If you could pack up and move your whole life, where would you go?

xpost yes, threadban plz

sick of imago/xyzzzzz beefs shitting up literally every thread lately

i remember having some rare decent food at the Pizza Hut in Houghton in the 90s.

The origin of your screen name, presumably?

Suprised so many of you want to go to NZ. Why there? Why not Melbourne or Sydney if you want the antipodean life? I'd be worried about all the earthquakes.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Wednesday, June 1, 2022 3:44 AM bookmarkflaglink

just what i've read about it, and also I have a friend who spent some time there and loved it. buuuuut if I were to actually consider moving there I'd probably dig deeper than anecdotal stories.

are they allowing people to emigrate there atm? I know during the first few years of pandemic (god it sickened me to write that) I think that was a hard 'no'.

Somewhere between Lisbon and Porto seems good to me rn

Plus my wife says the miserable summers kind of bring everyone together in shared suffering. Like Carnival in reverse, but still a civic bonding.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

ah yes, i remember the first month of covid too

Seems many here have fallen in love with New Orleans as I did. Did no one have the experience a friend of mine had: it’s dirty, smelly, too hot, too poor

― Three Rings for the Elven Bishop (Dan Peterson)

so are you deliberately quoting my online dating profile or what?

i'm not gonna lie - to me the NZ fantasy is all about seeing where sauron lord of the rings came to be

i was also impressed when they had a mass shooting and immediately banned semi-automatic weapons. (i realize a similar response has happened in other countries where mass shootings have occurred, including the well-known continent of australia. but none of those other countries have sean bean

that action played a lot into my decision making as well. but honestly I think I had just seen Hunt for the Wilderpeople and decided I loved New Zealand.

Re: New Orleans, I would never, ever move there, but I've also had a different experience than some people, perhaps— I really love it there, but have a distinct impression that I would wilt during the summers, and also just give in to alcoholism in a way that I haven't yet done here in Philly.

My main reasoning has nothing to do with the culture, poverty, or tidiness— I live in Philadelphia, after all— but because about half of the people I've ever known in New Orleans have died in New Orleans or died directly because of events that transpired in New Orleans. Only a few people I know are thriving down there, and a majority of them are sober. (All my dead friends died of either liver issues, heroin, or in the big warehouse fire of 2010).

Oh yeah, I definitely would be a much less healthy person. It's hard to imagine maintaining things like daily exercise and being a vegetarian in New Orleans. I would definitely smell worse. But the culture is unique, and I just fantasize about going to second lines every Sunday.

Suprised so many of you want to go to NZ. Why there? Why not Melbourne or Sydney if you want the antipodean life? I'd be worried about all the earthquakes.

the serious consideration as to which particular town in NZ each respondent would choose is the tip-off here

would have hoped people might opt for choices a little more imaginative than clichéd wealth enclaves

― imago, Wednesday, June 1, 2022 5:55 AM (six hours ago)

imago, we now have a settler colonialism thread ... this would be a good discussion there tbh. At least the (mostly) educated white English-speakers of ILX are choosing places where they can be with those of their kind as opposed to colonizing / gentrifying?

I mean, I guess I could try to move back to the unpromising Greek Island my great-grandparents emigrated from over 100 years ago ... but honestly, I would probably choose El Cerrito or a bougie condo in Los Angeles (since staying in my own city is against the rules of the thread)?

please don't direct imago to the settler colonialism thread thanks

half of the people I've ever known in New Orleans have died in New Orleans

tbh if we move there it could easily become the place I die, tho ideally not for a few decades at least. It's even an appealing prospect. But I know what you mean, there are certainly rough currents there. (R.I.P. Johnny Thunders.)

i would likely enjoy living somewhere on the navajo reservation if i had access to necessities and a sense of kinship but yeah that's complicated isn't it.

i want somewhere that's quiet, has nice bars that aren't of the "loud trivia night/karaoke" type, but quiet places where you can sit outdoors and talk about your lives with friends while the sunsets, where there aren't "I DID THIS" stickers all over every gas pump and "TRUMP WON" posters visible, where there's beautiful street art on the corners, and concert venues that are loud as fuck and get obscure metal bands to show up.

and weed is decriminalized.

