How does our home look like?

How does our home look like?
November 11, 2000
this entry mostly for parents; talking about our house, apartment, fatal state of traffic in the Valley, and my immigration tests.

Since you had asked how it looked in our new home, let me invite you for a little visit. Please note that you're doing so on your own risk -- no one shall clean up just because of you -- and no one did.



	724 Arastradero Rd.



	A view to our apartment

We live in something which could be described as a dachshund skyscraper. There are only three floors, and it all forms a long noodle of a house, with a common garage in the basement, but each apartment gets only one place. Our wagon (the bigger car) takes the spot and Cecilia has therefore become a street girl. There is a small lot in front of the house entrance, but it will accept about ten cars, so there's not much chance. Next parking stretches right under our windows, but it is closed for some property dispute with the city. Given the fact that it is literally "under the windows", we don't really wish it to open again. Imagining how people start their cars here early in the morning, make noises cleaning and repairing their cars, and dealing with their offspring when loading and unloading, is not very tempting.

On every floor of the house, there is a washing room with two washing machines and two dryers, which work when fed with quarters. First it seemed odd sharing a machine with so many other people, but it is great that laundry gets dry soon. There's no complicated hanging, there are no damp socks dangling around our apartment.

Our apartment consists of one big room, which includes both a kitchen and a living room (I like this arrangement). There is a rather roomy closet attached to the kitchen, which serves as our stuff repository, mostly for empty boxes that "may get handy some day". Then there is a bathroom - a front part with a sink (embedded in a kind of cabinet) and a huge mirror, with a toilet and a shower/tub in the back part. Our bedroom is small, it has a built-in storage space, and besides our bed there's not much room left. Last is our balcony, relatively large, but I have not been there yet, as it means cleaning it up first.



	Main room with kitchen		Kitchen with Dolores



	Bedroom

Renting the apartment includes kitchen appliances, cabinets, and built-in Dolores - our dishwasher (back in June, I asked Sid about washing the dishes, he said that his dishwasher's name was Dolores and she's from Yucatan... that got me). Dolores became my friend. Not that I could not wash the few dishes myself, but when I spot one cup, one glass, two little plates, some silverware scattered over the kitchen, I simply put them into the dishwasher and the place looks clean again. Then they do not rot in the sink, and I don't need to wash them immediately.

There's also a gym, a swimming pool, and a sauna in the house, but I have not used them yet. The gym is a glass affair, and I don't feel like exposing myself to every passersby's gaze. It has been a trifle cold for the (outdoor) pool.

Mail delivery and pick up is a very interesting thing. A mailman would bring letters (mailboxes are on our floor) and takes away any mail accumulated in a box for sending. There's no need to trip to a post office -- that is, if you know how to correctly stamp the letters. But as most of my relatives, friends and contacts are on the internet, I don't use this arrangement much.

Our street administratively belongs to Palo Alto, but since it is located in a corner of the city area, we have it much closer to down town Los Altos or Mountain View. Palo Alto is quite ugly in one way. City council have decided to "suppress the dangers of vehicular traffic" and so they instituted "red wave" lights (when you arrive to an intersection, you are practically guaranteed to get a red light), and the maximum speed limit is 25 mph. Other cities usually allow 35 mph, and sometimes even some twitch of a "green wave" (Sid claims that it is not a system, merely a coincidence).



	Cecilia

Here, wasted car gas is not a problem. How could it be, when a gallon (3.84 liter) costs under two dollars, which is about twenty Czech crowns per liter -- and wages are higher by an order of magnitude. People here carelessly buy cars that take twelve, fifteen liters per hundred kilometers. My Cecilia with 1.6 l engine qualifies for a shopping cart.



