First Impressions
I've finished my chores for today (laundry, cleaning and a bit of shopping) so now I can take some time to write.
We're pretty settled. We've got basics in place. Besides the dishes, sheets, and towels I wrote about earlier, we have some welcome extras.
I got a used Dyson vacuum cleaner for 30 pounds. I love the design. I like how the handle also houses the extension hose. And it's neat to see how it works: it creates a vortex inside this transparent cylinder; centrifugal force pushes all the dirt to the outside, where it's caught below, so you don't need bags and you don't lose suction as the dirt fills. Though the one I got seems weaker in suction than I'd expect.
I did get that Monitor Audio i-Deck. When I auditioned it, it wasn't as impressive to me as the reviews I'd read made it out to be. But it's the best-sounding iPod dock I've heard anywhere. I'd considered going up to the next step at that particular hi-fi shop: a Denon micro CD/AM/FM/DAB amplifier and a pair of bookshelf B&W speakers, but once I'd added an iPod dock, the price would have been well over three times as much as the i-Deck, and the sound wasn't that much better. I may complement it with a DAB (digital radio signals) tuner soon.
We also got a 20" LCD TV. I know, I know. TV in our house. But we wanted to learn more about the culture. We've been seeing four basic TV channels in our travels and the programming is quite excellent - it seems there's almost always something worth watching. Last night I enjoyed Ricky Gervais' Extras plus a new sketch comedy programme, That Mitchell And Webb Look, on BBC Two. We also have a very basic cable package that gets us about 70 stations and 4 megabit-per-second broadband Internet access. It took me a few phone calls to get the cable modem and wireless router working yesterday but now I can surf with Margo's laptop on the kitchen table, as I am now.
Our House
Like I mentioned earlier, we're in a three-bedroom house. I don't know if it's considered semi-detatched (usually two houses in one structure) or terraced (several houses in one long structure, usually the length of the block): we're one of four houses in a structure.
The house very bright inside. Every room has sunlight, even the bathroom. The windows are all double-pane. There's a solid front door behind a tiny foyer that's about two feet deep. We have a small yard in front enclosed by a fence, but then that's nothing unusual - I think every yard is fenced, everyplace I've seen. We have a larger yard in the back, with a wooden patio and a French door opening onto it.
Most rooms are carpeted - I want to say Berber carpeting but I'm not sure how that's defined; it's definitely not shag by any means. I think it's new. The walls are also freshly painted. We have new beds, mattresses, dressers and wardrobes. Unfortunately, they're all offgassing, so we keep our windows open when we can. We're looking forward to personalising the house with our own unique stinks.
We don't have a clothes washer/dryer yet but it should be delivered soon. This is a bit of a hardship. My new sheets were pretty itchy and smelled strongly of ... I don't know, plastic or cardboard or something. Our new towels didn't seem so absorbent. And it's a drag for me to pack my travel bag full of dirty laundry and haul it to a laundromat. I'm an adult! You're not supposed to have to use a laundromat after college.
We struggled with the controls on the electric cooker. The timer setting has to be just so for it to work. That was one of our first calls for help to our landlord, who conveniently lives a few doors up the street with his wife and children. We're also seeing that it doesn't take much to trip the circuit that the cooker is on, once it's turned on: that thing is a power hog. When I look at the meter (upstairs above the door in Sarah's room) it spins like a frisbee with the cooker on.
Our hot water comes from a gas flash-burner, so there's no water tank. You turn the hot tap on, and moments later you get hot water freshly heated. It works well in the shower but I'm adapting to it for washing dishes: you need a minimum amount of flow to get it heated, so if you're just rinsing dishes sometimes it's cold. I'd also most recently been spoiled with two sinks, a spray rinser, and a faucet handle that lets you choose hot/cold as well as on/off, so I'm adapting to get by without any of those niceties. Please play your violins for me.
Like I wrote earlier, there are no closets here, and we're still figuring out our storage needs. I think they'll be mostly solved with bookshelves, and maybe a cart for the TV and a desk for the computer. But we don't have too much stuff, so it's not a big issue yet. The bathroom was completely without racks or storage, so we got a toilet paper holder that suctions to the tile wall, and an over-the-door towel rack plus a floor-standing towel caddy, so we're getting by.
Our Neighbourhood
I won't share our address here because of security concerns, but if you email me I'll pass it on. I can also give you a Google Earth .kmz file that will let you zoom to our house from space.
Sarah and I walk to and from her school. It takes about 15 minutes each way. Her school is actually on our block, but it's a really big block. Houses ring it, as well as the Ipswich Hospital, and inside the block are many medical buildings, the primary school, the high school, a sports centre, golf driving range, and soccer (football) fields.
