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It has been one of the more stressful weeks of my life — you see I was moving, again – third time in three years and again for not really a fault of my own.

I loved my previous apartment and I enjoyed (perhaps) for the first time the luxury of space. It wasn’t as much the fact that I could pack a whole lot of stuff into the apartment, I just had enough room to walk and breathe and think. As a kid growing up in a cramped house in New Delhi, ample space and a private bathroom were the ultimate luxury.

So the day when I heard from my land lady that I had to leave, I went into a super funk and essentially made everyone around me miserable. I think buying an apartment in San Francisco is an option right now. So in the end I ended up moving into a smaller apartment in the same building complex. Ironically I am paying the same rent for my one bedroom as I was paying for a two bedroom four years ago.

The new place while generous compared to my New York quarters or even my New Delhi home is small. In order to get my life organized I had to purge at an unprecedented scale. Half my furniture, nearly three-fourths of my clothes and about two thirds of my shoe collection are gone – either to charity or to a consignment store. Even my iMac is gone. It has been a shedding exercise and it actually feels a lot better to get rid of the stuff and become less attached to things don’t matter.

But I do miss the organization of a walk in closet and I miss the ability to take a few moments and decide what shirt I wanted to wear. Instead it is primarily white shirts and blue denims and a sweater of some sort. I will get used to the rhythm of the new apartment band new life. I am getting used to the nooks and crannies of the place and its weird layout. I am also getting used to the light and air — a massive upgrade compared to the previous apartment — as well.

Why stay here? Simple — I love the broadband in my complex. I pay my ISP WebPass $50 a month for 200 megabits per second fiber broadband. It will hit half-a-gig by end of 2013. I would never want to go back to pokey AT&T or Comcast connection. I love my ISP and I am pretty sure not many people say that about their ISP.

Yup, broadband is the reason I am living in a smaller apartment and putting up with high rents. It is simply my way of living in the future. Now of I could find a way to live in Sweden, I would. But for now in California, it is as good as it gets. My books are all backed up. Music is a click away, thanks to Spotify. Netflix looks pretty awesome and all the web is a few nano-seconds away. Mg life has become ultraportable, thanks to this big broadband.

That said, i totally related to the New York Times article by Graham Hill who talked about less is more. I totally agree with him. While I believe in having a few things but I also believe in buying ones I deem the best. And sometimes that means you pay more than normal and it seems like wanton consumerism but I have worked hard to wear the best damn pair of socks I can afford. Hill’s spiritual argument is something I don’t disagree with — buy less, buy smarter and live happier.

Even though it is a much smaller apartment, I feel better. I don’t really miss the things I got rid of and basically now I have to stick to the diet and buy better. I also feel I could stand to lose another 50 percent of my belongings.

Now that I have lightened the load, fitted my life into five suitcases, I am stuck with one problem: I can’t find my Kindle. That means I might watch a old fashioned show tonight. Goodnight all!

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Om Malik

Om Malik is a San Francisco based writer, photographer and investor. More....

14 thoughts on “Moving means a new beginning!”

  2. An awful lot of landlords suck. Paying more for less ain’t always a healthy solution.

    I have no beef with smaller; but, it still must be a choice derived from personal choice – not just reacting to arbitrary orders. Perhaps your ISP may be able to provide a map of alternative locations. Might be worth considering.

    1. Yeah well, this is one of those things which makes me wonder about landlords. I like the building I live in – safe, well built and great support team. Plus the bandwidth. i am not moving for at least two more years.

  3. Hey, we need to talk about getting you a new router if that’s your typical Wi-Fi speed above. 😉 My pokey FiOS (advertised as 75 down/35 up) actually gives me 80 Mbps down over Wi-Fi and 40 up on my iPhone 5. I bought an Asus 802.11 a/c router to take full advantage of my home broadband.

  5. Its interesting – I recently committed to keep living in the flat where I’ve been for 7 years in Toronto (longest I’ve lived anywhere – so perhaps that stasis is its own reason for continuation) because I just upgraded my connection to a 10Mbps upstream (which sadly seems to be the fastest here in Toronto) and thus am guaranteed the ability to add new titles to the http://getfilmi.com catalog from home as I license them. Funny that bandwidth has become such important factor in assessing the value of lifestyle – it doesn’t seem that long ago when I was happily dialing up to 9600bps over copper wire in Nairobi.

  6. Congrats on your new place! If you ever change your mind in the future and would like to switch to Comcast, I am here to help.

    Best regards,

    Mark Casem
    Comcast Corp.
    National Customer Operations
    We_can_help@cable.comcast.com

  7. Looks to me like Webpass is ripping you off if that Speedtest picture is from your own connection. You’d get faster downloads from the Comcast 50 Mbps than what you’re seeing, unless you ran that test on an Android phone with a lame CPU. You should complain to the FCC about the fact that you’re not getting the speed you paid for.

    1. On Ethernet it is 195 Mbps — so no WebPass isn’t ripping me off 🙂 the wifi routers need some upgrading in near future Richard. I am pretty sure I get better connectivity with WebPass than with Comcast when I paid $80 a month for their 50 Mbps connection.

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