should be 5 star players because of their legendary real-life abilities.

When you come across a 3 star player and you're not sure whether they are a mega star or just an ordinary lower class player, go to the PES card database (under settings) and, while having 5 star players enabled in the search, enter the player's name (with correct spelling) to see whether he actually has a 5 star card.

Some players have 5 star cards only in special events. Sometimes, a grade 89 striker, for instance, will be a grade 90 striker during the "striker" event. But that's a rare occasion and who knows if you're going to get that player. But for regular superstars, keep their 3 star cards - this includes Messi, Ramos, Busquets, whoever you may want to have on your team IF you get them one day. Don't sell a 3 player card just because you don't have the respective 5 star player YET.

Have many slots for your collection and collect all sorts of players

You can increase the maximum number of cards you may own under settings - prime balls store. There is an option where you can increase the collection card limit (expand card box). It only costs 5 prime balls per increase and will be a permanent change.

It is very useful to have a large collection of cards for various reason. Here are some reasons:

• having lower star cards for fusions with 5 star players later on
• having a pool of very different player cards for required events (nationality-wise, in terms of primary stat, position-wise, club membership etc.)
• you may need a lot of players to have different line-ups (a grade 1200 team, 3 teams for an event that requires 3 teams, a PVP team, a road to glory team, and so on) 

It is very useful to keep strong players that belong to various teams. I try to keep at least one 5 star player for each national team represented in the game, as well as one 5 star player per club represented in the game.

The reason for this is that an event may occur (for instance, Rising Stadium - see more further down) where those cards offer a boost to your success. So it's good to have them in case you need them.

You should also keep some of the lowest grade players (grade 50 to 53). There is an event (the PES CC Island Event) where some achievements need to be done by a team with an overall grade of only 1200. I will go into detail about that later.

Keep refraction ("shiny") cards under all circumstances

Very rarely, you will get a card that has some shiny, rainbowy colours. These cards are called refraction cards and they may affect player cards of all star levels. It could be a 5 star player, but also a 3 star player that can be merged (fusioned) with a 5 star player card. Whenever you put a normal card and a refraction card together with a fusion, the end result will be shiny.

Refraction cards have better stats than normal cards. They are roundabout 3 grades better than they usually would be (for instance, my grade 94 refraction Busquets has a stronger overall stat than a normal 97 Messi).

Even if your player card doesn't have a 5 star equivalent, you may want to keep him. Maybe someday there will be a 5 star verson of him (either because of a special position event or because he has grown stronger in real life). Even if he never becomes a special card, the player is useful in his grade peer group and may be used well in a grade 1200 match (see the Island event for more).

This is all for the general tips. Let's go ahead and talk about some events...

Always complete daily quests

You need the resources!

Recurring events in PES Card Collection

With this part of my guide / walkthrough / tutorial, I want to give you an idea of the events and what to keep in mind about them before they even start.

There is a certain rotation about these events, but I don't know if anyone has figured out a pattern here. What I do know after playing for about 4 months is that some events take place once every 2 months maybe, others may not be seen for more than half a year, but often times, events come back after a while.

If you know what to do and how to be prepared, you can gain an advantage over other players or finish getting that new 5 star player really quickly. So let's browse through some of the events (this list is incomplete since I still have to play this game a lot more).

Ren Pa Doh

I have not played this event myself and can only rely on what I found in the neoseeker forums. This event took place in February 2018 in the wake of the Chinese new year from what I understand.

The way I understand this event, you can play with one or two player decks, but the best bet is to have 3 separate teams. This means: 11 unique players, 7 unique bench players, and the same thing 2 more times, totalling 58 players. It seems that you should spread out the strength of your team accordingly, so if you don't have enough 5 star players, maybe add a 4 star here and there so you have 3 equally good teams. All you need to do in preparation is to keep your card collection box big enough and not sell every unneeded player immediately.

This should work fine, though, since you are already following my advice from before, where I said you should keep strong players from every background (1 Croatian 5 star, 1 Barcelona league 5 star, 1 Champions Leage 5 star and so on).

Jewel Chaser event

Probably my least favorite event. This event relies on luck too much. The rules are simple: Beat an opponent (a real human player's team) from a list that you may refresh for in-game money. If you win, you get a jewel. Collect all different jewels and your set is complete. Then finish the next set. For each complete collection, you get a prize. This prize may be a 5 star player, but if you are unlucky, it's only some carat points (used to get rewards the further you progress).

