What's going on with your life?

[blackdog]

23 hours ago, AlexM said:

I'm also heavily struggling with the city vs country thing. My partner is Japanese and the Japanese government is currently giving away 8 million houses, sometimes they even give you extra money to renovate them. We've thought a lot about maybe moving there and possibly having some sort of cafe or business. Either way, Japan is WAY cheaper than Vancouver. Since I'm a programmer I can pretty much work from anywhere and stuff is relatively cheap in Japan compared to where I live.

That's fantastic! I'm surprised they have houses to give away really, thought it was hard to find as they seem so squished together in cities. You talking about apartments or other sorts?

Italy has been doing this as well for several years, or better said, local municipalities that have become progressively deserted due to youngs moving to cities. I think in most cases you have to pay a nominal fee, maybe just some law loophole, but we are talking of €1-2. The catch is that in most cases you have to turn them into businesses, cos they are of course hoping to revive those areas with these operations.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the same sort of deals in past years in central Italy, and I think the occasional "train crossing house" goes on sale (I believe is where crossing operators used to live as they had of course to be on-site to do it).

~

@TheOnlyDoubleF the idea sounds amazing, throw in an Airbnb for game jams anyway was great to see your face on your facebook updates during the cycle. Grand adventure, well done!

Edited November 5, 2020 by blackdog

[AlexM]

3 hours ago, TheOnlyDoubleF said:

Voilà le lien vers le podcast : https://open.spotify.com/show/6nyuHat61nBpT8flQcfpZ8?si=C2f4eh6iT22MZz_6pZHiYA 

I would not hesitate if the French Government was giving away houses in the countryside ahahah. 

I had some sort of alternative idea too. When I left ubisoft, my plan was to build a place outside of a big city where I could have a small game dev team but also space to have additionnal people working there like local freelancers, etc. A coworking place next to our game dev studio, and possibly welcoming some kind of game art residence there in greenlands. Sure the place would have a common food forest and a crop garden for people working there.

 

 

That sounds amazing.

 

1 hour ago, blackdog said:

That's fantastic! I'm surprised they have houses to give away really, thought it was hard to find as they seem so squished together in cities. You talking about apartments or other sorts?

Italy has been doing this as well for several years, or better said, local municipalities that have become progressively deserted due to youngs moving to cities. I think in most cases you have to pay a nominal fee, maybe just some law loophole, but we are talking of €1-2. The catch is that in most cases you have to turn them into businesses, cos they are of course hoping to revive those areas with these operations.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the same sort of deals in past years in central Italy, and I think the occasional "train crossing house" goes on sale (I believe is where crossing operators used to live as they had of course to be on-site to do it).

~

@TheOnlyDoubleF the idea sounds amazing, throw in an Airbnb for game jams anyway was great to see your face on your facebook updates during the cycle. Grand adventure, well done!

The thing about those 8 million houses is they are in very small towns. Very little of the free stuff is in the city. My understanding is that part of the reason this program exists is there were people who died who were the last of their bloodline so the property went to the government. The other motive is to bring people back to small towns that are losing population. I guess there's some similarities to Italy's program.

About a week back, we did see a listing where you can inherit a large onsen ryokan (traditional japanese hot spring inn) but part of the deal is you have to agree to run it for at least 5 years.I wouldn't be able to pull that off

Btw : love those Kirsten Dirksen videos!

 

 

 

 

[blackdog]

My 1.5 years old was pointing at my tshirt last night, so she can now say Doom almost perfectly #goals #gamerdad

[ElectroSheep]

Duuh, my 2 years old is singing the Emperor March from Star Wars, I win ! 

[ElectroSheep]

Also fuck the cold. I wish I was in California or somewhere hotter right now 

[AlexM]

3 hours ago, ElectroSheep said:

Also fuck the cold. I wish I was in California or somewhere hotter right now 

I went on vacation to Montreal a couple years ago in August and absolutely loved it. Way more interesting city that Vancouver when it comes to nightlife and stuff to do. I was seriously considering moving there.

I mentioned my thoughts to the security guard at the hotel we were staying and he said "maybe take another vacation here in December before you decide to move here

[-HP-]

46 minutes ago, AlexM said:

I mentioned my thoughts to the security guard at the hotel we were staying and he said "maybe take another vacation here in December before you decide to move here

Yeap, exactly this.

At least Vancouver's weather is way more tolerable, since the pacific ocean (and coast) is way warmer than the atlantic.

I have a friend who just moved from London to Vancouver this week, he told me that if you look at the avg temps between both cities during this time of year, you'd think they're about the same, but Vancouver feels way warmer. This actually sent me down one of those internet rabid holes, and turns out there's other aspects to how cold it feels that temperature (C/F) can't read, there's the dew point and relative humidity and others that might or might not be less relevant like how far you are from the arctic jet streams. So since London tends to feel more humid, 10c will feel way colder than 10c in drier location, which will just feel cool.

But yes, fuck the cold man... I can take rainy weather, but I'm not a fan of freezing my ass off!

[AlexM]

1 hour ago, ┌HP┘ said:

Yeap, exactly this.

