Friday, March 23, 2007

Birthday at a Steakhouse

From the beginning I wanted to try an American steak at an appropriate location. My birthday seemed like a good excuse to make my dream a reality. Upon some investigation I chose Black Angus Steakhouse to have my celebration dinner. I certainly didn't regret my choice of the venue. It was a genuine American steak house. The place was similar to a ski lodge or a hut. Everything made of wood, sloping roof, wooden floors. Colours --- a dark finish. The layout was that there was a bar type counter in the middle and on the sides there were these semi private booths with three walls about a meter and a half in height with glass pannels spanning the top 30 cm. The atmosphere was a mixed one. On the one hand I was conscious of the ranch --- cowboy pictures everywhere on the walls. On the other hand I felt like I'd go outside and jump onto some dog sleds in one of Jack London's stories set in Alaska/South Pole...

The three of us --- Brendan, Tina, and I --- were shown to a table and some freshly baked round bun was brought to us with some souce. We then promptly ordered a sampler dish as an appetizer. I can't remember the names of these things now, but there was some vegetable stuff deep fried, chicken also deep fried, prawns, and a strange potato shell --- potato with most of its inside mass removed. Tasted quite good. To complete the American experience Brendan and I decided to order the Prime Rib Steak, a whole pound (454 grams raw weight) as our main dish. Suffice to say that we got pretty full after the total time of about two hours in the steakhouse. The meat was great, I ordered mine medium, and it was as soft as jelly! Note to self is to order steak medium well done to make it a little more chewy. On the side there was a large dish of salad, mash potato with garlic (surprisingly tasty!), and some boiled vegetables. The size of the steak was impressive, but not overwhelming --- nothing that I couldn't handle. It was probably the size of a good portion of steak... and twice as thick, about 2 cm! For the sauces to go with the steak I had mild horse radish and ranch sauce. Brendan ordered full strength horse radish and that thing was the most spicy thing I've ever had in my life! I put literally a drop of that radish on a tiny bit (less than 0.5 cm cube) of broccoli. Immediately I turned all crab red and my eyes started to water. That sauce gave me a whole new meaning to spicy. The spice in Wassabi, at least one that I've tried in the past, fails miserably in comparison to this horse radish. I won't attempt that stunt again in the future...

I mentioned to the waitress that it was my birthday so we got to choose one free desert. I chose a chocolate cake slice, which we each had a third of. I don't eat desert normally, but it was a special day in a special place so I made an exception :) The waitress also took a couple of polaroid pictures of us --- old school photography, but still cool. If we get hold of a scanner I'll post those pictures up later.

Overall impression of the place exceeded all my expectations. I was really impressed by the atmosphere, quality of the food, and the service. Not bad, for a reasonable $100 (including tip and tax) for the three of us. We were the last customers out of the place at around 11.40 and the place shut at 11 officially I think :D

Mission birthday celebration dinner --- accomplished. Over and out.

Monday, March 12, 2007

First Trip to San Francisco --- Golden Gate Bridge and Fishermen's Wharf

This trip is now included in all my posted photos.

On Sunday we set out for our trip to San Francisco --- first one for me. The original plan was to go to the San Fran zoo, but that will probably happen another time. In terms if people, it was me, Brendan, and Tina. Before we left we stopped for lunch at the Oakridge mall. I had some Japanese chicken teriyaky and shrimp with steamed rice. I was relatively impressed by the size and quality of the meal. Not a bad value --- unlike IBM kitchen.... After fueling (or some might call it stuffing) our stomachs we set out for our trip at around 1.30 in the afternoon.

The trip didn't start as smoothly as might be expected. Once we were driving along the 280 highway we heard strange flopping sounds coming from the road or tyres. I became suspicious thinking one of our tyres might be flat and that steering is a bit strange because of it. We pulled over, after some search for an exit (never a close offramp when you need it!) we ended up very close to San Jose downtown. All tyres were perfectly fine to my relief. The sound was simply the not-so-smooth road surface coming in contact with our tyres at 70+ mi/hr. Yes, the roads here aren't the smooth NZ (or just Wellington?) motorways. Our transport was now proven to be relatively crash safe, but getting back on route took a little time... Now, it could have been me turning into random streets or it could've been our designated map reader misreading the map in the wrong direction... Either way, we ended up having to do a U-turn after driving for about 15 minutes in one direction and thankfully were back on the 280 highway heading north to our destination, San Fran.