We have a Chinese take-out place, a bike shop, an old appliance store, and a Post Office/convenience store/toy store nearby. But we don't have any pubs or restaurants or chemists or chip shops (that I know of yet).
I think where and how we live is pretty typical. Single houses are rare, I'd guess 5% of the total housing stock; most people live in semi-detatched housing, terraced housing, or flats. And it seems most people don't have the chip shop and pub around the corner; this is more common the closer to the town centre.
Despite the high density, our neighbourhood has sort of a suburban feel. It's definitely not studded with shops like closer-in neighbourhoods (though we're only a mile or two out), but it also is friendlier to families. I've noticed several (a dozen?) kids wearing the uniform of Sarah's school on our street alone. I think some of her classmates are on our street. It's also very quiet here.
We're well-served by public transit. There's one route I use that's steps away, running every 15 minutes during the week; I can get to/from downtown in 15 minutes. I may get a bike eventually but I'm hesitant because the streets are much narrower here; also, fewer people seem to ride and the ones that do usually don't wear helmets, so it seems bike transportation isn't as accepted here, certainly not like Portland.
Ipswich
Ipswich is a medium-sized city; larger than Colchester but nothing like Birmingham or Liverpool. It's also close to Norwich (home of Bill Bryson!), Harwich, and Sanwich. (Okay, I made the last one up.)
There's a football stadium; the team is doing badly at present. There are a few towers downtown but I'm not too familiar with who's who yet. There are two main shopping streets and a large public square; I've been spending a lot of time there this past week getting supplies. There's also a nice library (I've got a library card!); art galleries; and museums I haven't seen yet. The River Orwell goes through town and there's a large shipping port and a growing waterfront area with lots of redevelopment. This is also part of a Cambridge-to-Ipswich technology corridor; maybe I'll get a piece of that action soon. The train station is just across the river from the town centre; it runs toward London in one direction (an hour and ten minutes away) and Norwich in the other.
I'm looking forward to exploring the pubs here. There's also a beer festival this weekend that I intend to take part in. (I'll go sometime Wednesday through Friday; Margo's booked us on a trip to Amsterdam for the weekend; more on that later.) You can also learn more by visiting the site of the Ipswich Borough Council.
So that's mostly where we are. I've just started looking for Java contracts in Ipswich yesterday (I applied for the only available one matching my skills) and am coordinating after-school care for Sarah that will allow me to work full days. We'll have lots more to write about soon.
We're pretty settled. We've got basics in place. Besides the dishes, sheets, and towels I wrote about earlier, we have some welcome extras.
I got a used Dyson vacuum cleaner for 30 pounds. I love the design. I like how the handle also houses the extension hose. And it's neat to see how it works: it creates a vortex inside this transparent cylinder; centrifugal force pushes all the dirt to the outside, where it's caught below, so you don't need bags and you don't lose suction as the dirt fills. Though the one I got seems weaker in suction than I'd expect.
I did get that Monitor Audio i-Deck. When I auditioned it, it wasn't as impressive to me as the reviews I'd read made it out to be. But it's the best-sounding iPod dock I've heard anywhere. I'd considered going up to the next step at that particular hi-fi shop: a Denon micro CD/AM/FM/DAB amplifier and a pair of bookshelf B&W speakers, but once I'd added an iPod dock, the price would have been well over three times as much as the i-Deck, and the sound wasn't that much better. I may complement it with a DAB (digital radio signals) tuner soon.
We also got a 20" LCD TV. I know, I know. TV in our house. But we wanted to learn more about the culture. We've been seeing four basic TV channels in our travels and the programming is quite excellent - it seems there's almost always something worth watching. Last night I enjoyed Ricky Gervais' Extras plus a new sketch comedy programme, That Mitchell And Webb Look, on BBC Two. We also have a very basic cable package that gets us about 70 stations and 4 megabit-per-second broadband Internet access. It took me a few phone calls to get the cable modem and wireless router working yesterday but now I can surf with Margo's laptop on the kitchen table, as I am now.
Our House
Like I mentioned earlier, we're in a three-bedroom house. I don't know if it's considered semi-detatched (usually two houses in one structure) or terraced (several houses in one long structure, usually the length of the block): we're one of four houses in a structure.
The house very bright inside. Every room has sunlight, even the bathroom. The windows are all double-pane. There's a solid front door behind a tiny foyer that's about two feet deep. We have a small yard in front enclosed by a fence, but then that's nothing unusual - I think every yard is fenced, everyplace I've seen. We have a larger yard in the back, with a wooden patio and a French door opening onto it.
Most rooms are carpeted - I want to say Berber carpeting but I'm not sure how that's defined; it's definitely not shag by any means. I think it's new. The walls are also freshly painted. We have new beds, mattresses, dressers and wardrobes. Unfortunately, they're all offgassing, so we keep our windows open when we can. We're looking forward to personalising the house with our own unique stinks.