There is also sometimes a gift box displayed. Matches with gift boxes give you immediate rewards if you win. Again, this could be a 5 star player, but the chances are very slim.

People report that this event, on average, gives a good amount of medal players. Some players even claim that they purposefully don't complete a jewel set in order to keep the GP cost low (a match initially costs 10 GP, after one complete collection, it goes to 15 per match, after that 20 and then stays there).

I personally will try to only have 10 GP matches and definitely not complete a set. Also, even if I choose opponents that are 3 leagues below me, I often still lose, and for me, that's too much of a waste of precious GP. This one is a pass for me most of the time.

Championship: PES Fest

An often recurring PvP event that uses BP tokens instead of GP. You play a match against a real-life opponent, much like a ranked match, and hope to defeat them. The main focus is EP generation, so if you have strong players with EP bonus skills (and maybe a formation that supports EP generation), this one might be for you.

To me, however, this one is often a very mediocre game as I am faced with stronger opponents half the time. There are some decent rewards for at least playing as many matches as you can without spending extra resources, but chances are that you won't excel at this unless you are hardcore.

Eleven Match Event

An event where you play Eleven Matches with other players as you would also usually do. The difference is that you can buy better things with the coins, mainly a singular 5 star player for 3000 coins. So, like I said, keep a big stash of coins for this event. You will need it. Also included may be national team strips, draw tickets, 30% and 10% draws and other useful stuff.

Rising Stadium

One of my favorite events, because it rewards players who prepare themselves. During this event, you use GP to play a match against the AI. This sort of match is comparable to a skilled match - easy, medium, hard. The harder the match, the higher the chance to trigger a "stadium" (also, the ratio for "rising balls", an in-game currency, is higher in the harder matches)

Once a stadium appears, you can clear it without having to play a match, but you will need BP or "rising balls" as a currency to do so.

The stadium will be cleared by players you have that fit the scenario. There will always be one specific group of players that will have an advantage there. The first time I played, they were the German national players, the next time, it was Playmakers of all nationalities. Apart from that, players that are high level, high star and limit breaks will also give you an advantage.

You may want to consider pulling a 250 PB draw at the very beginning of the event in order to stock up on players that are favored in the event. Apart from that, you should keep many players of different backgrounds and hope that one of them or more already give you an advantage.

Here are some tips for you during this event:

• Level up the event-specific players immediately as the event starts
• If you have more than 11 players of the preferred type, try to do fusions if you have more than one of a kind
• If you can easily win those, do the hard difficulty matches more often - they not only give you a 99% (almost 100%) chance for a stadium, but also have a higher rate of dropping rising balls
• Prefer to complete stadiums that have a good chance for a treasure chest, as this will increase the meter for a mega or giga stadium (in turn, this means you can also abandon stadiums that don't offer a chest)
• Before you go to bed, open up some stadiums to clear immediately when you wake up again (most stadiums have 11 hours to finish)
• If you have the chance, almost finish a stadium, then finish it off hardcore with a 5 PB overkill - this will add further points to your tally and let you move up the ranks faster

Side note: Rising Stadium events often come with Legends Cards events. The legend card may be part of the rewards (both as an Extra card, often around grade 92, and the hard to get Legend with a grade of around 98).

PES Island

Arguably everyone's favorite event. During this event, you can play lots of matches on different difficulties on maps that look a lot like Mario Party stages. For every match, there is a reward for clearing it and another reward for clearing 3 specific objectives. These may be the number of goals scored, a specific number of special skills used, or even things like "win with a team that has a total grade of 1200 or less". Oh yes! Better prepare for that!

The great thing about PES Island is more than one thing. Let's see... the event doesn't reset! A couple of months down the road, you will be able to start off where you left off and finish new stages or clear stuff you didn't finish last time. Great!

Another great thing is that you can also use these stages for farming items you need. Need medium skill items? Play the worlds that offer them. Need medal players? Play some of the higher stages again and again.

Some of the objectives are really hard and will require you to try and try again. Sometimes you will need to "finish the match with a 5-3 score sheet exactly". It's hard to plan for that. Just keep trying.

