
Tired of London? Maybe you're living in the wrong place - lelf
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-01-london-youre-wrong.html
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mavdi
OK let me sell my shitty zone 6 flat and buy one in Mayfair instead. The
problem with London is that it's no longer a city for the middle class or even
upper middle class. Instead properties in London have become commodities like
gold, oil and diamond for world's millionaires. You lot work in IT, sell up,
get a remote work and work from sandy beaches of wherever suits. Still a
better solution than saving up to buy a flat, coz you fucking can't anymore.

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JDiculous
Same situation in NYC.

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sjg007
And San Fran.

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lolwutf
Not that it isn't true...

...but you're obviously not from San Francisco, because you called it 'San
Fran'.

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sjg007
I'm not, but I live here.

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LouisSayers
Yes, I was tired of London. Tired of Pedestrians telling at cyclists, cyclists
yelling at pedestrians, hell bent taxi drivers, and the ambient sound of
sirens.

So I left. I went to Thailand where 1 months rent alone buys you 2-4 months of
decent living. I traveled home to New Zealand where you can upgrade from a
single bedroom apartment to a 3 bedroom house with a backyard.

London pays well, has loads of events and is great for networking. Being able
to travel around Europe is also great.

But at the end of the day, if youre unhappy having the pub as your main social
activity, and if you find yourself drinking every night to compensate for your
lack of enthusiasm for life, then just move. There's a better life elsewhere.

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megablast
> So I left. I went to Thailand where 1 months rent alone buys you 2-4 months
> of decent living.

Should have gone to Laos, where you can live in a beautiful house for $10 a
day. It is also quieter, has great internet, no roads and cars.

And London may pay well, but not as well as Australia for the last few years.

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reustle
Where in particular in Laos would you recommend? I'm currently in Bangkok for
the month, but heading to Laos after Myanmar.

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peteretep
Also in Bangkok, having just come back from Myanmar. There are quite a lot of
us, we should do a Hackernews Bangkok meetup...

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jnardiello
Well, as someone pointed out: London is not anymore an approachable city for
middle class/upper middle class. I think that to live well in London you need
to earn at least 6k GBP/month per family (3k each basically). Of which,
2k/2.5k will go for rent alone. If you earn less than 3k, you are going to
live counting pennies and won't likely save anything.

The main problem with London are 1) houses: it's really hard to find a nice
apartment close to where you work 2) public transports: which are incredibly
overcrowded (yet kind of efficient). If you have to commute to work - which is
most likely - then life is going to be hard.

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andyjdavis
>yet kind of efficient

I dispute the efficiency of London public transport. On paper it looks great
but it has some major reliability problems. I don't know if "signal failure"
is some sort of catch all error code but it seems to happen an awful lot.

My wife and I have spent years traveling and spent significant blocks of time
in a lot of big cities (most admittedly not as large as London). Tokyo,
Bangkok, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur etc and have had a combined 0 delays on public
transport within any of those cities. Not saying they never occur, maybe we
have just been lucky, but we have had 3+ years of regular use and 0 delays.

We recently spent a month in London and had at least half a dozen delays on
the tube. Actually, more than that. On our way to the airport the tube was
delayed 3 separate times on that single journey due to congestion.

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m_t
"Signal Failure" is also a major cause of delays in the Paris mtro and RER.
You're comparing these problem with city like Tokyo and Taipei, and this makes
me think that the main problem probably comes from the age of the
infrastructure.

The métro in Paris dates back to 1900, and in London it goes back to 1863.
Even with the major enhancements, I think that would explain why both are over
used and congested. Running a line at full capacity, like the Northern Line
that I have to take to commute, where trains are running 1 or 2 minutes from
each other, will result in delays.

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andyjdavis
>this makes me think that the main problem probably comes from the age of the
infrastructure.

I suspect this is the cause. I don't know what level of technology is running
behind the scenes but it certainly didn't feel anywhere near as modern as many
of the systems you encounter around Asia, which are generally no more than a
few decades old. Often they have also been aggressively updated since their
construction, both out of utility and almost as a point of national pride.

One thing jumped out at me as being particularly anachronistic in 2014, which
is when I was in London. Human beings standing on the platform making routine
announcements over the loud speakers at stations and train drivers making
announcements on the trains.

The vast majority of places have all of their standard announcements
prerecorded as well as a bank of prerecorded special case announcements. Not
just in Asia. In Australia (Perth), where I am from, and Barcelona, where I am
now, this is also the case.

This has the advantage that the announcement has zero background noise in the
sound coming over the speakers, a relatively accent free voice can be used and
the announcements are the same every time. I am a native English speaker but
still found understanding the announcements over the noise of a train pulling
into the station with that same sound also coming through the speakers was
often impossible. Throw in the person having a reasonably strong accent and
them feeling the need to adlib the announcement format and things get even
more difficult.

I was genuinely shocked the first time I saw a human being standing on the
platform attempting to shout into a microphone loud enough to be heard over a
train. And given that the customer facing technology is sub-par it does make
me suspicious of the degree to which the rest of the system has been updated
over the years.

It would be lovely to think that the London underground has retained its old
worldy charm whilst running state of the art 21st century technology under the
skin but I suspect its not the case.

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sublimino
Shoreditch/Hackney (London startup land) postbox psychology results: most open
to experience, high on extraversion and life satisfaction, low agreeableness,
least emotionally stable and conscientious.

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peteretep
The "wrong place" in London is the one that requires the longest and most
arduous commute from your workplace.

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collyw
"Anywhere near London" would be the wrong place for me personally.

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001sky
This is interesting only in that it points out that previous studies lacked
any common sense.

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m1117
Seems I should move out from northbeach to the mission

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simonebrunozzi
I live in the Mission and love it :)

