Comment by rnk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rnk | Hacker News Reader

I saw this ad/article multiple times the last few days, good ad placement. About $300k for a 12 year lease on a ~250 sf apartment with a bathroom, small bed. This is at storylines.com. Travels to cool cities all over the world, stays at each for a few days. Has an option to prepay for food, has coffee places, bars, "5 star" restaurants, entertainment. Includes booze but not the absolute top shelf stuff. They have internet and wifi. I thought I saw somewhere the annual everything (laundry, cleaning, food, etc) fee was 3-4k/month, laundry, gym but I can't find it today. The cheaper rooms have a murphy (fold down) bed.

I'm sure there will be fees. Suppose you spend 400k total for 12 years, that's only 30k / year. Add in another 40k and you are spending 70k/year for a kind of peramanet vacation. If you are "working" like this teaser article says at a high paying software job it could actually work for a while. You'd be constantly shifting timezones though. Would be fun if you had a low stress job without a lot of meetings.

It's appealing to me as I sit here after xmas, but but but cruise ships are pretty destructive to the environment.

To me the idea of living on a cruise ship is pure madness, I find it even madder that people think it can be a viable lifestyle.

How can you have or start a family like that? Have meaningful normal relationships? How can you explore different aspects of life? Access advanced medical centers in case you need.

Nothing about this sounds sane, to me it feels like the worst of tax evasion meeting pointless planet pollution, meeting void and "luxurious" lifestyle.

Some of us out here absolutely do not want to have children, so it's not a problem for us.

>Some of us out here absolutely do not want to have children, so it's not a problem for us.

And some of us (not me) want children's in every harbor, and i think that's his plan.

Family is optional but having human relations is not unless there is a mental disorder involved.

Different people have different lives. It’s okay for you to not agree , but it can be viable for someone else.

Starting a family? Who says this person wants that. Many people don’t.

Having meaningful normal relationships? Again, who says that’s important? For all we know this person may be polyamarous or content with just hookups. Or they’re asexual.

Additionally, does his lease not allow reselling or subletting? He could get out of it early if he wanted or just share it with friends and family instead.

I can't even imagine going on a cruise ship for fun anymore, let alone live on one. Once COVID hit, I was convinced that if society was sane, the floating petri dish industry would finally die. Hell, I get the heebie-jeebies just walking into a 400 sq. ft. retail shop. If I had to live in a cell of one of these disease-honeycombs, I'd lose my mind.

I mean, I'm not a big fan of cruise ships, but it sounds like your life is a little antiseptic. Perhaps literally.

> Perhaps literally.

Huh?

An antiseptic is a substance used to slow down or kill microorganisms. It's also an adjective meaning boring or uninteresting. I'm saying that they're being a bit boring, but also that their life might literally be too full of hand sanitizer.

Isn't this more of a stable set of people on the cruise ship? You would be able to have normal relationships with the other long term contingent of the ship. I don't think starting a family would be viable, and you'd have to get anything but first aid elsewhere, but that would be arrangable.

That said, I agree on the tax evasion and planet pollution.

Imagine your home moving four timezones away as you need to be hospitalized for a few days.

I've never been hospitalized in my 45+ years on this planet, so this is pretty hard to imagine. As I'm sure it is for most young people. What's with the medical emergency astroturfing on this thread?

Young people may have trouble imagining it. But, while medical concerns for a healthy person shouldn't keep someone from traveling, they should have a plan for a multi-year trip because young people do get sick and suffer serious injuries.

I spent Christmas Eve in the emergency room with a question about if my leg was broken, my knee's ligaments were damaged, or what was going on. Just lucky, I guess!

As soon as I can get an appointment, I'll be going to a doctor to sort out the next stage but best case scenario is I'm laid up for 6 weeks and the worst case is surgery.

> I'm sure there will be fees.

Those fees are going to be in the neighborhood of $40k/year. I couldn't find any good documentation, which I suspect requires going through more of the sales process. However, this page [1] has children's rates as $15-20k/year, and another article suggested around $25k/year for adults. That's assuming double occupancy though - single occupancy gets an 18% discount off the rates for double occupancy.

[1]: https://knowledgebase.storylines.com/assessment-for-single-r...

So in other words, for what this costs, you can get an apartment pretty much any place you want and/or AirBnB or VRBO etc. around the world for what to me at least would be a far more interesting experience.

That works out to 2083 per month. That is about the same (or less then) rent in many major Cities. I wonder:

1. If the Cruse Ship is retired, will he get a berth on another ship ?

2. What if the Curse Line goes bankrupt ? He looses the balance ?

3. Taxes, will be liable for taxes, and what about working while in another Country ? In many places that is illegal.

4. Medical ? That could be an issue too.

So many questions :)

> 4. Medical ? That could be an issue too.

It very much is, but young folks tend to ignore it.

I had a friend who was a Chaplain on a cruise ship, and had a heart attack, while they were at sea. He didn't get proper medical care for about a month, and, by that time, considerable damage had been done.

He had to resign that commission, and was never the same again. He ended up dying before reaching 70.

> About $300k for a 12 year lease

12 years?

Why can't you do a smaller commitment like... 6-12 months? There's only so many destinations, right?

You can, it's called a cruise.

The website also talked about "shared" rooms. I'm sure they don't want you to sell your space like an air bnb though. You don't own it. Maybe if you bought an expensive one you could share it with your kids.

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