I can see why Broadway is still masking. That's a lot of people sitting cheek by jowl in an indoor space for several hours, and I don't know how good the ventilation is in theatres. My friend and I are seeing the touring production of Hamilton in May, and I don't know about her, but I'll be wearing a mask throughout the performance.
I am indeed in Vancouver, not Seattle. Vancouver's downtown is much prettier than Seattle's (no enormous concrete freeway spoiling the view of the ocean and mountains). But Seattle's suburbs are prettier than Vancouver's. The Skytrain is MUCH less cool than it sounds, I'm afraid.
Vancouver has excellent public transit by the standards of many other North American cities of similar size. As a person who doesn't have a drivers license and has no desire to get one, it's a good place for me to live. But as soon as you get out of the city, or certain popular routes in inner ring suburbs, the public transit situation gets very shaky. My mother lives in a far-off suburb called South Surrey/White Rock, and when their first child was a baby, my sister and her husband moved out there too. Following the free babysitting!
Getting out to them on public transit is tortuous, and I still have to get a ride at the end, because there are no buses serving either my sister's or my mother's subdivision. I end up at the South Surrey Park and Ride and have to get a lift from there. So yeah, if you want excellent transit, stick to Vancouver or Burnaby (an inner-ring suburb). Certain high-traffic destinations in other suburbs are well-served, but getting from one suburb to another suburb (rather than to downtown and back) is a nightmare.
Richmond is another inner-ring suburb (besides Burnaby) well-served by transit, but most of Richmond is below sea level and built on sedimentary land. When the big earthquake and or tsunami comes, everybody in Richmond will drown, I fear. There's a dike which is theoretically supposed to keep out the water, but it's very poorly maintained. My parents first moved to the Vancouver area when I was 10, and nearly bought a townhouse in Richmond. We were so sure my parents would put in an offer that my little sister and I were arguing in the backseat of the realtor's car over which of us would get which bedroom. But my mum asked the realtor to drive us back into the city by way of the dike. My mother grew up in the Netherlands, where well-maintained dikes will save your life. It took her all of 3 minutes at Richmond's dike to decide we were never ever moving to Richmond.
I go into the office a few times a month to get a change of scenery. I live in a 600 square foot 1 bedroom apartment. It's a perfectly nice 1 bedroom apartment, but there's no space for a separate home office, obviously. The desk is in the living room and the view of my patio gets monotonous. At least in the office it's a different view.
I hope to stay working from home 4 days a week even after we all theoretically go back to the office at some point. Partly because I work with a mostly Ottawa-based team, most of whom are 3 time zones ahead of me. So my workday starts at 7 am (10 am Eastern) or sometimes earlier. On the days I go into the office, I have to get up at a truly unsocial hour, on days I work from home, I only have to get up at 6 am.
Luckily for my ambitions, for at least 4 years before the pandemic started, the Canadian federal government had been pushing hot-desking and working from home most of the time. They own and lease a lot of very expensive real estate in the downtowns of various big Canadian cities, and they are trying to divest what they can. If you have 4 employees who all work 4 days a week from home and are only in the office one day, you can easily ask those 4 employees to share a single cubicle when they are at the office. Which means you need less prime downtown office space.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2022-03-19 05:24 pm (UTC)I am indeed in Vancouver, not Seattle. Vancouver's downtown is much prettier than Seattle's (no enormous concrete freeway spoiling the view of the ocean and mountains). But Seattle's suburbs are prettier than Vancouver's. The Skytrain is MUCH less cool than it sounds, I'm afraid.
Vancouver has excellent public transit by the standards of many other North American cities of similar size. As a person who doesn't have a drivers license and has no desire to get one, it's a good place for me to live. But as soon as you get out of the city, or certain popular routes in inner ring suburbs, the public transit situation gets very shaky. My mother lives in a far-off suburb called South Surrey/White Rock, and when their first child was a baby, my sister and her husband moved out there too. Following the free babysitting!
Getting out to them on public transit is tortuous, and I still have to get a ride at the end, because there are no buses serving either my sister's or my mother's subdivision. I end up at the South Surrey Park and Ride and have to get a lift from there. So yeah, if you want excellent transit, stick to Vancouver or Burnaby (an inner-ring suburb). Certain high-traffic destinations in other suburbs are well-served, but getting from one suburb to another suburb (rather than to downtown and back) is a nightmare.
Richmond is another inner-ring suburb (besides Burnaby) well-served by transit, but most of Richmond is below sea level and built on sedimentary land. When the big earthquake and or tsunami comes, everybody in Richmond will drown, I fear. There's a dike which is theoretically supposed to keep out the water, but it's very poorly maintained. My parents first moved to the Vancouver area when I was 10, and nearly bought a townhouse in Richmond. We were so sure my parents would put in an offer that my little sister and I were arguing in the backseat of the realtor's car over which of us would get which bedroom. But my mum asked the realtor to drive us back into the city by way of the dike. My mother grew up in the Netherlands, where well-maintained dikes will save your life. It took her all of 3 minutes at Richmond's dike to decide we were never ever moving to Richmond.
I go into the office a few times a month to get a change of scenery. I live in a 600 square foot 1 bedroom apartment. It's a perfectly nice 1 bedroom apartment, but there's no space for a separate home office, obviously. The desk is in the living room and the view of my patio gets monotonous. At least in the office it's a different view.
I hope to stay working from home 4 days a week even after we all theoretically go back to the office at some point. Partly because I work with a mostly Ottawa-based team, most of whom are 3 time zones ahead of me. So my workday starts at 7 am (10 am Eastern) or sometimes earlier. On the days I go into the office, I have to get up at a truly unsocial hour, on days I work from home, I only have to get up at 6 am.
Luckily for my ambitions, for at least 4 years before the pandemic started, the Canadian federal government had been pushing hot-desking and working from home most of the time. They own and lease a lot of very expensive real estate in the downtowns of various big Canadian cities, and they are trying to divest what they can. If you have 4 employees who all work 4 days a week from home and are only in the office one day, you can easily ask those 4 employees to share a single cubicle when they are at the office. Which means you need less prime downtown office space.