Skip to main content

The Experiment: Part 2

By
I can't believe that somehow the rest of the the year slipped away without any more posts... so I'll just have to make up for it now!

***************************

By Day 3 of the second week, The Experiment was already over.  Three more days of commuting and I was done.  On that Wednesday, I took the train to San Jose, met my co-worker, took a Lyft to our site meeting, then Lyft back to the office.  Then after work I went with another co-worker to an event in San Jose, then took the train back up to San Francisco.  So I left the apartment at 7am to get on the train, and then got back at 10:45pm.  It was grueling, and I was so tired that when I got home, I wrote a mostly incomprehensible post about how tired I was, that I will spare you from reading.

By Day 4 (Thursday) of the second week, J and I agreed that we were not moving to San Francisco.  He had been sick most of the first week, so he wasn't taking the train, which meant he started in earnest on the second week.  By mid-week, he was already calling it quits.  The good news was that it was easy for us to agree.

Pros to living in SF while working in Palo Alto / Mountain View:

  • We're close to everything interesting on the weekends, including our friends.
  • It's technically reverse commute so maybe it's not as horrible as the other direction?
  • I was happy to stop biking and driving; taking the train is easier.  And I actually got more exercise than usual by walking to and from the train.
  • We both enjoyed living in Potrero Hill.
Cons:
  • Pretty much everything else, including but not limited to:
  • The train is loud and annoying, the timetable is confining, and it's exhausting.
  • Spending 2+ hours of commuting time every day is a waste.
  • We can always drive up to SF on the weekends.
  • SF has pretty lousy internal public transit, so we'd still need a car.  Compared to NYC, it's not a real city.  (Yes, I said it.)
  • Did I mention it's exhausting?
In conclusion, here's a bad picture of the new Dandelion Chocolate factory (not yet open) out of the window of a bus, which I guess is a fitting representation of this whole endeavor:



Just imagine me, sitting on public transit, imagining all the things I could be doing -- like visiting this chocolate temple of deliciousness -- if I wasn't on public transit but was instead in the city, and that was pretty much my experience of The Experiment.  Now, instead, I can sit at home in MV on my comfy sofa, and imagine it from here, which is much quieter, and thus, a better place for imagining.  So I guess that's better overall.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: "Theory and Design in the First Machine Age"

By
Reyner Banham 's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) is an engaging overview of the important theoretical developments of the early 20th century leading up to the "International Style" of the 1930s-40s.  Banham does a fairly good job, in my opinion, of avoiding excessive editorializing, although he has a clear viewpoint on the Modern Movement and finishes with a strong conclusion.  In opposition to his teacher, Nikolaus Pevsner , whose own history of modernism came out in 1936, Banham dismantled the " form follows function " credo that became the stereotype of modernism, arguing instead that formalism (a preoccupation with style and aesthetics) was an important, if not overriding, concern of Modern architects.  Two sections of the book struck me in particular: his analysis of Le Corbusier's famous book Vers une architecture (Toward a [new] architecture) from 1923, and his Conclusion (chapter 22), where he breaks the link between functionali...
1 comment
Read more

A Voter's Guide: Local Elections 2016

By
I spent a long time researching different local races and some of the ballot measures here in Santa Clara County.  In case you're on the fence or want some further information to guide your voting, I've compiled my thoughts here. Selection Methodology I have three tiers for selecting  candidates. 1. Alignment on Issues:  I will choose the candidate who is most closely aligned with me on the issues I think are important. 2. Experience and Education:  All other things being equal, I will choose the candidate who has the most knowledge of what is required for the position, either through education, previous experience, or active participation in similar positions. 3. Women and Minorities:  All other things being equal (#1 and #2 above), I will choose candidates who are women or minorities in order to increase the diversity of voices of our elected officials.  It's my own personal form of affirmative action. The Issues We're fortunate enough to li...
Post a Comment
Read more

Housing Affordability in the Bay Area: An Architectural Perspective

By
The Bay Area's housing crisis has gained a status akin to the weather: We can't help but mention it whenever two or more Bay Area residents are gathered together, and we feel there's equally nothing we can do to change it.  But instead of the general praise given to the area's weather, there is general despair about the state of housing.  At least among the twenty-something set and construction industry professionals who make up my peers and colleagues, there are few answers and much criticism for the way we live here.  It's not dense enough, public transportation is a sham, and housing costs are outrageous.  Many of my peers agree that they would not live here at all except that their spouse/significant other works in the tech industry, without whose salary they could not afford to live here, but whose worth is so valued here that it makes little sense economically to live elsewhere.  Here in the Peninsula it's just as bad as in San Francisco ("the city...
Post a Comment
Read more