It's nice to visit, but don't try to live here...
Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2016 5:54 am
I have no idea whether anybody else would have any desire to talk about where they live, but this is my take on the San Francisco Bay area.
I don't mean for this thread to be a serious criticism of any place to live, but my summer visit to Dublin reminded me that many places are nice visit, but maybe not such great places to try to live. While I was in Ireland, I met many people who live there, who loved their city, but who were also looking for a way to move somewhere else. For me, I thought Dublin was heaven. All I did was eat great food, read great books, listen to mostly great music, and drink great beer. The minor details of making a living, finding a place to live, and dealing with bureaucracy were not a part of my life. I think I have an overly positive view of Dublin, and Europe in connection. I suspect that I would love living in Europe, but I don't think I really understand what I would be getting into even if I could figure out the whole visa, work permit part of things.
I live in the San Francisco Bay area, a part of the United States that many people think is a great place to live. The reality of living here is a little more complicated. There are a bunch of good points, but it is easy for visitors to overlook the many problems of living here.
I love the many languages you here just walking down the street here. I love the whole melting pot culture here. If you are a computer person, it is the center of the world. I came here as part of the computer industry and it was amazing to find myself on the edge of million dollar deals with people who they make movies about. (I said on the edge only). But in so many ways, living here is no fun.
The price of everything is brutal, housing especially. You make a lot of money; salaries are high, but you spend it all just keeping a roof over the head. You pay taxes like you are rich, but you are barely able to pay the bills. I'm pretty sure that my son and his girlfriend would like to become a couple on their own place, but even though both of them make a professional salary, as young people it is really hard for them to afford an apartment. Don't even get me started on the price of buying a house. If I had enough money to buy a house here, I would be far away, maybe in a small town somewhere near the sea...
Traffic is horrible. A lot of the time, you can't get anywhere very far away because of the huge number of people on the road. The Bay area has many interesting and beautiful places that I haven't seen for years. This place isn't as bad as Manila, for instance, but it's pretty bad.
The pace of life is brutal. This is the main thing that bugs me about living here. My life is being drained away by one annoying little problem after another. I've lived in several countries in my life, and I've never lived anywhere that eats up your life with trivia as much as the US does. As I sit here, I have a check for $0.11 that I need to cash left over from a settlement over a $2000 overcharge by my long distance carrier. This led to a separate case over another overcharge of $20, and now I have another check of $0.11. I guess I win. There are a million details to life in the US, and I find it difficult to disengage from all of the minutia of life here, the credit cards, the new management of the apartment I live in, the new construction going on that blocks the logical road to work, etc.
I don't mean for this thread to be a serious criticism of any place to live, but my summer visit to Dublin reminded me that many places are nice visit, but maybe not such great places to try to live. While I was in Ireland, I met many people who live there, who loved their city, but who were also looking for a way to move somewhere else. For me, I thought Dublin was heaven. All I did was eat great food, read great books, listen to mostly great music, and drink great beer. The minor details of making a living, finding a place to live, and dealing with bureaucracy were not a part of my life. I think I have an overly positive view of Dublin, and Europe in connection. I suspect that I would love living in Europe, but I don't think I really understand what I would be getting into even if I could figure out the whole visa, work permit part of things.
I live in the San Francisco Bay area, a part of the United States that many people think is a great place to live. The reality of living here is a little more complicated. There are a bunch of good points, but it is easy for visitors to overlook the many problems of living here.
I love the many languages you here just walking down the street here. I love the whole melting pot culture here. If you are a computer person, it is the center of the world. I came here as part of the computer industry and it was amazing to find myself on the edge of million dollar deals with people who they make movies about. (I said on the edge only). But in so many ways, living here is no fun.
The price of everything is brutal, housing especially. You make a lot of money; salaries are high, but you spend it all just keeping a roof over the head. You pay taxes like you are rich, but you are barely able to pay the bills. I'm pretty sure that my son and his girlfriend would like to become a couple on their own place, but even though both of them make a professional salary, as young people it is really hard for them to afford an apartment. Don't even get me started on the price of buying a house. If I had enough money to buy a house here, I would be far away, maybe in a small town somewhere near the sea...
Traffic is horrible. A lot of the time, you can't get anywhere very far away because of the huge number of people on the road. The Bay area has many interesting and beautiful places that I haven't seen for years. This place isn't as bad as Manila, for instance, but it's pretty bad.
The pace of life is brutal. This is the main thing that bugs me about living here. My life is being drained away by one annoying little problem after another. I've lived in several countries in my life, and I've never lived anywhere that eats up your life with trivia as much as the US does. As I sit here, I have a check for $0.11 that I need to cash left over from a settlement over a $2000 overcharge by my long distance carrier. This led to a separate case over another overcharge of $20, and now I have another check of $0.11. I guess I win. There are a million details to life in the US, and I find it difficult to disengage from all of the minutia of life here, the credit cards, the new management of the apartment I live in, the new construction going on that blocks the logical road to work, etc.