Daughter of CA Yankee Attending U of Alabama (Birmingham, Tuscaloosa: sale, lease)
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Many nice people who responded, but I'm going to address this arse three step
What I do not understand are fools who do a bit of Internet surfing, come up with ideas, give no information and immediately go into the defensive
"Fools? Don't answer my post you loser. You gave me some crap about not having arrived if I live in mountain brook. You got something shoved up your you know what. Really dislike peeps who only serve to get annoyed by questions, but yet they have used this site 10k plus times. The k means thousands dummy"
Pick up and semi auto may be an achievement in Cali. Our circle in AL kept and keeps information about toys low key. You may as well post a street address
"Achievement? How are those achievements? You are one wretched individual. It is conversation. If you don't like it, ignore it. Keep driving your Hyundai and leave the adult conversation to others"
Your daughter is enrolled but you cannot pull up the school's site to figure out the requirements for various tuition scenarios?
"Have you read the legalese? It is obviously highly susceptible to the universities lawyers adherence to various requirements. There is bound to be someone who did the same thing, so I fished in the hopes someone could tell me their story. Sorry you don't know how to utilize others who can provide firsthand accounts"
Your son is 13 and you are concerned about his options in the world of dating?
"Yes. Don't want him to grow up like you, bitter and complaining on websites that conversations aren't to your liking. Sorry you didn't have a date till you were 25"
Yes, you can live in Mountain Brook as if it were an island and send your son to private school. You can move to cookie cutter 'r us Chelsea for cheap.
"Again you attack towns. Sorry I don't pick a town you like. But now it becomes obvious I'm not the problem, you are"
In almost 20 years in the South, Texas, Oklahoma I have once been asked to go to church - by my mother in law.
Where and how you and your family will not fit in is mostly in your court.
" I don't like you. Can't stand internet fools like you, and you have an agenda which I'm guessing is bitterness about your own life and accomplishments. Get a life buddy"
Many nice people who responded, but I'm going to address this arse three step
What I do not understand are fools who do a bit of Internet surfing, come up with ideas, give no information and immediately go into the defensive
"Fools? Don't answer my post you loser. You gave me some crap about not having arrived if I live in mountain brook. You got something shoved up your you know what. Really dislike peeps who only serve to get annoyed by questions, but yet they have used this site 10k plus times. The k means thousands dummy"
Pick up and semi auto may be an achievement in Cali. Our circle in AL kept and keeps information about toys low key. You may as well post a street address
"Achievement? How are those achievements? You are one wretched individual. It is conversation. If you don't like it, ignore it. Keep driving your Hyundai and leave the adult conversation to others"
Your daughter is enrolled but you cannot pull up the school's site to figure out the requirements for various tuition scenarios?
"Have you read the legalese? It is obviously highly susceptible to the universities lawyers adherence to various requirements. There is bound to be someone who did the same thing, so I fished in the hopes someone could tell me their story. Sorry you don't know how to utilize others who can provide firsthand accounts"
Your son is 13 and you are concerned about his options in the world of dating?
"Yes. Don't want him to grow up like you, bitter and complaining on websites that conversations aren't to your liking. Sorry you didn't have a date till you were 25"
Yes, you can live in Mountain Brook as if it were an island and send your son to private school. You can move to cookie cutter 'r us Chelsea for cheap.
"Again you attack towns. Sorry I don't pick a town you like. But now it becomes obvious I'm not the problem, you are"
In almost 20 years in the South, Texas, Oklahoma I have once been asked to go to church - by my mother in law.
Where and how you and your family will not fit in is mostly in your court.
" I don't like you. Can't stand internet fools like you, and you have an agenda which I'm guessing is bitterness about your own life and accomplishments. Get a life buddy"
Get accustomed to smart remarks here.....it seems to happen a good bit. It's the main reason as to why I don't get into a topic very often.
@harry. Sorry to hear you lost your wife. i hope your getting along well these days.
