2003-01-23 News
We are swapping the sun for the rain and clear blue skies for clouds.
There are many things about California that we will miss immensely. First and foremost we will miss our very good friends here who we presume will not follow us into the drizzle. We hope they will forgive us for our betrayal and lunacy. We will also miss the perfect weather and jaw-droppingly beautiful countryside which help to significantly raise the escape velocity from the Bay Area. We will miss the politeness and civility of random strangers even towards someone who looks like he needs an extra level of security screening at airports. I will miss the elementary school where I do volunteer work and help to create a new wave of students with hybrid accents (namely Mexican-Scottish and Punjabi-Scottish).
We will not miss US-101 (the “road to hell” as I call it) or El Camino Real with its endless strip malls (shopping centers). I will not miss living in suburbia far from a proper city center and decent pub. I will not miss the California DMV (DVLC). I will not miss Jacuzzi maintenance. I seem to be one of the few people here who holds the heretical belief that the average price/performance of high end Bay Area is very low. I hope to never see a badly grilled piece of meat covered with an Asian confusion cuisine sauce and served with the standard issue garlic mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus which is guaranteed to clash with any wine known to mankind.
I have decided resistance is futile. I shall be assimilated by The Borg. In February we move to our next raintown Seattle (not Redmond) where I shall start to work at Microsoft on a distributed programming language / operating system project.