Moving

More Ridiculously Circuitous is No Plan at All
It’s two on a Sunday morning, and I’m coming up on the last twenty-four hours of my first six months in Switzerland. I’ve just rotated the flat (i.e. moved nearly all the furniture a hundred eighty degrees along the outside wall of the living room) on the suggestion of a friend about a month ago and I have to say she was right, it’s much better this way.
30 Nov 2008 2 min read
The Color of Hell
The apartment is coming together, slowly. While shedding the cloud of stuff that had orbited me in Pittsburgh was an almost religiously therapeutic experience which I would recommend wholeheartedly to all, it turns out that clothes irons, cooking pots, and mops are all kind of useful.
16 Aug 2008 2 min read
The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Spiders
I was sitting on the balcony last night, my ears recovering from the quite loud, somewhat interesting, yet ultimately disappointingly clubby beats of my brief Bellerive-to-Mythenquai flirtation with Streetparade, registering to vote in the November U.
10 Aug 2008 2 min read
My Ridiculously Circuitous Plan is Three-Fifths Complete
From the twenty-third of March, two thousand five to the fifth of August, two thousand eight: my one thousand, two hundred thirty-one day tenure as a homeowner ended yesterday with a wire transfer, a HUD-1 form via fax, and a closing in Erie, Pennsylvania.
6 Aug 2008 2 min read
To the Health of the Vice Consul of the United States for the Republic of Ireland
Have just returned from Ireland. I had a chance to see a little of the city of Dublin, wandering about a bit through the Temple Bar – Trinity College – Grafton Street triangle last Sunday afternoon, and again on Tuesday; the weather, I take it from every cabbie who drove me around here that we really, really lucked out on the weather.
4 Aug 2008 2 min read
Home Sweet Home
I moved into the flat yesterday. By “moved in”, I mean most of my stuff is there, I have a motley and assorted collection of furniture, much of which is still boxed and flatpacked in the hallway, and I slept in the new bed last night.
25 Jul 2008 2 min read
We Have Keys
I went by my new flat Monday morning to pick up the keys and do the walkthrough. It was a good Bastille Day. First off, it was much bigger than I’d remembered, and in somewhat nicer shape.
15 Jul 2008 2 min read
It’s The Little Differences, Really, Part One
Every reasonably-sized city in the Western world is basically similar. One can understand life in Zürich quite easily by thin metaphor and direct reference to New York or San Francisco or Berlin.
9 Jul 2008 2 min read
The Beginning of the End of the Beginning
I have now joined the ranks of adoptive Zürchers who can (and seemingly invariably do) say, in the language of their choosing, “with luck, and patience, you will find a flat.
5 Jul 2008 4 min read
On Luck (or, The Apartment Search, Volume One)
In software development, we have a saying: “Good, fast, cheap: pick any two.” I’m sure many other technical fields have a similar saying. Essentially, it expresses if you want something done right, it’s either going to take a while or be expensive.
25 Jun 2008 3 min read