<story><title>The married couples in Hong Kong who live apart</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190903-the-married-couples-in-hong-kong-who-live-apar</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ChuckNorris89</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m from Europe and I also live apart from my long term SO.
The reason being our job commutes.&lt;p&gt;We work in completely opposite parts of town and due to the city lacking fast public transport and her job lacking flextime she has to wake up way earlier than I&amp;#x27;m use to if I want to be productive at work and so far we haven&amp;#x27;t found a middle ground where one doesn&amp;#x27;t have to compromise too much.&lt;p&gt;Honestly, remote work would ease a lot of modern urban problems like traffic, rents, relationships, childcare, etc. If only our corporate masters would allow it.&lt;p&gt;World governments need to start incentivizing employers to offer remote ASAP as infrastructure in the cities is not keeping up with population growth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xwolfi</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m from Hong Kong, funnily enough, and what we do with mine is that we switch every 2 years. Renting here is easy (albeit expensive), so we just move to a flat near her work, spend 2 years of me having 3 hours of bus, and then we move near mine, when I am 10 minutes away by foot and she has the 3 hours of commute per day.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s nice is we can pay the 4000 euros per month of rent. If not we&amp;#x27;d find a 2000 euros flat mid-way. The main issue is that hker are either too stingy to rent, or really don&amp;#x27;t earn enough to spend that much on it. Don&amp;#x27;t underestimate the number of people here who can&amp;#x27;t pay rent by sheer ideology, and live at their parents while extremely overpaid compared to Europe.&lt;p&gt;Also, as a side note, city incentives to companies come either from your salary (via taxes on companies) or your taxes, not the sky, so it&amp;#x27;s not a solution. Real solutions are sacrifice, like changing job, changing girlfriend or changing flat. Would you ask for the country to give incentive to companies to help you work 300 km apart your gf ? Sometimes life&amp;#x27;s unfair and the government isn&amp;#x27;t your mom, you&amp;#x27;ll have to solve the problem yourself.</text></comment>
<story><title>The married couples in Hong Kong who live apart</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190903-the-married-couples-in-hong-kong-who-live-apar</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ChuckNorris89</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m from Europe and I also live apart from my long term SO.
The reason being our job commutes.&lt;p&gt;We work in completely opposite parts of town and due to the city lacking fast public transport and her job lacking flextime she has to wake up way earlier than I&amp;#x27;m use to if I want to be productive at work and so far we haven&amp;#x27;t found a middle ground where one doesn&amp;#x27;t have to compromise too much.&lt;p&gt;Honestly, remote work would ease a lot of modern urban problems like traffic, rents, relationships, childcare, etc. If only our corporate masters would allow it.&lt;p&gt;World governments need to start incentivizing employers to offer remote ASAP as infrastructure in the cities is not keeping up with population growth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pfortuny</author><text>But the problem the article tries to explain is that they live apart because they cannot afford a house &lt;i&gt;at all&lt;/i&gt; (both live at their respective parents&amp;#x27; and their child spends time with either alternatively).</text></comment>