A friend of mine had to move from America's east coast to the west after her husband lost his job thanks to the recession (and found a new one). Here's her account on how the last thing you need are 'too many options' when all you want to do is just move lock, stock and barrel
Like a few others in America affected by recession, we too lost a job in January, but thankfully a new opportunity aligned relatively sooner for us. The new destinations was San Diego, city of the beaches, very pretty weather and hence very pretty and fun everything else. It had just snowed 4 inches here in DC the night before, when we got this news about the new job. The snow still thickly settled on our car hoods and on the grass with a persistent dull and cold weather. The news was honestly a relief. We’d soon be seeing the sun almost every day! I was totally looking forward to it. But we had to move!! Although we were excited, the ‘move’ almost was a nightmare, an experience in itself. We had about nine days to wind up things here before we started work there. The time seemed good enough initially to be able to sort everything but just until we got started.
One good and bad thing both at the same time about this country is the variety of options one has for practically every single thing. If you go to the general store all by yourself for the first time here, you are most likely to call a local to ask what’s what and if you don’t know anyone, better hit the internet first. You have a minimum of ten options for every single item, including potatoes. Let’s take a basic example - milk. You can choose from 1% fat, 2% fat, reduced fat, half milk, whole milk, skimmed milk, vitamin A milk, chocolate milk, and ah of course there’s always fat free milk, mother of god! How ever am I supposed to guess what to get when I first step in there? And all these are available under two to three brand names. Ever heard of these back in India? Life’s so simple I feel out there, Cow’s milk, Buffalo’s milk or pasteurized dairy milk. You prolly even know what each one means of your own without dependency on technology or anything else. Things like these make India so different from other countries I guess. It’s less complicated or less ‘systematic’ if you chose to say and sometimes they both mean the same! I have mixed feelings about our country racing in that direction too now. We are probably losing what makes us, us! But that is a long debatable issue I am sure.
Anyway coming back to the move. Now that we had in all about nine days to sort it out, we began reverse planning. We had to begin work by Monday and we’d need about three to four days to search and freeze on an apartment before that, so we’d need to reach there by about Thursday. That left us with five days back here! Of these five days three days we’d be spending on the internet and on the phone. Although out of context, one interesting observation: If you want to really nail down America someday, devoid them of internet. There’s nowhere they’ll go. They wouldn’t know what to do and where to go without it. And living in America it applies to all of us living there, so we began looking for apartments online and we looked for movers, for rental cars for our local commute there, for hotel deals to stay put for a few days during the apartment search etc.
Now here’s the thing, as we looked for movers, our options kept increasing, like I said before, OPTIONS. The more we looked the more options we found. We could higher professional movers and packers who’d do it all while we sit and watch but that was turning out unaffordable. We had other options of either getting movers while we packed all the stuff ourselves or sell everything on ‘craigslist’ (the all in one website of America) and drive across the country ourselves and save on all the shipping costs or just sell the big furniture items and ship the smaller boxes using ups or usps, the US postal services and of course permutations of these options. We could haul the furniture and the car on a rental trailer, a popular service here called u-haul. But who knew how to drive such a long truck? It was too risky especially with the long distance we had to cover. All soaked in calculating and comparing to opt for the most economic option, we were tired and wired, totally confused with three full days, morning to night of all this research and with our deadlines racing closer we had to finally decide on something and just stop looking for more. Just then we came across this one more option called ‘u-pak’ where they’d leave a pod or trailer depending on the quantity and size of your goods outside your house for three days and you can load and unload it yourself while they’d do the transportation. We called them to get a quotation for the move and fortunately and finally it turned out to be one of the affordable and convincing alternatives.
So on the fourth day, a Tuesday, by noon we made our decision and asked them to leave a pod outside our house and we’d ship the car separately. Well all the actual work was yet after this when we had to begin packing and thereafter load the pod all by ourselves. In our in between breaks we’d look at apartments online and call up their leasing offices to enquire about vacancies, rates and if they had any specials running. ‘Specials’ are some sort of discounts they offer to lure tenants. They’d quote a certain monthly rate with a minimum one year lease and say first entire month free or say 20% off on the first two months etc. We had a short list of apartments before reaching there that’d save us some time. By now we were running one day behind schedule and also running in and out of the house packing our furniture and boxes in the pod. In about 18 to 20 hours we managed to have it all set to go by Thursday. I’d say we did great in that much time! Assembling things inside required a little skill as we had to take care nothing flew around crashing and dashing the other things while on its way across 3000 miles.
Finally we flew down on Friday; all exhausted we were literally snoring throughout the flight. We stayed in a hotel for about three to four days while looking for apartments and exploring San Diego in our ink blue rental Mazda. Four days later our pod arrived and thankfully everything was intact. We chose an apartment that was not on the shortlist and we happened to come across this one on our way to some place else. With a little broken back one week after unloading the pod, I sit here on the deck of our condo that has a nice view of the pool and the canyon beyond, the sun is shining nice and bright and I sort of relish the sweet n sour memories of the move we had to make in that cold. It was fun though!
