I have two acquaintances if not to say friends, on the American continent. One in US, the other in Canada. I also have local, physical friends and acquaintances. Every Friday morning since 20 years ago we meet in one coffee shop for one hour and chit-chat. People came and went over the years (some died) but overall the ritual is alive and thriving and a great way to make new friends after 40, btw. With these 2 guys from North America it's essentially the same thing since about 3 years. Every once a week for an hour we meet online. The perks of technology Anyway, two things: 1) If some of you are curious in joining our air/ water / coffee / beer fueled weekly videochat, feel free to message me. 2) Reason I'm asking here and not the guy (to not startle / offend him or something) who told me he owns a "small" apartment in Toronto, only 75 square meters. WTF guys, 75 square meters in a major city in Europe is considered lavish. I'm not exactly poor but could only afford 55sqm in a suburb of the major city. And my better positioned cousin owns an 80 sqm in Paris, valued at 1 million euro. So is this a cultural difference betw. NA and EU? What's considered "big" or "small" in apartment size?
With the guys near me it's natural. We are all university graduates, very intelligent, even though we might have been born in lower middle class families. But the key issue is none of the very smart guys I know or interact with were born in poverty let alone squalor. Some of the guys are already multimillionaires. But in the end it's the compounding effect. Like my math teacher used to say "one is very different from zero even for very large values of zero".
When your friend said he lives in a small apartment, he was being self-deprecating. Some people don't like to brag, unlike the way you describe yourself as very intelligent. Post something profound and we will determine your intelligence level. Here in the U.S., people don't describe their homes with measurements, we typically say we live in a 4/2 or a 6/4. That's short for a house with six bedrooms and four bathrooms.
I have never heard of people describing their house in terms of bedrooms. I hear people describing houses in terms of sq ft all the time.
I think in the US (at least here in California) apartments aren't that much bigger than western Europe but its the houses in the suburbs that are very large compared to Europe. I live in a 750 sf (~70 sq meters) 1 bedroom apartment near downtown Berkeley and its probably worth about $400K-$500K. Of course I've seen large 3 bedroom apartments (sometimes referred to as Lofts) that are really big like >120 sq meters. I believe Toronto is similar to like San Francisco or Boston/NYC real estate. These are all very expensive cities. Not that different than coastal Australia or even NZ real estate.
Man I love berkely... I stayed in a house up by the hill that had a sequoia tree running up along side it...it was like 100ft tall.
You liked Berkely house because it had a 100 ft tree next to it? What's wrong with Humboldt county then, where you can live next to hundreds of trees like that, and pay much less for a house? And Ganja man!