Picture My World

We’ve been in Boston for about 6 weeks now. Executive summary: Boston is nice. Moving sucks.

Prior to the move we heard that Bostonians were a little cold or aloof and really bad drivers. So far, the former is false and the latter is true, but they are no worse than Vancouver drivers (and definitely better than Richmond drivers!). One local that we met said Bostonians are obligated to tell outsiders that they are cold and aloof even though it’s not true. I hope they don’t come get me for revealing the truth.

We haven’t had a lot of time to explore Boston proper yet. We spent our first month out in Framingham in a hotel, so didn’t get into the city at all. A couple of weeks ago, we went to the Boston Common which was quite nice. The architecture here is fabulous — and now that I’ve finally unpacked my camera, I hope to start photographing it.

The move has been a series of little pains the entire way - and it’s still going.  The MathWorks provided a really good relocation benefit, but many things outside of their control were imperfect.

We were “professionally” packed and moved from Vancouver by Great Canadian Van Lines.  There were 2 packers - one knew how to pack but not how to keep his trap shut and the other couldn’t do either - he was constantly on his cell phone and, for example, had tossed an unwrapped silver cup carelessly into a box (I only found it because I had to find some things they shouldn’t have packed).  We were not impressed at the time, nor when we had to unpack some of these carelessly packed boxes.

On the other hand, Arpin Van Lines (who sub-contracted the Canadian side) were pretty good overall except for passing on my complaints to Great Canadian before the guys had loaded the truck…  We’ll see how well they respond to my claim for 3 missing boxes, though.  The other headache is our car arrived with a brand new noise.  It’s also to be seen whether the shipper will deal with this.

We nearly didn’t make it into the country because we didn’t realize our daughters needed US passports when entering by air. We thought their Canadian passports were adequate ID, but we got a lecture about how wrong we were about that.  Again, this is something the immigration lawyer should have picked up on. Luckily we just ended up with a stern warning.

Besides the physical move, we’re dealing with starting with essentially no credit here.  AT&T wanted a $500 deposit per phone if we wanted a contract, so we’re on an expensive pay-as-you-go plan until we build up some history.  We’ve applied for some store credit cards and been denied.  It’s great fun.  However, we’re about to get a mortgage, so that should help on the credit problem.

We also had some fun navigating the health care system almost immediately.  First Kim got conjunctivitis and then Lior came down with a fever.  I was so used to walk-in clinics in Vancouver that it was a shock not to have them here.  You actually have to 1) be a member of a doctor’s practice and 2) call your doctor to make an appointment.  If you don’t or can’t do either one you need to go to the ER.

We still need to register our car here.  After that, I think we’ll be done with the biggest parts of the move.