Category: blog

Between 2011 and 2012

I can still clearly remember that dinner with Diane and lxl during my first travel to NYC. It was a nice Japan restaurant, semi-basement, cozy and decent. We ordered fresh sea urchin, very delicious. Part of that table talk was about China and US, pros and cons, typical topic among Chinese ppl, too big that no one can convince others with different opinions. In the discussion I suddenly threw out a sentence: “Anyway, we should try hard to get the next generation born in US.” A short silence. It seems everyone agreed for a moment. No matter how much you love the country, how much you’re used to the food and the society, when decide for your own baby, it brings up an “objective” and “ultimate” choice.

The opportunity came fast in a very unexpected way. In Sep I got the news and the position. At the end of Sep I flied back to China, did the wedding ceremonies in my hometown and xw’s hometown, in a rush. Then flied back to Beijing. Got the visa. Sold everything, from game consoles to mattress, from tables to chairs. Finished not-so-pleasant bargaining with the subleaser b****. Sent bobo (my cat) to a friend of xw’s friend and hopefully I’ll bring her to US on my next travel. Lived in a friend’s place for the last 2 weeks before flying to US. Looked for apartments in NYC remotely by riki’s help. Everything happened so fast and I had been excited and anxious until we finally got a place in Brooklyn and bought some furnitures in.

I can’t say this is all for my 2011. Xw and I had a great travel to Japan. We held countless board game parties in our home, on the great big table :) And we went to IKEA so many times, and installed so many stuff in that place… However, moving oversea should be the second big item… second to getting married, lol!

For 2012, I resolve to do a good job and live a good life.

It is 2012 in China now and still 2011 in US. I’m going to push the “publish” button and play Skyrim for a while, will attend a cross-year party tonight. See you in 2012, if the world is still there!

More Furnitures, and Guests on Floor

Went to IKEA yesterday with xw, because there was an one day only sale! 1$ for 8 wood hangers… we got 4 packs, lol

And a metal TV stand, my big TV finally has some place other than floor. A nice armchair, which reminds me of my first visit to Beijing IKEA, I laid in a chair, so comfortable that I dropped my wallet there. A small metal cart for bathroom. A clothes rack in bedroom. And a big weaved box as a small table with storage. xw and I spent around 2 hours to setup all of them, before dinner. Really fast!

Then sly, fruitcc and a friend of theirs arrived. They came for a tour in NYC, will live in my place until new year. These guys just borrowed one sleep bag and one blanket from Jack, and slept on the living room floor. I have no idea how they spent last night.

Returned Apple TV

After using Apple TV for 3 days, I bricked it and returned it to Amazon…

Before buying it, I thought the main function of Apple TV was to play downloaded movies on computer. Then I found this was totally wrong. Apple TV is designed for buying/renting movies, either from iTunes or Netflix. Another selling point is its AirPlay integration with iOS devices. However videos from ppLive usually only have 480p quality or worse, so they look terrible on big TV. And AirPlay randomly broke after 1 hour use… It’s not that nice.

Then I jailbroke Apple TV, installed XBMC, hoping it could stream movies on my laptop. Experiences with XBMC were quite frustrating. It’s too like a developer toy, not a “product” at all. It was a pain to input anything, a huge pain to connect it with OSX system, and it crashed all the time. Eventually I got it work (broken intermittently though), but it still had so many drawbacks: poor subtitle support, poor seek function, and slow buffering.

I tried Netflix on Apple TV then, it worked pretty well and finally gave me a bit satisfaction after I got this thing. Because Apple TV started to support Netflix subtitle since 4.4, I tried to upgrade it from 4.3(jailbroken) to 4.4. Then it became a brick… Even restoring in iTunes couldn’t fix it. Considering the hours I wasted on it, I decided to return it. Amazon’s customer service is great. I got full refund very soon.

XBox 360 also has Netflix/YouTube and it worked pretty well. I don’t really see the reason to keep both Apple TV and XBox connected to TV. Microsoft is catching up pretty fast in the living room war, maybe already ahead of Apple?

Subway in NYC

I live in Brooklyn now. It costs me 30 minutes or so to commute by subway, one way.

