12 posts tagged “seattle”

It's been awhile since I last blogged, but it's official, I'm now back to urban living after almost 18 months in the wilderness. Actually Redmond's not that bad, but it's a good example of the suburban car culture, so-called bedroom communities, dotted with sprawling apartment/condo complexes and everything requiring a car to get to if you want to do your shopping, go out to eat or for entertainment (unless you live right in downtown).

I'm now living in First Hill, right on the cusp of downtown Seattle. I can walk a few blocks and I'm in the heart of it, a few blocks more and I'm at the bus stop where I catch the 545 to work. In the other direction, I'm half a dozen blocks from Broadway and the nightlife of Capitol Hill, which is handy for not having to worry about either parking or the 15 mile drive back to Redmond after a night out.

It's somewhat akin to how and where I used to live in South Yarra, but now I'm even closer to the CBD. I suppose this at least in part is a reflection of the fact Seattle is much smaller and hence more compact than Melbourne. I don't know if this is symptom or cause of a public transport system that's not up to par with 21st century cities, because back at Domain Road I had a choice of walking, tramming or training to pretty much anywhere I needed to go.

So this proximity to people and activity is a welcome thing, even if it means I'm paying more for rent, but spending less on petrol as I save the earth and reduce my carbon footprint by taking the bus to work. Some things I've noticed:

• You are more conscious of people and places when you walk. In a car you're insulated from your environment and tend to concentrate on a point-to-point journey and ignore the diversity of your surroundings.
• You need to plan your time more, particularly on the return leg from work -- the bus tends to run less frequently at those hours so you need to stay focused on which bus to catch, and therefore when you need to wrap up what you're doing.
• Natural light makes a big difference to mood. Ironically, since I'm living in a loft with big 15ft windows, I get more light living in the city than when I was living in wide open suburbia. (My previous place was below ground level on one side, so the bedroom was quite dark; and the living area -- while situated to face the Cascades -- was also not that well exposed to sunlight...)

Alec's official Seattle coffee rankings:

A friend took me to the "Thursday Nights at the Pedestal" this evening to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (the most recent one besides the current release). It was pretty decent (you can't argue with free), but you do have to wait a bit for the sun to go down properly (try well after 9pm) and remember to wear warm clothes! Somehow they manage to project the image on the upwards sloping bit of the Rainier Square building with no discernible distortion... For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here's a photo.

Just went on a great little hike today to Rattlesnake Lake with Eugene and Evan -- only 4 miles return, a short drive from Seattle east on I-90 and a spectacular view (i.e. the pay-off to effort ratio was pretty high). Unfortunately I was stupid and forgot to load my camera with a memory card :(. Great exercise and nice to take advantage of the Seattle sun while it's about...

In other news, the Dreamliner has been unveiled! If I'd known I might have tried to attend myself since I was a big airplane freak when I was a kid; I reckon I can identify 95% of the planes out there barring light aircraft (which I never had much interest in). Having said that, I really need to think about getting to the Boeing factory to take a tour one of these days... Anyway, back to the Dreamliner -- sounds like a fantastic plane, fuel efficient and supposedly more comfortable to fly in (bigger windows, higher cabin pressurisation). Can't wait to fly in one, but given my experience of the state of the American domestic fleet, I doubt that opportunity will be coming along soon. Of the theories concerning why American airlines (with a few exceptions) are doing poorly, overinvestment in their planes won't be one of them.

Sorry for the dual headline, they have nothing to do with each other; just too lazy to make two separate posts :).

Well we're RTO'ing our latest release Friday, so as a present for working so hard to make it happen, the entire team has the day off (except for those who are required for the actual deployment of course). Hooray, what will I do with this new spare time now? Hmmm probably not much -- sleep in, go to the gym, do some shopping, run some errands; all the stuff I typically put off on weekends because weekends are supposed to be a time for fun! Too bad they only told us today, otherwise I might have actually been able to plan something!

Anyways a couple things for today's post; I got this link to a gallery of the upcoming Transformers the Movie. Now this is a movie I'm looking forward to (July 4 here we come). I remember playing with these toys a lot as a kid, coveting the jet fighter planes, cars, trucks, animals, even dinosaurs that would transform into humanoid robots. Not to mention visitng Redcliffe Entertainment Centre (1 big screen -- count 'em!) back in hmmm 1985? to watch the original Transformers animated movie with Orson Welles voicing Optimus Prime (iirc). Speaking of which: Optimus Prime in the upcoming live action film looks AWESOME!

2nd thing: found out this week about the upcoming Seattle International Film Festival. Apparently it's the biggest in North America... And looking at the list of films on offer, I totally believe it! The hardest part is going to be figuring out which ones to go to without breaking the bank :(.

