<p>The object seemed to be the tickets, not the winning the game. Otherwise wife wouldnt have had to get them.</p>
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<p>I think we might have raised the same child. Mine would also bargain for ways to earn back stickers she had failed to earn, or for partial stickers. </p>
<p>Hi dustypig, </p>
<p>My daughter is going to look in the peninsula. </p>
<p>You are right.</p>
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This is what I meant but I could not articulate it well.</p>
<p>He was quite young at that time. He really did not enjoy playing almost all the games at the arcade. He might only enjoy the scene of the game machine spitting out those tickets. (His beloved toy around that time was our small boom box because of the tape recorder: Push a button here and then the tape elsewhere is moving. How exciting is it to him!) Who knows what was going on in his little head at that time.</p>
<p>Oh…at some age, he even enjoyed seeing his mom playing the Mario game more than he himself was playing it. At one time, they had a break-through in one of the game, and some “white ghosts” came out from one side of the screen with some “scary” sound effect. He happened to hold the game controller at that moment. He became so scared by the ghosts that he immediately relinguished the game controller to his mother. But he still insisted his mother continue playing (and he was just seeing) even though he was scared.</p>
<p>We did a lot of things that were not age appropriate due to our inexperience at that time. (Luckily, no major damage was done.)</p>
<p>Fast forward to his college years: Their suite had a game machine. He was much better at playing two of the games there and few suitemates wanted to play against him: Maria Kart and Tetris Attack. (esp. the latter.) You can not underestimate the game skills that had been built up over the years, by playing mostly together with his mom. His mom was addicted Tetris Attack for many years.</p>
<p>Which are these inexpensive Peninsula towns? Not Palo Alto, not Portola Valley, not Menlo Park, not Los Altos, not Cupertino, certainly not Woodside, definitely not Atherton, not Mountain View or Cupertino. Redwood City, maybe?</p>
<p>My son is about to look for an apartment in San Jose that’s affordable for a person in a low-wage job. There are none. There are no 1-bedroom apartments or studios in three figures per month, or even in low four figures per month. None. </p>
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jym626,
We did know. But according to what my wife told me, she bought the “generic” tickets but the kid would not take them. She said the tickets from that arcade have their name printed on the tickets and the kid could tell whether the tickets were truly from the arcade. All of these are sweet memory from the past. There may be grandsons/granddaughters in the future if we are lucky, but there is no chance that we can be as close. So it is a once-in-a-life-time experience.</p>
<p>CF, parts of the northern peninsula are cheaper…Daly City, South San Francisco, San Bruno, Pacifica, parts of San Mateo, maybe Foster City…</p>
<p>We are talking cheap in a relative sense.</p>
<p>I am talking housing prices.</p>
<p>@CardinalFang,</p>
<p>Likely because Apple from Cupertino branches out northward to the Sunnyvale (where it is close to Mountain View), the 1-bedroom apartment in a somewhat nice area costs $1850 per month.</p>
<p>One of my friends used to live in a 2-bedroom apartment in Cupertino a year ago. The price tag: $2800 per month. I bet the rent for 2-bedroom is even higher today.</p>
<p>Is the rent for the apartments in Morgan Hill more reasonable? There is a light rail from/to that remote area. But it only works if the work schedule is very regular (say, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm every weekday.) Very few trains are scheduled each day.</p>
<p>Back to housing. DS#2 has 2 roommates. It was the only way to find “affordable” housing in SV and by affordable I use that term relatively. Traffic is terrible, from my limited experience, on 280, 380 and 101 so he didn’t what to have to commute for long distances. Finding was challenging. </p>
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<p>Redwood City north to the border with San Francisco, along the 101 corridor, mostly. There are exceptions (Foster City is probably going to be pricier than most of San Mateo) and I am not guaranteeing anything, but that’s where I’d look.</p>
<p>Redwood City is in a construction boom right now, but a lot of that construction is office space because that’s what developers want to build – it makes them more money. Still, there are a lot of new apartments and condos going in, and most of them are pretty near the Caltrain station (and 101, if you have to drive).</p>