As for the 1200 grade requirement: I found it useful to pack my bench with grade 50-52 players, then use a mix of grade 70s and grade 90s players. Some things to keep in mind: It's better to have a grade 90 and a grade 70 player than a grade 85 and a grade 75 player. The grade 90 player has massive skills and a very high max level, while the grade 70 player can still have the same basic C skill that a grade 75 player would have.

Try to have many grade 90s players in your team while still having a stable team. You may have to experiment a lot with your grade 1200 team. I found it very useful to put grade 90s players in key positions (CF, DF, CB, GK) and put weaker players where they can work as a team. Also, if you have a player who is limit-broker (for instance Level 73 instead of 70), use them, they can overpower your enemy! And maybe you have a grade 70s refraction card? Stronger than it looks!

"Joint Team" event

I forgot how they called this event, so let me try to describe it: It's very similar to Elevens matches. You enter the event, place a player in the line-up, and hope that many other players will add their players, and then the match starts. The more other humans add their players, and the more you dominate the other team, the more bonus points you get.

There are some pieces of advice I want to give you here:

• Unless you know other people in the game and make appointments with them, focus on the bonus times only, otherwise you will lose resources, play against tougher teams, and totally get frustrated
• Use the bonus boost when the line-up is full
• Try to find other players who are very motivated and make a union with them
• Use a very strong player that you have, preferably one that has had a limit break, as the total level of the players used counts
• Be careful when opening up a new match  - if it's bonus time, there is a chance someone else is also opening up a match and everyone is running into "the other room".

"Special League" event

I also forgot what this one is called. Here, it's all about the special player stats. Did you ever notice that every player card has one dominant stat like "Speed" or "Power"? During this event, you are supposed to create a team based purely on these stats, so your best bet is to have enough players to create a "stamina" and "speed" team, then have a "power" and "defence" team the next day. The better you can adapt to these changes, the higher your rewards will be in the long run. Apart from that, I remember this event as being quite okay and fair and the rewards seem to be in reach.

This is all I can offer for now when it comes to events. I'm sure I forgot some (or haven't seen them yet). I hope this could be helpful to you nevertheless. Let's go on with some frequently occuring draws and the law of the draw.

Recurring draws in PES Card Collection

When I speak of recurring draws in the context of this guide for PES Card Collection, I am talking about the draws you can get in the "draw" section at the bottom corner of your game menu.

These draws usually include a single draw (for 25 PB) and an 11 draw (for 250 PB). The 250 PB draw always has advantages. Not only do you get 11 player cards for the price of 10, the 11th player called (called "excelsior") usually has a higher chance of being a 5 star card, sometimes even a guarantee.

Here are draws you can expect in the game:

• Nationality draw (either one national team or two national teams, for instance Germany or Italy/Colombia)
• Position draw: Strikers, Playmakers, Guardians
• Talent draw (players may have a talent already active when obtained)
• Prometheus (was that the name?) draw (6% instead of 5% chance for 5 star players for the 1-10 slot position of the draw, small chance for Legendary player)
• Guaranteed first time 5 star player draw (a draw where the first try already offers a 5 star player - may be combined with the option of playing the draw once more if you're unhappy, but then you have to settle with the second choice no matter what comes out)

Please note the following when it comes to draws:

• Always read the text for the draws even if you are very excited
• Don't expect to get the player you want, or even the player class (nationality / position you want)
• Read the ratio of the draws and the schedule of the draws (what can you get in the first, second, 5th draw?)
• Keep in mind that grade 90-92 players are more likely to be drawn than 93-95 and so on
• Also keep in mind that the presented player group (Italy national team for instance) is only part of the chance. Sometimes, they only have a 34% chance of being drawn, you could still end up with a totally different player than what you hoped for

One thing you should ask yourself all the time is: If a draw with [enter player group] comes up tomorrow, will I have enough Prime Balls? Do I need Prime Balls in case the draw event comes up?

By the way, the more Prime Balls you have, the higher up you can move on the draw schedule (the 8th draw may be better than the 6th because of the chances of getting what you want - read the text provided by Konami in the draw description).

Next up, some frequently asked questions...

FAQ

I need a specific player position as a 5 star player (for example, DF). What's the best draw to get the job done?

Your first instinct may be to wait until the next Guardians draw event. During a Guardians Draw, the 2nd, 4th and 6th draw guarantee a 5 star player, of which 34% will be a Guardian (which in turn might be a goalkeeper though!). The 8th and 10th draw will guarantee a 5 star guardian, who might also be a goalkeeper if you are really unlucky.

