The West Coast - V

Seattle has been pretty stressful. Kelly got a job at the Salmon Center in Belfair, WA. Unfortunately, it’s in a rather inconvenient location, and it’s looking like it might be her only option. I still haven’t been called in for an in-person interview, so my best option at the moment is to go to a coding boot camp known as Coding Dojo in Bellevue. It is bordering on impossible to find a place to live that is convenient for both of us. Right now, we’re heading back to the house in Portland to regroup our thoughts and plan our next foray into Seattle.

The place where Maiya will be staying and working is pretty nice. It’s a nice, well-kept home on Bainbridge Island with a bunch of people about her age. Nobody was there the first night, so we watched a very thought-provoking sci-fi thriller, Ex Machina after making ourselves a nice dinner of vegetarian burritos. It was actually quite a realistic sci-fi film. You just have to be ready to buy the rationale that to create an AI capable of passing the Turing Test, one has to almost perfectly copy the functioning of the human mind, and for that one has to perfectly replication human abilities: walking, talking, seeing, feeling and even having sex. Seems somewhat implausible, but it’s an interesting idea.

The next day we went into Seattle using the ferry. It wasn’t easy finding parking there, but we managed eventually. We saw two of the main Seattle tourist attractions; the Space Needle and the Pyke Fish Market, and met up with Kelly’s friend Edson. He was with a friend of his from yoga, so they went around doing cool yoga poses and taking pictures of themselves doing so. We saw the gum wall, pinnacle of Seattle urban art; essentially a stretch of brick wall covered with colorful pieces of chewing gum. We then went to look at a very spacious house with cheap rent in Shoreline. However, Kelly was turned down for a job in Seattle shortly after the visit, so we decided it probably wasn’t going to be right for us. We spent a stressful few hours at home considering all our housing options, but not quite finding anything that would work. Maiya made a delicious hot pot, though, which helped restore sanity.

Approaching Seattle!

In the car port

The Gum Wall

Planning out one’s life ain’t easy. I hope things will work out in the end.