Category: Saint Louis

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Buying a house is probablly the biggest investment most people make during their life time. In past few years, as I was looking for my first house, and accompanying my friends for their house hunting, I have seen lots of houses in St. Louis area. The price ranged from 100 K to 800 K; the square feet from under 1000 to 5000; stylewise from condo, to townhouse, villa to Single Family House; agewise from more than 50 years old to brand new. So which one impressed me the most?     

It’s not the 800 K mansion, although I liked the size (2 stories plus basement), the atrium, the family (game) room, etc. Here is a picture of the luxury home:

 

Besides I can not afford it (the house itself and utility bills), I think the house is too big for me. It is designed for a family of five I think.

My favorite place, is a townhouse I saw recently. It’s a decent size town house with lots of light (San Francisco style). Here is a link. And here is a picture from inside.

That’s about the right size for me. I can imagine I will be very happy just sit on that sofa and look out of the windows, doing nothing.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

The following was written on July 19, 11PM.

This evening we had a big storm here in St. Louis. When I walked out of the door at the TKD place at Woodson plaza, the sky was full of black clouds and the wind is blowing hard. I hesitated for a minute and decided to drive back home anyway. I saw some trees being split by the wind. And the power was out at our condo. Since everything in my condo is powered by electricity. I pretty much can not do anything. My roommate came back from work shortly. Since we are out of power, the only thing we can do is chat, which ispretty nice because we don’t have much time to talk. He does lots of trips recently for work.

I called my Chinese friends to see if they have power. They are in the same boat as mine. So we went out to search for food. MCD and Subway, IMO all are busy now. Luckily we get in Sunway although they closed at 9, they are nice enough to let us in.There are lots of fire trucks running around. But no luck in power as of now (11 PM). I will go to bed now.

The following was written on July 20, 8 PM.

I left some lights on when I went to bed. During the night the lights went on and off couple times and never sustained. In the morning I went to two Panera Bread stores and both are out of power. Many traffic lights are also down and it caused delays. From radio I heard it is the biggest power outage in St. Louis in many years: half a million people are out of power. I believe St. Louis region has about 2.3 million people. The bad thing is it is also the hottest days, the high temp reaches 100F.

Luckily my home got power back today. From the TV news I heard they restored about 1/4 of the power, I felt very lucky compared to people still live without power.In retrospect, I don’t have a good contingency plan for those things. A few weeks ago I laughed at a friend when we talked about the preparation for those kinds of emergency situtaions – thought it was unnecessary.

Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe gas price hang around at $3.00 for a few days now. The temporature is even hotter, it’s more than 100 F. Looks like it stay at 100 for a few days. Maybe we all drive too much and emit too much CO2 from our cars?

Reading Time: < 1 minuteMUNY is probablly one of the best kept secrets in St. Louis. Not sure the full name of MUNY, but it is America’s oldest and largest outdoor musical theater. It’s located in the Forest Park. Besides great musical shows, it has another nice feature: it reserves the last a few rows of seats for public for free. You can see the schedule of the shows for this season here.

I went to see the show “AIDA” last night. I went back again tonight because I have to leave early last night. It’s a love story from ancient Egypt, filled with wars etc. Although I probablly only understand 30-40% of the English, I did understand the story because it’s a live show and I watched it almost twice. I will try to write a summary of the story in Chinese/中文 sometime when I have more free time.

Here is a picture I took at last year’s MUNY. You can have an idea what’s it like.
 

Reading Time: < 1 minute我的朋友兼室友准备离开这个城市, 前几天我把召室友的广告登在网上.
 
收到很多回音, EMAIL, 电话, 有一位还发来了照片. 有白人, 黑人, 中国人, 印度人. 昨天有两个人来看房子. 老印(印度人)先到了, 他来美国也有五六年, 人看过去挺老实. 最近在这里百威啤酒找到工作. 我实话告诉他我不能容忍印度饭的味道, 因为他说他会”Cook a lot”. 其它倒没什么, 他说下班后主要也就上上网. 那倒不要紧. 他对我的房子挺赶兴趣. 恨不得马上就敲定.
 
把老印送出门, 老美(小美)就来了. 在路上迷了点路. 谈了一谈, 双方都还满意. 他甚至想当场给定金了. 我说你再想想, 毕竟已经找了两个月的房. 他也是最近搬到St. Louis, 本来是想买房的. 看了两个月, 没看到合适的. 先找个地方再说. 我说(今天)我等你电话.
 
今天两个人都没电话, 也没EMAIL. 看来我还得再等一等. 正好我也可以想想, 听听各方的意见.

Reading Time: 3 minutesI read the following article “Success is an ‘us’ thing, SLU president says” from St. Louis Post Dispatch a week ago. The President of St. Louis University talked about problems and hopes of St. Louis community. I have been in this city (oh, more accurately county) for more than 5 years, and have witnessed some of the problems he mentioned. For example, there are many small municipalities in St. Louis county. While there is tradition in it (such as the Kirkwood & Webster Grove rivalry), I think it also means inefficiency in governance, public services, and development planning. As a region, St. Louis has lost many corporations headquarters in recent years. Inerestingly enough, it appears the Chinese immigrants population is bucking the trend. Maybe it’s a sign of revitalization?

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The region’s fiefdoms, polarization and overall “myopic attitude” are holding St. Louis back from greatness, the Rev. Lawrence Biondi told an auditorium full of community leaders and friends Wednesday.

The crowd was on hand to honor Biondi as the 2005 Citizen of the Year.

“The future success of our St. Louis region is not a Republican versus Democrat thing,” said Biondi, who is president of St. Louis University. “It is not a city versus county thing. It is not a black versus white thing. It is an us thing. All of us – you and me – together.”

Reading Time: < 1 minuteI have not been to the Borders for a few months. This evening when I visited the Borders at Creve Coeur, I was glad to see, Gene Operle, a local musician, was getting ready to perform. I remembered I listened to his Country songs a year ago, also at Borders (can not remember whether it was at Sunset Hills or Creve Coeur). When I heard the “Rhythm of the rain”, “Sometimes we touch”, and “Rockie Mountain High”, all the familar songs I used to listen in college, I felt like seeing old friends again. Gene is going to perform on May 13 at Sunset Hills, I will try to be there and enjoy it again.

Here is a map of the Borders store.

There are other public (free) performance at Borders. I attended Mark Biehl’s musical performance last year and it was also good.