Ayashe Ninetails

Totally get what you mean there, but that may also be quite regional. I'm in the suburbs, so definitely not rural and a good hour or so outside of NYC, however, I'm sandwiched between a fairly prominent international gang and a...quite vocal red base, let's say. My region of NY has always been a bit spotty that way. You can find little mixed neighborhoods throughout, but everything is so so so jammed so close together, it only takes a good 5-10 minute drive to find yourself in very hostile territory. And hostile in that sense means everything from accidentally stumbling into some gang-related beef all the way to "we don't like ur kind round here" vibes. Total polar opposite depending on the direction you drive in. My immediate neighborhood is not too bad - pretty diverse. But we're a tiny little safe haven (well, "safe," all things considered) in a big ole region full of WTF. I've spent a little time in other states, and I've been to some of the more rural regions. The problem (for me) with moving to a small town in like Tennessee, or Louisiana, or Texas, or freaking...Nebraska (do not even ask me about driving through that state oh my god) is I'd be at the mercy of the state government and local PD. I can complain a TON about New York, and NYPD is...definitely something, but the local dept out here is not too bad. Not ideal, still very shady, kinda lazy, that intruder you're calling about might actually manage to take your whole damn front door off before they cruise leisurely at 20 mph over to you but still get paid like whoa, might show up eating or not at all...but that's about it. I've definitely seen/heard worse. A LOT worse (obviously!). As for the government, well, I can still vote here very easily, so... 😂 Actual rights are the only thing I don't need to worry about.

I struggle with this in real life, too. 😄 Kidding kidding (mostly - I drive fine, but don't let me park your car, guys). My SL struggle would be anything to do with buying/auctioning/selling land and being premium. Never done any of that. Always just rented.

That's definitely regional. Maybe. Don't go by me, though. I'm rather cynical lol. I can't think of a single place I've been to in the US where things felt better. You could maybe trick yourself into thinking NYC is fine (which I did for a long time), but...dig a little harder and nope! Where to go is always an interesting question to me. I've read through so many articles and rankings of best cities, best countries, etc. But once I start digging deeper - nope, definitely not for me. I've been to some pretty nice places, but nothing that screamed "everybody's welcome!" quite like Oxford did (at least my area of it anyway). The Caribbean maybe, since so many people from all over flock there for retirement and visit on vacation and show up on cruise ships because of the great weather and beaches, but then you'll be dodging storms! 😵

Thanks! That's the dream right there! I somehow magically found myself living right around the corner from a major street that had every type of culture you could imagine all living and working side-by-side. A Greek market next to a Japanese restaurant across from an Indian restaurant next to an Italian grocer next to a kebab takeout across from a Jamaican dine-in restaurant next to a Lebanese restaurant next to a pizza place next to an African restaurant. Mixed in with pubs and other stores and businesses. On and on for what felt like miles (but was like, half a mile lol). Being there was the safest I ever felt and I guess it all got to be a bit overwhelming, in a positive way. Everyone was just so dang nice and you could wander around at all hours and find people doing the same. For the first time ever it felt like I found a place I could call home. Now finding that again someplace else, I'm not quite so sure!

