Gainfully employed
I got a new job. I’m now working for Telchemy, a company that does VoIP and other kinds of real time network stream monitoring, and it’s been pretty neat so far for the week that I’ve been there. But I’m not about to start blogging about big important things; who cares about the big important things in life? What about the stupid minutae?
Telchemy is in Duluth, and that’s been taking some getting used to. Autovin’s office was also, by my elitist city reckoning, way out in the ass end of suburbia, but Duluth has a different feel to it than Roswell. The drive is only about five miles longer, and I’m still going opposite of the trafficy direction the whole way, but crossing those county lines while I go up 85 seems like a big deal. Most obviously there’s no MARTA service in Gwinnett. There’s the GCT and some GRTA buses that go up that way, but I haven’t yet figured out the maze of transfers or the schedules it would take to use them, so for now I’m off the bike. This is going to be difficult, both because I don’t like to spend money on gas and because I know from the broken foot what sedentary time does to my waistline. Unless I figure out the bus routes I’m going to need to figure out another way to exericse. Maybe I’ll get that Wii step-up-on-the-white-thing game.
Another obstacle I’ve met has been the problem of where to eat. I suppose I should probably be making lunches at home that are healthier and cheaper than eating out, but that seems like a lot of work, so I’ve so far continued my old habits of depending on whatever eateries are in the area. The problem is that I just don’t have a good feel for Duluth quite yet. In Roswell I was able to rotate among a series of small, locally owned shops where people knew my name and often what I wanted to eat, but in Duluth so far all I see is a bunch of strip malls along Sugarloaf and the levaithan of Discover Mills. I tried eating at Discover Mills, but all they have is just pretty much what you’d expect for mall food, and the Popeye’s meal I settled on was about two bucks more expensive than it should have been. The strip malls have all of the usual depressing sandwich and burrito chains that strip malls have, but today’s lunch gave me some hope. As usual I was undecisive but hungry, and I decided to turn the other way, to drive away from Sugarloaf and see where the road would take me. After maybe a quarter mile the road took me to a Korean enclave that I never knew existed. I felt like I was driving down Buford Highway and it was right next the office; it was so awesome. I have no idea what I ate for lunch today—the waitress made a big deal about me trying the bizarre array of side dishes that came with the soup, and one of them, a sort of spicy gelatin, she didn’t know the English to describe, though it seemed to involve acorns. They had SBS on sattelite playing a show with some kind of swordfighting love story, and I’m pretty sure those English subtitles weren’t there until after I’d sat down for a couple of minutes, which made me feel like I was doing right. I have no idea why a bunch of Korean people decided to settle in Duluth, but I’m certainly glad for it. Maybe this place is a little better than the highway would have you think.