So lets say I move to Chelsea. My son is only 13. He may stay with his mom in California, but if he came with me, could he ever get a date. Or would he be branded as trouble, since his dad is single, lives alone, and we don't see him in church. He already is surrounded by Chinese and Indian, and has limited options to date herei in California. I would not want to bring him to Alabama and give him a new set of problems.
You got me thinking that maybe I'm better off having her accept the offer at Baylor in Texas. If I'll never be accepted in Alabama, then I question having her attend the university of Alabama
Kindly ken
Ken,
Please disregard what this person is saying about Birmingham and Alabama in general.
Birmingham is a diverse place, with insane amounts of positive momentum. It doesn't matter if you are athiest, Catholic, gun advocate or gun hater, straight or gay. Please, please do not get caught up in the old tropes about the "south" and Alabama, etc. The difference between Birmingham and Alabama is the difference between San Francisco and southeast California. Can you drive 40 miles outside of the city and be in a totally different world? Absolutely. But you are not going to be discriminated against in Birmingham based on your religious beliefs or accent. As long as your expectations are in line, you are going to be just fine. Birmingham is a major metropolitan area with employment,opportunity and offerings in almost any area. If someone is expecting the Bay area or NYC though, they are going to be very disappointed. There are issues with the area, like almost any area, but most of the tired old sterotypes and backward thinking from the senior citizen crowd is far from reality. This idea that you only hang around people of your own race is completely untrue among people under 40 here. I go to gatherings with people from 8 different countries present. I haven't been to a church service in over 15 years, and never will again. I definitely can't remember the last time someone even asked me where or if I go to church and it is such a non-issue in daily life as to be laughable. The idea that to fit in around Birmingham you have to go to church is totally ridiculous.
Mt. Brook, as a city and as a concept, is a contentious issue among many in the metro, thus the responses you received. It is the wealthiest city on the state, one of the wealthier in the country, and has a very insular culture. Due to its insular culture and decidedly old money tradition, the idea of a guy from California moving there sight unseen(presumably), is a bit of an eye brow raiser for some. Let's keep it in perspective, the city only has 20,000 people. It isn't some sort of city-state that has checkpoints at its borders. But to many, it is the epitome of us vs. them, rich vs. poor, etc. Some Mt. Brook residents and their actions fuel this fire and some non Mt. Brook residents fuel this fire. In the end, it affects daily life on both sides almost none.
The University of Alabama(which I did not attend), has 50% of its students from out of state. Almost 60% of its incoming freshmen are from out of state. The reasons for this are complex and mainly to do with money, but why would those students be coming to the university if it were in some racist, backwards backwater? At the same time, the UAB medical school consistently ranks in the top ranks in the nation. Again, that doesn't happen in a one-stop light backwater that is is filled with toothless rednecks.
You referenced programming consulting/jobs. Innovation Depot(as someone else mentioned) is an incubator with over 100 startup companies from 1 guy in a small room, to companies with over 25 employees. They have something called DepotU they recently started that is a coding boot camp for people interested in coding. There are plenty of banking and healthcare operations in the city in addition to many, many other companies in all areas. Mostly ignore the Huntsville talk. Huntsville has always had a reputation, somewhat rightfully so, as a "tech hub" within the state of Alabama due to NASA and defense related industries. That is somewhat true, but we are talking about a metro area of 430,000 people. Huntsville isn't Silicon Valley, and Birmingham has plenty of tech jobs. Again, it isn't NYC or Austin though.
Please enjoy your trip to Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, do not stray from the course you have currently set for you and your daughter based on the rantings of a couple of people with decades old axes to grind about the city of Birmingham. I have known many dozens of people who have relocated to Birmingham for work or similar and almost all of them have said Birmingham is a very livable place and they enjoy it.
Thanks Justin, Thanks Boss. Harry had some great advice.
