Sunday, October 23, 2005
Saturday, October 22, 2005
First week in Seattle
A very hectic and interesting first week. It's been a long, long time since I have lived on my own. Sandhya has been doing everything for me for God knows how long (except for that brief period in 2000 when I had to go alone to California).
First of all, I was right. Parking is going to be a huge deal. They are giving us free parking for the first week at the ParkMed building up on a hill on 12 street South. From there I have to take a shuttle to the office on 5th & Weller. Again more novelty for me. Me taking a shuttle. I would once have shuddered at the thought. The fact that it does not bother me shows how motivated I am!
I was given a couple of days to get my feet wet. But by the end of week I have started serious work. Can't say more because it is all confidential.
The office downtown is nice. I did interview there, so it wasn't much of a surprise. There's a Starbucks nearby and aroma of coffee is nice early in the morning. There are lots of eating places in the vicinity. But I have picked up some lunch from Safeway. But most people seem to go out to eat.
Weatherwise the first couple of days were overcast. But the week ended with sunny days. I am even feeling optimistic that flying is possible.
I'd say I'm off to a reasonably good start.
First of all, I was right. Parking is going to be a huge deal. They are giving us free parking for the first week at the ParkMed building up on a hill on 12 street South. From there I have to take a shuttle to the office on 5th & Weller. Again more novelty for me. Me taking a shuttle. I would once have shuddered at the thought. The fact that it does not bother me shows how motivated I am!
I was given a couple of days to get my feet wet. But by the end of week I have started serious work. Can't say more because it is all confidential.
The office downtown is nice. I did interview there, so it wasn't much of a surprise. There's a Starbucks nearby and aroma of coffee is nice early in the morning. There are lots of eating places in the vicinity. But I have picked up some lunch from Safeway. But most people seem to go out to eat.
Weatherwise the first couple of days were overcast. But the week ended with sunny days. I am even feeling optimistic that flying is possible.
I'd say I'm off to a reasonably good start.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
A new beginning (cont'd)
They got us into the plane on time. As my luck would have it I got the middle seat. Looks like whenever we get cheap tickets, say through orbix or something like that, we always get the worst possible seat allocation.
The plane landed on time. So far so good. But it took for ever to get my baggage. Just when I beginning to fear that my baggage was lost, there it was. I went to the Avis rental counter and everything went off well till, that is, I turned on the ignition. No gas! Went back to the counter to get another car. The girl at the counter actually apologized for this mix-up. This was a novel experience. Although rental car mixups happen more often than not, people apologizing for their mess-ups is rare indeed.
Then I started on the drive to the key pickup place. I discovered that this was right in the middle of downtown. This meant that there was no parking. So I went round and round trying to find parking. I kept thinking why are they asking people to pickup keys from locations where they can't park? I finally found public parking at $5. I thought it was outrageous that I had to pay so much for parking. Remember I was used to free parking in the Bay Area!
When I got to the apartment complex, it was a pleasant suprise to see a nicely furnished apartment with a reasonably well equipped kitchen. For someone who was going to live off TV dinners, this was more than adequate.
But it looks like Parking is going to be a big deal all in all.
The plane landed on time. So far so good. But it took for ever to get my baggage. Just when I beginning to fear that my baggage was lost, there it was. I went to the Avis rental counter and everything went off well till, that is, I turned on the ignition. No gas! Went back to the counter to get another car. The girl at the counter actually apologized for this mix-up. This was a novel experience. Although rental car mixups happen more often than not, people apologizing for their mess-ups is rare indeed.
Then I started on the drive to the key pickup place. I discovered that this was right in the middle of downtown. This meant that there was no parking. So I went round and round trying to find parking. I kept thinking why are they asking people to pickup keys from locations where they can't park? I finally found public parking at $5. I thought it was outrageous that I had to pay so much for parking. Remember I was used to free parking in the Bay Area!
When I got to the apartment complex, it was a pleasant suprise to see a nicely furnished apartment with a reasonably well equipped kitchen. For someone who was going to live off TV dinners, this was more than adequate.
But it looks like Parking is going to be a big deal all in all.
Monday, October 17, 2005
A new beginning (again)
Well, here I go again. The nomad in me can't sit still and wants to go places. Today is the day I go on to Seattle to join Amazon (Sandhya will follow in November after she wraps a few things at her office in South City).
The flight was scheduled for a departure time of 12:45 p.m. which means (I thought) we should leave for the airport at 11:00a.m. at the latest. We did leave at 11:00a.m., but realized that I had forgotten to get my leather jacket. So we had to head back home to pick up the jacket. This meant a loss of ten minutes from the schedule. I could feel myself becoming a bit antsy (you guys know I am paranoid about keeping time).
