Archive for August, 2009

In this post, I’ll try to give an overview of the cost of living here in Pittsburgh.

Before getting into the numbers, let me tell you that generally, restaurants, bars, alcohol, and public transportation are a lot more expensive here. This is a fact. However, students don’t pay to ride the bus, you generally don’t pay to refill your soda and you never pay for bread and butter in a restaurant. It’s pretty standard to give a 15% tip in a restaurant and the service is usually good (or no tip). Most of the groceries are significantly  more expensive here, specially olive oil, fruit and vegetables, pasta and rice. Some are cheaper, like shower gel, shampoo, creams, toothpaste and detergent. Most of the times you also have good deals for meat. Electronics and gadgets are a lot cheaper here. Gas is a lot cheaper here. Cars are a lot cheaper here, even the german brands.

Housing and utilities: We are living in a nice and big 3 bedroom apartment on the fifth avenue. A 10-minute walk is enough to get to the campus. The rent is close to $1900 a month. Last month, we payed $112 for electricity, but keep in mind that sometimes we have the A/C turned on all day. The gas bill was $33 (for heating water and cooking). For cable TV and Internet the bill was $61. The speedtest reports 12Mbps but I don’t know what is the bandwidth hired. For TV, we have a special HBO package included.

One last and very important thing. You need health insurance if you are living here. We’re paying around $350 per month for health insurance (one of the top offers) which does not include dental care and eyes care. I heard this price is pretty good, but it might be because we got it through the university.

If you have any questions please leave them here and I’ll try to answer.

One of the things that Universities work on very hard here is their image. Image is everything, the better they sell the school, the more people will become interested in graduating there, the more people will apply to their programs, the better are the students that get in, who in turn will have more chances of succeeding in the industry afterwards, which in turn will improve the school’s reputation and so on and so forth, in a snow ball effect. Besides their interest in better students is the interest in profit. After all, schools here are real businesses. Their grants, subsidies and partnerships with the industry will depend on their success.

This week, I can see a lot of new students arriving, with their parents, going on a tour of the campus. Older students are the tour guides and they totally sell the school to the newcomers. I could feel by watching some of the newcomers’ faces that they already feel pride of being part of a prestigious school. That made me think on how we receive the freshman in Portuguese Universities. I guess we do the exact opposite, all we do is to have fun and humiliate the newcomers.

Interesting ad on the sidewalk of one of the most trendy streets in Pittsburgh (Walnut Street).

It’s supposed to get really hot in the Summer here, but so far, I haven’t see anything. It’s true that at night it’s usually more chilly in Lisbon than here. The weather here is very humid which makes it feel warmer. Last week we went to Five Guys, a Burger-King-type-of-thing, but better. I guess it was a hot day, so they decided to rent an air conditioning unit (if you look closer at the bottom of the picture you can read that the A/C was rented). What is funny about this is the way it was installed. The central unit is in the  middle of the room, and they have some fans to spread the cool air around. I guess it was not effective since it was still hot in there, but it’s not surprising if you you take a look at the master piece.

Then some other day, we went to a fancy restaurant for dinner. It was funny to see a fan in the middle of the bathroom.

On the other hand, when you ride the bus you need a jacket. It’s usually freezing in there! If the ride is long, even if you are wearing a jacket you might freeze to death, so beware!

Last weekend, on my way to O.C. I had a stop in Minneapolis. I was surprised how big and modern Minneapolis airport is (4x Lisbon’s Airport). Anyway, when I went to the restrooms I was surprised with the best Hand dryer I have ever seen. It’s really efficient. I must confess that I usually don’t like hand dryers because they take too long and do not dry properly.

I was able to dry my hands in less than 10 seconds (the same way I dry them when using other driers).