I lied when I said I'd be writing about mexicans and canadians, instead I'll be writing about things. Yes, very descriptive, but in short it'll be about how things are going out here. Lets start with the depthless necessities then shall we?
In my last post I said it took about four weeks before I saw any kind of rain. Well since then, the weather has alternated between sunshine and rain on a daily basis. I'm not talking about some sissy London drizzle rain here. It's a dramatic visual spectacle preceded by a low rumble of thunder, featuring walls of low hanging clouds that slowly drift over the entire sky. When it does swallow up your gaze, sheets of water pour forth in the darkness, occasionally lit by the muted light of the lightning strikes that crash through the sky like clockwork. Moments like this are peaceful and help to momentarily pull me out of the reality of my situation.
The reality of that situation is that I now find myself at the six week mark of the internship. At first the experience was of discovering somewhere new and meeting a new diverse group of people I'd be interacting with for the next while. Activities were planned on an almost daily manner and a grand time was had by all. Slowly things have slowed down due to the fact that we're all here to work, so from 8-5 everyday we find ourselves milling away on a computer doing the menial tasks that are generally associated with temporary hires. The project I work on is definitely interesting and allows me a week to travel at the end of the internship, which I'm grateful for. If I'd been tasked with developing a worthless unused feature - the final result of which I wouldn't see - like some of the interns, then the work would definitely be chipping away at my ability to ascribe a certain sense or purpose to my function.
That aside, a certain sense of tristesse has been coming and going in waves of late, resembling what I imagine MDMA is like, but with melancholy replacing the intense feelings of joy. I can't pinpoint the exact source of these feelings, but certain suspects come to mind. At the beginning of the contract, my closest friends from home have all been occupied with individual travel, school, and other priorities. However as we approach August, most have returned and their festive reunion, combined with arguably one of the nicest summers the city has seen in a while have, in all honesty, stirred up some feelings of jealousy at my inability to share in the fun.
This is not to say that I'm not having a good time in Austin. There are a lot of activities here in the summer to enjoy, however I suspect a lot of my feelings of isolation arise from my mobility situation here. I live and work in the suburbs of a great city, but without a car it's nearly impossible for me to be independent and do things at will. My extended stays in Paris and Singapore while on vacation may have corrupted my mind with the expectation that all major cities have easily accessible transport alternatives to cars. When I was in Singapore staying at PGP with Haomiao, we were a decent ways away from the city. Despite this, buses came frequently and the metro could bring you to any destination in short time. When this wasn't an option, taxis were an extremely cheap alternative, never costing you more than $15 SGD. Paris, where I stayed for two weeks and treated as a travel hub was also infinitely easy to navigate around. The city proper is massive but the metro network extended literally everywhere, and as long as you stayed within city boundaries, you were never more than 400m away from the nearest metro station. I could wake up on the weekend, decide that I felt like roaming the other side of Paris for the day, and do exactly that without depending on a car. New York, not unlike Paris is covered in subways and owning a car is the opposite as it is here. No one drives in NYC because you'd have to be insane to want to be stuck in gridlock and hunt for parking spots, its effectively a colossal waste of time to drive.
I live in a tiny 600-800 sq ft apartment with three other roommates. It's cramped as hell, and theres absolutely zero privacy. I'm never really alone but my complete dependence on them for transport has taken away one of the freedoms that I've taken for granted. I've never had to live or travel in a place where my two feet aren't a viable transportation option. Even out in the west island the buses come every 10 minutes or less to whisk you away onto the transit network. That's not an option here, and I can tell when I ask to borrow my roommates' cars, they're understandably reluctant to do so. I can suggest things to do with them, but if they decline, then I'm left disappointed at their reluctance to go out. Instead, I find myself at home, occupying myself with indoor hobbies to no great success. A person can only cook so much in a single day (I've become a pretty damn good cook if I say so myself), and my eyes can only stare at a book for so long before the urge to jump outside and do something kicks in. When I do, a long, empty, highway and a cactus pointing down the stretch of road remind me that, at least for the next few weeks, I'm still trapped.