At least Vancouver's weather is way more tolerable, since the pacific ocean (and coast) is way warmer than the atlantic.

I have a friend who just moved from London to Vancouver this week, he told me that if you look at the avg temps between both cities during this time of year, you'd think they're about the same, but Vancouver feels way warmer. This actually sent me down one of those internet rabid holes, and turns out there's other aspects to how cold it feels that temperature (C/F) can't read, there's the dew point and relative humidity and others that might or might not be less relevant like how far you are from the arctic jet streams. So since London tends to feel more humid, 10c will feel way colder than 10c in drier location, which will just feel cool.

But yes, fuck the cold man... I can take rainy weather, but I'm not a fan of freezing my ass off!

That explains a lot. When I lived in Japan it wasn't THAT much hotter than Vancouver in the summer but I was dying and taking like 5 showers a day. It was however WAY more humid. Most of my neighbors had rice paddy's and they would flood them in May. During that time I felt like I was drowning just breathing air

Now I know what people mean when they say "it's not the heat, it's the humidity"

[dux]

14 hours ago, ElectroSheep said:

Also fuck the cold. I wish I was in California or somewhere hotter right now 

You don't wanna be there

[Radu]

14 hours ago, ElectroSheep said:

Also fuck the cold. I wish I was in California or somewhere hotter right now 

 

 

[blackdog]

11 hours ago, AlexM said:

I went on vacation to Montreal a couple years ago in August and absolutely loved it. Way more interesting city that Vancouver when it comes to nightlife and stuff to do. I was seriously considering moving there.

I mentioned my thoughts to the security guard at the hotel we were staying and he said "maybe take another vacation here in December before you decide to move here

Yeah have a friend that moves to Montreal for a few months every year for work and when I startd talking Canada he was questioning if I really would like to shovel snow every morning lol.

11 hours ago, ┌HP┘ said:

But yes, fuck the cold man... I can take rainy weather, but I'm not a fan of freezing my ass off!

I'm all for dry cold (or dry heat). Wet is just shit. You go out and you get muddy, wet... the house can get mould and so on.

My year in Namibia was so much better than one summer in NE Italy despite temps in Africa are obviously hotter. Same loved my holiday in Iceland, lots of snow, dry cold... wear the right gear and you don't even feel it.

[-HP-]

8 hours ago, dux said:

You don't wanna be there

I'm here, been here for 8+ years and I'm starting to agree, as many wonderful and amazing things California provides, there's also a lot of fuckery going on, specially on the governmental side.

Plus, who the fuck can afford median house prizes of 700k?

[AlexM]

2 hours ago, ┌HP┘ said:

I'm here, been here for 8+ years and I'm starting to agree, as many wonderful and amazing things California provides, there's also a lot of fuckery going on, specially on the governmental side.

Plus, who the fuck can afford median house prizes of 700k?

Whoo boy, you don't want to come to Vancouver then It's 1.6M here

[-HP-]

53 minutes ago, AlexM said:

Whoo boy, you don't want to come to Vancouver then It's 1.6M here

It's ridiculous dude... some of these cities really make it hard to buy.

It's actually more than I thought here:

 

But yeah, seems like you're ballpark about Vancouver too, I guess it makes sense that it's the most expensive real estate in Canada due to economy, geography, close to the US and climate. (I believe it's the warmest city in the whole of Canada)

 

Good financial advisors always counsel on keeping your mortgage at around 25% your monthly net, so with that knowledge, we can do a quick back of the napkin math here, for a $1 million house, if you saved to put a downpayment of 10% ($100k), you're probably looking at a mortgage of $4500 a month, and this is with the current low interest rates too! So you'd need to net around $18000 a month to afford that... 

Oh well... it's a brave new world now with WFH, so we only have to be around these expensive places if we really want to. I can tell you I'm already considering my options here... and there's a lot of options out there.

[AlexM]

44 minutes ago, ┌HP┘ said:

It's ridiculous dude... some of these cities really make it hard to buy.

It's actually more than I thought here:

 

But yeah, seems like you're ballpark about Vancouver too, I guess it makes sense that it's the most expensive real estate in Canada due to economy, geography, close to the US and climate. (I believe it's the warmest city in the whole of Canada)

 

Good financial advisors always counsel on keeping your mortgage at around 25% your monthly net, so with that knowledge, we can do a quick back of the napkin math here, for a $1 million house, if you saved to put a downpayment of 10% ($100k), you're probably looking at a mortgage of $4500 a month, and this is with the current low interest rates too! So you'd need to net around $18000 a month to afford that... 

Oh well... it's a brave new world now with WFH, so we only have to be around these expensive places if we really want to. I can tell you I'm already considering my options here... and there's a lot of options out there.

I just realized you're in south california. I'm guessing the bay area is even more expensive with all the programmers?

One other thing to note is the pay in Vancouver is relatively quite low, even within Canada. It's gone up a lot for tech people lately though because everyone started leaving.

I guess that's the one thing many of us here have as an advantage. We aren't necessarily tied to our location by our jobs. After the pandemic stuff subsides I'm going to have to put more thought into where I want to live in the next 10 years.