When I was in your position and did 6 Guardian draws, I was unlucky and only got one 5 star Guardian defender, but 3 (!) goalkeepers of 5 stars among other 5 star players.

I found another way for you to try your luck, if Guardian is not what you wanna try (although it could be worth it).

The other option you have is to look at the card database and find a national team (or maybe club team if these draws occur) that has a high chance of having a defender drawn.

Let me give you an example of how this might work:

Take Argentina for instance. I sorted the database for 5 star players by team so you can see them all in the screen shot (the shot was taken during the Guardian event).

As you can see, of all the Argentinian players available, the "lower grade" players (within the 5 star community) are all defensive players. Lower grade 5 stars are traditionally more easily drawn than higher grade 5 stars.

The other 5 stars are massive superheroes that, even if you wanted a defender, you'd probably still kiss your screen for if you got them. These include Messi, di Maria, Higuain, Aguero and Dybala. All great players.

If you try an Argentina draw and an Argentinian player is drawn (of which the chances might not be optimal, but again, you must try your luck), the chance of getting a defender will be higher than the chance of getting a superstar striker. Other positions (pure midfielders, weak strikers etc.) are not present here.

This may apply in similar ways to other teams. Check out the national teams of other countries and ask yourself: What is the most predictable outcome? Which players positions are more common? Which are lower grade than others? What's the worst that could happen to me?

And always remember: Unless you go up to the Xth draw, you won't have a guarantee that you get the respective player type, so it will always be a question of luck and probability.

Should I keep and limit break a 90 grade player?

Indeed a good question. Maybe when you were a beginner at this game, you thought to yourself that you should only keep the best players and discard all the ones with a lower total strength (which are the lower grade types).

The tradeoff with lower types in the 5 star realm is that grade 90-92 players are more common. This also leads to better chances of direct limit breaks with identical cards.

Some cards that I have come across multiple times include:

• 90 Parejo
• 90 Jonas
• 91 Lacazette
• 91 Immobile
• 92 Koscielny
• 92 Mkhitarian

For you, it might be other players.

It is absolutely possible that the number of identical cards you get mean you can outgrow a grade 95 or higher card before you get one. After all, grade 90+ cards are more common than a 98 Messi, for instance.

In the end, you have to make your own assumptions. For me, it was easy getting rid of Lacazette even though I had limit broken him at least once. Since he had only striker skills and I already had a 95 Mertens which I knew I would manually limit break, I let go of all other lower grade strikers from that point on (central forwards that is).

However, it is a completely different story with Koscielny. I have had more than one limit break with him and haven't seen any central defender yet that is stronger than him, even though there are plenty in the game. So I'm happy every time he shows up in a draw. Also, even if I get a better defender, there will always be at least one other central defender position available for him. I can't say the same for central forwards in the formations I use.

How do refractions and talents carry over during fusions?

I only have some personal experience with this, but I'll try to answer this from what I read on the forums.

If a fusion takes place between identical cards and one of them is "shiny", that effect (refraction) will carry over. I know from first hand experience that it did when a 5 star non-shiny "ate" a 3 star shiny, and if it's the other way around, there is no reason why the refraction effect should be lost.

A fusion also creates a new talent, but from what I've read, old talents from the player who is used up can still stay alive after a fusion. This may even go for several talents. If a player already had a talent (let's say a 3 star player) and a fusion takes place with a 5 star player, the 5 star player will inherit the old talent and gain a new one through the fusion. The fusion meter, however, will only increase by one digit (from 0/5 to 1/5 instead of 2/5). So it should be possible to "stack" various medal cards for the same player and then perform a number of fusions with the mother card later.

Help! I can't perform a fusion!

There are some possible reasons:

• The player you want to use up has a higher level than the one you want to keep as the base card
• The player you want to use up is either favorited (yellow heart in the corner) or is part of a formation
• The players are from different series (regular league versus champions league) and therefore don't fit together (don't ask me why, it's Konami's fault)

Why are bonus times more often at night than when I'm awake?

Because Konami favours Japanese players and all the bonus times are based on the daily routine of an Asia-based person, I suppose. I don't know if this is the way it was programmed before they knew it would be an international an not only a Japanese game or if they just like to cater to their local geographic more (the Japanese national team, interestingly, seems to be the only team whose members you can only get with purchased PB), but it's the way it is. It's unfair, yes. At least all of us here are rich enough to play games on mobile phones though, so we are privileged anyway I guess.

