I agree with every word! I particularly enjoyed this thread because I am also planning on moving to Orlando and want to find as much relevant info as I can, and it was interesting to see someone else's story in a similar situation and see how things work out for them, so I can get ideas of what to look for.
SanFran, how are your new apartment and job hunts going? Found any neighborhoods more to your liking?
I am still working as a photographer at Universal Studios because summer is not the time to be looking for work. In addition to the traditional summer jobs held by students, the college interns are out in full force. With school starting back, things are looking up. I interviewed last week and have another one scheduled for next week. It sounds really terrible, but I do believe that the main reason for encouraging everyone to go to college is to keep down on unemployment since full-time students generally aren't seeking full-time jobs. Thus time is bought, or at least borrowed, for four years in a strapped economy.
The jobs here in Orlando are generally tourism jobs, of course; but I came here after 24 years in San Francisco so I am used to living in a tourist town. I understand my supervisor's dissatisfaction since he came from an executive position in manufacturing and is thus used to making much, much more money. However, living in a tourist town means not living next door to a big stinky factory.
The apartments are often in better condition than the houses in my neighborhood. The houses often look like they are falling down, but that could be because so many of them are allegedly unoccupied.
If you want a really nice neighborhood with a convenient address, I think that Thorton Park is lovely with older but well-kept houses, some with charming porches. It is also close to downtown, which is served by the "Lymmo" bus service, which is free and more reliable than the Lynx system which charges a fare. This is a nice perk when fuel prices are rising, especially since it is supposed to be extended into Thorton Park next year.
The apartments that I live in have some strange thefts. Yesterday we noticed that someone had taken about ten bottles of emergency water that we had put in the storage closet on our second-floor balconey. This means that the person who took it had a key to the apartment, and we had a repair to a leak in the bathroom last week. I think that the guy is nuts and likes to steal things just to bother people. That water was saved for hurricanes or whatever because we learned our lesson after the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco. Yet it was just tap water for crying out loud, tap water in old soda and Gatorade bottles, so it was an incredibly stupid thing to steal while this city is not in a state of emergency. It reminds me of those people who looted electronics equipment in a city without electricity after Hurricane Katrina.
It is weird, but so far the most disturbing thing to happen here was the night that I found three little tiny kittens, less than a month old, that someone had thrown in the trash. They went to a shelter to be adopted. That bothered me more than the petty theft that goes on around here, but I sure don't like knowing that building management are the thieves.
