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Chindie

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27 minutes ago, GarethRDR said:

Forgot a big one, wife and I started taking Japanese lessons last year. Japan is our collective dream holiday and when we do it, we want to spend about 3 weeks seeing as much as possible. We decided to go see a tutor for however long it took to save the ~£8k we calculated we'd need so we had a basic grasp of the language when we got there.

Then I got made redundant from my job last September with a £16k payout, so we suddenly had the cash and just needed to wait until I was back in gainful employ (which coincidentally was last week) before splurging. 

It's been a fascinating language to learn, I've always had quite strong language skills but have only ever learnt latin-root European ones so this had been an entirely different kettle of fish.  Some of it's been easier (only two tenses!), some of it has been beyond bonkers (formal/informal rules, scribbling/remembeting all the bloody kanji) but I'd totally recommend it to anyone wanting to learn a new language.

Also it would be nice to understand what's actually being said during all my favourite Asian pornography, if only to reassure me that it's not actually crying.

I was close to trying Japanese. 

I wanted to learn a language and in the end went for Spanish, but Japanese was right up there. Decided in the end it would probably be more difficult and less useful.

But I'd love to go to Japan too. The OH and I were half planning it this year but not sure we'll make it now.

 

I need to take the Spanish back up actually. I recently used a pretty decent audiobook to brush up on it but it's not the same as proper classroom learning. I do miss that.

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1 hour ago, lapal_fan said:

I like to come on here and post absolute drivel. 

I get a tally-mark tattoo for every like I achieve, which is painful and unsightly, which makes the whole experience kinda double-edged. 

I imagine the third one you get will be a bit less painful! 

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8 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

My hobbies are getting less and less. It's quite sad really.

There was a time where I'd play loads of sport, do lots of gaming, did some running and basically did more with my spare time.

 

These days I hardly seem to do anything, but I'm not really sure why. At the very least I'd like to start playing football again.

Kinda "This" for me

I used to run about 40 miles a week in my lunch break  , play 5 a side a couple of evenings a week , few games of squash and then 3 games of 11 a side over the weekend  ( 1 on Sat , 2 on Sunday) .. oh and throw in the odd game of tennis a week for good measure ... off season I'd run at the weekend for an Athletics clubs doing the 100, 200 and 400 for them (plus relays :) ) ...

 

needless to say my knees went sometime after I hit 30  , my first arthroscopy was bog standard and I soon got fitness back  ..the second one coincided with the birth of my first child , and one of my clients growing from circa £200k a year to about £1.6m and the surgeon telling me to never never never do any more sport  .. so I had a couple of years away but then did what I should have done 2 years earlier and found a different surgeon , who said I can do some moderate sport , trouble is the fitness had gone and I never really had the time or the desire to get it back  , but I still played the odd bit of tennis and 1 game of football a week ..oh and badminton and 5 a side

 

I had the stem cell op on my knees about 2 1/2 years ago , but that also involved No sport for 2 years and I consoled myself by eating even more junk food and reckon I put on about 4 stone since my fighting fit days ... I run 5k on the treadmill 3 times a week but thats about it now ...if I lost the 4 stone I could probably do some football and tennis , but the mojo has gone and I just don't have the desire 

 

Guess the only real Hobby I've stuck with is travel  , but even that has scaled back a bit in the last few years , I hit the 100 country mark about 2 years ago which was my target so don't feel quite the need so much now   , though I have had the bonus of my son now being 14 so we've done a few road trips together  , probably not many 14 year old that have been to places like   Djibouti  , Belarus and North Korea  ... Daughter is coming up for 12 so it will be her turn soon but she's not quite as adventurous  as the boy , so it will probably be a US road trip with her  , once the US final take me off the banned list ( due to visiting most of the axis of evil  , thought that was a formality but coming up on 4 months now since they denied my visa pending review )

 

Oh and I got into gigs a lot more as well , from the big festival stuff to tribute acts ( Doors alive @ Putney next weekend)  to pub bands

 

sorry it was a long post , it's more exciting in real life than it reads

 

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

For a long time 'the gym' was my main hobby and then I realised it's a pretty dull hobby to have, requires zero cognitive skills, there's very little to learn once you have a couple of years under your belt and gym people are in general pretty dull individuals with nothing interesting to talk about.