Just been alerted to this 25 for 25 concept -- Melbourne has something similar that lets you try fine dining without hurting the hip pocket too much. I will have to give it a go; life's too short for bad food and chain restaurants. Heard good things about Flying Fish and Wild Ginger -- time to make a list :).

One of the things you notice when working for Microsoft is that very few of your colleagues are locals. (By "local", I mean Seattle-ites -- there are plenty of Americans but more often than not they've moved to the Northwest for Uncle Bill.) So I felt it was time for some of the EHS crew who are outsiders all to go on an outing to explore some of the tourist-y things that Seattle has to offer... you know, the kind of stuff you tend to postpone until another day because you think you'll have plenty of time for that later -- in the meantime you have bigger fish to fry like going to Canada, or overseas and boom! you end up never going.

After sending out an S+, thirteen of us turned out in our Sunday finest to do the Seattle Underground tour. A stunningly sunny day (for the tail end of a Seattle winter) ensured we had a pleasant day learning about the history of Seattle, and how the wise fathers of this city built it not once but twice on a tidal plain, ensuring that at high tide the streets would go under water. Even after a fire swept away much of the original city (thus presenting an opportunity to start from scratch and do it right), expediency demanded they repeat the same mistakes... To cut a long story short, their ingenious solution to flooding? Keep the buildings but raise the streets themselves, with the 'ground floor' now being below road level... I won't spoil the tour by revealing too much more, but suffice to say that the tour (90 minutes of it) was well worth the price of admission.

Little did we know how popular the tour would be; after originally planning on the 11am tour and missing out on tickets, we killed some time until the next free slot at 1pm by going up the Smith Tower (pictured above right). Named after the typewriter guy of Smith-Corona fame, it was the tallest building outside of New York when it was built. The observation deck gives a great view of the city... heck it might even be better than the Space Needle since (a) it's cheaper to go up it, and (b) you can't see the Space Needle from the Space Needle :). Notice the car park that looks like it's rising out of the pavement in the foreground... It gives you an idea of the slope of the land, as well as an idea of how unsentimental Seattle town planners must have been back in the 60's when the hotel that was originally sited there was torn down for this concrete monstrosity.

Above left is me sitting in the Chinese room in the Smith Tower observation deck on the 35th floor. The Chinese room is so-named because it's filled with Chinese artifacts (mainly intricately carved furniture as per the pic) given to Mr Smith by the last Empress of China.

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Above is a pic of some of the EHS crew + friends that managed to take a break from their very important work to let their hair down and play. Below right is our illustrious tour guide, who was funny from go to whoa. Above his head: the skylight that used to light the underground passageways of underground Seattle (to find out more you need to do the tour!).

Melbourne and Vancouver beat Seattle hands down imho, but if there's one thing Seattle is good for, it's music. Tomorrow I'm seeing Snow Patrol, Ok Go and the Silversun Pickups for a fraction of the price similar tickets would cost back in Oz. It amazes me how much I was paying back then, whereas now because it's so cheap and more readily accessible, I'm sure I've seen more live music in the past seven months than I have in the past seven years (ok maybe not that far back but it sounds more poetic doesn't it?).

I'm hoping to see Brett Dennen at Chop Suey in a couple weeks' time too... a recent discovery thanks to iTunes. Imagine a 6-foot-5 red-headed giant with a voice almost like a woman's, backed by a guitar and matched with some really thought-provoking lyrics on his latest album, So Much More. Oh and I found Brett Dennen because iTunes suggested I might like them since I bought an Iron & Wine EP (I think). And now I can't remember how I found Iron & Wine... maybe because I like Rocky Votolato...?

It's moments like these I wish Apple would support the subscription model for the iPod -- I can definitely see a compelling reason to sign up for unlimited music downloads if I pay a set fee per month; if Zune can do it for $15/month, Apple could too (I could almost live with onerous DRM in return for the kind of all-you-can-eat that would really take advantage of my broadband connection here).

Even more snow today! Had a mini-dinner party the night before (thanks Riz for cooking up a storm, I feel guilty now for only contributing one dish) and Atul ended up crashing on the couch when he couldn't get his car out of the visitor lot thanks to the snowfall that started in the late evening... I didn't feel confident my car would make it and I had no clue how to put on the snow chains I bought for my (cancelled) San Fran roadtrip, so this morning we walked to work (although Atul wimped out and caught the bus for the last leg).

Atul! Snow!

Walking to work in the snow

A friend of mine just sent me a link to this article, and I quote (language warning, adult discretion advised):

and to the people who defend this fucking town, you can shove it up your Subaru driving,UDUB going, Latte drinking, snowboarding,Northface wearing,tattoo sporting,hiking boots wearing, liberal thinking, 35 mile an hour driving, jogging all year round hiking,kayaking,biking,ipod wearing narrow minded ass!!

Guess which city it might be talking about? And btw, just for the record, I approve of Subarus, lattes, hiking boots, liberal thinking, hiking and wearing of iPods :).