When I moved to Arizona, I never even visited. I sent out my deposit to the apartment building, and moved my wife and I out there. I loved everything about the West, the open spaces, the heat, the food, all of it. I never move anywhere and work to change the place I've moved to. The move up to Silicon Valley was because the job opportunity was too good to pass up. Getting laid off in 2009 was almost a disaster until friends came to the rescue and found me my current job. But I'm tired, and want to slow down. If I did work in Alabama, it would be something less stressful, but if there are places that could use my skill set, Software Engineering, then I would work a bit to stave off boredom. I had no idea about Mt. Brook as a contentious issue. Whenever CA residents move out, the backlash is the same. You hear it when CA people move to Oregon, Montana, Arizona, Nevada. People are rightfully fearful that local housing prices can rise out of reach when newcomers arrive. But this is America, and I like living and experiencing the vast richness and depth that each micro area of the country has.
My daughter is resolute in her desire to go to Bama. Her roommate from Tennessee is a sweet girl, and they talk daily even though they have never met. Bama put on some of the most impressive recruiting of any of the schools she applied to. The facilities are top notch, and I like the idea of contributing to Bama as a world class institution. My daughter isn't there to change anyone or anything.
I'll just wear my John Hannah shirt wherever I go. My man played for Bear Bryant, is considered the greatest offensive lineman in the history of the NFL, and retired back to the great state of Alabama. Mr. Hannah is a great representative of how well Alabama raises it's young
Well, we'd be glad to have you but just let the notion go that being from Cali is going to mark you or make you stand out. To be blunt, it doesn't make you special. This is a large enough city with people from all over to where it won't be a big deal unless you make it a big deal. No one is going to make you conform to anything or make you act or talk a certain way. But people are friendly. They will try to get to know you. The reason I say that as sort of a caution because sometimes SOME people feel uncomfortable when people ask questions about who they are and what they like to do. On the internet that always seems to turn into something worse like being accosted to go to church or be a conservative republican or whatever. Not saying you would do that but most of your concerns seem to be about fitting in. I really don't think it would be a problem.
I have no idea what an "assault shotgun" is (unless it's a reference to scary things like pistol grips and folding stocks the subjects of Kaliforniastan are not allowed to own), but there are virtually no restrictions on what kind of guns you can buy and own here, including NFA items. Just don't run afoul of federal law, and get a pistol permit to keep things as simple as possible ($20 a year, if you want a card with your picture on it...$10 if a simple piece of paper is adequate for you).
As far as where you're from, fitting in, etc...and I mean this in a good way...nobody cares where you're from. As long as you don't try to make an issue of it, folks here generally won't either. While I live in Huntsville and not Birmingham, in the 8 years I've been here I haven't heard of a single Yankee getting lynched in either town. :-D
An "assault shotgun" is a shotgun I don't have to pump to load the next shell. The Marine Corp uses one from Benelli, called the M4 Super 90. Semi-Automatic with 5 shells available. When the Marines drove down the streets of Fallujah in Iraq, the soldier riding shotgun would use this shotgun to blast through steel doors, concrete, and basically vaporize the Iraqi soldiers. A beautiful weapon, and if the Walking Dead ever materializes in the US, something I'll be glad to own. Not sure I can get one with a folding stock at all even in Nevada, but yes, the pistol grip is there as well. Yes, Kaliforniastan would have a fit if they caught me with that. But I will say, California is at least a touch better than that communist state MA.
I am skeptical of all this talk about Alabama being severe culture shock for a Californian. Unless you live in Mill Valley or Carmel, California is very diverse and has conservatives, religious people, poor people, etc. The only person I know well in Alabama has three degrees from UAT, is close to being a one percenter, is a reliable Republican but a social moderate to liberal, and is basically just like any other educated, successful American. Yes, someone may ask you where you "church."
You'll be fine in Birmingham, but I do agree with some of the Mountain Brook discussion....that would probably not be the area I would recommend as it is probably the least diverse and very "insular" as some others have stated. Its borderline incestual...and that vein extends clearly to UA and you see it heavily in the Greek system.
I only read about 10 sentences in this whole thread. But read enough to know there's no need for me to get involved.
Here's the bottom line. Anytime a thread say I'm from here and what is it like there, you might as well ignore the post. Always leads to trouble.
It's like someone else posted in another thread. If you don't like it where you are, you probably wan't like it here. If you like it where you are, you will probably like it here.
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