13: On Moving

Moving sucks, but with one minor exception this may have been the most perfectly executed move I have ever participated in.

My last day of work was on July 17. The morning of July 18, we rented a 12′ truck from Penske. We loaded the truck from 8 AM – 11 AM outside our LA apartment, moving our one million pound mattress, one thousand pound cat tree, and 75% of our total belongings. In three hours! That is pretty rad. However, once 11 AM rolled around the outside temperature hit 101 degrees F and that is when we knew we would have to slow down. We didn’t finish the remaining 25% until 8 PM that night, but because we got that early start we were able to take it easy in loading the truck and didn’t wear ourselves out too badly.

Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to our friendly neighbors. They were kind enough to invite us over to dinner that evening, where we replaced 90000 of the 100000 calories we burnt that day with the best Korean BBQ I have ever had in my life (and I don’t even eat beef!). This is where we learned to soak meat in beer prior to cooking it in order to get it as juicy as possible. Like beer can chicken, minus the ghettoness.

We left our apartment at 4 AM Sunday morning, on a few hours of sleep. This could have been terrible news, but two Starbucks Doubleshot Espresso cans from the nearby 7-11 (one for me, one for the lady) was more than enough to keep us alert and moving through the Central California heat all the way to Berkeley. Dariya gracefully managed driving the car with two clambering cats, and was kind enough to reserve a truck with a CD player for me, so I could be comfortable driving the behemoth through the Tejon Pass out of LA and through the whatever Pass into East Bay.

We arrived outside our apartment around 10 AM. This is normally wake up time on the weekend, but here we had the whole day to unload. It was a cool 70 degrees outside (compared to the 100+ degree heat we just left!) and once the cats were in the house sniffing around we unloaded the truck in just a couple of hours. I don’t know where all the energy came from, but I credit the cool Berkeley summer and the caffeine rush from the drink. We even had time in the day to have lunch, surf Craigslist at a cafe, drive the truck to Alameda, pick up a couch, and set that up as well. Not bad.

The one minor blemish is the parking ticket the truck got Monday morning, for $41. This further solidifies Berkeley’s reputation as home of the curious subspecies of hippies known as the jerkies, who are like WoW nerds that look down upon newbies, but with environmental things instead of, I don’t know, whatever WoW people do. That’s probably unfair… to WoW players. I’m sorry about that guys. But yeah, parking tickets for moving trucks? That is like ticketing pedestrians for loitering at a stoplight. Lame.

And so we are in Berkeley now. A lot of people have commented that it is foolhardy to have given up our secure and high-paying jobs in an economic climate such as this, but the more I hear this observation the more I am convinced it is incorrect. I need to increase the depth of my technical knowledge and my level of exposure to medical MEMS research and development. I will achieve exactly this during my graduate career at Cal. As for money, well I’ve earned enough so far, and the fellowship Berkeley has given me to study here certainly will make the transition to grad student life a lot easier.