Oh I totally agree with you on Alienware/Dell. I'm even going to be so bold as to toss HP into that mix, though HP is *slightly* better on PSUs. The absolute worst thing for me IMO was to buy a prebuilt from a company that uses proprietary parts. HP refused to update my older motherboard's BIOS past a certain date (natural, but infuriating), which meant I was stuck with Legacy and it essentially cut off my replacement GPU options to anything pre-UEFI (or something that had a BIOS switch, which was a pain in the #@#$! to figure out). That was my most recent PC before buying this new bad boy in 2020. Never HP again. Dell is even worse (crappy PSU power - at least HP lets you pick from a list, though they're still not great options). But luckily, prebuilts have come a long way. I went with a tiny brand because of the Black Friday sale, but the parts are real! If parts fail, I can go in and replace with standard parts I can buy on Newegg. Things have names! And brands! So I should be able to keep this thing upgraded as time goes. And this is only one brand of several that build and offer custom PCs with standard parts. I looked at about 5-6 different companies that do fully customizable prebuilts before buying this. Yes, the prices were higher, but it was also at a time when GPUs were still insanely expensive. So I can't really fault them on that. My main issue with building from scratch is I do not like the idea that I could get all the parts right and still wind up troubleshooting. Fix this, fix that, take this out, take that out. Listen for that, plug that in, hop into the BIOS, mess with that, change this setting, oh no my drive's faulty, do a return, wait for replacement, ugh. I can handle that piecemeal (replace a drive, few months later add some RAM, etc.) but not all at once. No patience for it. And I can't really go without a PC for an extended time so...someone else can tinker with all that and ship me something finished and ready to go out of the box.

Oooo spicy! I'll take something new, but in the meantime, here's an older one.

I'll admit - it never used to bother me as a kid or a teen and I've always lived in neighborhoods and went to schools where I was the odd one out, but past a certain point, it started giving me major anxiety. The years of being followed around stores just trying to shop, having things yelled at me while on dates, being questioned, being afraid to drive, being afraid to walk around as a woman in general, like a million other things all of a sudden hit me in my 20s, especially. I think my brain just up and fried one day. I'll never forget the evening I was walking around my neighborhood in Oxford England (I moved out of London to save money and picked an area that was super super diverse) with my boyfriend and a couple friends and I stopped right in my tracks and blurted out - "OMG I forgot I was black!" And they all turned to me like girl are you okay (lol they were all white) and I'm like oh crap did I say that out loud? Sorry just got caught up in the moment! And they all just stared at me like ok go on girl live your life LOL. But it was such a massive weight off my chest when I realized I was just doing stuff. I could just...walk around, and nobody was following me or being a jerk despite being in an interracial relationship and hanging out with a bunch of guys who don't look like me. They finally understood somewhat once I was able to calm down and explain it more, but we laughed so hard over that because I damn near yelled that in the middle of the street, oops! Omg, I had to admit that was pretty funny. Then I came back to the US and my brain broke again, LOL.

Oooooo. If that also applies to islands in the Caribbean, I may have to look more deeply into that.

Oh, you have to travel. You must. It's such an amazing experience. Dust off that passport (when Covid calms the hell down, anyway)!

Oh hell, that's definitely part of it, LOL. But what I'm looking for specifically - a large, safe, diverse minority community where we're not over-policed to literal death. Somewhere I can just throw my headphones on and tune out and go for a walk in the park without having to be on high alert all the time. Geez, I haven't even been to a park in forever now that I think about it. I used to enjoy that a LOT but I don't feel too safe wandering around alone these days (general crime plus shenanigans). My biggest wish is honestly just to be left alone, lol. But Aya, you live in New York! Uh huh...leave NYC and try that statement again. 🤣 Though even NYC is a mess these days and I wouldn't take my chances there either.

You don't have to worry about lil ole me! Lol, I'll be super honest - I have absolutely no desire to relocate to Europe. I had a blast in England and Scotland and did think about returning, but the excitement I had many years ago where I'd say "omg I could move to Spain or or or Italy or or or Germany next!" yeah, that's long gone. My priorities changed in a big way since then and I realized living over there wouldn't really be much different than living over here. For what I personally want/need, it's not much of an upgrade.

Mhm! It makes the whole process a lot more fun - having someone to help plan itineraries and spend time with in an unfamiliar place. I don't mind traveling around alone, either, but it's just a lot more comfortable for me doing it that way. I've heard Portugal is really nice. Shame you didn't go!

