Finding A Home

I found out this week that despite being self employed for only a year, I can still get a mortgage. I was planning on looking for a place to buy next year, as then I will know better how much I have to spend, but it's nice to know that if a perfect place comes up, I have the opportunity to purchase it. Although, there's not too many places in the New Forest one can afford, even on London money.

London vs New York

Now that I've been in London for a little over a year, I feel I can properly compare the two biggest, most important cities in Western Civilization.

London
The Underground beats the New York Subway any day of the week. The only thing the Subway has going for it is that it's cheap. And 24 hours. London as a city also has more character. With winding roads, and what survives of it's glorious pre-war buildings. It loses points due to how confrontational many people appear to be. And for it's desire to replace everything with ugly architecture.

New York
The people in the Big Apple are some of the best in the world. I always thought I was an LA guy, until I got stuck in with New Yorkers. It's almost impossible to get lost as well, and the fact that Manhattan is an island means that most of the places you'd ever want to go are self contained. The downsides are how it feels, to me at least, like just a really big Northeastern city, rather than something completely different to the rest of the country. And it's super dirty.

In an ideal world, I'd take New Yorkers and place them in London. But it doesn't really matter because at the end of the day, Paris trumps everything.