Danbury Update: 3-months, Part I

Salaam

Well, it's been three months since I've arrived to CT, Alhamdullilah. I wasn't really sure what to expect and in many ways I'm still not sure. Being here for a one year contract position was a difficult choice: leaving family and friends, SGP, my home (= TV & the iMac), and, generally speaking, my comfort zone for the majority of my life. But, the choice was made and as a Muslim we have faith that Allah is the Best of Planners. The reason for leaving was to broaden my professional context from a networking perspective as well as a risk-taking perspective (i.e. moving about 1k miles away for a contract position, but with the hopes of helping to lead this group and building upon my resume). That was the professional reason. The personal reason was to experience life outside of that comfort zone. Granted, it's not like I've moved to another country with a uniquely different culture, but, honestly, have you ever been to the East Coast? It may as well be...

The first few days of CT life started out with something I'm all too familiar with: lots of driving. Not only did I drive to CT from Chicago (a 15.5 hour journey that ended safely thanks to my wife staying on the phone with me for the last hour to keep me from dozing off), but the very next morning I drove from my cousin's place to Danbury (aka "Do-me-bury" courtesy of none other than Masood) for the next four days in a row in order to find an apartment. The distance from my cousin's place to Danbury is about 70 miles. So that's a lot of mileage I put on my bechara Corolla, ma sha Allah. Anyway, the apartment hunting took up the better part of those days and it's actually quite tiring. Two of those days were spent with a realtor my wife found. He was an older dude and knew Danbury and the surrounding areas extremely well. It was actually very useful to have him because I got a pretty good tour and feel of the area. He also pointed out specific attractions (yes, I'm taking the liberty of abusing that word) such as the awesomely cool Stew Leonard's (OK, it's a huge grocery/dairy store, but, I kid you not, it's worth checking out) [See Side Note #1 at the end] [Also See Side Note #2], one of the nation's smallest underpass bridges, and one pretty legit pizza place in Bethel, which he told me is the birthplace of PT Barnum (the circus dude). So, finally, by Sunday I settled on a nice looking apartment community that would allow me something I was not at all familiar with: a short commute from home to work. This place was all of 5 minutes and 33 seconds away from work.

...

Sorry, I needed a moment to take that in even after 3 months. A 5 minute commute? Me? After ten years of having loooong commutes [Side Note #3], Allah hooked me up most mercifully with a tremendous, tremendous blessing of experiencing a short commute. I look back at the past ten years and ask myself, "WTH was I thinking? And how come no one cared enough to provide an intervention for that?" To be honest, though, the one part of the long commute I do miss is using that time to catch up with friends, recite my wird when I was being a acha bacha, and listening to lots of talk radio, music, and/or miscellaneous stuff on CDs or my iPhone (i.e. lectures, Bollywood music, Amreekan music, Pakistani music, naats, qawallis, Quran, etc.). But, FTR, I do not miss it enough to where I'm asking for a long commute again! The fact that I come everyday for lunch is epic, a money saver, and phenomly phenom in that I get to spend time with my lil cutie pie, Suhaylah. Oops, let me revise that part for my continued posterity, "...and phenomly phenom in that I get to spend time with my amazing wife & my lil cutie pie, Suhaylah." (OK, since I pay her to read my blog, I do have to mention that she's been cooking like never before and doing a great job of spoiling me.) [Side Note #4].

OK, so now you're of course thinking, Wow, Pac Daddy, everything seems pretty legit. You're living life on the edge by having moved out to the East Coast and now you have a short commute, too. Can it get any better? Well, thanks for asking. Because while it can and does, Alhamdullilah, it definitely took an interesting turn on the way. You see, the apartment I selected was located essentially at a walk-out basement level. I thought this to be highly phenom as it allowed privacy (corner unit and the last building in the community), a nice yard in the back that my kid could play in, and a jungle (ok, woods, but relative to Chicago, the CT/New England area is a colossal jungle), which looked really beautiful & scenic. I began thinking to myself that this Danbury area could really work itself more positively than I imagined. Danbury was, relatively speaking, a sizeable city that had a uniqueness to it: a downtown area that had pockets of an old town feeling, some parts that are run-down, other areas could be best described as quaint (I wanted to say, "cute"), many other parts that were beautiful as everything here is hilly and located in the woods (this isn't an exaggeration, folks), one area that has CT's largest mall (Chicagoans, this isn't saying much, but the mall is def nice) with a Cheesecake Factory being built and, crucial to highlight, a Coldstone Creamery across the street from it, and many, many hole-in-the-wall/mom'n'pop shops like Double Twister (phenom homemade ice cream place). [Side Note #5]. And so to me that's something I looked (still do) forward to exploring.

Little did I know, however, that my own apartment was going to be an exploration, on many different levels, by itself...


To Be Continued... (= when I'm bored @ work again)

Side Notes:
#1. Yes, for those that are fans of Bill Simmons' Grantland project (great site), I am totally copying his footnotes style here bc it's really cool and, if I've learned anything in life, cool things are worth copying like the one time in kindergarten I ditched school because one of the troublemakers in our class did it and, well, it was obviously cool (just don't ask me about my mom's reaction that I still remember all these years later). Anyway, I need some nerd to show me the HTML tags to do the linking. Any takers?

#2. Is this what Danbury has lead me to? Convincing people that a huge grocery/dairy store is an attraction? If so, then so be it. And you will be forced to check it out if & when you visit me. Doh, maybe I shouldn't've wrote that because now I pretty much guaranteed you won't visit. :-/ But, really, I love Stew Leonard's.

#3. At one point, back in Chicago, my commute was so long that I was considered a traveller and could shorten my namaz at work. Of course, that translated into me staying late so I could do Isha as a traveller, too. Just kidding, please relax to any RG (religious guy) reading this. But my long commutes were also due to my desire of not wanting to leave the Southwest suburbs of Chicago, which I love dearly.

#4. I feel like I just sold out on my loyal blog readers, who I don't pay to read this, by having a shot out to my wife. I'm sorry, loyal readers, but if you're married and the only friend you have in Danbury is your wife, then you'll understand why these shotouts are necessary and could be a potential reoccuring theme for future blogs throughout my stay in Danbury. Wow, I think I need to internalize this for a second. My wife is my only friend out here. Wait a second. Will the wife read this Side Note? Crap. I'm doubley screwed now.

#5. So it seemed like Danbury encompassed everything any normal person would want: a dubious area to keep you on your toes, nature to keep on your toes due to the looming threat of wild deer and/or pheasants attacking you without warning alongside an army of insects the Midwest has never seen (and I pray never sees) and pollen the size of golf balls to ensure that even though you've been keeping yourself agile and alert by being on your toes, you won't be able to breathe so you'll just have to stay indoors assuming that the pollen, which has created a thick film on your car, hasn't travelled with you and that the deer and pheasants haven't devised a strategy to at least leverage their insect army to seek out, infiltrate, and destroy your apartment. Oh my God. I just had an ephiphany about this place. CT is like the body's immune system. It's a big ol' white blood cell that won't stop attacking foreign objects like myself and my family. Or maybe it's like Rambo. No matter what the age, it will infuse itself with steroids (= pollen) and keep on finding insane ways of killing you. Or maybe it's like my brother, Liam. It has a certain set of skills and will find you and kill you (see the movie Taken for background). Or maybe it's like...ok, ok. I'll stop. Honestly, it's not that bad, but it's fun to make fun of some of the things we've experienced. Overall, I'm truly grateful for what I have here no matter what it is. All Praise is Due to Allah.


More to come