Driving on highway is nice... five lanes each way, everyone is doing 75-80 mi/hr (=130+ km/hr). Feels fast, especially in small car. I didn't make a note of the time it took us to get to San Fran, but I think it's under one hour. However, it took us a lot longer to get to the Golden Gate Park as traffic was pretty slow -- it wasn't a highway anymore. And I don't think there is a highway that goes through San Fran, all of them morph into normal streets while in San Fran down town. It was pretty hot that day too --- over 25 degrees celsius. But in the car it was nice and cool --- the air conditioner, our new found friend in California heat, kept us from boiling over. As it turned out the A/C is always operational --- another thing to fix in the car.

Before we got to the G.G. Park we saw some guy dressed only in his thongs holding a sign advertising car wash. I think he may need to work on his advertising campaign a just a little bit more to have any kind of hope for customers.

The G.G. Park is huge, but I still needed to parallel park (my first time in this country) as it seemed all of San Francisco decided to spend their Sunday here. There was nothing really outstanding about the park. It was big, it had a lot of tall pine trees. It had some large open areas where people were half naked playing frizbee and others walking their dogs. A group of "hippie-musicians" were randomly drumming something in the middle. You think Wellingtonians are relaxed about their attitudes and clothing style? Well people here behaved like you would on a beach --- super relaxed. We got drinks/water from the nearest McDonalds (which charged 28 cents for a non-water refill!) and headed for Botanic Gardens --- still inside the G.G. Park. The gardens were ok, nothing flash. Ironically, we decided to walk around the New Zealand and Australian part (as well as some others). Squirrels were here too (they are around apartments and outside my IBM site). We walked around for a while and I think photos speak for themselves...

Slightly disoriented after the walk we finally managed to find my car. It was time to see what I came here to see, the Golden Gate Bridge. Ok, it's big, but the size wasn't shocking. To be honest I expected bigger. I also forgot that it's actually red in colour, not yellow or gold as the name might suggest. As most people do we drove through it ending up on the opposite side with a view of San Fran.. As an aside a lookout here is called vista point, and that's where we stopped. Struggling for, but luckily finding, a car park, we walked under the bridge first, crossing the road. You can see the construction beams and feel just how much the bridge actually shakes as the cars drive on it (3 lanes each way). After that we walked for about 80 meters on the bridge and stopped when we got to the place where we were actually above water. A lot of photos were taken, as everywhere else --- Tina is a keen photographer, a lot of the time taking photos while we don't notice --- which is great! But I do delete some of the more awkward ones, especially of myself (as some of you know my facial features do show most bizarre expressions at times :)).

The Bridge was followed by another hunt for car parks, this time on San Francisco waterfront. All hope was gone, but a small gap between cars appeared and we tried to squeez in there (this time parallel park was easier as it was on the left on one way street). Luckily the car behind us moved back to give us enough room and even told us to turn the tyres away from the curb as it was a hill sloping backwards (you get fined for that pretty quickly). It's strange, but that particular side of the street didn't have any parking meters. Everywhere else there were parking meters and even then the limit is 60 or in some places only 30 minutes. Parking buildings were expensive, for example, $5/hr or $12/hr, but later discovered there was a whole day parking for $10/day. Most of these were full anyway... After finding such a lucky spot we carefully read all the signs about parking, there were two or three. All the hours and days didn't apply to us and we didn't have our engine on (that was punishable by some ridiculous fine, from memory, $1000).

The time was around 6.30 and we decided to walk around the waterfront before we got food. There are a LOT of tourist shops and entertainment as well as endless amount of people. And this was Sunday evening in the first weeks of spring! I think the photos here are self explanatory too. The guy who painted live for some techno music was cool. He uses only spray paint to paint his art! We saw him do one right there. Brendan says he saw him on YouTube --- that's how famous this guy is!

For food we went to Fishermen's Wharf, where all the sea food is sold. Brendan tried a whole crab, I just had a crab sandwich. I don't like to wrestle with my food for hours. I did try a little though. As for taste I didn't think crab is that different to shrimp. I guess all sea food tastes similar. By the way, the crab was $9.95/lb and Brendan had an average one, which set him back around $15. I wasn't too impressed with the prices, but I ought to have anticipated a little better what "cheap" sea food really means here. My sandwich cost me $6.00...

The night time drive back through San Fran was great. A lot of illumination on the streets, bridges, and buildings. Once we got on the highway, but still in San Fran, it was cool because we were above the city as the highway is elevated tens of meters above ground. It felt a little freaky as you couldn't see the sides of the road. One wrong move and we could be flying many stories down... I did manage to keep us safely on the ground.