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<p>I was at a San Jose City Council meeting a week or so ago, and they were deciding whether to dedicate a certain pot of money to transportation improvements or to affordable housing. A whole bunch of people who had just been evicted from The Jungle (did you see that news story?) came and spoke about how even with their housing vouchers they simply can’t find anywhere to live because there is no affordable housing. These people are living on the streets right now. (The city council did vote to put the money towards affordable housing, so that’s something.)</p>
<p>I was looking through the Chronicle. How does the middle class live in the peninsula, sf or marin? </p>
<p>Where do the middle class workers live?</p>
<p>Where do the lower middle class workers live? </p>
<p>Are they living a few families per unit?</p>
<p>They live in Gilroy and commute…</p>
<p>“Where do the middle class workers live?”</p>
<p>There is such a thing called East Bay!</p>
<p>Like East Bay is that much cheaper… or that commute not horrendous</p>
<p>I just spent 3 hours in the north peninsula. I am blown away by the prices.</p>
<p>The 3,900 square foot, new house in our neighborhood is still on the market, going for $578,000 now. It was listed at $649,900 on August 8. I wish the builder would price it appropriately. I’m guessing $499,900.</p>
<p>Home prices are approximately $550 a ft where I looked today. Most of the homes are probably around 50 years old. Lots are 3,000-5,000 sq ft. Homes range from 1200-2000 sq ft. </p>
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I have heard of this kind of living arrangement (but I have not seen with my own eyes, so read the following with a large grain of salt.)</p>
<p>At one time, our company had some contracts with some overseas companies which supply the engineering resources to our company. (it appears the name has the name “Tata” in it.) Some of them occasionally worked within our company (different groups of engineers rotated in and out but all of them seem to be from the same contracted company.)</p>
<p>They worked mostly all by themselves and did not have a need to interact with anybody even though they were working in the same building with us - maybe some of their project leaders/managers might have a need to communicate with a selected few of our managers in our company who were assigned those executive level managers to get the “results” from them when their project were completed.)</p>
<p>At one time, we happened to have a chance to have a chat with a couple of them when both they and several of us took a late afternoon coffee break at the same time. When the topics about the housing came up, one of them told us that a few years ago, one of their company’s engineers who were assigned to work in this area (not necessarily on a project with our company) had a brilliant idea: They leased a very large house and many of them lived there instead of living in an apartment. Since then, all of their engineers rotating here would live there instead of renting an apartment. He said it was much cheaper to share the cost in this way. Some of them have actually been married. But only the luckiest ones could have their spouse coming here to live with them in US. Quite a many of these families have the “bread earners” to come here to work. Another of their surviving technique is that they often can manage to commute to the company without owning a car. They rely on the public transportation like CalTrain and bus or light rail. One of them seems to commute from as far as Redwood City or even farther away to the heart of Silicon Valley everyday, without relying on a car. For the last leg of commute between his home and the company, he just walks (for about 25-30 minutes.) A little bit inconvenience for their management (not a problem for our management) is that they can not work till very late because they have the last train to catch. But it seems they usually can pass their unfinished work on that day to the engineering team (the team over there could be even larger than the “expat” team here) back to their overseas headquarters before they go home.</p>
<p>That is a good story. </p>
<p>One thing I noticed today was the incredible amount of cars parked on the streets, driveways and occassionaly cemented over front yards. </p>
<p>There are so many cars…some people must either be sharing houses, not using their garages for cars, or a combination of the two. </p>
<p>Agreed, katliamom. When we were out there we were back in the east bay area several times. Apparently its the new “hot” area, with the Berkeley neighborhoods being referred to as the Brooklyn of the West. Prices have shot up. DS and fiancee wondered what their former apartment, they left just a yr and a half ago, is currently renting for.</p>