Cool things about living in Northern Virginia

I live in what's been called "Data Center Alley" or "The Silicon Valley of the East." About 70% of the world's internet traffic passes through the data centers in this area. Data centers are quite impressive buildings. They're like massive 5-story tall LEGO blocks, some with fences and moats around them for security. Modern era castles, basically.

We're close to Washington DC, with all its embassies, so people from all over the world live here. It's totally normal to see someone wearing a sari or yarmulke or hijab. The local movie theater plays some Bollywood movies. And I can try food from pretty much any country in the world.

Speaking of food, if I had to pick one food representative of Northern Virginia, I'd say it's Peruvian Chicken. So many Peruvian Chicken places, and I try every one in an attempt to find the best one.

We have friends that we don't even know what their job is, and we know not to ask. Many people making a living in this area are working on something that requires some sort of government clearance (like, if you found out what they were doing at work, they'd have to kill you... or at least report you to the authorities). I have friends who would go out of town, but couldn't tell anyone where they were going or even to what country they were going to.

Sometimes it's convenient to be next door to the nation's capital. We have all the embassies and government offices nearby.

Since I was a kid, I've always been fascinated with the Smithsonian Institute. The main Smithsonian is about an hour away from me, and I live within minutes of the Udvar Hazy air and space museum, which is quite impressive.

Virginia was first colonized by Europeans over 400 years ago (and Native Americans lived here long before that), so it has a relatively rich history as far as the Americas goes. It's pretty neat that sometimes I run across old tombstones at seemingly random places. I know there's a few 200-year-old graves a few paces from my local pharmacy. There's another old gravesite next to the local Chipotle restaurant.

I live less than 15 minutes away from Dulles International Airport, making it very convenient to travel. Sometimes I can even see my house from the airplane when we're landing!

It's really cool whenever the President is traveling through town. These days they don't let you even see the motorcade though. But it's neat how they do it. You'll be driving along when suddenly all these police motorcycles will pass you and block the intersection in front of you. You'll stop at the intersection and wait a few minutes until the police leave and you can be on your way, because up ahead, the President or some other super important political person was passing through the area. Years ago, my next door neighbor was one of Obama's personal secret service agents (he even had a photo of Obama with him standing in the background wearing a suit and sunglasses on his Facebook page).

So many people here work from home and have flexible schedules (including myself). That means if you go out at random times like 10am on a Tuesday, you still see many regular working age people out and about, not working ;)