It's getting late now. I think I've told you most of what's happened that day.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Day light savings early this year

Today we set the clocks forward one hour three weeks earlier than usual. Daylight saving will also end one week later than normal in autumn. Read the San Jose news article for more detail. To see exactly what time it is anywhere you can search google or go to www.timeanddata.com: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=283 and Auckland Time. The website tells you the current time, date, and daylight saving dates. By looking at that, NZ time will go back to winter time on the 18 March. So for a week, the time difference is 20 hours instead of the usual 21 hours, or as I prefer it, 4 hours ahead of NZ and one day back. So right now it is 11 a.m. on Sunday and it is 7 a.m. on a Monday in NZ.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Flea Market

I went to a nearby flea market today around 9.30. It took me only 10-15 minutes to walk there. To get into the market you first have to stand in line to get a ticket pass. The ticket costs around 50 cents on Thursday, 75 cents on Friday, $1.25 Saturday and Sunday I think. But it was worth it. Originally I was only going to have a look, but I ended up buying fruit and vegetables for next week. I think I spent about 10-15 dollars on food, but that was much better than the supermarket although I need to do a bit more shopping to get a feel for exactly how much cheaper things cost at the flea market.

The market itself is HUGE. At least compared to the one in Porirua and probably twice the size of Malahovka's market. At least how it was in '96. The food part of the market is probably at least four times the market in Porirua. The rest of the market is new and second hand items, ranging from tools, watches, and socks. The atmosphere is very Mexican. The sellers are dominated by Mexicans and Chineese. The buyers seem to be mostly Mexicans. The day was (and still is) great --- sunny, no wind, and feels like pushing 20+ degrees now. I was getting really hot on the way back --- one because it was sunny and warm; two, I was wearing hoodie as it was chilly in the morning; and three, I was carrying my back pack with some 10+ kgs of fresh food! I ended up walking around the isles for over one and a half hours! That's how big the market was. I got back around 11.30.

I think from now on I will do my fresh food shopping at the flea market. And because I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, flea market constitutes for over 80% of my weekly shopping. The rest, such as chicken breast, beef, fish, and rice, takes very little effort to get from the supermarket or CostCo (a.k.a. MoreWilsons). As you can probably tell I'm very happy with my find.

The only other thing I need to find for a good price and variety is herbal teas, as I like to drink a lot of them. At the supermarket a box of only 20 bags costs $4.00, which would get at least twice as much and many more varieties in NZ.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Weird toilets with too much water

The one thing I forgot to mention right at the beginning of my experiences was that toilet bowls here are of different design than what I've seen in NZ (or Russia for that matter). The seem to have a lot more water so it feels like you are "doing your business" in pond, at first anyway. Flushing is also different, especially in IBM buildings. Once the flush is initiated, the water seems to be sucked in and then refilled from the reservoir. The reservoir still looks the same as in NZ.

On a somewhat different note, the wash basin is blocked not by a separate plug that is usually attached by a metal chain so it doesn't get lost. Instead, on the water tap itself there is a metal rod that is connected to a metal plug that is permanently in the basin. When you want to block the drain you pull the rod up, which moves the plug down to block the drain. Pulling the rod down opens the drain. This is true for a bath as well.

Shower, has only one knob that goes from cold to hot, just like the one I had at home. But water turns hot much faster...

Preliminary San Jose downtown photos on webshots

Follow this link to Brendan M's San Jose downtown photos which are there just to give you an idea of San Jose. I borrowed the photos from Brendan&Tina so there's almost no me, but there's the views... Or go to all my public albums. So far there is only the one above, but will upload more later.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Bowling

Alla invited me and some local interns and friends to go bowling. According to Alla they used to go regularly, but lately people have split up into groups and don't do as many things together. The bowling alley, called 300 San Jose, is around six to seven minute drive from Alla's place. I picked up Stefan on the way and we got to the place around 9.10 p.m. The alley has been recently refurbished. On the wall there was a series of large projector screens that were at least three meters in diagonal. If you follow the wall of these three or four screens you hit the bar, which is perpendicular to that wall. This just means that you don't have to go there just to bowl, you can watch sports on huge screens and have a drink.

As an aside, in California it's the law that all bars and night clubs must shut at 1.30 a.m. At times this is the time people GET to the clubs in NZ.

Anyway, the bowling itself is pretty similar to everywhere else. First, if you didn't have spare shoes you hired special bowling shoes. Then, you get a ball that has a suitable weight and the correctly sized finger holes. This step was new to me as the only other time I've played the balls were already there and I didn't get to chose my own ball.

