I’ve officially moved out of a hotel and into an “aparthotel.” I’ve never heard of this concept before, but it’s pretty great. It’s the local version of long-term stay places in the U.S. except nicer. I have a legitimate apartment, but with hotel services – maid service and breakfast 6 days a week, and even laundry service 1x/week. (I have a spare bedroom. Just sayin’.)
First, if I say “almost nice developing-world construction,” does something come to your mind? For me it does. It’s something made with generally nice materials, but details mean it loses its actual niceness. For me, these are things like the marble entrance in a Chinese hotel… finished out with hanging icicle Christmas lights. Or the pretty new shopping center nearby that has fancy restaurants and home furnishing stores… but the shared bathrooms look like the painters and caulkers didn’t use any protective tape and then they got 10 years of use in one.
The other big giveaway for me is lighting. The lighting in these places tends to be purely overhead fluorescent, and without a lot of points of light. The next result is:
-Lots of shadows, because of the few points of light
-The garish white of fluorescents that makes white walls and floors seem dirtier by comparison
As I have driven around, I have seen some surprising modern-style offices/stores. Usually these modern stores are home furnishing stores. I haven’t seen a lot of modern-looking homes, so I guess modern furnishings are hiding inside some of the traditional construction homes.
I got an afternoon with an apartment hunter here and in the process I picked her brain about general high-level life in San Jose. Tidbits:
-A good white-collar income is $60K/year
-A small, one-bedroom condo at an upscale community with pool/lake/tennis courts (catering to internationals) runs ~$135-180K to buy
Housing here seems to be moving in the same direction as in South Africa, which is to say towards gated, shared-security compounds. (One I saw even has its own little grocery store.) In really old areas is Spanish architecture with a faceless wall on the outside and a nice courtyard on the inside. In more recent places, you have individual homes that are frequently gated on the front, but have an open front yard and people can be seen hanging out in the front yard a lot.
A picture from my own little gated aparthotel.
First, if I say “almost nice developing-world construction,” does something come to your mind? For me it does. It’s something made with generally nice materials, but details mean it loses its actual niceness. For me, these are things like the marble entrance in a Chinese hotel… finished out with hanging icicle Christmas lights. Or the pretty new shopping center nearby that has fancy restaurants and home furnishing stores… but the shared bathrooms look like the painters and caulkers didn’t use any protective tape and then they got 10 years of use in one.
The other big giveaway for me is lighting. The lighting in these places tends to be purely overhead fluorescent, and without a lot of points of light. The next result is:
-Lots of shadows, because of the few points of light
-The garish white of fluorescents that makes white walls and floors seem dirtier by comparison
As I have driven around, I have seen some surprising modern-style offices/stores. Usually these modern stores are home furnishing stores. I haven’t seen a lot of modern-looking homes, so I guess modern furnishings are hiding inside some of the traditional construction homes.
I got an afternoon with an apartment hunter here and in the process I picked her brain about general high-level life in San Jose. Tidbits:
-A good white-collar income is $60K/year
-A small, one-bedroom condo at an upscale community with pool/lake/tennis courts (catering to internationals) runs ~$135-180K to buy
Housing here seems to be moving in the same direction as in South Africa, which is to say towards gated, shared-security compounds. (One I saw even has its own little grocery store.) In really old areas is Spanish architecture with a faceless wall on the outside and a nice courtyard on the inside. In more recent places, you have individual homes that are frequently gated on the front, but have an open front yard and people can be seen hanging out in the front yard a lot.
A picture from my own little gated aparthotel.
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