Thursday and yesterday, my wife and I were in Charlottesville looking for housing for me since this coming Fall, I’ll be entering the Ph.D. program in Religious Studies at UVA. I must say it was quite frustrating. Advertisements were often erroneous in a number of annoying ways. There’s one place we visited that announced “washer/dryer: none” but in fact there was a laundry facility in the building. (Because of this mistake, this place turned out better than advertised but there’s no telling how many places I rejected because of erroneous information.) Then there were places for which the addresses they had entered for showing a vicinity map were wrong. The difference between 1309 and 1039 can be enough to put a location out of the running.

Some ads were for places that had already been rented out. I can understand that the timing may just have been bad: maybe I called just after the place had been taken but before the manager had time to remove his listing. However, there were a number of cases that looked fishy: management companies overadvertising in the hope that they’d get more calls. (Why that is advantageous remains a mystery.)

I also had a bit of sticker shock. I expected Charlottesville to be cheaper than Philly but that’s probably some expectation I formed without enough research. I don’t think now that it is cheaper than Philly; rather, prices are probably very much in the same range. In Philly I stayed in a big Victorian house with 6 other students. The house was located in West Philly which actually has a bad reputation due to perceived criminality there. (In 2 years there, I haven’t had a problem.) That might have been enough to make the price lower than average and then I went to Charlottesville with that unrealistic price in my head.

The place I have found in Charlottesville is closer to the university than the place I had in Philly. It is also closer to… hmm… places of interest in general. It is similar to what I had in Philly in that I have my own room but the kitchen, dinning and living room areas are shared with 3 other students. However, I have my own bathroom whereas in Philly I had to share that with 3 other students (there were 2 bathrooms in the house). Due to the rules in place, noise or other disturbances shouldn’t be a problem. I’m just hoping there won’t be personality problems with the other students. In Philly, I was lucky that that was never an issue. I had been thinking of getting my very own apartment but the places that I have had a chance to see all had some problem: the location was bad, too spartan, too big (yes, one of them was too big), too expensive, run down, etc. Getting my own place would have also meant furnishing it, which would have been yet another thing to take care of. Now, I don’t have to think about that.

Anyway, I’ve found a place which will fulfil my needs for a year. After that, I can move.

La culture américaine, fortement axée sur la consommation, favorise les grosses portions. Les consommateurs (tout le monde ici est un consommateur) veulent en avoir pour leur argent. Les marchands, donc, proposent des formats de plus en plus grands. Quand je suis allé voir le dernier Star Wars dernièrement, j’ai été surpris de voir la grosseur d’une grande boisson gazeuse: c’est tout simplement gigantesque. Il me semble aussi que “grand” est plus grand qu’avant. Verrons-nous bientôt le jour où ils offriront des tonneaux?

Cette situation qui prévaut dans le commerce s’immisce aussi dans nos maisons. Depuis quelques temps, il m’est difficile de trouver des verres de taille raisonnable dans ma propre maison! Or, ça cause des problèmes quand je veux contrôler ma consommation. Je dois avouer boire trop de cola principalement parce que c’est mon choix. Cependant, ma consommation totale est aussi influencée par la grosseur des verres que j’utilise. Depuis peu, je m’efforce d’utiliser des verres de taille raisonnable plutôt que les gros formats. Ça a eu l’effet de réduire ma consommation. Malheureusement, hier j’étais à la recherche d’un verre raisonnable et faute d’en trouver un qui soit utilisable parmi la foule de verres gigantesques qui occupe notre cuisine, j’ai dû me rendre à l’évidence que nos propres verres, chez nous, sont aussi sujets à l’inflation générale.

According to this article, some researchers have found that laughing can help lose weight. Isn’t this another variation of the general rule that doing any kind of physical activity is better than not doing anything if one wants to lose weight? Is anyone surprised? Anyway, I certainly lost some weight as I was reading that article. And for those getting excited at the prospect of losing weight through laughter, the article states:

Physiology experts say it’s not exactly an effective way to shed extra weight — but the idea is worth a laugh or two.