Beginning to settle down..

February 12th, 2006 at 05:41am

Its two weeks since I landed over here, and I am slowly beginning to settle down. The daily normal routine is in shape now.

Work wise, things are pretty hectic. I am here as an replacement for Suroor, who has been here for nearly 2.5 yrs now. He would be leaving back to India tomorrow. We had a two week transition., and most of it went on smoothly. But the past two weeks were kind of very hectic. So, from this Monday, I would be on my own and it would continue to be hectic for the next couple of weeks.

On the home front, the apartment that I moved into was kind of unfurnished. Its an 1BHK apartment. The features available at the time I moved in were :
1. Carpeted flooring
2. Electric Surface heating (something similar to hot plates in India) with Oven
3. Fridge
4. Dish washing Unit
5. Air conditioning (heater and cooler)
6. One fan in the Hall, and a light in the kitchen!

So, that’s about it!. so, the entire house was pretty much empty, and I had to take care of…
1. Electricity
2. Lights, Microwave, Vacuum cleaner, and other household stuff
3. Bed/Mattress
4. Cable + Internet connection
5. TV
6. Furniture - chairs, tables, iron board etc
7. Lot of other small things..

Getting electricity connection was pretty easy. The house was already powered. All I had to do was call up the power company and tell them that I had moved into this particular apartment. And I had to deposit around $160 as security deposit, which is refundable.

Lights…… got two lamps from Walmart. One for the bedroom, and one for the hall. They are pretty much basic, and look good. Also bought a basic microwave oven and vacuum cleaner and lot of other household stuff from Walmart.

Getting a mattress was quite a challenge. I got a very good second-hand king sized mattress. Sriram, one of my friend & colleague knew a person who deals with second hand mattresses. So, we went over to his place, and bought one. The only problem that we had was, moving the mattress into my apartment since its located on the 1st floor! (or 2nd floor if you are in US!). But thanks to Andy (another friend of mine), we managed to move it with no major struggle or may be a little bit of struggle!

The only Cable + Hi Speed Internet service provider in this area is Charter. I had asked them for a connection on the day I moved into the apartment. i.e., on the 31st of Jan. They gave me an appointment for installation on the 8th of Feb. And the time slot given was 10 AM to 2 PM. That was the earliest available one. And the next available appointment was 13th Feb. I wanted the Internet access at the earliest and went ahead with the 8th Feb option, even though it was a Wednesday and I had meetings at office from 11 AM to 12 PM. I requested Charter if they could come at around 12-2PM time, but they said that its not possible, and they can come anytime during the time slot given (ie, 10 AM to 2 PM!). I asked them to give me a pre-call, and I only hoped that they wouldn’t come at 10 AM. On Feb 8th, luckily, they didn’t call me upto 12.30 PM. I came back home at 12.30 PM and waited…..and the technicians did not turn up even upto 2 PM! Called up the local charter office, and finally, the technicians came in a few mins later. It took them around 20 mins to install. So, finally, I was online with a 3 Mbps connection. And, the speed rocks!

I am yet to buy TV and other furniture. May be sometime this week I will have to go out for one more round of shopping. Otherwise I am kind of done with shopping for most of the things required on a day to day basis.

Oh yes, yesterday I applied for my SSN. The process was quite straight forward, and took around 20 mins to complete. I should be getting my SSN in a couple of weeks.

Yesterday being Suroor’s last Friday in the US, around 6 of us went out for a movie named “Firewall“. It was a decent movie. 6.5 on a scale of 10.

And yes…….for almost the entire day today, it snowed.

Tags: Kingsport, Life, lifestyle, USA

Entry Filed under: Kingsport, Life, USA