Saturday, October 23, 2004

Apartment decision should be in the past

Today I decided that I've spent too much time looking for apartments already and things weren't going to get much better than they were, I was just going to get more and more points in the "Pareto front". So, I went back to the apartment I liked most and filled the application. I wrote the checks already, but it all depends on the "background check" that is done on all new perspective renters. There shouldn't be any problem, but right now I can't confirm with 100% certainty that I have an apartment.

I decided that it made much more sense for me to live outside Seattle, in Bellevue. Why? Because I'm not a "go out every night" kind of person. I prefer to either be working in the office or to stay at home and enjoy my hobbies (well, my research right now, until I finish everything). If I want to go out is mainly to go to restaurants and as I can't eat at the same place often, I would end up using the car anyway. Being in a suburb means less traffic to go do groceries, less violence, less noise. It also means longer commutes, but, hey, I'm from Sao Paulo, Brazil: 40 minute commutes are normal even if you live in the city.

I also went to the synagogue this morning. I decided to try Beth Shalom, a conservative congregation. I got the day that there was a Bat Mitzvah going on so I ended up going to a very packed service (mainly at the end - it started with around 6 people inside the sanctuary, but ended with something like 150 people that is still small for my experience, but much larger than what you would find on a normal Bat Mitzvah in Oklahoma) where everybody was a stranger. I had to leave early because the moving people were going to pass by here to drop my 3 boxes, so I just didn't enjoy all the food and talk after the service.

There were some things, to tell you the truth, that didn't quite meet my taste. First, the first cantor (a girl, maybe 20 years old), had a low female voice, very soft and terribly out of tune. She knew how to read Hebrew for sure, but it's not enough. Then there was a whole complicated process in the Torah reading to include the whole family of the bat-Mitvah'ed girl that was just a little too distracting. And the service ended with another cantor, not a ~40-year old woman, that had more voice power and tuning, but was still too low for a cantor. Imagine, I'm sometimes considered a Bass-II in choir (i.e. a low bass, the lowest voice in the choir) and it was a little too low for me to feel confortable singing along. It annoyed me...

I guess it all means that next weekend I'll try somewhere else. Most probably an orthodox congregation... But those are hard to choose from, unfortunately. Too many variations, and there are some that it's just impossible to be able to follow the service. I have a week to decide, though.

So, as I mentioned, my boxes arrived with my computer. Now I just have to find out an internet service provider! Right now I'm using the laptop from work that can connect to Amazon's network. Most lower-cost providers require for you to use their dialer and browser, but none of them, as far as I can tell, support Linux, and I really don't want to drop my Linux.

Alright, time to start working a little on my research. Let me get back on track, because life is going to be pretty hard very soon.

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