I fairly recently started making hiphop beats, not everyone's cup of tea, but I invested a decent amount into both hardware and software and have invested a hell of a lot of time learning sampling and drum pattern programming. I've become pretty decent at it in a fairly short space of time and I absolutely love it. It's great to simply creating something.

Other hobbies include learning a new programming language but that's not really fun these days.

I think that is the most you have ever disclosed about yourself in years! :)

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Having hobbies is definitely beneficial to your mental well being as @Chindie says. 

I need to make more time for myself but I often find myself exhausted when I finish work now. Like now for example, I'm shattered. I'll be in bed by 9pm! I don't read anymore as I'm too easily distracted. I go to non league games every now and again but that has dropped off this year. Like @tonyh29, going away was always my main pastime but due to mates getting married and having kids, even that is far less regular than it was before. 

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Football coaching takes up nearly all my free time. But I’m blessed to get paid for my passion, let alone my hobby. 

If I have time I like to, in no particular order:

target shooting

walk the dog

lift weights

travel

take the mustang out for a spirited drive

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9 hours ago, GarethRDR said:

Forgot a big one, wife and I started taking Japanese lessons last year. Japan is our collective dream holiday and when we do it, we want to spend about 3 weeks seeing as much as possible. We decided to go see a tutor for however long it took to save the ~£8k we calculated we'd need so we had a basic grasp of the language when we got there.

i think you should take this to the japan travel thread! £8k is a crazy amount of money for 3 weeks in japan, i think i spent maybe £2.5k there in 2 weeks and saw a fair bit

japan has a reputation for being expensive but the thing is there's so much there that you can find a good range of prices

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and back on topic I've been learning German, my issue with it is I've got an old tutor who uses English teaching methods to try and explain it

"when you have this subjunctive in a female pluperfect it conjugates the verb"

I don't understand what the **** shes on about 

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On 28/02/2019 at 03:01, chrisp65 said:

I do a fair bit of driving with my job so for a few years I've had a hobby / game of trying to collect funky gravestones. Rule is: no major diversions, the graveyard has to be visible from the route I was taking anyway.

12518388363_82180848be.jpg

 

I'm imagining piles and piles of gravestones in your back garden that you've collected over the years, but I'm pretty sure I must have got this wrong.

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Promised myself I would start up either break dancing or salsa this year. I have two left feet and a whole lot of awkward to go with it. So I'd like to overcome that.

I have written some lyrics in the last year which I have been invited to record free of charge at an established artists studio.

I'm happy with the lyrics, have been told they flow well, I think elocution is on point and have received feedback to say as much.

I'm just terrified of how my vocals will sound, to the point I have never even rehearsed it to myself, I just show people the lyrics on paper.

So that's a thing.

I started playing basketball 24 years ago this year. 19 of which have been spent playing with commitment to a club, around 15 years at an elite level.

I haven't been snowboarding in a few years but that was a lot of fun and I plan to do it again this year.

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5 hours ago, A'Villan said:

I have written some lyrics in the last year which I have been invited to record free of charge at an established artists studio.

I'm happy with the lyrics, have been told they flow well, I think elocution is on point and have received feedback to say as much.

I'm just terrified of how my vocals will sound, to the point I have never even rehearsed it to myself, I just show people the lyrics on paper.

I pretty much guarantee you'll hate it. I don't know anyone who hasn't cringed hearing their own recorded voice for the first time. I believe it's because we normally hear our voice reverberating through our skull, rather than just what comes out of our mouth, and it inevitably sounds different 'on tape' (what's the modern equivalent of that? On chip? No matter). With time you get used to it. Those of us who do a lot of home recording will probably confirm. Funnily enough,these last few days I've been salvaging some audio from over forty year old gig tapes, and I found my first ever performance - a blues band gig from about 1978. It was a benefit show, and we put the band together with virtually no rehearsal the night before the gig. As you can imagine, it was pretty ropey, but what still embarrasses me after all these years is not my dodgy singing, but my speaking voice doing the announcements between songs. 