	Big wagon

Some wise head came up with an idea to convince people to not drive alone in their cars -- to use mass transit or to team together and pool when going to work. That may actually be a reasonable thing, only they must have invited some "expert" from totalitarian times -- that's the only way I can explain how somebody could come up with what we have here. They had built mass transit system, which is six times more expensive, yet four times slower, than if you take your car. Their next move was also brilliant -- at rush hour times, i.e. from seven to nine in the morning, and from three to seven in the evening, one lane on a freeway is reserved for so-called carpool - vehicles that contain two or more people. The result: at peak times, freeways NARROW down by one lane, which stays mostly empty, while other lanes turn into parking lots. By the way, "carpool" marks on the road have diamond shape -- something quite similar to a very vulgar Czech graphic. Driving in a lane reserved for this... felt strange, in the beginning.

The system with several people sharing a ride to work might work somewhere with a concentrated urban housing, where everybody lives in the same spot -- and where everybody goes to the same job, with the same working ours, "from-to", no exception. Neither item of such list is very applicable here, so the only conclusion is that every day, traffic practically stops for two hours in the morning, and for four hours in the afternoon.

The other day, I endured a mandatory immigration medical examination. It consisted of me changing into a paper gown (one must reveal body parts for examination, I realize, but I don't see why they made me wear the paper thing. Would the doctor be shocked by looking at a naked woman??? Or was I supposed to be intimidated by being looked at??? In the end, I simply felt like an idiot). Then they measured my blood pressure, looked into my ears (you see, for this "thorough" checkup I had to strip naked!!!), they made a copy of my inoculation card, took a blood sample, gave me some shot (I think measles) and gave me a tuberculosis test. The TB area swell within two days and I returned for results. A nurse of Japanese origin informed me gravely, with a terrible accent, that I was a very serious problem, for I was veeery positive for TB. So I told her that I waaaas not surprised at all, for I had been inoooooculated before and that it would be veeeery strange if I was not positive, and that I did not see why they did that test anyway. She relaxed a bit and turned more comfortable (she stopped regarding me as if I had leprosy), shrugged and said "required... all must test". So I had to go through a lung X-ray. Given the fact that they charged me extra $180 for it, I have the impression that these regulations make for a good business for some. But what can you do?

Alas, my computer monitor got that TB from me. The picture started shaking and kept turning red, then greenish again. It had come from a dumpster dive (our neighbor Martin specialized in such technology), but it made me uneasy. And so we went to buy a new monitor to Fry's. Imagine a huge department store, which is special, because it contains mostly men. Just as women browse through boutique stores during their lunch break, men here go to Fry's (they sell electronic gadgets there). Sid, too, zipped through this store with much more zeal than during our other shopping (my shopping enthusiasm stays at freezing point, warming up slightly only in climbing gear stores). Finally, he beheld with joy a beautiful, nineteen inch monitor. When I saw the screen, I got dizzy. I like computers, but I don't think I must have a monitor to make me feel small... but Sid was so excited (and the thing had a $50 rebate), so we agreed to a compromise. I shall inherit Sid's "mere" seventeen inch monitor, and Sid would buy his selected nineteen-incher (he uses a twenty-one inch screen at work, so he gets actually "humble" at home :-)).



	Sunset from Borel Hill

Well, then we also bought chairs to sit on in front of our computers. Until then we only had one office chair, and two kitchen chairs, and to sit at a keyboard on a kitchen chair was rather bothersome. So now we turned half of our living room into an "office". It looks rather funny, office chairs in a living room, but what can we do, each having just one spine?

I took Cecilia out on a trip. We went upon Borel Hill on a mountain range between the Bay and the ocean. On good days, you can see both from up there. But what's more important, a very fun road leads there, and since all the turns are well tilted, one can enjoy proper driving. I chanced into a day when there was not so much smog over the Bay as usual. Palo Alto is one of the better spots, is considered one of the cleanest, unlike San Jose or East Bay, which fares not so well. Still, it is very pretty here, including the weather -- unless I forget open windows on my car, it does not rain :-) :-). Sun is shining, it is warm (short sleeves) and comfortable.

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