We split up into four teams and played two games in those teams, after which we all headed home as it was close to 11. I did better than the first time I ever played, but nothing outstanding. 112 in the first game and 109 in the second, but I did win both times :) By the end my thumb was getting a little red and sore from the friction from the hole. Others were experiencing that too. I guess you just have to get use to it.

One other thing, the touch screens for every team was cool. You could control some things from there, such as input names and correct the scores. The one in Wellington, I think we had to ask the operators to input that data. Having said that, the team right beside us had their lane "break down" and the assistant had to fix it. Because that happened in Wellington also (AND we had to reset the whole game and start again), I was still impressed with the quality of the whole thing.

Pricing. Shoe hire is $5/person, games are $3.50 after 9 p.m. which is not bad I thought.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Internet and general utilities bills

Internet at the apartment I was first living at is cable, 6 Mbps download and some people say an unofficial cap of 200 GB/month, cost is $33/month. However, they seem to have problems as the service seems slow at times. Here at Alla's place it's DSL. Just did a speed test at http://www.speedtest.net/ it is 2489 kb/s down, 429 kb/s up, latency 45 ms, server San Jose CA, distance <50 mi. The cost is $32/month.

Electricity for one person is $45.

Phone line is about $20/month.

As I said rent is $630 without utilities and later it will be $500/month. But I'm not sure how long that will last either as we are moving out of that house in June, because the lease runs out.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Dollar Tree and Sushi house

Sunday was a slow day. I day woke up around 10 and did some updates on this blog. Then Alla woke up around 12 and told me where I can get my shower curtain three traffic lights away from our place at the shop called Dollar Tree. Guess what? Everything costs a dollar there! Man, I should have gone to that shop first thing before I bought stuff from supermarket. It's like our 2 Dollar Shop, but has much more and it's much bigger. A lot of stuff there is cheaper than at Walmart apparently. I did get my shower curtain and rings (sold separately here for some reason) and about 15 other things, such as pliers, screwdrivers, hand soap. I spent over an hour in that shop! It's really great, finally I found a lot of cheap stuff. Granted some things aren't good quality, but if you are getting a screwdriver made of metal and rubber handle, not that much can go wrong. I'm sure that place would've been heaven for my Mum too :) The shop sells food too, about 1/5 of the store is food. Mostly junk food, but there were some jars of pickles and olives (same size as NZ) and they were only a dollar... Anyway, that made my day.

On the way to Brendan's I visited a hardware store and bought a matching screw to screw in my front number plate. Finally! Before I got some screws from Walmart, but they were too small. So this time I unscrewed on of the screws from the back and found the ones matching it exactly in the hardware store. That means no more driving with the plate inside the cabin behind my windshield.

After this shopping spree I headed to Brendan's and hung out there for a while. It turned out they wanted to have an easy and relaxing day, which was fine with me as I wasn't feeling my best. By about 4 in the afternoon my stomach reminded me to feed it, so I had some Oatmeal ("Quick Oats", which is still raw, but somehow "Quaker Oats" is even less processed, which is what I got from CostCo... a whole nine pounds of it :D). As soon as I finished my bowl, it turned out that Stefan's roommate was having a little celebration as she got a raise at work so we headed to her place first and then Sushi Boat. By the way, the promotion is really a "side motion", because Onnita (that's her name) used to have an office job at an electrical company and now she's going to get paid more for being outside performing maintenance on electric lines. So basically she'll be climbing those road poles... Apparently that's what she wanted -- "I always wanted a job working outside, I hate working at a desk" was what she said. Part of it is true I guess. As she also put it "You come home feeling like you've done an honest day's job", which I can relate to. I don't know too much about her... She is, I think at least partly, Native American (Indean). She is 23. She drinks when emotions get the best of her (according to Stefan). She smokes too. However, she's not a bad person. Touch character, no bullshit (her desk job is taking complaints, so I'm sure she acquired some of that toughness there or through personal experiences). I recon she's cool -- speaks her mind that's for sure.

At their flat Onnita's Mum and brother were present. By the way her Mum is a clothes designer and likes Stefan and how he dresses. Stefan is the styly one of us... In the flat they have a cat, which is really cool -- doesn't fear anyone and lets everyone pat her. Onnita also has a very small, but very energetic and very white dog. She jumps up and down on her two paws it's fun.