What is the best formation?

The answer is very individual and not absolute. Here are some thoughts:

• The best formation FOR YOU is a formation where your best players can play in positions that suit them and their abilities best
• Try to get your hands on a formation that you can level up and put improvement points into
• When using one of those special formations, remember that some bonuses go for one player, others may affect several players at the same time (for instance, 3 central defenders can benefit from the same bonus for CB)
• A formation depends also on the type of match you play. I use 4-3-3 a lot against the AI, but use my super defensive 4-5-1 against human opponents a lot. You decide what is best for you, depending on the players you have!

What are the best player skills?

Again, there can be lots of arguing about this. First of all, A-skills are better than B-skills, which are better than C-skills. Some skills work in almost any position (for instance, defensive skills can even work for strikers sometimes, as shown by players like Mandzukic). Other skills are very much dependent on the position on the field. A shooting skill requires a player to be within shooting distance to the goal.

Generally speaking, defensive skills are almost a must have for your back line. Have one, better two defensive skills per player. Be careful when using strikers out of context: Some strikers are really made for central striking, and even though they can play in the midfield, they can't use some of their special skills there.

The midfield benefits a lot from passing and dribbling, wingers (right forward and left forward) are really great with dribbling too. Some midfielders can do well with shots and defensive skills, but it depends on the formation you use.

Do "Team Skills" even work if the player with the Team skill is on the bench?

Yes, it seems that way. In your team management, you can see in one of the sub-menues which players affect your team. You will see every team skill active and every player affected by it. This is the reason why your bench should be full with 5 star players if possible. Even a 5 star goalkeeper on the bench can be useful for defense team skills, even though I have never seen a goalkeeper being replaced for an injury (or otherwise).

The End - for now

I hope you liked the tips and tricks written here that are compiled in this guide or tutorial. As mentioned before, this is only the stuff I collected online and not purely my own research to boast about, even though I put some thought into it. I hope that the people at the neoseeker forum know their input is appreciated. Thanks and feel free to share the info to other players. Feedback and updated information is also welcome, though I can't guarantee that I will update this page.

End Of Year Post 2017

This year it's gone by really fast. It didn't really feel like there was a lot of 2017.

Let me sum up what happened this year:

• Made one trip to Ireland (first time ever) in May
• Another trip to Singapore, early July
• Amrum (North Sea) late July

Three major vacations in one year were great. It's something to keep up, especially with one country being a new one.

We also got a cat, Akasha, in November. She must have been born in early September, maybe even September first, we don't know for sure. This cat was very shy at first but turned out to be very social, loving and playful.

On a wider scale, 2017 was a very political year. Not only was it the year right after a big American election, which Trump won (we will remember how misleading the media reports were, considering it was not unlike the Brexit vote), there was also a German election. It is not the election itself that was really the milestone in a negative way, but in some way I feel that the election represented the changes that Germany has gone through. It all leads back to the "refugee" crisis of 2015. Most people in other countries won't understand what this means for Germany, because in other countries, laws are different. Here, whenever people come, they stay. It's that simple. And the people we got in 2015 were, even if they were real refugees, very different people who, let's say it mildly, are at odds with the German culture. To put it even more friendly, it's the German system who doesn't fit to them, if you won't put it the other way around.

To be more clear: I believe we will look back one day and say: 2015 was the year it was decided that Germany will be changed forever. It doesn't matter that it was changed genetically. What matters is that freedom of religion, safety and especially freedom of speech will be affected because of very conservative islamic communities building up in the future.

Back to 2017: Even though the elections politized a lot of people and had a shocking result to some, things stayed the same basically. The reason is that there has been a stalemate for some years. There were two big political parties, one of which has been suffering losses for over 10 years now. The other big party is also losing, but stays the strongest party, and that means that the chancellor who got us into all this trouble will stay in power for another 4 years.

Away from politics... what else happened? Not much, I think. I would mention terrorist attacks, but now is the time to acknowledge they have become a boring *yawn* part of our lives. But I do remember they were new and unheard of in the early 2000s. I will not forget that. And whenever a politician comes and tells me otherwise, I will slap them in the face (in my mind).

