Year in Review

#220

This year saw visits to 2 international places, couple of within-India trips, one cross-continent move, and several noteworthy events and moments. Here are a few highlights:

First Quarter

1. Visited Dubai Expo
2. Binge-watched the MCU Defenders series - Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Defenders, and finally caught up with all pending Marvel movies (Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant Man, among others)

Second Quarter

1. Completed all lessons in the first (beginner) unit of French in Duolingo
2. Launched an SVP goal at work, officially transitioned into a managerial role
3. Went for a 3-day trek to Dayara-Bugyal

Third Quarter

1. Drove to Bangalore for meet-ups with several relatives
2. Read 10+ books in 3 months
3. Interviewed for a team in AWS
4. Visited Kolkata right before Durga Puja festivities

Fourth Quarter

1. Relocated from Chennai to Seattle
2. Explored nearby places, went on a hike to Quinault trail at Olympic National Park
3. Signed up for Pure Barre pilates and attended 4 classes
4. Moved into a new apartment and setup the house
5. Wrote and published 20 blog posts this year

As I look back at 2022, it gives me a boost of energy and motivation to make wishlist items happen for 2023.

Wishing you all a wonderful and adventurous new year!

Board Game Night

#219

Friday nights are now board game nights!

Finally got to learn and play Catan, after having heard about it so much from all my NRI friends. It's nice having known a group of people right from the time we landed so we could start playing all sorts of games from Week 1 itself. Uno, Scrabble, Catan, Exploding Kittens, Sequence, and previously played games we'd learnt at The Board Room Cafe in Mylapore, Chennai. 

Once we learnt the rules and played with them initial couple of rounds, we soon started adding our own twists and customizations to make each game more fun. For instance, adding a couple of characters like Jester, from the online game Among Us into Mafia, and tweaking each round with a different rule, such as each Mafia won't know who the other Mafia is, and more!

Soon, friends of friends started getting added to our little group until we had a large enough crowd of 6 or more to play even more games that required 5+ players that we couldn't play before.

The best part about the board game nights were playing with the perfect group of people who were no only open to learning and trying out different genres of games but were also super competitive, smart, and sporting - we got to play abstract games like Dixit, card games like Poker, strategy games like Azul and Santorini, and Word games like Word on the street and Codenames - both online as well as the actual board game in-person.

Apartment Hunting

#218

We went house hunting in Seattle and Bellevue and visited a bunch of apartments. Here, apartment refers to a house within a building whereas 'house' refers to an independent house, usually a duplex.

Day 1, we visited 3 apartments - the first and the second were older homes, located slightly interior, thus were in quieter neighborhoods and had electric stovetops. We had done 'virtual tours' online, which allows us to walkthrough the house and see what each room would look like, so it was good to see it was similar in person too. Rent everywhere for 2b2b (here instead of 2BHK they say 2 bed 2 bath) was $3500 minimum with an additional $150-200 for utilities (water, electricity, internet, gas if applicable), per month. All kitchens here are modular, meaning they already come with a microwave oven, grill oven, refrigerator, stove top, and a dishwasher. And the apartments also come with a washer and dryer. These things would have to be bought if it were a house.

 

Apartment 3 was much newer - it was a high-rise apartment located near Amazon buildings and in the heart of SLU (South Lake Union). We visited the 19th floor to look at an empty apartment and the 30th floor for a model house. This place had 40 floors, with the 41st being a massive closed rooftop and an open skydeck, with a picturesque view. We liked this place the best - it had a gas stovetop (yay!) and looked the most spacious for a 2b2b with 987 sq.ft. It had the maximum amount of storage, especially in the kitchen, great set of amenities, and felt the most secure. 

One issue we saw in all the apartments here was lack of extra space to keep things, like a loft or an attic. That's one caveat of staying in an apartment vs an independent house, but the advantage is getting help for things needing repair, usually free of charge, done by the maintenance team, whereas in an independent house you are on your own for everything. All the apartments also mentioned that if we wanted to install a bidet (aka health faucet aka toilet spray), we would have to install it ourselves and bear damage costs, if any. 

In SLU, which is close to Downtown, parking charges seemed over the top at ~$250-300 per month! Luckily for us, we like walking and there are a lot of places nearby that are walkable, including the rental car place. A lot of known acquaintances also follow the same and do not own cars due to parking hassle.

Overall a new experience in terms of what to expect when looking for an apartment here. Visited 3 apartments across 2 cities in 1 day - 7-8k steps in total.