LUV, US Elections, Gaming, Socialising

[tcpip]

Last Tuesday night convened the monthly LUV meeting. A good turnout, and two excellent speakers which have spurred my hitherto laziness on the need to learn and use HTML5 more extensively. Have also made initial preparations for LinuxConf AU 2013 and, across The Ditch, Multicore World 2013.

This Sunday Dean Edwards, Vice-Chair of Democrats Abroad (Au) will be speaking at the Kooying ALP FEA on the US Presidential elections. Expected a good turnout and interest. Have followed the polling closely at RealClear Politics and FiveThirtyEight, both of which suggest an Obama victory.

Pendragon game last night introduced the mythic story of The Fisher King. Earlier this week my review of jiawen's Blade and Crown was published on rpg.net. Last Sunday Redmond finished a session of Dark Hesresy. Still working away way to complete the next issue of RPG Review with last minute articles coming in; hopefully will complete by early next week.

Last Saturday evening caseopaya and I enjoyed the company of Brendan E., where we enjoyed dinner, drinks, and several episodes of Archer. Also very much enjoying the Friday evening gatherings organised by Keith P., a multicultural mix primarily of local students with themed discussions which help both cultural communication and understanding (not to mention English skills). Tomorrow afternoon will have other visitors (work and ex-work) colleagues and their partners to tour the Willsmere estate.

Comments

[tcpip]

Yes, I certainly understand how the mobility/PT issue can be justifiably off-putting for many. Apparently there used to be a little coffee-shop-cum-milk-bar, but the population wasn't there to sustain it. That might be different now as there has been a fair bit of development.

Carlton is indeed insanely expensive, especially in recent years. The only places in the inner urban regions that are remotely affordable in the private market would be parts of Richmond and Abbottsford. As for the public market, there is a waiting list greater than a lifetime. As always, it is ration by price or by time.

Oddly, because of the reputation of Willsmere, it remains one of the more affordable parts of Kew.

[ideological_cuddle]

There may be some affordable bits of Richmond, but from what I've seen looking at listings there's not much of it -- unless you want a tiny falling-apart dogbox, anyway.

Mind you my house here isn't that much more expensive than the two-bedroom place the boss has leased at Willsmere, and what I have is a two-bedroom (really one plus a study which is unusable in the summer!) townhouse tucked away in a little square thingy across the road from Melbourne Uni.

Have to go a bit further out to get much cheaper, there's some stuff in Moreland. But mostly, if it's close to PT, particularly trams or rail, then it's going to be pricey. The market has spoken.

[tcpip]

Wow, sounds like you picked up quite a good spot next to Melbourne Uni...

Yes, the market has spoken.. But the market is biased when it comes to real estate. There's not many other industries where the supply of a core component is perfectly inelastic.

Oh, but I could go on for hours about the economics of land...

[ideological_cuddle]

Yes, this house is remarkably good. It's relatively modern -- looks to be maybe a 1970s or 1980s build -- but reasonably good with insulation and so on. There are two others in this row, we have a little shared open area, and my neighbour on one side is a coffee shop who needs the parking space I have, so I get free coffee in return for that. :)

(And yes, the cost of coffee is a factor I take in to account when comparing rents.)

There are all sorts of issues with this stuff, absolutely. The one I find most annoying is that although politicians typically don't take PT very seriously, and many people are quite dismissive about it and are quite happily living their car-centred lives, there's enough demand for PT that all the property close to it is much more expensive.

Which is a real bugger if you don't get the choice to have that car-centric life. Because I'm making university/community-sector style money but competing with bankers and lawyers for housing...