2017 was in some way a standstill. My other blog I use to generate income has been standing still. I only write when I have to and I don't put much effort into it any more. But in some way I feel that's okay because I'm looking at the stock market again, it has some potential perhaps.

What is there to expect in 2018? Let's see:

• Turning a childfree life into a permanent reality
• A trip to Tenerife (first time in Spain at the same time)
• small trip to Switzerland to visit a cousin
• Probably many retirements in my main job, which will bring changes
• Weight loss (there have been many ups and downs in 2017 and now I have to start at a very high weight)

So far, not that much is planned. I'll see how it goes. Bye!

Why Do Websites Change Design All The Time?

Before I start: Last month I forgot to post something. First time in the history of my blog that I don't have a post for one month of the year! This is not good for my obsessive compulsive disorder.


Why do websites constantly change their design? Here is an example:

Hey, are you still using the "classic" yahoo mail design? Do you want to change to the new design?

NO!

Why does everything have to change every year? And why does it have to change to the worse?

In the last 12 months or so, the amazon associate program, google adsense, xanox affiliate network, my online broker and yahoo mail have all changed their design. And I liked all of them the way they were (except for yahoo mail, because that's a piece of shit anyways).

Especially when money is concerned (affiliate programs), you just wanna create your monthly reports and print them out for tax reasons. You don't want to get involved in new fancy designs, find where the hid the buttons you used to find easily, or even rename things.

I don't mind if websites get better, but can we just decide to stick to one design for 5 years maybe? It's really mentally exhausting, and on top of that, I am in favor of a slick design that doesn't need a lot of text and many on-screen elements or scripts in the background. Can we just have a simple design and keep it? Please?


Here is how I like a design:

Everything that does not have a purpose: Keep it white (no racism here).
Buttons: One colour (corporate design stuff)
Tabs: The other corporate design colour
Number of tabs, buttons, menus: Start with a small number, then spread it out when you hover over some of the fewer options... then it can get a little more complex, because it's not all on one screen from the beginning and at all times.

Just like in all areas of life: If you want something to be done, you have to do it yourself. Well, I can't, and I won't. Just let me do my stuff, okay?

AFD: Useless political drama

There have been elections in Germany recently. And oh, my god, there was so much political drama because for the first time, a right wing party called AFD entered the parliament.

In Germany, this is seen as a big issue, because Germans can't distinguish between right wing parties and nazis. Basically, everyone who is "right" is automatically a nazi. And when you take Germany's history into consideration, everyone is afraid that history will repeat itself.

Now, to be fair, this party has some representatives who have uttered ambiguous (whatever the spelling is) messages. You could say that they are fishing for votes from nazis. Yes. But that doesn't mean that the whole party (or all the voters) are nazis.

Funny enough, most people who are against the AFD, bring up all kinds of reasons why it is stupid (yes, "stupid) to vote for them. They bring up all kinds of elaborate reasons. For example:

• The AFD does not even have a concept for pensions and retirement benefits
• The AFD has financial / tax plans that benefit rich people more than poor people (the supposed target group)
• The AFD can't provide solutions to the problems they complain about

All of this may sound like legitimate critisism, there is just one problem. Voters in favor of the AFD vote for the AFD for very, very simple and straight forward reasons:

• To veto Angela Merkel's 2015 decision to let 1 million immigrants (labelled as "refugees") enter the country on a permanent basis
• To protest against the rising influence of Islam in Germany
• Most AFD voters don't believe the AFD will solve problems, they simply mistrust ALL other parties

On top of that, you should note that there are virtually no other alternatives to vote for if that is your political position. Let me walk you through the options:

CDU: The party of chancellor Merkel. She decided to take in refugees. You vote for the CDU, you support Merkel's decisions
CSU: A party that has a strong position against the intake of refugees, asking for an upper limit of refugees per year. The only problem: They can only be voted for in one state (Bavaria) and are in a union with CDU, making them basically the same party in effect!
SPD: The social democrats. They were in a government coalition with the CDU, making them Angie's partners in crime (or in a brave act of humanitarian efforts, if that's your point of view). Voting for them basically means you still support the intake of refugees. It is a social party after all.
Green party: They are very much in favor of refugees
Left party: They are in favor of all poor people and therefore not opposed to taking in refugees
FDP: A liberal party. They are in favor of a Canadian model immigration program, meaning they want qualified immigrants who are given points depending on how qualifiied, suitable etc. they are. The only problem with them: They share similar views on other political topics with the CDU, making them a frequent coalition candidate in the past. In other words: Voting for the FDP will extend Angie's chances of being a chancellor in a CDU-FDP government.

