Where Should I Live Next?

One very cool thing about living in this day and age (especially considering my primary skillset of computer-nerding) is that I feel like I can pretty much go anywhere.

I was fortunate in that my Mom took me for a few trips while I was growing up–I remember visiting Ecuador and St. Martin very vividly. If you haven’t been to either, I just remember that Ecuador has tiny streets and a lot of poverty, and St. Martin was a beach paradise where I first got comfortable speaking French.

However, unlimited choice can be stressful. I really like traveling, but I can’t just visit every country in the world, right? Plus, someone else is already doing that.

Something that I think about sometimes is finding a new place to live. LA is pretty excellent and I have a lot of great friends here, but the lack of solid public transportation is annoying, and I’m not into the car-culture which keeps people geographically distant from their friends. New York is clearly the best city in the world (don’t get mad at me, I don’t make the decisions) but it’s pretty expensive and it lacks warm weather year-round and beach culture.

So, considering that constraints make you find creative solutions, I’ve decided on my qualifications for future cities to visit (in no particular order):

1. Easy access to the beach
2. Mild winters
3. Geographically small/good public transportation
4. Vibrant nightlife/music scene
5. Globally influential (it’s on the list)

Just looking at that list, I see a few that pop out to me already–Sydney, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Dubai, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, Tel Aviv … okay, there’s more than a few. I guess I should probably add “Politically Stable” to my qualifications as well.

I’m excited about this list, and it’s helped me define what I’m looking for a bit more. I can already see there are a LOT of places that I need to visit… I’d really like to make a list.

Hmph. I just tried to use WolframAlpha to crunch the data, but it’s proving to be difficult. Where’s my artificially-intelligent supercomputer when I need it?