My college was so absolutely inept, they mishandled my financial aid upon arrival, leaving me flat broke without my disbursement for housing and food. Thank goodness the president of the school found me sobbing in the front lobby, walked me to his office, and personally kicked some butt around the Financial Aid dept, otherwise I would've been completely stranded. They had my money at the ready in no time after that. In the meantime, my roommate, who I had just met that week (there were 7 of us in our apartment total, but she and I were assigned to the same bedroom - ahhh the joys of student housing), offered to share her food with me until it came through. I had two of my own contacts, but they lived too far outside of the city to be of much help. So that taught me real quick - make sure they live in the same city, too! Never know when you'll need a ride back to the airport. 🤣 That's definitely one way to make connections, sure. My method is to pick a place where I already know someone. I used to be super social online (well, I still am), so I met a lot of people all over the world and had some long-term online friendships. I've visited quite a few places based on that and always had someone to hang out with when I got there. It was a great chance to meet some of my closer online friends and explore new places simultaneously. That's actually how I met my best friend of oh gosh...14 years now? We first met in World of Warcraft a million years ago and then hung out quite a bit in person, though he's somewhat local (just a few states away).

This is so true. And, the one thing I learned taking the "just go" approach - sure, that works as there's never a perfect time when the stars align to make a big move like that. It's always a huge risk. But you absolutely should have at least one contact in the country you're going to. I'm not at all afraid to yeet myself into the abyss, but I always always always make sure I have one person waiting for me at the other side when I do it. Red tape is so scary and it's not uncommon for things to go horribly wrong.

Oh my god if I went to Mexico I'd do nothing but eat and buy musical instruments I'm not even kidding LOL. My mom still has the didgeridoo we got from our trip to Australia. I kid you not - we had to ship the damn thing home it was so huge. Found it in a shop full of handmade arts and crafts made by locals this lovely woman ran. We stayed in there for hours chatting with her, looking at her photos, chatting about the local history, etc. But yeah, you can't go to Australia and NOT buy a freaking didgeridoo. And when in England, I bought a beautiful used violin and took some lessons. I chose to leave it with a friend rather than bring it home, though. I was afraid of trying to lug that through an airport. I would totally fall in love with Mexico I'm sure. Unfortunately, my Spanish is absolutely horrid. Yes I took it in high school (3 years worth, essentially, and straight As) - but the moment I got laughed at trying to use it in a real-world situation, I was done, LMAO. I'm convinced what they teach us in school is not even real! These days, I can understand some of it if written - but I can't speak a word and can't understand it at all when spoken. But go freaking figure - I took one single German class at the local community college years ago and found that so much easier. Which reminds me - Duo is probably very angry with me as I've been neglecting my German lessons for ages now, but yeah, I pretty much gave up on Spanish for good unfortunately LOL. A lot of the music I listen to is from Germany, so I just went with that.

Thank you so much! And yeah, that's the hardest part. If you can't meet a country's company sponsorship requirement (due to being entirely freelance or worse - working completely for yourself with no clients involved - like a blogger or something), you're pretty much out of luck there. So many of those travel blog posts telling people - just move to Bali and be a freelance web designer, yaaaay! - don't tell them that they'd be working quite illegally in many cases without getting the proper approvals and documents, lol. So much this. I'm not looking to move somewhere cheaper. I'm looking to move somewhere comfortable. I've taken tons of long multi-day road trips around the US before, so I know packing up and skipping off to Nebraska or North Carolina or Alabama or Utah or whatever is NOT the answer for me. Yayyyy but it's an exciting process! I mean, stressful, but exciting. And yeah, super complicated - even before Covid. Paperwork up to the eyeballs, but so worth it. South Asia would be amazing if you can pull that off before settling down elsewhere (and lol so many people in this thread choose Canada!).

