Why do Americans live in cold states?

Post Reply New Topic

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I second that.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

You got a problem with my culture, bub?

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.

Here's a better question: why would anyone live in a hot, muggy, flat, ugly, overcrowded state like Florida? (I ask myself that question every. single. day, because I have the misfortune to be one of them. >_< ) Why would anyone live in Washington State? Oh, I don't know, maybe because the climate is perfect and you can see the most beautiful mountain in the country from a third of the state? *sigh* Did I mention I really hate Florida?

Only if you're from there; Deep South culture is clannish and pretty hostile to outsiders. For me personally, though, my big issue with Southern culture is that it's so passive-aggressive. I'd rather be told "eff you" by someone who means it than have it cloaked in pretty words; the last thing I need in my life is more subtext.

Florida is not overcrowded it has less than 400 people per square mile.

Sure, if you want to live in the swamp. My city has a population density of 3,856.00/sq mi, and that's not counting the year-round tourists.