Why do Americans live in cold states?

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elbowgrease
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24 Dec 2017, 6:41 pm

I'm still hoping someone around here will let me use an acre or so and build a little shack.

Never made it that far north yet. Got to the South edge of Portland once but turned around and got sucked back into the norhum vortex.
I really just kind of crash landed here ten years ago and somehow made it work for a while. Found an amazing martial arts teacher here.
Long story.



goldfish21
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24 Dec 2017, 6:47 pm

elbowgrease wrote:
I'm still hoping someone around here will let me use an acre or so and build a little shack.

Never made it that far north yet. Got to the South edge of Portland once but turned around and got sucked back into the norhum vortex.
I really just kind of crash landed here ten years ago and somehow made it work for a while. Found an amazing martial arts teacher here.
Long story.


An acre or so of free land use, eh?

I know there are cities/towns etc that literally give away free land to anyone willing to move there, build a home, start a business etc.. so free land, even in Canada/USA is a thing.

However, I saw your "acre" and it reminded me of the headline news here in the last day or two, as a piece of property (with a restaurant on it) just under 1 acre in a desirable downtown Vancouver location just sold to a Chinese developer for a record price... $245 Million Canadian dollars. For just under an acre. 8O


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auntblabby
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24 Dec 2017, 6:48 pm

EG, if I wasn't so frail and clumsy, i'd like to have tried martial arts also. :bounce: if I had an acre i'd let you build a shack on it. I think you'd find south Puget sound to be an interesting place, very green and dewy. lotsa water both on the ground as well as in the air, falling. puddles can be pretty. the ocean smell is very much here.



elbowgrease
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24 Dec 2017, 7:11 pm

Tai chi chuan is amazing for the frail and clumsy, in my opinion.
I've heard nice things about Washington, and always wanted to go. Just never managed to get there yet.
Land here is pretty expensive, and I think it's going up right now. Part of it's the pot, part of it is the general lack of space. It's a bit like an island. There's not much room to expand here. I know a one bedroom house with no yard at all down the block from my old house was listed at $250,000 not that long ago, with the attached empty lot at over a hundred.
I don't know, it's getting gentrified here, and they've cut down nearly every tree in town this year. It's pretty sad. Also some seemingly irresolvable problems at the gym where I do martial arts have me thinking it may be a lost cause.
Considering socal, as crazy as that seems. My sifu's sifu's gym is in LA. Don't really want to live there but I need to make the pilgrimage at some point.
At the moment I'm waiting to see about disability before I try to do anything.

You'd think one of the old hippies around here would be all about someone trying to be a Taoist hermit way off on the back of their property somewhere.



auntblabby
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24 Dec 2017, 7:15 pm

^^^ok, I googled and came up empty- what does "SIFU" ["sifu's sifu's" ] mean?



goldfish21
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24 Dec 2017, 7:21 pm

elbowgrease wrote:
Tai chi chuan is amazing for the frail and clumsy, in my opinion.
I've heard nice things about Washington, and always wanted to go. Just never managed to get there yet.
Land here is pretty expensive, and I think it's going up right now. Part of it's the pot, part of it is the general lack of space. It's a bit like an island. There's not much room to expand here. I know a one bedroom house with no yard at all down the block from my old house was listed at $250,000 not that long ago, with the attached empty lot at over a hundred.
I don't know, it's getting gentrified here, and they've cut down nearly every tree in town this year. It's pretty sad. Also some seemingly irresolvable problems at the gym where I do martial arts have me thinking it may be a lost cause.
Considering socal, as crazy as that seems. My sifu's sifu's gym is in LA. Don't really want to live there but I need to make the pilgrimage at some point.
At the moment I'm waiting to see about disability before I try to do anything.

You'd think one of the old hippies around here would be all about someone trying to be a Taoist hermit way off on the back of their property somewhere.


Similar story here.. ocean on one side, mountains on the other.. EXTREMELY desirable little patch of beauty in between. Only the scale of price is totally different.. like off the f*****g charts different. $250K for a one bedroom house would basically be considered practically free here, not expensive at all. $250K can still buy one a 1 bedroom condo, but it'd be old and probably a 1-1.5 hour drive from the city. Brand new studio apartments can be had for around that in the suburbs where I live, so it's possible.. just not plentiful.

Meanwhile, downtown, there's a new ~18 story wood frame (highest in the world) condo building going up by some rockstar architect from Japan. ~2500sf condos with hot water heating that extends out onto the decks outside as well, nice looking design (a lot of glass) etc. It's called Terrace House and is being sold for a record in the city at $3000/sf for an average price of $5.5M per unit. Chances are there MAY be one or two local wealthy people who buy a place there, but for the most part with high end luxury properties here now they'll be bought up by foreign investors who may or may not ever even come spend a weekend in the place. Or maybe just a few weeks or months a year when they're in town on business etc. Crazy.

