An idea

I have to admit, I'm a bit of a fan of lists. In this month's Esquire magazine, there's a good one - 75 things every man should do. It's a list of things they suggest every man should try once, ranging from the general (start something that scares you) to the specific (drink mescal in Mexico). Some of them I've already done (build a fence, learn three or four chords and a song on the guitar), others I probably never will (have a threesome).

There were some good ideas in there though, and I think I'm going to come up with my own list at some point.

One of the things on their list (and probably mine) is live abroad. Which is quite timely because, given the strong Australian dollar, a colleague and I were browsing New York properties on the internet today, and found that it's not as expensive as you'd think. An (admittedly small) apartment in Greenwich Village was going for about $300k, bigger ones out in Brooklyn for less than $200k.

Of course, neither of us have $300k, or even $200k. We realised though that if we only wanted the place for a month a year, we could organise a coop with people from work and buy-in for about $20k each. Plus, the way the Australian dollar is going, in a few months it will be even cheaper . . .