San Francisco

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My parents left this morning. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this alone. Meh.

Moved into our apartment. It is very pretty and awesome. I think the best part is the location… one or two blocks down one direction is Japantown. This means that, not only is there authentic (and affordable!) Japanese food (bento boxes, real ramen, sushi galore), but that there’s also a Japanese bookstore (that sells game art books at really good prices), but also a Japanese collectables shop (games, giant robot figurines [Dan would love the store], cards) and video shops (anime, movies). Also a Japanese grocery store that sells these tasty things (fresh, not frozen! :D):

Yesterday’s lunch was a tasty bento. Yesterday’s dinner was delicious cold soba and sushi and tempura. I could live like this :D

One or two blocks down the other way is a Best Buy, Mervyns, Trader Joe’s, and a bunch of Kaiser medical facilities (which will be my insurance company). Convenient one-stop shopping, and it’s on the busline that I’ll take home from work, so I can just stay on the bus for a little bit longer and stop by and play Rock Band every day after work.

One or two blocks down another way is a bunch of restaraunts of various cuisines (Thai, Korean, Italian, etc). The other way is a ton of coffee shops.

The apartment itself is really pretty. The layout is actually ideal for two people sharing it, since the single bathroom has two doors (so I don’t have to go through the bedroom to get to it).

Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos for you, since my 28-80mm lens decided to break. I think some of the glass just shifted or something, since it is no longer able to properly focus at things further than 3 feet away at the 80mm end (even in manual focus mode… the focus ring simply won’t turn far enough). It’s probably fixable, but likely not worth the trouble. On the plus side, I now have a nice macro lens that can focus much closer than any normal 28-80mm lens… In any case, this kinda gives me an excuse to drop $300-$500 on the 18-200mm lens that I’ve been looking at.

So yeah. Orientation for work is tomorrow. I’m nervous as hell. Also lonely. People should send me emails and letters (my physical address is on my Facebook profile).

Birthday/Moving

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I’m 21.
Hm.
Doesn’t feel any different.
Didn’t get terribly drunk or anything last night either… had a nice dinner with family, ordered my first legal mixed drink here in the US, came home to pack and sleep.

I’m not ready to leave and start my grown-up life…
I fly out to SF this afternoon. I probably won’t have internet until next Monday, so if you need to reach me, you should call my cell.

Packing up

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Just an update, because I’ve been failing at blogging my life lately…

I did find an apartment. First month’s rent is paid, contracts have been signed… things are good. It’s a pretty nice place, and is only temporary until we can find a better, more permanent place toward April/May time. Whee.

I am packing up my room. I have way too much stuff. A lot of it is going to go to charity, be put in a garage sale, or go to my mom to give to her students. Whee.

I was up last night until 6 AM watching Battlestar Galactica with Pat. Whee.

My aunt and grandpa are visiting before they head back to Thailand. Exciting. Whee.

Life is good.

Apartments…?

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I’ve been here 1.5 days and feel like I mostly fail at finding a place for me and Em to live in about two weeks.
Wasted time… wasted money flying here and staying here and eating here… wasted energy walking everywhere looking at places.

I feel kinda defeated.

At least I now have some semblance of a plan… check up on this place that both of us would be ok with but that has terrible, terrible ratings online… if the lease is breakable without too terrible a penalty, take it for now. Otherwise, take a 1-month lease (expensive as it may be) somewhere nearby so we can get our bearings and make decisions with more than 24 hours to consider their consequences.

Maybe.

Meh.

I’m a complete failure.
I just feel so lost.
Does anyone at all have any knowledge about housing in San Francisco (or even Berkeley)?

End of 2007

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I guess I should make an entry before the year is over…

Nothing much has happened since my last entry. I’ve been looking at apartments in San Francisco, and will be heading there this week (Thursday) to actually look at places.
Also, Em will be living with me (she got the job), which is awesome… especially because I absolutely *cannot* live alone.

I’m working on a computer version of Student Wars v2 so that I can play people over the internet with an application. This makes sense since I won’t be seeing many of the people who actually play card games with me very often. I’ve really only done the initial design work… I’m currently coding up the classes for the cards themselves. My eventual hope is to have the application link to my website and automatically download card images and data (for the application). This would make the thing very easy to use… download a lightweight client that will then go out and pull everything it needs to actually run from the internet.

Tonight is a new year’s party thing. Should be awesome.