Sunday, 15 July 2012
Tuesday, 3 July 2012
Texas is large & name change
Hello ladies and gents!
You may have noticed I changed the title of my blog and the url, this was done to protect my online anonymity in the off-chance an HR rep from work stumbles across this. All should be well though :)
It's been a number of months since my last significant post, but I feel that perhaps my temporary residence in the foreign land of the United States would count as travelling. As such, you are about to be blessed with another one of my delectably random rant-posts.
Raise your hand if you never expected me to take residence in a place typically viewed to be about as ass-backwards as the developped world can get? *Raises hand* I desperately fought for other opportunities closer to home for the summer, but nothing significant ever materialized. I was disappointed at being unable to spend the summer at home, which as many of you know is the the highlight of a long and mostly cold year in the city. But fear not, they said Austin is fun, full of things to do and generally a liberal oasis amidst the most conservative state in the US.
And boy were they right, Austin truly is an oasis. That's not to say its even close to what i associate with being a liberal, but they're a generally more accepting group of people here. Their party district is on par with crescent/st-laurent in terms of madness, but man cops are dicks here. I've only been here 4 weeks, and I've seen double digit arrests for public intoxication, most of whom weren't really doing anything wrong apart from stumbling a bit. Not only that, but they were arrested with what could be construed as excessive force, they didn't resist but were brought to the ground and pinned by 3 cops whilst the other cuffed them.
The alcohol laws here are kind of bizarre, you can drink whilst floating down a river in an inner tube, but the moment you step onto land, theres police there to arrest everyone, and I mean EVERYONE seen with a container holding alcohol in it. The tubing itself is fun, the water is a cool 20C all summer long, and you just float down it lazily for a couple of hours and pack a cooler full of drinks to keep yourselves entertained.
Oh I forgot to mention its hot here, dry and ridiculously hot. This is my first experience with dry heat, and although I can say that I prefer this over humid hot, the absolute temperatures it hits here (think consecutive days over 40C) are enough to literally kill you if you find yourself outside somewhere without shade. On a more amusing note, it's been four weeks since I arrived, and it was only a day ago that I witnessed rainfall for the first time. Never thought I'd miss rain, but damn the heat to hell, I have no idea why some european colonists would choose to settle in a place with rattlesnakes, a summer that can cook human flesh in a couple of minutes, and virtually no water. No wonder the spanish empire failed at establishing some useful territories.
Ok, onwards to the fun part, AKA my observations about this place and subsequent negative commentary:
My god, les gens sont gros. From a distance you could mistake them for slow moving tumbleweeds. Thats not to say there aren't thin people, but I believe Texas is one of the top 10 fattest states in america, thereby making it one of the top 10 fattest places in the world. Their lifestyle habits here are just not conducive to being healthy at all.
Allow me to elaborate, the population of Greater Austin is just under 2million, from my observations, the highway network here consists of THREE north-south 4-lane highways, two east-west highways, and a ring road to bypass the city. You can't exist here without a car, everyone drives, even if its to go to the store that's literally one block away. Fuel prices are under $1/litre so no one really bats an eye at the cost of fuel. I dont think I've seen a single city bus yet, so public transit is non existent. And to imagine that I live about as far from downtown as i do back in montreal, where the buses come frequently and only take 45m-1h to reach the downtown core.
Then theres the food, Every week we have meetings with our mentors and go out to eat lunch somewhere nearby. EVERY destination is a chain or a franchise of some sort. The amount of fastfood-derivatives is astounding. I've asked local interns on whether the concept of small non-franchised restaurants exist and they were hard pressed to name more than a few. Portion sizes are the equivalent of a newborn texan baby. You could feed yourself for an entire day on 10$ worth of fast food from this place.
