The Weather Comes in Waves & Here I Sit

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.