California
California is more. Every aspect I can think of to compare California to Iowa is described as "more". More people, more cars, more waiting, more options, more to do. And when I say "to do" I'm speaking personally and socially. Since we've arrived we haven't had much down time. We're either setting up the apartment, the job, the school, the wedding, or something we just purchased for the place. I think I've found my daily refuge of downtime in the commute to stanford, usually about a 45 minute affair each way. I'm hoping to be a power-commuter and get a whole bunch of things done on the go, including writing.
I can start with the living conditions. We found a two bedroom apartment in a large, gated complex. This makes things more difficult for getting in and out but we don't get too many random crazies wandering around, just the ones that live there. We managed to get a second floor place so we have neighbors above and below. The people below are organ/piano players who tend to practice around 9:00 a.m. The songs they play are vaguely recognizable but elude any naming. The people above weigh approximately 700 pounds each, or so I can gather from hearing them stomp and make the foundation shudder. The people wandering around the complex are a mixed bag, some are outgoing and will help or talk to you, but the majority of them are reserved and don't respond to greetings. The management is very flighty. It took us about three weeks to get our initial walkthrough of the apartment, usually this occurs before starting to throw your stuff in. I'm sure when rent's due they start to pay more attention to the calendar. Did I mention that rent in the east bay is twice our mortgage in Iowa?
The job is going well. I started a couple of weeks ago and I'm just finishing up my first assignment. I had a couple of days when I started to get acclimated to the surroundings and then quickly got assigned my first tasks. The work is definitely different than my previous job. The jump from procedural coding to object-orientented after so many years is a bit difficult but I'm doing it. They're definitely way more structured here and have quite a few more standards to follow. I think overall it will further my development in the field, I just have to keep up and do the work. They're all good people here, definitely very different from one another but all very helpful and welcoming. It feels good to be working on a project that supports hard science rather than administrative-type data. While counting up RVU's and years to tenure is interesting it's not quite as interesting as genetics. I feel like there's a lot of opportunity in many more directions here. Plus, since I'm not dealing with as many users and as directly the hours are much more flexible, even allowing for real tele-commuting every once in a while.
That's it for now, the first bus across the bay is about to reach it's destination. Time to start another day. It's going to be a big weekend with labor day coming up. I've learned to respect the whims of the traffic. The local news during the past month has been reporting almost exclusively on the bay bridge closure over the labor day weekend. The bridges and highways around here seem to require quite a lot of attention from everybody. I guess since there is very little weather to talk about they have to replace it with traffic. When our bus got stuck in local traffic the other day, making the trip twice as long, everybody moved to the front of the bus and gathered around the driver to discuss the event, no complaints, just discussion.
Ryan's "bay" moments:
While walking across the street the other day I hear some sort of muted flute. I look around and the SUV stopped at the intersection is being driven by somebody who decided it was a good idea to whip out her recorder at the intersection and start practicing. She was in the driver seat, recorder in her mouth, playing away. Performance arts even in the streets.
California is more. Every aspect I can think of to compare California to Iowa is described as "more". More people, more cars, more waiting, more options, more to do. And when I say "to do" I'm speaking personally and socially. Since we've arrived we haven't had much down time. We're either setting up the apartment, the job, the school, the wedding, or something we just purchased for the place. I think I've found my daily refuge of downtime in the commute to stanford, usually about a 45 minute affair each way. I'm hoping to be a power-commuter and get a whole bunch of things done on the go, including writing.
I can start with the living conditions. We found a two bedroom apartment in a large, gated complex. This makes things more difficult for getting in and out but we don't get too many random crazies wandering around, just the ones that live there. We managed to get a second floor place so we have neighbors above and below. The people below are organ/piano players who tend to practice around 9:00 a.m. The songs they play are vaguely recognizable but elude any naming. The people above weigh approximately 700 pounds each, or so I can gather from hearing them stomp and make the foundation shudder. The people wandering around the complex are a mixed bag, some are outgoing and will help or talk to you, but the majority of them are reserved and don't respond to greetings. The management is very flighty. It took us about three weeks to get our initial walkthrough of the apartment, usually this occurs before starting to throw your stuff in. I'm sure when rent's due they start to pay more attention to the calendar. Did I mention that rent in the east bay is twice our mortgage in Iowa?
The job is going well. I started a couple of weeks ago and I'm just finishing up my first assignment. I had a couple of days when I started to get acclimated to the surroundings and then quickly got assigned my first tasks. The work is definitely different than my previous job. The jump from procedural coding to object-orientented after so many years is a bit difficult but I'm doing it. They're definitely way more structured here and have quite a few more standards to follow. I think overall it will further my development in the field, I just have to keep up and do the work. They're all good people here, definitely very different from one another but all very helpful and welcoming. It feels good to be working on a project that supports hard science rather than administrative-type data. While counting up RVU's and years to tenure is interesting it's not quite as interesting as genetics. I feel like there's a lot of opportunity in many more directions here. Plus, since I'm not dealing with as many users and as directly the hours are much more flexible, even allowing for real tele-commuting every once in a while.
That's it for now, the first bus across the bay is about to reach it's destination. Time to start another day. It's going to be a big weekend with labor day coming up. I've learned to respect the whims of the traffic. The local news during the past month has been reporting almost exclusively on the bay bridge closure over the labor day weekend. The bridges and highways around here seem to require quite a lot of attention from everybody. I guess since there is very little weather to talk about they have to replace it with traffic. When our bus got stuck in local traffic the other day, making the trip twice as long, everybody moved to the front of the bus and gathered around the driver to discuss the event, no complaints, just discussion.
Ryan's "bay" moments:
While walking across the street the other day I hear some sort of muted flute. I look around and the SUV stopped at the intersection is being driven by somebody who decided it was a good idea to whip out her recorder at the intersection and start practicing. She was in the driver seat, recorder in her mouth, playing away. Performance arts even in the streets.