It's no wonder there are so many people here on board with the Yoga, and some Tai Chi, etc.. some complain that Vancouver is full of hippies endlessly pursuing all these "fad" relaxation/fitness lifestyle things, or coming up with new ones.. and to that I say necessity breeds invention. People are so stressed to the max here that they HAVE TO do some Yoga/meditation etc to maintain their sanity. Or smoke a lot of weed. :lol:


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elbowgrease
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24 Dec 2017, 7:27 pm

Sifu means "teacher-father", although sometimes it's spelled or pronounced differently. I think that my teacher's teacher is technically my xiugang, or sigung, but my sifu never called him that.
Both of them are dead now, with neither of them appointing a successor. So it's kind of a weird situation. Some of us remaining students (or maybe just me) trying to put together the pieces of the whole system they developed. All of us trying to keep it going.

Sifu James wing woo was the founder, my teacher's teacher. My sifu was Paul gale. Sifu woo has a website, and there are some interesting videos on YouTube.

Hard to find real Tai chi chuan.

I've heard Vancouver has a pretty large Asian population.
I honestly have no idea what property goes for here. I think part of why it may be lower than Vancouver is that there aren't any jobs here.



goldfish21
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24 Dec 2017, 7:41 pm

elbowgrease wrote:
I've heard Vancouver has a pretty large Asian population.
I honestly have no idea what property goes for here. I think part of why it may be lower than Vancouver is that there aren't any jobs here.


Yep, we certainly do! We have had a large Asian population since the inception of Canada, really, or before - Chinese people came to help build the railroads & Vancouver has a Chinatown etc. The ones who have been here for generations are just a part of the fabric of this place. It's some of the new money ones that have come recently who have skyrocketed the price of housing & buy their teenaged children supercars that get the evil eye from some locals - not because they're Asian, but because they're really messing with our economy.

Likely correct. Housing prices tend to be based on local incomes. Here, they are not.. they're based on speculation of overseas investors and seen as a great way to launder money, or simply just as a biggy bank to stash cash in outside of China. Local incomes can support prices of $400K. Meanwhile prices are currently at something like $1.5M & economists say we'd have to see a crash of 70% to get back to where local incomes truly support prices. It's all just f*****g nuts.


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elbowgrease
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24 Dec 2017, 7:50 pm

goldfish21 wrote:
It's all just f*****g nuts.


I second that.



Misery
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24 Dec 2017, 8:38 pm

auntblabby wrote:
Misery wrote:
Quote:
i've noticed that southerners in general don't appreciate effeminate long-haired old outliers such as myself, conformity is much more a valued thing in the warmer places [outside of California at least].


What does this mean? I haven't encountered anything like this anywhere down south myself.

that was my experience in AZ and a few other places, I was harassed by some yahoos, given the cold shoulder by others. I just walked in one store, and the owner pointed out "we reserve the right to refuse service to anybody." I got the message and left.


Wait, was this based on your appearance or something?

I've got the whole "kinda looks like a girl" thing going myself, but I've not run into this sort of issue. Yet.

I can say if I did run into it, the store owner probably wouldnt find himself winning that particular arguement in the end.

Bah. Just hearing about that sort of thing angers me. As much as I hate alot of big stores and such, at least in such places they arent allowed to pull that kind of crap. Even freaking Walmart is above that one...



auntblabby
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24 Dec 2017, 8:40 pm

Misery wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
Misery wrote:
Quote:
i've noticed that southerners in general don't appreciate effeminate long-haired old outliers such as myself, conformity is much more a valued thing in the warmer places [outside of California at least].


What does this mean? I haven't encountered anything like this anywhere down south myself.

that was my experience in AZ and a few other places, I was harassed by some yahoos, given the cold shoulder by others. I just walked in one store, and the owner pointed out "we reserve the right to refuse service to anybody." I got the message and left.


Wait, was this based on your appearance or something?


being that I doubt he could read my mind, my appearance and manner would logically be the only thing he coulda based his provincial prejudice on.



lostonearth35
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25 Dec 2017, 8:19 pm

I wouldn't be able to live in an igloo even if I wanted to, there's not nearly enough snow and ice on the ground. In fact we had no snow at all just the day before on xmas eve, so I was pretty happy to actually see enough for there to be a white xmas when I got up today. :)

But now we're having a nasty storm. I hope dad got home okay after taking me back to my apartment. :(



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25 Dec 2017, 8:58 pm

I think it is reasonable to assume that many of Chinese who built the railroads were actually quite intelligent. The wealthy railroad owners needed them to do things like create tunnels with explosives. Things that normal people couldn't do.



The Unleasher
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25 Dec 2017, 10:36 pm

I mean, the Northeast is the richest and most economically developed region in the country. Cities in Northern central states (most notably North Dakota) are actually doing pretty well now.


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JustFoundHere
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20 Feb 2018, 7:46 pm

The following article my be of interest:

The Economic Advantages of Life in a Cold Country.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/the-eco ... y-1.871761



ScarletIbis
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20 Feb 2018, 11:24 pm

elbowgrease wrote:
I noticed it more in the deep South (gulf coast) than the southwest. Deep South is weird. I like the place but can't deal with the culture.
I'm also from northern Illinois, and hope that I don't ever have to go through another winter there.
Pretty happy with northern California. Not too cold, not too hot, can deal with the culture, can deal with the rain.


You got a problem with my culture, bub? :ninja: :rambo: :batman:

Jk, I respect your opinion. Although I will say this, every time I’ve left the Deep South, I’ve come to realize there is a lot more hospitality down here.


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