Back home, when you go to a grocery store, the fresh produce, boucherie and poissonerie sections account for about 1/2 the floor space. At our local grocery store in Austin, about 1/4 is for fresh produce, the rest is pre-prepared meals, frozen meals, you name it. It's no wonder people aren't healthy when you give them options like that.
Well, that sums up some of my first impressions of Texas. Next time, I'll talk about canadians and mexicans.
You may have noticed I changed the title of my blog and the url, this was done to protect my online anonymity in the off-chance an HR rep from work stumbles across this. All should be well though :)
It's been a number of months since my last significant post, but I feel that perhaps my temporary residence in the foreign land of the United States would count as travelling. As such, you are about to be blessed with another one of my delectably random rant-posts.
Raise your hand if you never expected me to take residence in a place typically viewed to be about as ass-backwards as the developped world can get? *Raises hand* I desperately fought for other opportunities closer to home for the summer, but nothing significant ever materialized. I was disappointed at being unable to spend the summer at home, which as many of you know is the the highlight of a long and mostly cold year in the city. But fear not, they said Austin is fun, full of things to do and generally a liberal oasis amidst the most conservative state in the US.
 |
| Yes, I'm aware of how redneck this looks. |
The alcohol laws here are kind of bizarre, you can drink whilst floating down a river in an inner tube, but the moment you step onto land, theres police there to arrest everyone, and I mean EVERYONE seen with a container holding alcohol in it. The tubing itself is fun, the water is a cool 20C all summer long, and you just float down it lazily for a couple of hours and pack a cooler full of drinks to keep yourselves entertained.
Oh I forgot to mention its hot here, dry and ridiculously hot. This is my first experience with dry heat, and although I can say that I prefer this over humid hot, the absolute temperatures it hits here (think consecutive days over 40C) are enough to literally kill you if you find yourself outside somewhere without shade. On a more amusing note, it's been four weeks since I arrived, and it was only a day ago that I witnessed rainfall for the first time. Never thought I'd miss rain, but damn the heat to hell, I have no idea why some european colonists would choose to settle in a place with rattlesnakes, a summer that can cook human flesh in a couple of minutes, and virtually no water. No wonder the spanish empire failed at establishing some useful territories.
Ok, onwards to the fun part, AKA my observations about this place and subsequent negative commentary:
My god, les gens sont gros. From a distance you could mistake them for slow moving tumbleweeds. Thats not to say there aren't thin people, but I believe Texas is one of the top 10 fattest states in america, thereby making it one of the top 10 fattest places in the world. Their lifestyle habits here are just not conducive to being healthy at all.
Allow me to elaborate, the population of Greater Austin is just under 2million, from my observations, the highway network here consists of THREE north-south 4-lane highways, two east-west highways, and a ring road to bypass the city. You can't exist here without a car, everyone drives, even if its to go to the store that's literally one block away. Fuel prices are under $1/litre so no one really bats an eye at the cost of fuel. I dont think I've seen a single city bus yet, so public transit is non existent. And to imagine that I live about as far from downtown as i do back in montreal, where the buses come frequently and only take 45m-1h to reach the downtown core.
Then theres the food, Every week we have meetings with our mentors and go out to eat lunch somewhere nearby. EVERY destination is a chain or a franchise of some sort. The amount of fastfood-derivatives is astounding. I've asked local interns on whether the concept of small non-franchised restaurants exist and they were hard pressed to name more than a few. Portion sizes are the equivalent of a newborn texan baby. You could feed yourself for an entire day on 10$ worth of fast food from this place.
Back home, when you go to a grocery store, the fresh produce, boucherie and poissonerie sections account for about 1/2 the floor space. At our local grocery store in Austin, about 1/4 is for fresh produce, the rest is pre-prepared meals, frozen meals, you name it. It's no wonder people aren't healthy when you give them options like that.
Well, that sums up some of my first impressions of Texas. Next time, I'll talk about canadians and mexicans.
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