When we got to the airport, it was 11:30a.m. (or so). I was flying United and so we went to the United counter. There I saw a placard that said that e-ticket check-ins would close 45 minutes before departure time. This of course had the effect of racheting up my anxiousness level! Oh, by the way, I think I was quite artful in hiding my anxiety from Sandhya (I can hear her say 'Yeah, right').
Has anyone noticed that the check-in counters are all self-serve now?
Anyway, we got into what was a suspiciously short line. Turns out it was the line for oversized luggage that needed to be checked in. Sandhya said that this didn't look right. We looked around and she suggested we go to the other line where there was a long line-up. This was indeed the correct queue.
And it was a very long line. It was now around 11:40 and I was starting to get worried. There must have been about 50 people ahead of us in the line. But to United's credit, I must say they had lots of self-serve counters open. The only problem was people in the line seemed to think that they should only go to the counter nearest to the head of the line. Unbelievable, but true. So there I was, eagerly eyeing all these vacant counters and seriously considering doing the 'Indian' thing by rushing to the counter to check in, like a 'Walla' (after all, all those years of travel by Indian Railways must mean something), so high was my anxiety level.
Naturally I was muttering in what I thought was a low tone (but Sandhya could here it) that the line was full of incompentent idiots who couldn't recognize a self-serve counter if it hit them in the eye.
But it turned out there were more smart ones than idiots so we were able to get to a self-serve counter and check me in.
It was now aleady 11:50a.m., so I decided I should go through security right away. Guess what? There was this super slow guy in front of me who filled up the trays with his belongings (very, ..., very slowly) and then promptly forgot to take his baggage with him! This right away rang alarm bells in my head and I tell the security gal that there is this abandoned bag in the security area. It takes her a while to realize that it is actually an abandonned (or forgotten bag--although how anyone can forget a bag is beyond me--even I couldn't do that). The funny thing is she comes to me and asks me if it was my bag! I said no! She then go backwards asking all those people behind me if it is their bag. What incompetence.
The next part will be continued in part II.
The flight was scheduled for a departure time of 12:45 p.m. which means (I thought) we should leave for the airport at 11:00a.m. at the latest. We did leave at 11:00a.m., but realized that I had forgotten to get my leather jacket. So we had to head back home to pick up the jacket. This meant a loss of ten minutes from the schedule. I could feel myself becoming a bit antsy (you guys know I am paranoid about keeping time).
When we got to the airport, it was 11:30a.m. (or so). I was flying United and so we went to the United counter. There I saw a placard that said that e-ticket check-ins would close 45 minutes before departure time. This of course had the effect of racheting up my anxiousness level! Oh, by the way, I think I was quite artful in hiding my anxiety from Sandhya (I can hear her say 'Yeah, right').
Has anyone noticed that the check-in counters are all self-serve now?
Anyway, we got into what was a suspiciously short line. Turns out it was the line for oversized luggage that needed to be checked in. Sandhya said that this didn't look right. We looked around and she suggested we go to the other line where there was a long line-up. This was indeed the correct queue.
And it was a very long line. It was now around 11:40 and I was starting to get worried. There must have been about 50 people ahead of us in the line. But to United's credit, I must say they had lots of self-serve counters open. The only problem was people in the line seemed to think that they should only go to the counter nearest to the head of the line. Unbelievable, but true. So there I was, eagerly eyeing all these vacant counters and seriously considering doing the 'Indian' thing by rushing to the counter to check in, like a 'Walla' (after all, all those years of travel by Indian Railways must mean something), so high was my anxiety level.
Naturally I was muttering in what I thought was a low tone (but Sandhya could here it) that the line was full of incompentent idiots who couldn't recognize a self-serve counter if it hit them in the eye.
But it turned out there were more smart ones than idiots so we were able to get to a self-serve counter and check me in.
It was now aleady 11:50a.m., so I decided I should go through security right away. Guess what? There was this super slow guy in front of me who filled up the trays with his belongings (very, ..., very slowly) and then promptly forgot to take his baggage with him! This right away rang alarm bells in my head and I tell the security gal that there is this abandoned bag in the security area. It takes her a while to realize that it is actually an abandonned (or forgotten bag--although how anyone can forget a bag is beyond me--even I couldn't do that). The funny thing is she comes to me and asks me if it was my bag! I said no! She then go backwards asking all those people behind me if it is their bag. What incompetence.
The next part will be continued in part II.
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