"I DID THIS" stickers

wait, what are these?!

stickers of Joe Biden pointing, and people paste them so that his hand is pointing at the gas prices on the pumps.

I've ripped several off in the past month.

you have to admit that joe biden does control global gas prices though

one of those "the worst person you know has a point" moments

At least the (mostly) educated white English-speakers of ILX are choosing places where they can be with those of their kind as opposed to colonizing / gentrifying?

New Zealand is colonised?!

Like, it literally is? White people are the colonists there.

Also certain other large countries

in conclusion, we should all live under the sea

i want somewhere that's quiet, has nice bars that aren't of the "loud trivia night/karaoke" type, but quiet places where you can sit outdoors and talk about your lives with friends while the sunsets, where there aren't "I DID THIS" stickers all over every gas pump and "TRUMP WON" posters visible, where there's beautiful street art on the corners, and concert venues that are loud as fuck and get obscure metal bands to show up.

and weed is decriminalized.

A bit of weed, a bit of colonialism..

Let's make lots of money.

he's in Florida and talking about sitting outdoors so... canada would be a bit of a let down

You can't sit outdoors most of the year here in North Central Florida. It's either too hot and humid or too damply cool.

a good year in most all of Canada we're talking 50 sit out nights

*all the more populated parts of canada. adjusted to average for the geography we're talking 0.5

I grew up near Buffalo on the Canadian border. The joke there was that Buffalo had two seasons, winter and the 4th of July. It wasn't really true, but warm summer nights were valued

Florida's not quite but reaching the 'unbearable to be outside' phase. my mother got heat exhaustion just trying to see Paul McCartney last weekend, and this was as the sun was setting.

I feel like one of those cheap CVS misters is a required purchase here

I grew up near Buffalo on the Canadian border. The joke there was that Buffalo had two seasons, winter and the 4th of July. It wasn't really true, but warm summer nights were valued

I read a version of that joke in a Jim Harrison book, describing the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as having two seasons, August and winter. He described sitting in a pickup truck with the engine running and the heat blasting to watch Fourth of July fireworks.

Florida's heat is still more manageable than DC or New Orleans if you're on the coast.

My dad grew up in northern Wisconsin and his version was "ten months of winter and two months of tough sledding".

Buffalo isn't so cold, though, because there's always a house on fire nearby.

not sure what that refers to tbh

70s news broadcasts on WIVB and WKBW that seemed to be nothing but house fires in Tonawanda and Cheektowaga, night after night.

I remember that being a thing in Detroit in the 70s - Devil's Night - but not in Tonawanda or Cheektowaga

we got hit really hard by the lake-effect winter snow coming from the west over Lake Erie

This thread makes me think of Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. The author treats the couple's plan to move to Paris as the embodiment of deluded wishing, but then he also treats a poorly-performed amateur play as a crushing humiliation. So to avoid extreme pessimism, perhaps stay away from this book while thinking of living elsewhere.

― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 1 June 2022 03:02 (yesterday) link

ha, that's hilarious. i hadn't heard of that book til now, but it basically sounds like paris syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

Finland:

it's either dark all the time or light all the time
everything just seems to work perfectly
death metal is normcore
even the tiniest apartment has a sauna and you will see everyone you know fully naked
the most popular flavour for any foodstuff is salted licorice
everyone is surprisingly open and friendly, in a quiet reserved sort of way, but all of them carry big knives

― Portrait Of A Dissolvi Ng Drea M (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, May 30, 2022 4:07 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i can't tell if you like or dislike those things, but all that sounds awesome to me

Also: rampant alcoholism, I gather.

not even in the top 10

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcoholism-by-country

"If you could pack up and move your whole life, where would you go? "

1971

Odd that some countries with reputations for alcoholism, like Ireland and Iceland, rate much lower than South Korea or Latvia. Doesn't mean that alcoholism isn't a problem there, but that reputations are not a very good yardstick.

New Zealand is colonised?!

― gyac, Wednesday, June 1, 2022 2:33 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Like, it literally is? White people are the colonists there.

― gyac, Wednesday, June 1, 2022 2:34 PM (yesterday)

yeah, you're right ... but they'd be the 2nd, 3rd, whatever wave? Does that make it better? Do you feel like it's worse than being the first white boots on the ground? What if they're American, and are coming from another country where white people were the colonizers?