Moving abroad for financial reasons wasn't really why this thread was started. Luna and I started off discussing work visas and how difficult they can be to obtain, especially for freelancers, in the Pet Peeves thread. From there, we decided to just start a whole new thread to discuss expat success stories in general and pick each others' brains on how it was done. The reasons for moving can be varied - met someone in SL and decided to take the plunge, moving for college, moving for work/employment opportunities, met someone elsewhere online and got married, joined the Peace Corps, won the lotto, left to teach English, etc. Anything at all. Me personally, it's been a lifelong dream to leave ever since I took my first international vacation and it only grew stronger the more I traveled around. Once I had a few trips under my belt and realized how much more comfortable I felt outside of the US, I was sold on living abroad (and managed it for a short time but only temporarily - I'd love to make it permanent).

I'm going to peek at this! Thanks! England would require a company to sponsor (same as many places), and so many companies in London and beyond hate doing that (I job hunted while there). I remember back in the early 2000s, company websites even had that in the footer - we do not sponsor, LOL.

Check my edit - bangs! That might be an easier problem to solve than finding a hairbase that wants to play nice and line up well. Though I'd still recommend trying some new hairbases for fun, too.

LMAO. Yeah I saw mention of a HUD on Flickr and I have no idea. Cute hairstyle, though! But nuuuuuuuu, don't give up! Hit up Not Found, grab their hairbases, try em out. Hit up Stray Dog and Mister Razzor, too. Demo all the things! Don't just stick to the womens hairbases either - the mens can look so nice, as well. Can't really see it that well, but this is Not Found - Carl on my Lilly. Edit: Better view of it below. AND ALSO! What about adding bangs? Get thee to...who sells separate bangs? Doux? Tram? I forget...but get thee there!

Same! I considered both Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands several years ago (that's not technically leaving leaving for me buuuuut, kind of sort of, and a way easier process), but then Hurricane Maria hit. I mean, I'm somewhat used to seeing hurricanes hitting those regions (St. Croix especially), but that one was massive and recovery is still in progress. Oof. Shame because I adore both of those places. Well, St. Croix less so. It's too quiet - St. Thomas has all the nightlife.

That one looks super cute! Also completely unrelated buuuut her new braided styles are insane and I need them in my life.

Try a little bit of everything. I had that weird issue with my male avatar - hair out too far, hairbase out too far, etc. I finally found something that lines up really nicely at Not Found (Not Found - Carl), but it's mostly shaved with some cute lil line work on the side (speaking of which, can we get more of that, too, please?!). Edit: Wait - you have that exact hairstyle? I totally didn't read that right, LOL. Have you peeked at Vanity Hair's shop in a bit? She seems to be doing Evo X hairbases now (with mesh addons), at least for events, so maybe one of those might fit that style, too. Might have to buy a whole new hairstyle to get one, though, but ya know... there are worse things... Here's her Flickr - https://www.flickr.com/photos/vanityhair/with/51496971920/

That particular hairbase (and fully shaved ones I've got from a tattoo shop that have really nice tattoos on them) are the sole reason I mostly keep my butt in Evo mode when I wear Lel heads. Head tats and cute hairbases make it almost impossible for me to go full-time Evo X. Stores just aren't updating them and new ones are kind of lacking at the moment. I was going to suggest taking a peek at Not Found Rufus or Roddy, but they're not quite like that, and they're mostly shaved on the sides/back. Uhhhh...part of me wants to say Mister Razzor or Stray Dog, but I don't think they do that style either. Maybe, maybe, mayyybe poke the creator to ask if she has any plans to revisit those hairbases maybe. Maybe?

I made the huge mistake of going off to school with what...like 4-5 big heavy suitcases and carry-ons and a laptop bag and omg. This was obviously long before we got charged $50 per bag or whatever nonsense they're doing now. Miserable navigating airports with all that, I tell you. Absolutely miserable. When I came back, I tossed almost everything and came with one suitcase. Shipped another to avoid having to deal with it. That was it. If I do it again, I'm not taking anything but a backpack. Rather start my whole life from scratch than pay $40+ a bag are they insane? Sheesh. I bet shipping is wayyyy more expensive now, too. To be fair, that's how I travel in general. If it doesn't fit in a carry-on, I don't even take it with me. I learned my lesson. Luggage sucks.