Hacker News Reader

Comment by etherael | Hacker News Reader

This makes me quite happy to be moving to Estonia in February.

It's not just this, it's a pattern of behavior in general by the Australian government. It's not even a single action, I don't play games that often anymore and the lack of an R18+ classification has almost no effect on me, there are many data points in Australian political actions though which reflect a deeply troubling underlying truth, the government perceives it's citizens as children.

My reasons for leaving are many, but the two big ones; primarily the above, but secondarily that I can't help thinking in a large amount of cases with regards to aforementioned citizens, the government is not entirely wrong.

So long Australia, and thanks for all the fish.

View on HN

You are moving from Australia to Estonia ...? Really impressive. I kind of considered to do the opposite, though I'm not from Estonia.

Sydney vs Tallinn.

I dislike;

1) Very high cost of living.

2) Very high tax rate.

3) Poor quality of internet access.

4) Lack of R18+ rating for games.

5) Conroy's clean feed nonsense.

6) Quality of technological innovation in Australia in general.

7) General contempt for civil rights displayed by political parties in Australia.

8) Apathy disguised as being laid back.

9) Hot weather.

10) Sun.

I like;

1) Low cost of living.

2) Very low marginal tax rate.

3) High quality of internet access, almost ubiquitous wifi access.

4) One of the highest populations of atheist people in Europe.

5) Largest political party majority ideology is classical liberalism.

6) One of the most advanced technological infrastructure programs in Europe.

7) Straightforward no bullshit populace.

8) Very cold weather.

9) Very little sun.

All of that said, you can never really know until you've actually tried it a while, so start February I'm moving to Tallinn for a three month trial, in the event that it wasn't for me was planning on coming back to Sydney but in light of these new developments and a continuing frustration / annoyance with associated events, I think if Tallinn doesn't work out I'll just pick some place else, I have a pretty big laundry list to go through. :)

What about languages? Does English work fine there? What about Russian? The native language is very unlike any of the Indo-European ones I've studied.

That might be because it belongs to the Finno-Ugric family which are completely separate from the Indo-European languages. :-)

Usually - English is fine, at least in bigger cities.

From what I've heard from a friend who has already moved over there, English is fine for Tallinn (the capital). That said, if I do end up making the move permanent, I'd want to learn the language fluently regardless.

I for one hope you'll be kind enough to blog your Estonian experiences, be they good or bad.

Or is there already a website that specifically aggregates reports of the form "I moved from <X> to <Y> and found <Z1><Z2>...<Zn>"?

I'll be sure to do so, I have found a few already but they're more stream of consciousness than data point based.

http://palun.blogspot.com/

http://utvandrarna.blogspot.com/

http://estoniaonthemap.com/

If you don't mind, I'll ask. Are you setting up some kind of business in Tallinn?

Actually I'd prefer to assist a local consultancy, I've been looking at Aqris as they were listed on the grails development firms list and seem like a good place to work, but in the event that I'm unable to find some place to work over there already I can happily live off remote contracted consulting work from existing clients after I leave my full-time position end of January 2010.

Might even give me some time to actually build something of my own if I can outsource the sales / marketing aspects I'm not so hot at.

Time will tell I guess.

Thank you for taking your time to reply. It was really interesting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com