When you go through all these options, you quickly realise that you can either vote for a party that wants to have many refugees from Africa, the Middle East and whereever, or you can vote for a party that technically is against taking in too many refugees, but then you directly support Angela Merkel who will then claim "the electorate is on our side".

So this is why 12.6 per cent of all people voted for the AFD, the only party that is clearly against Merkel and her choice to flood Germany with mostly uneducated and sometimes criminal nincompoops.

I should note at this point that Germany has a tendency to mix humanitarian acts with "we need highly qualified foreign workers". This argument does not work in reality, however, politicians use it to fool the public into thinking that bringing in ANY foreigners is better than not bringing in foreigners at all. The reality is that many poor foreigners would love to enter Germany to seek asylum and gain easy financial benefits, while few highly qualified Chinese, Indians and other specialized workers feel attracted to a country with a complicated language that is kind of isolated culturally.

It's as simple as that.

The next thing on the list is the alleged nazi problem with the AFD. I see two options here: Either, the AFD radicalize themselves further and further until they are basically unvoteable by the German public (12.6 per cent is not the amount of nazis in Germany... it's people giving them the benefit of the doubt) or they democratize (?) themselves to the point where they become a right wing, but not radical hater party. Then, they can continue to attract people who have conservative views within what's acceptable in a democracy.

And I think that's what we will see.... it's all not too dramatic.

Stuck in limbo

Man, life is really annoying right now.

I notice that something is wrong with my neurotransmitters. I'm constantly unhappy, easily angry, often stressed out and never satisfied. At the same time, I'm trying to lose weight, which seemed so much easier a couple of months ago.

When I go home from work everyday at 11:30 (I'm a part time worker), people say "man, wish I had your life". Then I wonder: why is it that everyone feels this way but I can't even be happy about it, even though I KNOW that I'm lucky?

I'm walking through a goal-less and meaningless life right now. I make video game achievements and saving money my priorities so that I have anything to live for. The bad thing is that the video game achievements are shallow and without long-term reward, and saving money doesn't work because life always takes money away anyway. Crazy dentist costs, unexpected bills, being screwed over financially, wasting money because you can't find time to look for cheaper contracts. Whatever I do, I've been stuck at my current balance for a year now.

I would like to be happier. I don't want to say "I'll be happy later" or "I'll be happy as soon as X happens". I know it doesn't work that way.

Other people seem to be happy. At least they have this ability of laughing when small things are good, pleasing or funny. It takes me more things to enjoy myself.

I still get thoughts like "I'm falling back into a depression" sometimes. I can't escape it completely, I guess.

Sometimes I keep a "to do" list, but I can't work all these things off because I'm suffocating with the daily tasks. Too much time is wasted doing housework or paperwork or paying off another bill and stuff.

I also waste too much time with the cheap thrills I need. I need youtube and video games. No longer do I have a hobby. I'm tired all the time and not interested in doing anything. My weekends are so boring that I do housework to keep myself busy and get the workload done for the week. I would rather do housework on weekends because I'm bored and I prefer having more time to myself when I get home from work.

What would have to change to make things better?

• I need to go to a doctor and get my amino acids checked. More money down the drain, but I'm tired of conventional "take this pill" medicine. It's on my list of things to do, but I lack courage to explain myself.
• I need to get some long-term "things to do" done so that I can return to a life where I don't stand in my own way.
• I need to lose weight to the point where I can finally focus on healthy nutrition without having to constantly anger myself over too little weight loss
• I need balance... just don't know how to feel more balanced. But I've been wanting to really be alone for a couple of weeks. When people speak of this "lonely island" and what to take there, it always sounds like an emergency situation. But I really want to go there.

The only good thing I take from my current situation is a very strong confirmation that having kids is not ever going to work for me. I'm too overwhelmed with life as it is. I'm not even that much attached to life. Even though I might be pessimistic about my parenting abilities, and can't speak of experience, I know in my heart that not ever having kids is the right thing, the "rightest" thing to do. It really, really wouldn't be a good idea otherwise. But it still makes me furious to imagine that I would have to justify myself in front of family members.