NYC is the only city in US that ppl rely on subway heavily and seldom drive. Subway here is over 100 years old, much older than Beijing’s, but more comfortable in most means. It is crowded in rush hour, but not as much as Beijing or Japan, maybe because US people aren’t used to touch each other in cart. The scent is far more better. I remember its hardly breathable in Beijing’s subway cart, that’s why so many ppl drive there, even jammed.

NYC subway is old. So some parts are not clean, for example, rails are disgusting. However no one really cares that. Carts are not modern, some of them don’t show station names so you have to watch closely or listen to drive’s broadcast, if you can recognize their speaking. And ad posters here are usually covered by giraffe, such as mustache on every face or a single black tooth in a smiling mouth…

NYC subway is pretty expensive actually. It costs 2.25$ for a single ride. And weekly or monthly unlimited ride doesn’t give you too much discount if you are just a commuter (twice a day). Beijing subway is really really cheap, indeed.

Oh, and NYC subway doesn’t have cellphone signal at all. I’m drafting this post on my way home, but have to post it when I’m back to surface.

找房，找房，找房

之所以写了三个“找房”是因为一共找了三天。目标是月租2000$左右的1 bedroom（一居）或者studio（开间），commute时间30分钟以内的公寓。

第一天是23号，也就是下飞机之后的第二天。带我们去看的是之前在酒吧认识的美女broker（中介），好吧其实是我同事的姐姐……看了五个midtown的公寓，4个1br一个studio，价格都在2000或以上，面积都挺小的也就三四十平的样子，两个人住的话说实话会比较挤。这个区域是曼哈顿很繁华的地段，离公司很近可以走路上班，于是租房价格也自然就高了。比较夸张的一点是这些房子都是要年租15%的中介费，也就是接近两个月。想想一下拿出快4000$去付中介费，总是让人觉得很忐忑。于是我们决定还是往岛外面找找看。

第二天是感恩节。令人惊讶的是好几个中介仍然说有时间带我去看房。这一天的主要目标区域是Brooklyn（布鲁克林）的Clinton Hill一带的免中介费的房子。可能是由于前一天看的房子都太憋屈，这第二天看的房普遍感觉都还不错，至少面积是大了不少。毕竟这是离曼哈顿30分钟地铁的地方，所以这也是个拿空间换时间的问题。看了三处房子，比较中意的有两处，一处是刚修好的公寓楼，比较大的一居，2000~2100，空调冰箱各种设施都是崭新的，独立的洗衣机烘干机，带健身房公共活动室地下储物空间可以上屋顶看风景，离地铁AC线近上班20分钟左右；另一处是一个150年的老房子，1居1800，优点缺点都明显，缺点是有点旧，洗手间没窗户，地铁上班要30分钟，优点是周围环境很好。事实上这个老房就离前面那个新房十几个block，我一路走过去20分钟，明显能感觉变漂亮了很多。可能是因为路边从光秃秃变成有树了，加上靠着Pratt这个艺术大学的缘故吧。

第二天晚上回来跟xw讨论了一会儿，决定再去看一趟，因为我拍回来的照片都很差还得她再去亲眼看一看。第三天上午又跑去看这个老房子，看完了感觉都不错，加上两个人都有点累不想再跑了，于是就定下了。

租房过程中使用的网站有zillow，streeteasy和craigslist。前面两个都是比较现代的网站。但是密集用了几天之后我的感觉是有点中看不中用。虽然集成了地图，有各种搜索方式，还有这样那样的功能，但东西做复杂了之后时效性好像就差了，经常是电话打过去没人接或者消息送出去没人回。相比之下craigslist虽然就是个20年前的网站，但是就是很好用。每天都有很多新信息（中介们在勤奋的刷屏），常用的几种筛选方式也都支持，用起来感觉很有效率。在纽约这种流动性大的市场上找房，时效性就是No. 1啊。

最后还要特别鸣谢一下riki和riki夫人。当年我在加州实习的时候就是riki在craigslist帮我找到的那个泳池花园豪宅……在我来这边之前的一个周末他和他lp去看了Queens的Long Island City/Astoria和Manhattan上Upper East Side的一些房，结论是我们要找的那个价位没有什么太合适两个人住的，看了的一些房都比较miserable。可见不自己亲眼看看还是不太靠谱，不过这些信息也帮助我决定了要找空间大些的还是得找离岛更远一点的。