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14 hours ago, Xela said:

Having hobbies is definitely beneficial to your mental well being as @Chindie says. 

I need to make more time for myself but I often find myself exhausted when I finish work now. Like now for example, I'm shattered. I'll be in bed by 9pm! I don't read anymore as I'm too easily distracted. I go to non league games every now and again but that has dropped off this year. Like @tonyh29, going away was always my main pastime but due to mates getting married and having kids, even that is far less regular than it was before. 

I don't say this to sound harsh but from what you post on here it does seem like your work/life balance isn't weighted correctly.

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9 hours ago, villa4europe said:

i think you should take this to the japan travel thread! £8k is a crazy amount of money for 3 weeks in japan, i think i spent maybe £2.5k there in 2 weeks and saw a fair bit

japan has a reputation for being expensive but the thing is there's so much there that you can find a good range of prices

I didn't find it too bad at all.  Significantly cheaper than London I thought.  Although that was before all those angry old people destroyed our pound 😉

Edited by Wainy316
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Nothing unusual for me really. My main one is (unsurprisingly) the collection and viewing of movies - currently the total is past the 3,000 mark. I read a stupid amount of irrelevant movie info too, but I find it oddly interesting. Video gaming is another big one, I’ve been a gamer for 40 years but I think I enjoy it even more these days. Then there’s music, which I listen to 90% of my working day and have a routine where I listen to a minimum of 3 new albums a week (managed to keep that one up for a few years now) and also go to plenty of gigs each year because let’s face it, there’s not much better than live music, good company and good beer.

I used to write short stories (a shit H.P.Lovecraft basically) but that’s fallen by the wayside the last couple of years, although on the plus side I have recently rediscovered my love of illustration so the pens and pencils have been back out and that’s something I intend to do more of.

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8 hours ago, MrDuck said:

I'm imagining piles and piles of gravestones in your back garden that you've collected over the years, but I'm pretty sure I must have got this wrong.

luckily I've got quite a decent sized garden

but people do get pissy when they see you loading up the good ones in to the back of the van

10843760114_fa79a9b4eb.jpg

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35 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

... it inevitably sounds different 'on tape' (what's the modern equivalent of that? On chip? No matter). 

:) 'On playback' covers it

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I'm not sure all of these can be described as hobbies, but some things I dick around with are;

 

Running - I've been doing it casually on or off for years but I've taken it a bit more seriously in the last 18 months. I've now got a nice little medal collection, a few personal bests that I'm proud of and a parkrun stat page I like to just look at...(I like stats).

Gaming - Not much to say about this, but I reckon I play at least a couple of hours everyday on either my playstation or switch. Might seem like a waste of time, but meh, keeps me quiet and happy.

Guitar - I learnt guitar and wrote songs when I was a teenager so I could become a rockstar, record albums and play to millions of people all around the world. That obviously didn't happen, so now I just pick up my acoustic every now to play the latest song I've googled the chords for. I think my cat enjoys it more than my wife does and my cat hates it.

Local History - This is a weird one, but I have a fascination with old photos of buildings (especially pubs), canals, train stations etc from around places I know. I like spotting what's still remaining today or how areas have changed. I'd love it if you could go on google street view and select any decade from the last 150 years.

Comics - I collect old Beanos and Dandys, annuals and comics. Not actively, because I was spending too much money on them just for them to sit in the loft, but if I'm in a charity shop or at a car boot I'll keep an eye out.

 

My little boy is due in June, so I'm looking forward to getting in to lego and getting annoyed at him for doing it wrong.

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2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

luckily I've got quite a decent sized garden

but people do get pissy when they see you loading up the good ones in to the back of the van

10843760114_fa79a9b4eb.jpg

do you live in the dead centre of town 

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