Since we got the visited countries thing on the go i thought it would be interesting to see where all of us have lived.

So...What cities have you all lived in for a time period of 6 months or longer??

The only places i have lived in are:

Belfast, Durban and Cape Town

The only places i have lived in are:

Belfast, Durban and Cape Town

in CT for 6 months or longer? when?

D u r b a n, my whole life

lived in the following cities in order of length of stay

Cape Town (5 years)
Johannesburg (4 years)
Durban (1 year)
Accra (10 months)
London (6 months)
New York (5 months)

Durban 20 years
London 3 years
Key West/Miami 1 year
New York 1 year
Warsaw 6 months
Johannesburg 1 year
Auckland 6 months
Sydney 3 years
Dubai 4 years

in CT for 6 months or longer? when?

2000

I have lived in Harare (when I was there it was clean and pretty but dull), London (urgh: crowded, dirty outside of the tourist areas, crap weather, EXPENSIVE, terrible standard of living), Oxford (stunning: an amazing privilege to study there truly the most beautiful buildings in the world and it really is the city of dreaming spires. Where else to students get to dine every night in gowns and jacket and tie in 13th century dining halls?!!!! Mind you if you cross over the Magdalen bridge out of the university district into east oxford the place is a shithole!!), New York (impressive but busy, noisey, either far too hot or far too cold and stupid working hours with 80 hours a week expected as standard in manhatten), Cape Town (what can I say: AWESOME) and Johannesburg (busy, buzzy, intense, vibrant, scary, exciting, ugly, pretty, good god Jozi really is the city that cannot be defined or summed up which is why I like it soo much)

Durban
London
Melbourne
London

I have lived in ... London... terrible standard of living)

Why do most saffas always say this? I can understand it from people who have just left daddys 6 bedroom house in Sandton or Bishopscourt and gone to live in a crappy sharehouse in some immigrant suburb where no one cares who your family is, or private school was and have to work for £7.63 an hour or something.

However you say you worked in a hedge fund in London. Assuming you werent a graduate or the mailroom engineer, I would expect you to take home at least £100k pa = £8.3k a month after tax. What does £8.3k a month buy in London?

For example:
New riverside 2 bed sub-penthouse in docklands with car park: 1800pm
New Aston Martin DB9 / Porsche 911 Turbo + insurance: 1300pm
6 city breaks to europe, a week skiing in the Alps, 1 intercontinental holiday: (Rio? Bermuda?) 1000pm
Food, bills, satellite, huge plasma screen, wine fridge, etc: 1000pm
Clubbing, bars, drinking, restaurants (assuming its not free with your firm): 1000pm
and you are still saving £2200 a month = R370,000 pa

Fair enough if you would spent it on different things, but how is this a bad standard of living? Especially with a trillion young chickies desperate to find guys with this somewhat cliched existance? And you are likely to have more than 1 friend who can match this kind of spending - no fun being the only one with some bucks to spend.

I struggle to see how any city in SA creams this sort of lifestyle in this sort of industry, and there are a shitlot of guys in their 20s making more than this.

New Delhi, India (6 years)
Dallas, Texas (6 years)
Johannesburg, ZA (10 months and counting)

Out of the three places I have lived, Dallas was by far the best. Joburg is okay i guess, and India is good cause all my family is there, but i was a little kid when i moved out from New Delhi.

:bash:

Lifestyle: crap weather, overcrowded, grey streets, always having to be inside cos of the weather, taxes going up and up, cramped housing (my house in cape town with a terrace and pool overlooking the ocean is a million times nicer than some small 2 bed flat that would prob cost me £400,000 or probably more in londons docklands which is boring dull and surrounded by endless council estates are you seriously saying Docklands offers as good s lifestyle as camps bay?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! COME OFF IT!! Indeed where the hell in london can even come close in terms of lifestyle to camps bay?!!!!),

And clive you are very out of touch with what people with skills etc in finnace earn in SA ( as I said in a previous discussion Im not earning any less than if I was in London as Im way more senior in SA than I ever would have been in London at my age due to the skills shortage)and as for the thing about not having any mates earning good money: well Cape Town has many many people earning very good money indeed. Sorry mate its a personal thing but the London standard of living is indeed shitty compared to Cape Towns (in my view)

Just as well we're in our respective cities eh? :D

You're right about docklands being a dump - only used it as you said you lived in CW. Many places vastly better.

I guess I'd be bored stupid after in a month in Capetown, and from what I remember, the weather's also pretty awful there outside of summer. But, hey, enjoy.

yup I lived on westferry road in a place called millennium harbour right on the river in Canary Wharf , still have an investment property there but the area is so fake and surrounded by crappy social housing for miles around. (and despite that you still have to pay £400,000 to a decent 2 bed in a all right development!! and it will take you 20 mins or half an hour to trek across to the west end in order to go out)

I guess at the end of the day lifestyle is subjective thing: for me its warm weather, scenery, relatively short working hours, good food and good wine, beaches, general outdoor lifestyle, being able to get out of the city on a Saturday morning into countryside with stunning scenery within 20 minutes and above all being surrounded by friends and family (I want my kids to grow up with their grandparents around etc). For others it might be art galleries, theatre etc and for others its simply money and work. Everyone is different.

for me its gonna be sitting on my farm in Paarl wondering which course Im gonna play that day, then checking on the vines and olive grove and then back to pick up the boys from Bishops before heading back to the farm for the sunset
eeer for now its fighting traffic and having eternal summer days and spending too much time in a plane/taxi/hotel/waiting lounge/airport