All of us then went out to Sushi Boat. It was a reasonably big actual restaurant where they served us with menus and everything. The portions were american size so half of it people took home. I had barbecued eel and tampura and something else I can't remember. That was a pretty good experience. I'll write more about it when I'm not falling asleep like right now....

Tomorrow (Wednesday) I might be going bowling with Alla and some of her friends. Should be fun :)

Shopping and a little of San Jose downtown

On Saturday I woke up late, around 11, as I was up until 3.30 due to a long Uno game, long conversation, and unpacking my bags. I then went to get Brendan and Christina and we went to a shopping center nearby. Before I left I did laundry and it's pretty cool with the drier, as we never had one in NZ. Everything comes out really dry and there's no need to hang things on the line (which doesn't exist in an apartment of course). There is also a dishwasher, but I don't think I'll use it. Clean as you go is my policy. I also made a list of bathroom accessories to get --- cleaning and essentials, including a shower curtain! Apparently the apartment comes with no shower curtains and the old room occupant evidently took hers with her. I had to take a shower the night before with the shower head pointing towards the wall. Somehow I managed to get some water on myself and outside the bathtub too :) Alla's advice was to get the shower curtain from the "Dollar Store".

It was a great sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, just a little mist on the horizon. It was very warm, I wore a t-shirt all day. When we had lunch Brendan was showing the drink they got. The size of the cup was exactly a large by NZ standards. Here this was a small! The food was fine --- I got a Mexican wrap with no cheese, and chips exchanged for rice --- it was quite filling. In terms of prices for takeaways and food it seems that it's either the same dollar for dollar or slightly cheaper. If you converted to $NZ everything would be more expensive. It's true, there are some cheaper products, but in general it's about dollar for dollar in supermarkets and takeaways. Fruit is relatively expensive this year because they had a big frost earlier this year. It's still cheap enough. Petrol here was about $US3/gallon when I filled up the other day. That's 79 cents, which ex.com tells me is about $NZ 1.15. If you buy electronics online things are looking up, most PC parts are at times half the price that in NZ. Cell Phones are cheaper, especially on Ebay. I think I'll buy an unlocked phone that can be used with any network and buy a prepaid SIM card. This way if I want to switch networks or bring the phone back to NZ I can. If you buy a locked phone it only works with that provider network, although I think you can pay to have it unlocked.

Anyway, after we had lunch we went around the mall and drove around. The extension of the shopping center is several blocks of continuous shops... If you want to see it on google maps, it's on Blossom Hill Rd, just search for "westfield oakridge, San Jose". After all that the time was around 3 pm and we decided to head to the San Jose downtown. On the way there was some highway experience lane changes that extended for four lanes at a time to get to the correct exit. I also had a couple of close calls when I was changing lanes --- people seemed to accelerate when I tried once. And there was the situation when two cars try to change to the same lane from opposite sides --- luckily I always check my blind spots so all collisions were avoided.

Downtown San Jose is relatively plain, although I don't know what I expected --- it's San Francisco that's supposed to have all the excitement. Parking was hard to find. In the end we parked near the library, but still had to pay AND there was a 30 minute limit even on Saturday. I think parking is free on Sunday though, just like Wellington. Roads are reasonably wide and streets are square. No need to say that it's absolutely flat. When I get a camera in April sometime I'll take pictures and describe things in more detail.

We got to Brendan&Christina's place around 6 pm and I got home around 8. Alla went to some masquerade party with her brother, also Alex (CAIIIA). We all speak in English though as I don't think their Russian is very good. As an aside, the night before one of Alla's friends mentioned that Russian Jewish people, that's Alla's family, and other Russians (me?) look different. That really put the finger on it --- before I was asking myself if she looked Russian or Ukrainian, but was coming up blank on both counts. Now I can see it --- the facial feature and typical wide and close eyebrows.

Finally I had the place to myself that night... Had dinner, some oatmeal with egg white, carrot, radish, and cucumber --- finally I can eat what I wanted. I didn't do much, but sat with the laptop and updated this blog and browsed the web in general. No TV in the house, so I watched a couple of five minute clips on YouTube, but decided that wasn't really me. I didn't miss TV at all this week. I haven't watched a single thing, not even Prison Break! By the way Prison Break and all the popular series Blayne downloads each week and watches most of it I think. Apparently there is no problem with downloading series, but downloading movies is "dodgy here" as Blayne put it. For now I haven't decided if I'll need a monitor or a whole new PC, after all I will have TV in a month... My work laptop serves me well for the time being.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Bought car

