Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Does This Make Me Weird?

Have you ever wondered what you would do if you were to win the mega lottery and all the possibilities in the world would be suddenly open to you? There is a really great article in the current issue of the New York Times about the most isolated places in the world in which to live , and it got me all thinking again about this fantasy.
And I picked Tristan da Cunha. I'll never travel into outer space and visit distant worlds, but I could live in a remote and unique cultural outpost on this little blue gem of a planet with great abandon. From the article:

Tristan da Cunha

There is some subjectivity about which place is the most isolated, but the islands of Tristan da Cunha have one inarguable distinction: They are the most remote inhabited place in the world, about 1,700 miles from Cape Town, the nearest inhabited land mass. The South Atlantic group consists of four islands — Tristan, Nightingale, Gough and Inaccessible — but all 271 Tristanians live on Tristan (perhaps owing to the island’s remoteness, there are only seven surnames among them). Visitors are welcome to Tristan, but new residents have to be approved by the Island Council. “Given that are no spare houses here,” David Morley, Tristan da Cunha’s administrator, said in an e-mail message, “very little private sector activity/industry and very few available jobs, it would not be a straightforward matter for someone to come here to settle.”

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