Apartment in California: Part 2

I have groused in the past about the absurd expense of apartments in the Silicon Valley area, given the rapidly rising demand and limited supply. Well, my corporate housing benefit expired mid-September, and so I had to bite the bullet and find a place. (The amenities at Google do make if possible to live on site….lots of food, showers, comfy sofas...but that is not encouraged :-) - -

My lovely real estate agent Rita took me on a couple of days of apartment touring. My criteria were, I thought, pretty modest, and I continued to fondly believe that I could find a bargain. (I don’t care about school districts, and I don’t need much space, and I don’t need too many amenities on site - - I can even do laundry at work if need be.) I did want proximity to work - - no more than 10 miles away, given the horrific Silicon Valley traffic. People pointed out to me that I could take the Google buses (very comfortable and equipped with wifi) that shuttle Googlers all over northern California, but I am too accustomed to the autonomy of driving. I don’t want to leave work at a particular time because that is when the bus leaves from my Google campus in Sunnyvale to community X; I want to leave work when I finish what I’m doing. I no longer have babysitters that I need to relieve at a certain time...I think I was an easy client to please.

I did find one place that was a few thousand dollars/month less than other options. I thought I had found the golden nugget. But when I did a google search on the property, there were lots of reviews of tenants saying their cars were broken into; their apartments robbed; and that management was unresponsive. Representative complaints? Outliers? Who knows...But since I don’t know the communities here, and even a “nice” complex can be abutting a less desirable and more crime-ridden area, I shied away…

So that brought me back to the more expensive units.

It occurs to me that there are no bargains in the age of the internet and comparative pricing. Just as we the consumer can compare the price of a car or a washing machine at 10 different online sites, so too can the landlords. They are so savvy about pricing, that the prices shift daily (based on demand? outlooks? who knows...)

Lots of housing designed for the growing tech community has sprung up in Silicon Valley over the last few years. Since the communities are competing with one another, there are certain basic amenities that most of the units have, such as pools, gyms, media rooms, computing and print facilities, meeting spaces. Not unlike the sorts of hotels many of us stay at on business trips. Given my modest needs, and given that Google already has all of these things, I didn’t need those peripherals. But you can’t strip them away - -they come with the package. (It would be nice to have a “cafeteria plan” of options -- where you can point out that you won’t be using all the amenities, and so you need not subscribe…)

The apartment I chose is a studio that is about 6 miles from my Google office, with no scary reviews on line. The complex boasts multiple olympic sized pools that I will never use…(I’m a bad swimmer, I can’t see well when I remove my glasses or contacts, if I wear a bathing cap, I don’t hear well, if I don’t, my hair gets frizzy - -  :-) It has lots of walking paths (that I will use). And a Starbucks and small grocery on site (that I will also use.) Funny how the Starbucks actually did play in my head as an important feature. While I was in corporate housing in Santa Clara for 3 months, there were no nearby stores that were walking distance. If you were out of coffee, you had to drive somewhere. Or go without. Not a big deal, but ability to get coffee on site is a nice amenity for me. I am reminded of taking kids on college tours to select colleges. I hear from parents how their student “felt right” on one campus and “less right” on another. On your walking tour you are not seeing the reputations of professors or the special majors offered by that school. You are seeing buildings, and kids wandering around campus. I wonder how many major decisions - such as which university to choose over the next four years - - are influenced by trivia such as walking paths and a nearby Starbucks.

This studio in San Jose (which is not the most prestigious zip code in the area -- Palo Alto would have been more expensive) - - will be $2300/month. I am told by friends familiar with the area that I got a real bargain.

I have just moved in. Some pictures included.

Beauty - Continuous, or intermittent?

My friend and former colleague John Thomas once shared the following recommendation: When you have a beautiful piece of art, you should place it carefully in your home. Don’t put it in an obvious place that you will see every day, because you will habituate, and stop noticing its beauty. Instead, put it in a more obscure spot, that you won’t encounter all that frequently, so that every time you see it, you will gasp.

I wonder whether that would be a good way to run a company like Google, too. There are so many exceptional offerings, but you are confronted with them daily. And you stop gasping. And you start saying: “why don’t they have pomegranate flavored water today?” Maybe intermittent reinforcement would be better, so that there are surprises on some days and not others. When there are surprises daily, they stop feeling like surprises.

There is so much to discover, though, that there are still lots of opportunities for me to catch my breath, and delight in the fact that “Google offers THIS, too??” - -I have captured a few of these in photos. 

We were at a meeting, and I noticed a dog park behind the building. Google is, by the way, a very dog-oriented company, with employees bringing in their well-mannered dogs many times a week.

Here was another wonder-worthy moment...There are (free) gum machines in Sunnyvale. Apparently the gum had an ingredient (xylitol) that is dangerous to dogs. Google influenced the manufacturer to change the recipe, so that if gum inadvertently falls to the ground and a dog eats it, he won’t become sick. 

Note also the terraces (and the views) outside the Google NYC building.

Accumulating "stuff"

Anyone who hasn’t moved in a long time can anticipate how daunting it would be to figure out what to keep and what to toss. To the point where I know people that opt not to downsize their homes, since they don’t know where they would put their stuff.

I had the experience of packing up everything we owned (including the boxes stuck in the eaves in the attic) before we left for our overseas assignment in India a few years ago. So I observed with horror and amusement the number of things we had accumulated, that we never or rarely used or looked at. I made a silent promise to self to be more mindful of what gets saved and stored, so that I don’t get overwhelmed with stuff.

I came to California in June, with 3 large suitcases.  As part of the Google benefit, I had fully furnished corporate housing for 3 months.

As the 3 months ended, and I had to move my personal items out, I anticipated having not much more than the same 3 suitcases. But I did have more. I am watching stuff accumulate, even as I try to be mindful. Some of it is needed. Some of it is “stuff” - -not needed, but too good or too new to throw away. The “may come in handy one day” category. Shampoo and conditioner are a good example. You get adventurous one day and buy brands you have never used. You discover over time that you don’t really like them as much as your original brands, so you buy those too. But you don’t throw away the barely-used other containers; maybe you’ll use them if your favored brand runs out; or maybe you’ll use them just to change things up. Voila; your bathroom cabinets get full. As do kitchen cabinets. And the clothing cabinets. So just “mindfulness” has not been enough of a deterrent - -