End of a week

It's been a week since I came to Milwaukee, WI, USA. This time, things wasn't as smooth as it was the last time I came to US.

To start with, I found out just as I landed in Chicago that my VISA petitioned had expired without me knowing that there's a renewal for that. Then, my flight to Milwaukee got canceled and I had to spend all the cash I had with me on taxi's. To top it up, my luggage got delayed and I had to buy cloths etc. to survive till it arrived three days later.

And then, when I went to open an account with JPMorgan Chase Bank, which is the closest bank to the place I'm staying, they started to ask for various address verifications etc. Which I didn't had to the last time with Bank of America. And when finally they did open an account for me.. they misspelled my name x(... and didn't include my SSN in the records.. x( !@#$%..

So apart from all that, I'm suppose to share an corporate apartment with another fellow till I find accommodation for myself. I hate sharing houses, especially with people I don't know. This bugger is not that bad or any thing but I'm irritated by certain things.

Housing poses another problem.. I looked around a bit and all one bedroom apartments costs around $800 to $900. That's without furniture, internet etc. and the price excludes water, electricity and gas. So if I go for a apartment that costs $800, then I'd be spending about $1000 per month or a little bit more on accommodation. Where as shared accommodation would cost less than half of it. But I'm willing to bare that cost for the peace of mind.

Right now I'm sharing a car with my QA lead, mainly because I need a car for finding apartments and daily groceries etc. and sharing is cost effective. And the fellow isn't they type who'd make it a bad experience. So I'd probably stick to that sharing agreement for some time till my financial situation becomes good.

But the problem right now is that I haven't received per deum as of yet, so I'm running out of money pretty fast. And I'm afraid that it would get delayed more, judging by the experience I had so far with the bank.

I was hoping to buy a Nikon D80 as soon as I come here. But it seems it would have to wait for another month at least.

One thing which runs smooth is that I'm not that busy with the office work. I do have to stay up late in to the night to communicate with my offshore team and get up early in the morning for a status update etc. but during the day, I have enough time to attend to finding apartments, preparing documents for logistics etc.

Which reminds me, I have to file a reimbursement request for that taxi ride..