[Rain Man]

I'm not interested in the tropics, other than Hawaii. Too hot. So no Brazil, Philippines, Caribbean, etc. Plus, all of the Caribbean islands I've been to have been rather dumpy in terms of infrastructure.

No place with lots of corruption.

No place in the eastern USA. I love the western landscape and culture. If I'm in America, I'll be in the west.

No place where the Americans have weird accents. Give me a prime-time television accent, please.

No third world countries where I get hassled on the street by people trying to sell me stuff. On my recent freighter journey, I was physically grabbed by people on the street in both Hong Kong and Vietnam, trying to stop me to give me their sales pitch. Any country where people do that can go to h-e-double-toothpicks.

I could live in a country where English isn't the main language, as long as it's widely spoken. I'm too old to learn a new language.

With those rules in place, here are my top ten places to live on this particular summer day, taking into account general cost of living.

1. Denver. Hey, I like it. It's ideal in a lot of respects.
2. A beach city in the LA area, e.g., Laguna Beach. Small-town living in a major metro area.
3. Juneau or Kodiak in Alaska. Just because it's gorgeous. My wife would veto this, but I would vote for it.
4. Paris, France. I'd deal with the language just to live there.
5. Some place in Utah or western Colorado near the cool parks and rocks.
6. The central coast of California, perhaps.
7. Hawaii, though I'd worry that I'd miss the seasons.
8. Maybe Santa Fe.
9. I'm running out of options. Sydney? Sydney's nice, but it's expensive.
10. Maybe Toronto or Quebec City?

I really liked Japan when I was there, but realistically I wouldn't live there. Cambodia was intriguing, because you could get services there and it was still cheap, but it was really hot. I could probably do London or Scotland.

Edit: ideally, I'd be a vagabond and move to different places for six months at a time. I could really enjoy that type of existence.