Other What currently makes your life awesome?

True that... Although I did survive 9 years with out any of the above occurring, but we had armed guards at the gates to my school! Grew up saying hi to guys with shotguns...

 

There ARE some MASSIVELY fun roads, though, which are hardly ever travelled on, except by guys test driving cars.

That said - there are some really boring-as-hell stretches. 300km of short yellow grass, no tree or hill in sight, and a stright road all the way? Yup... done that.

 

Now there's an idea. An expensive one but a good one not just to tell the misses the car was sold for less than it was?

 

I've seen people mention the pot holes on Bit quite a lot. Are they really that bad down south? Apart from the occasional one here and there which get filled (often badly) pretty quickly the roads are pretty good.

 

£450 isn't expensive!

 

Please tell me there are more U2711s available for £450!

 

U2711's

 

Let me asks you this. How many average monthly salaries you need to buy for example the cheapest VW Golf (13.690€, that is over 17 average monthly salaries) or a new 2-room ~60m2 apartment in a bigger city (€140.000, 175 average monthly salaries; by bigger city i mean an average bigger city in your country, for example in my country it means 70k+ people in the city). Then we can compare costs of living etc.

 

Living in South Africa is definitely cheaper. I should know, my dad left us to go there.

Petrol there is about 80p per litre, and that's expensive by their standards. A pack of ripe mangos costs less then £1, and we can't even get one good mango here for less than £1.20. When running a business there, income for whites is usually a fair bit more too. Living there is definitely cheaper.

 

Bought my 2209s from them, have had no problems with the monitors 1 year on.

 

OK, let's do this:
Average Salary here is the big question mark.
I know that a Personal assistant can earn anywhere between 3500,- and 10.000 a month. (that's before taxes). That's already upper echelons in terms of salaries, and an average domestic worker makes 2500-4500 or so. With a massive sustinance farming percentage and 55% unemployment, it's hard to guess this.
I'd hazard that 5-10K a month (between 400 and 800 GBP) is a "good average earner", and captures the bulk of the population - for example a junior programmer makes around that.

The cheapest VW Golf we have (1.6 basic model, not a TSI yet - the TSI's are more) is 233.600 ZAR. Add 5K to get it here (South african car prices are a wee bit lower than ours) and add CO2 taxes.
that brings it to 240K.

That's between 2 and 4 years' "Average" salary for a Golf.

I live in (rent - can't afford to buy) a 2 bedroom 72sq.m. place on the ground floor (although in a good area).
The estimated (i.e. recently bank-assessed) value on that is 1.5 Million. so between 150 and 300 months' salary.

This is living costs in Windhoek, as the biggest city with 400-500K citizens.
Other "bigger cities" are cheaper in terms of housing, but salaries get worse exponentially. For example, I couldn't even get a job in Swakopmund, and that's one of the bigger cities in the country, as well as one of the most "Upper class", if you will.

Now comparing that to South Africa (in this case, this makes most sense):
5K is an internship salary in ZA.
Housing is (in most, but not all areas) 30-50% cheaper.
Cars ar a bit cheaper, but not significantly.
Fresh Produce (except for meat) is significantly cheaper there, since it's produced there (ours is imported from ZA - I for example pay about 1pound for a single Mango as well).

Comparing it to Europe is not Apples and Apples, though... a Million factors come into play there, starting at the price of heating your house, which is hardly necessary here, all the way to fuel prices, bread prices, etc.
Smoking, for example, is dirt cheap here: 25NAD a packet of 20. That's 2GBP or so... that's just marginally more than 2L of coca-cola.

 

Excellent, thanks! It's something I've needed for a while but have been putting off... If I'm honest, I'd rather have a U3011, but it's just too expensive. My Viewsonics are definitely not cutting it any more though, so there'll be a 2711 on its way very soon to replace at least one of them

 

I've gotten my R.A.T9 back! And it's the newer 6400DPI model, rather than the 5600 I had before!

 

Just spent 5 minutes trying to work out how to use a wire stripper... 7 years of stripping cable with a Leatherman has made me pretty quick at it!

 

What type of stripper do you have? I never leave home without my Stripmasters

 

This one:



I started by trying to put the wire in the top....

 

Ah, I have a set similar to those as well. The Ideal Industries Stripmasters are my preferred tool though, they're perfect for an almost OCD level of work when it comes to wiring neatness

 

They do look nice! I need to be paid first though...

 

Last two days of work are tomorrow and today. I can't wait for my week off and back to college.

 

So intensely frigging bored in work today that when I got home I bought a bottle of Famous Grouse and some ginger ale and stuck on Clerks, my weekend has improved.