Seattle Day 4 & 5

Josh's Cat "Tomei"

Generally I've been taking it pretty easy the last few days. I've had a crazy last few months with all the closing out of my project and packing up my house. Just taking a bit of time to get over it. It is really great being in Josh and Wendy's apartment, it is clean and modern and in a really nice area. All in all, the whole Seattle area seems like a really great place to live. It is clean and quiet, but pretty close to a big CBD if you need it.

And there is apparently a lot of tech jobs around here, which is nice to know.

Right now what I'm trying to figure out is:

1. What bike I'm going to get (pretty sure the Concours 14, but which one out of all the dealers and private sellers)
2. Insurance for my bike (Geico seems to be the best so far)
3. Where I'm going to get a new Canon 7D from and which lens(es), cameras over here are not as cheap as I was hoping
4. What earbuds I should get for the bike, I usually get the Sennheiser 300s, but I keep shredding the cable on them, perhaps a better option exists?
5. Getting a small netbook for transferring my photos to my external hard drive and possibly up to my google drive.

Josh, Wendy and I went for a walk around the dog park in Redmond last night, which was a beautiful area. And a shit-ton of dogs as you'd expect! Afterwards we went to the Malt & Vine. We now seem like regulars there now!

Josh and his super opaque stout

Seattle Day 2 & 3

On my second day in Seattle Josh and Wendy had gone to their jobs for the day. I decided to use the time to do some grocery shopping and play around with my blog.

So first up I wandered down to the local Safeway, which is not part of the same company as Safeway in Australia, but designed by the same person. Everyone has been warning me that I could get very fat in America, so I tried to find things that were healthy similar to what is back home. Maybe I'm dampening my american experience by not eating lots of Count Chocula, Pizza Rolls and Pop Tarts.

USA's version of Weetbix, same shit with rounded corners.

Anyway, managed to find Weatabix for breakfast, which I'm having with "granola" which is the American name for musuli. Also I bought some 11 grain bread, which in Australia you'd expect to be something with lots of visible grains in it (e.g. Tip Top 9 Grains), but here it turned out to be kind of a sweet wholemeal bread.

Every supermarket here seems to want you to join their club. The prices displayed at Safeway are really tiny compared to the "club prices", which are so prominent on the tickets that everything seems to be cheaper than it is. I didn't become a member, but I was told by Josh later on that this is sort of mandatory for grocery shopping and everyone does it. It also is really quick and easy so I'll do it next time.

I also bought some instant coffee and found out that Americans don't really do instant. There was a small selection of varieties, which basically included Nescafé, Folger's and these expensive Starbucks packets. I'm guessing that in the US that everyone uses have drip coffee - that selection was much larger that it would be in Australia. So I thought I'd try out an American brand, but for reference Folger's tastes like crap.

Josh and I later that night went down to the local bar called the "Malt & Vine". This bar is awesome because:

1. It lets you sample wines and craft beers from a menu that changes every day
2. Samples mostly only cost a dollar each
3. It has the most variety of craft beers I've ever seen
4. It is walking distance from josh and Wendy's place
5. It is right next to a kebab shop

Josh and I have been to the Malt and Vine 3 time in 3 nights.

A range of microbrew beer samplers at the Malt & Vine

For actual 'regular American' beer, I've tried a few. Mostly the flavor is very weak, but this seems to be what they are going for in the brewing process. I guess they want a beer to be as light as possible for it to be as refreshing as possible. Most of the Budweisers and Millers are bland, but nothing compared to the Michelob ULTRA (purposely all caps) which I had in the outback steakhouse. This beer almost tasted like water! I don't think this necessary a bad thing, this seems to be what they are trying to acheive, just not my taste.

Anyway, Americans obviously do make good beers, you just have to look at the craft beers (or microbrew beers as they call them here).