austin-the good, the bad and the ugly

yes, i moved to austin. 3 weeks to be precise - new job and new apt. in fact a lot of new stuff- furniture, leather couch, bed, and a new 50" plasma. so far the place looks nice.

the good - austin is a smaller and "young"er city than san antonio. it has an ikea nearby (yes my friend, to a bachelor that means a lot :-) ).

the bad - traffic and drivers. i mean not only the jams, but the way people drive.i have seen similar traffic in CA but somehow the drivers werent that crazy there. oh well, what do i know.

the ugly - space. whosoever said that "everything is big in texas" forgot completely about austin. the parking space in my apt is a small problem in itself (with many of them marked for 'compact cars' and are really really cramped), but i realized the full shock only when i went to a 24 hr gold gym 5 miles from here. since i was used to seeing a pool in almost all the gold gyms in san antonio, i presumed by default that a 24 hr one in austin would also have one. not only was i wrong, i was way off. it seems that all the gold gyms near my apt (yes, 5 of them) dont have anything resembling a swimming pool. the only one which has, is 16 miles away and i read really horrible reviews of the pool (which i can understand given the shortage of pools)

now, i am stuck with a choice to join lifetime fitness (which is high end costing a neat buck every month-near my apt) or YMCA (which has a good pool-but the rest looks like a scene from a public utlity space-besides its near my office). even YMCA is $55/month which is more than double what i paid for the gym. it seems people dont like to swim in south austin.

in my life otherwise, rest seems fine for now, except that money is really in short supply right now- though 3 months of job should bring me back to where i started. the ppl in office seem nice too, especially in my dept. i have yet to get back to chess, after taking a break for 2-3 months. and for the last two days, i hosted a friend of mine from dallas. we went to a water park - but perhaps thats a story for another post.