Cardy,
Have you seen this slide show of 100 public housing apartments in Hong Kong, each 100 square feet in size?
http://www.photomichaelwolf.com/100x100/
It may be slow to load, but I just got it going, start with #1 and click on the picture to move to the next.
I did see a couple of those some time ago - I tried last night and again this morning but I wasn´t very successful, nothing seemed to happen - my modem just sat there staring at me without flashing.
I know many people all over the world live in less than 100 sq ft. It is amazing how cosy you can make even 50 sq ft. or less.
Ask any woman, all guys should live in 50 sq ft. they would have to pick up their stuff regularly.
I probably have mentioned this before, but when I was in Hong Kong in the early 1950s – a few thousand people lived on Sampans – these are small boats about 30/40ft long hundreds of them covered many acres of the water. They housed whole extended families of more than a dozen all living on these small boats. We use to call it Sampan city.
When a warship came into the harbor dozens of sampans would converge on it and the Mama-san would negotiate with the Captain to have her boat and girls service the ship.
Many of these ladies had recommendations from other ships captains going back over a hundred years given to their grandmothers. Each Mamasan had about a dozen or more girls from her family or other families working for her.
Warships were a great prize for the Mama-sans as they have huge numbers of men compared to a commercial vessel therefore huge amounts of leftovers. The ship´s Captain used to give the business to two or three Sampans.
By service the ship, I mean they would be able to visit the mess decks at meal times and collect all the garbage, in return they would do jobs around the ship like painting or cleaning. I have visited Hong Kong many times and have never ever heard of a Sampan girl being touched by any member of the crew.
These girls were young and most attractive but they had a job to do and everyone respected them for it, you treated them better than your sister. Their whole livelihood depended upon them being a pure as nuns among a 1000 sailors.
Of course, being so pretty they not only got the leftover food the sailors used to give them good stuff too. These were in the days before there were cafeterias on British naval vessels. In between meals they would be busy all over the ship and it was just unheard of for anyone to bother them.