I just got back from the trip to Michigan. I fit quite a lot into the trip, visiting a lot of landmarks and whatnot.
My sister’s friend Juli was nice enough to pick me up from the airport and show me around the town the first day I was there. After that, I met up with Adam, another SI grad student who I met at visiting days. So me, Adam, and Adam’s wife sorta just wandered around for a few days.
Let’s see… I went to Pinball Pete’s and played some kind of light gun game in Japanese starring a bunch of cats shooting at ghosts… or something like that. It was really easy, which means it’s probably a kid’s game. I beat all of the levels and then it gave me a game over thing.
I walked around campus a lot. Saw stuff like the fish bowl and the cube, and other random stuff I didn’t see during visiting days. I also got my MCard, which is just the university student id card. I wore my red Google shirt, then realized I wore Ohio State colors!!! NOOOO! I might need to get them to replace it with me wearing a yellow shirt or something.
I went to the Hatcher Graduate Library to finish up all of the paperwork for my job with the university. Glad that’s over with. I had to sign something and get it “notorized.” Luckily, one of the people in the administrative offices is a notary public, so I just had her “witness” me sign the paper.
Of course, I also went to look at apartments. There were some pretty crappy ones and some nice ones. There was one that was super nice in the middle of Kerrytown right above a Smoothie King! But there wasn’t any parking nearby. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be going with the Nob Hill apartments, since they seem decent and they’re only about a mile away from campus. So they’re sort of a good compromise between price, distance, and quality.
One of the realty companies I went to look at apartments with, Varsity Management, seemed kind of creepy. Like we just went to apartments that still had people living in them, then we knocked on the door to see if they were home. And they weren’t so we just went in. I felt like I was in some kind of cop show or something. Like I was scared there’d be bodies or dead hookers, etc. Apparently it’s part of the lease agreement, but that seems like a pretty crappy lease agreement.
There’s an Ikea in Canton, which is like 20 minutes or so from Ann Arbor. We went twice. That’s how much I like Ikea. The second time we went, I even bought a few random office organization thingys. I’m probably going to Ikea again next week when I go visit my brother in California… and buy more random stuff.
We also hit some pretty cool restaurants. Like umm… well, the only one I can remember is Champion House, where they do that Japanese cooking thing in front of you. It was pretty neat. Way expensive, though. But tasty. I suspect that our cook was Chinese, though, and not Japanese. Which is cool either way.
And I guess that’s it. Overall, it was a pretty fun trip, though somewhat stressful due to the quality (or lack thereof) of apartments. I guess I should’ve prepared for crapiness, but still, seeing it in person is quite harsh.
Recent Comments