Like a few others in America affected by recession, we too lost a job in January, but thankfully a new opportunity aligned relatively sooner for us. The new destinations was San Diego, city of the beaches, very pretty weather and hence very pretty and fun everything else. It had just snowed 4 inches here in DC the night before, when we got this news about the new job. The snow still thickly settled on our car hoods and on the grass with a persistent dull and cold weather. The news was honestly a relief. We’d soon be seeing the sun almost every day! I was totally looking forward to it. But we had to move!! Although we were excited, the ‘move’ almost was a nightmare, an experience in itself. We had about nine days to wind up things here before we started work there. The time seemed good enough initially to be able to sort everything but just until we got started.
One good and bad thing both at the same time about this country is the variety of options one has for practically every single thing. If you go to the general store all by yourself for the first time here, you are most likely to call a local to ask what’s what and if you don’t know anyone, better hit the internet first. You have a minimum of ten options for every single item, including potatoes. Let’s take a basic example - milk. You can choose from 1% fat, 2% fat, reduced fat, half milk, whole milk, skimmed milk, vitamin A milk, chocolate milk, and ah of course there’s always fat free milk, mother of god! How ever am I supposed to guess what to get when I first step in there? And all these are available under two to three brand names. Ever heard of these back in India? Life’s so simple I feel out there, Cow’s milk, Buffalo’s milk or pasteurized dairy milk. You prolly even know what each one means of your own without dependency on technology or anything else. Things like these make India so different from other countries I guess. It’s less complicated or less ‘systematic’ if you chose to say and sometimes they both mean the same! I have mixed feelings about our country racing in that direction too now. We are probably losing what makes us, us! But that is a long debatable issue I am sure.
Anyway coming back to the move. Now that we had in all about nine days to sort it out, we began reverse planning. We had to begin work by Monday and we’d need about three to four days to search and freeze on an apartment before that, so we’d need to reach there by about Thursday. That left us with five days back here! Of these five days three days we’d be spending on the internet and on the phone. Although out of context, one interesting observation: If you want to really nail down America someday, devoid them of internet. There’s nowhere they’ll go. They wouldn’t know what to do and where to go without it. And living in America it applies to all of us living there, so we began looking for apartments online and we looked for movers, for rental cars for our local commute there, for hotel deals to stay put for a few days during the apartment search etc.
Now here’s the thing, as we looked for movers, our options kept increasing, like I said before, OPTIONS. The more we looked the more options we found. We could higher professional movers and packers who’d do it all while we sit and watch but that was turning out unaffordable. We had other options of either getting movers while we packed all the stuff ourselves or sell everything on ‘craigslist’ (the all in one website of America) and drive across the country ourselves and save on all the shipping costs or just sell the big furniture items and ship the smaller boxes using ups or usps, the US postal services and of course permutations of these options. We could haul the furniture and the car on a rental trailer, a popular service here called u-haul. But who knew how to drive such a long truck? It was too risky especially with the long distance we had to cover. All soaked in calculating and comparing to opt for the most economic option, we were tired and wired, totally confused with three full days, morning to night of all this research and with our deadlines racing closer we had to finally decide on something and just stop looking for more. Just then we came across this one more option called ‘u-pak’ where they’d leave a pod or trailer depending on the quantity and size of your goods outside your house for three days and you can load and unload it yourself while they’d do the transportation. We called them to get a quotation for the move and fortunately and finally it turned out to be one of the affordable and convincing alternatives.
So on the fourth day, a Tuesday, by noon we made our decision and asked them to leave a pod outside our house and we’d ship the car separately. Well all the actual work was yet after this when we had to begin packing and thereafter load the pod all by ourselves. In our in between breaks we’d look at apartments online and call up their leasing offices to enquire about vacancies, rates and if they had any specials running. ‘Specials’ are some sort of discounts they offer to lure tenants. They’d quote a certain monthly rate with a minimum one year lease and say first entire month free or say 20% off on the first two months etc. We had a short list of apartments before reaching there that’d save us some time. By now we were running one day behind schedule and also running in and out of the house packing our furniture and boxes in the pod. In about 18 to 20 hours we managed to have it all set to go by Thursday. I’d say we did great in that much time! Assembling things inside required a little skill as we had to take care nothing flew around crashing and dashing the other things while on its way across 3000 miles.
Finally we flew down on Friday; all exhausted we were literally snoring throughout the flight. We stayed in a hotel for about three to four days while looking for apartments and exploring San Diego in our ink blue rental Mazda. Four days later our pod arrived and thankfully everything was intact. We chose an apartment that was not on the shortlist and we happened to come across this one on our way to some place else. With a little broken back one week after unloading the pod, I sit here on the deck of our condo that has a nice view of the pool and the canyon beyond, the sun is shining nice and bright and I sort of relish the sweet n sour memories of the move we had to make in that cold. It was fun though!
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