The next morning Edgar, who sold me the car, brought the car to my place and we headed to the bank first. I borrowed some money from the guys I'm staying with as I didn't want to transfer so much from NZ Visa. Next, we went to the DMV to sign the papers for the car including registration and number plates (we were driving without number plates this whole time and I didn't even notice!). The last thing was to go to the dealer and input the code for the stereo because it's antitheft --- once the power is out for more than five minutes, it needs a special code to work. Edgar promised me that the dealer does this for free. When we got there they demanded $110, $100 to take out the stereo and get the serial number and $10 to look up the code. Edgar was very practical and onto it, "they charge that much because they think people don't know how to take the stereo out themselves". Parked inside the dealership, in the space of two minutes he took the panel off and the two screws that were holding the stereo. Five minutes later we were driving to where Edgar wanted to be dropped off, listening to the stereo (CD/radio with front and rear speakers, factory installed and producing not a bad sound --- not as good as I had in NZ in the Toyota, but probably close to the sound in my parents' car). From there I drove to work, on the way I discovered that after around 65-70 mi/hr it starts to vibrate very very slightly. This means that the wheel alignment is not 100%, but I don't think it's a problem. If I find a cheap mechanic I might get the alignment done later. Also, when I drove later at night I noticed that the front lights are completely misaligned --- the left one hardly shines on the road and when I'm driving I can see the light reaching four or five meters high when I'm ten meters away from that object! I definitely need to do something about the lights as I can't see very well at night. When I test drove it I thought it was weird --- why can't I see the road very well, and I know the lights are functioning, I've checked them all before I got in! I asked Edgar and he said he could see the light... I'll do something about it soon --- wouldn't want to drive out of town with a problem with illumination.

In terms of mechanics and prices it is, I guess, like everywhere else (I've been told so far) --- most expensive are the dealership mechanics, then there are chain mechanic shops, and then come the unofficial amateur mechanics that work from home garage and are only known by word of mouth. I'll see if I can track down one of these guys and probably should get a quote in a couple of chain shops on wheel and front light beam alignment.

Other than that the car drives fine. I drove around with Brendan (one of the two other new interns that came with me) and his fiance Christina and there seems to be reasonably enough space in the back seat. I like the car. It is smaller than what I had in NZ, but still a manual. It's maneuverable easy to drive and park. It's also not conspicuous so less likely to attract car thieves and police, while still looking respectable.

So, I got the car, but it's not insured and driving without insurance is one risky and two illegal in U.S. So the same day I asked around and looked at several options for insurance. In the end, a company called Mercury Insurance, was the best one --- recommended by many interns and generally IBMers. Part of it is because Mercury recognises prior driving experience in another country and it also gives discount to engineers, so all IBMers get discount. Also I think it's just generally very cheap. In the end it was $180 for six months, for liability (same as NZ third party) only of course --- which is the minimum legal requirement. This might seem high, but to give you an idea, I'll give you a couple of other quotes. AAA told me I needed to pay $760/6 months and another "cheap" company said $420/6 months. So I feel pretty good about it.

To get insured I had to come into their office. I decided to do it first thing, 9.00 am the very next day. The lady I spoke to on the phone on the previous day was alone in the office (I had to wait for her outside to arrive though). Everything went very well in a nice relaxed atmosphere.

To get to the insurance office I decided to take lightrail. One track each way this rail system is always outside, never underground. It often goes in the middle of the highway and goes through the downtown (centre) of San Jose. The carriages look like trams, so really this is tramway. To pay you have to buy tickets at the automatic box, which I think excepts notes, but definitely coins. According to the locals they don't usually check the passes at all, except weekends. However, this is irrelevant for me because IBM gives every employee a special sticker on their ID card that lets us take buses and light rail in San Jose area (but not San Francisco or any other, nor trains that go to San Francisco). I thought that was pretty good of IBM. But now that I have the car I don't think I'll use my pass all that much... Maybe to go to San Jose downtown once in a while, but to work I'll definitely drive, even though I "could" get there for free via a bus and then IBM shuttle. Car is just so much faster and more convenient. Also traffic here doesn't seem to be a problem. There are many big highways, well planned out --- apparently the city is relatively new so the road capacity is enough. You can get anywhere in San Jose within the space of less than 20 minutes because of this comprehensive highway system --- on a highway you can go much faster because of higher speed and no lights. Highways also seem to be usually four to five lanes wide with the outermost one or two lanes being the exit lanes. If you look on Google Maps at San Jose you can see just how comprehensive the freeways are.