We don't have a clothes washer/dryer yet but it should be delivered soon. This is a bit of a hardship. My new sheets were pretty itchy and smelled strongly of ... I don't know, plastic or cardboard or something. Our new towels didn't seem so absorbent. And it's a drag for me to pack my travel bag full of dirty laundry and haul it to a laundromat. I'm an adult! You're not supposed to have to use a laundromat after college.
We struggled with the controls on the electric cooker. The timer setting has to be just so for it to work. That was one of our first calls for help to our landlord, who conveniently lives a few doors up the street with his wife and children. We're also seeing that it doesn't take much to trip the circuit that the cooker is on, once it's turned on: that thing is a power hog. When I look at the meter (upstairs above the door in Sarah's room) it spins like a frisbee with the cooker on.
Our hot water comes from a gas flash-burner, so there's no water tank. You turn the hot tap on, and moments later you get hot water freshly heated. It works well in the shower but I'm adapting to it for washing dishes: you need a minimum amount of flow to get it heated, so if you're just rinsing dishes sometimes it's cold. I'd also most recently been spoiled with two sinks, a spray rinser, and a faucet handle that lets you choose hot/cold as well as on/off, so I'm adapting to get by without any of those niceties. Please play your violins for me.
Like I wrote earlier, there are no closets here, and we're still figuring out our storage needs. I think they'll be mostly solved with bookshelves, and maybe a cart for the TV and a desk for the computer. But we don't have too much stuff, so it's not a big issue yet. The bathroom was completely without racks or storage, so we got a toilet paper holder that suctions to the tile wall, and an over-the-door towel rack plus a floor-standing towel caddy, so we're getting by.
Our Neighbourhood
I won't share our address here because of security concerns, but if you email me I'll pass it on. I can also give you a Google Earth .kmz file that will let you zoom to our house from space.
Sarah and I walk to and from her school. It takes about 15 minutes each way. Her school is actually on our block, but it's a really big block. Houses ring it, as well as the Ipswich Hospital, and inside the block are many medical buildings, the primary school, the high school, a sports centre, golf driving range, and soccer (football) fields.
We have a Chinese take-out place, a bike shop, an old appliance store, and a Post Office/convenience store/toy store nearby. But we don't have any pubs or restaurants or chemists or chip shops (that I know of yet).
I think where and how we live is pretty typical. Single houses are rare, I'd guess 5% of the total housing stock; most people live in semi-detatched housing, terraced housing, or flats. And it seems most people don't have the chip shop and pub around the corner; this is more common the closer to the town centre.
Despite the high density, our neighbourhood has sort of a suburban feel. It's definitely not studded with shops like closer-in neighbourhoods (though we're only a mile or two out), but it also is friendlier to families. I've noticed several (a dozen?) kids wearing the uniform of Sarah's school on our street alone. I think some of her classmates are on our street. It's also very quiet here.
We're well-served by public transit. There's one route I use that's steps away, running every 15 minutes during the week; I can get to/from downtown in 15 minutes. I may get a bike eventually but I'm hesitant because the streets are much narrower here; also, fewer people seem to ride and the ones that do usually don't wear helmets, so it seems bike transportation isn't as accepted here, certainly not like Portland.
Ipswich
Ipswich is a medium-sized city; larger than Colchester but nothing like Birmingham or Liverpool. It's also close to Norwich (home of Bill Bryson!), Harwich, and Sanwich. (Okay, I made the last one up.)
There's a football stadium; the team is doing badly at present. There are a few towers downtown but I'm not too familiar with who's who yet. There are two main shopping streets and a large public square; I've been spending a lot of time there this past week getting supplies. There's also a nice library (I've got a library card!); art galleries; and museums I haven't seen yet. The River Orwell goes through town and there's a large shipping port and a growing waterfront area with lots of redevelopment. This is also part of a Cambridge-to-Ipswich technology corridor; maybe I'll get a piece of that action soon. The train station is just across the river from the town centre; it runs toward London in one direction (an hour and ten minutes away) and Norwich in the other.
I'm looking forward to exploring the pubs here. There's also a beer festival this weekend that I intend to take part in. (I'll go sometime Wednesday through Friday; Margo's booked us on a trip to Amsterdam for the weekend; more on that later.) You can also learn more by visiting the site of the Ipswich Borough Council.
So that's mostly where we are. I've just started looking for Java contracts in Ipswich yesterday (I applied for the only available one matching my skills) and am coordinating after-school care for Sarah that will allow me to work full days. We'll have lots more to write about soon.
posted by Michael Nelson at 5:07 am
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