Touching concrete

I’m back at Starbucks, which is where I do all my blogging now. I’m like a diplomat, but instead of being surrounded by the law of my home country, I’m surrounded by 2012.

Although, I didn’t want to just take a picture out the Starbucks window again like I did last week — it looks the same now as it did then. It’s been springtime lately, for sure — raining and everything — but not too bad, just enough to make you grateful it isn’t snowing (which it did this past Wednesday out of spite).

I always like to remind myself not to complain too much, because I feel like I’ve got it pretty well — I have fun in school, learning things I enjoy, I know neat people, I have hobbies, you know. But, lately, I’ve just felt the need to express that it’s nearing the end of the semester and keeping up with the coursework is getting a little difficult (the thing that electrical engineering students the world over will tirelessly remind you of).

Now, a lot of this classwork is in courses that I took voluntarily — absolutely didn’t have to — because I thought the idea was cool, chief among these being the language special-topic business class I’ve been taking where we communicate with some Taiwanese classmates to present business suggestions and give presentations in Mandarin (they do it in English). I’m terrible at Mandarin, they’re great at English, we’re all learning together. I love it.

Every two or so weeks, though, we’ve got reports to write, and I do enjoy writing, but I didn’t realize that sometimes even coursework I enjoy can be stressful — this seems to just be the nature of the human mind (“oh, no! I’ve given up a minute amount of control, the world is ending!”).

That and a couple of very nice, appealing-looking job openings were made known to me over the course of the past week and I’m more than looking forward to hearing back as to how my applications are going in those — one of them was my first successful connection with someone on LinkedIn for a real purpose — I got someone to verbally confirm to me that a job opening was real and send my resume manually to the hiring manager! That made me feel somewhat more productive than I have in the past.

You know, if you haven’t connected with me on LinkedIn and you know who I am and what my face looks like, feel free to plug in — I need a network, for sure, because I need employers to know I’m legit (or something along those lines). I had a friend tell me in my 4-connections-on-LinkedIn days that I wasn’t distinguishable from a bot, which is something I’ve heard more times than is optimal…

So, if all goes well, I’ll have a career at some point. Seems like a necessary development to be putting so much time and effort into — I just thought there were more jobs out there. The world is hard.

Career aside, hobbies are also going well. I got a few fun & interesting parts on pieces in orchestra this concert cycle, so I’ll get to have my short sound-effect solo-length-of-time of fame the day after my birthday when the next concert is this coming April. I was listening back to our recordings from the last concert, too, and one of them sounded real good — the one with my other co-clarinetist making the whole of our venerable two-man operation. While we’re as quiet as you’d expect two people with tiny sound sticks to be in front of a full-sized orchestra, his solo was sounding real good & the post-performance fist-bump got caught clearly on camera. We’re going places.

Although, I’m running into some music now with A clarinet parts (the bane of the existence of anybody who likes nice things) — transposing is hard & sounds pretty bad because my poor Bb clarinet was just not built to play these scales, so I went scavenging on eBay for the potentially-usable remains of whatever 90-year-old instrument I could find, and I was somewhat successful — I didn’t get the listing, but I had found a good one at one point (it was a little expensive and didn’t have much time left on it, but it proves that I guess I might be able to get one for a decent price in the future if I’m diligent enough). Maybe I’ll just rent one, although it’s unclear whether even that’s possible, since most people don’t seem to care about the half-step disparity between “clarinet” and “slightly larger clarinet”. The single model they stocked at the Music & Arts near where I live was out of inventory (A Buffet E11, so pretty nice, but expensive & they didn’t have it in there anyway).

I might have to run to the Music & Arts near here where I go to school & see what they’ve got — I certainly can’t afford to buy a brand-new Buffet E11, but I could try to rent one for the month, which might be the way to go. I just got my tax refund, so if that’s enough to cover it, maybe I’ll be set.

Meanwhile, my attempts at artistic expression are extending a little further outward, because I’ve been traveling a little more lately being that the weather is venturing above the freezing point — the thumbnail photo is one that I hope to shoot after I’m done writing this and doing some more of my assignments due tomorrow. I accidentally stumbled upon a nice-looking part of town the other day when I took a wrong turn coming home from Target. Maybe I could plug in a few spots near there into Apple Maps and see if I can’t get a nice view to capture on my phone camera — it was foggy yesterday, which made the city look a little bit more epic, but springtime rainy-city photos are neat, too.

It’s 35 degrees, raining, and I’m in a city that I’ve lived in for a year and a half but never really seen. What a time to be alive!

I’ve got one more month to bear before I get to do a little bit of traveling to an even more epic city, of which you’ll definitely see some (probably even more rainy) photos.

Thanks to all those cool people who’ve followed me on Neocities and/or left a comment in the guestbook. 我聽說有的人喜歡我用中文的句子。我剛剛開始用「ㄅㄆㄇㄈ」鍵盤打字，所以正好需要練習。我一定應該繼續。謝謝評論！

Hope to be back with more neat photos, a neater duality of clarinets, and well-written 中文句子。

下個星期回來！

Thanks again.

…

After writing the post, I decided I was serious about trying to find photogenic spots downtown. The particular downtown is Rochester, NY, where I’ve lived for a little while and never really seen, so hopefully you’ll appreciate this little downtown walking-tour summary of what I saw after I was done at Starbucks.

I had to walk to my car on the way out of Starbucks, and couldn’t help but notice the public scooters. I was making a presentation for that business class lately about scooters being introduced to American cities, so that we have something to use on the streets that’s a little more environmentally-conscious than a car. I know scooters — and increasingly electric scooters — have already taken over Taiwanese streets, so for an assignment where we had to pitch an expansion plan for a Taiwanese startup into the US, I suggested Gogoro and said that they should start by introducing their battery-share plan and a special store in New York City. I hadn’t even realized then that the city where I already live was already sprouting a public scooter-share system of its own. Congratulations to the Rochester city government for being a few steps ahead of an optimistic youth and most other American cities!

I had to drive to a parking garage downtown, since the part of the city I was in before was a little detached from the rest. Rochester has a big urban highway system called the “Inner Loop” which seems to be in the progress of being dismantled, although I still had to get on it to get into the actual city (although I think I now know a route I could take without doing that, since I left using normal roads). I’m not sure what it is being built around this clock, but this was the first thing I saw after leaving the parking garage. This is a very nice-looking clock, and I’m sure the area around it will be even nicer some time in the future!

After a little bit more walking, I found a nice area in the center of town with this big light net and some open space. There were maybe too many cars, but there was still some neat scenery to be enjoyed. There were some restaurants and an art gallery here. Pretty upscale, seems nice.

This sign in the middle of town is pretty neat, especially since they show off the city logo in the middle of the big “O” — far better than the grainy image & some words that my original hometown calls its seal. This kind of reminds me of the big “TORONTO” sign in downtown Toronto, which doesn’t help Rochester’s somewhat strong “like Toronto, but worse” atmosphere — I mean, “worse” is in the eye of the beholder, and this is where I live now, so I choose to enjoy.

This church was a pretty neat sight, but I couldn’t get a good view. It’s behind a few older apartment buildings, but that green oxidized-copper accent style looks pretty good. I can imagine people who live in these apartments get a nice view.

It seems like they’re building a downtown Starbucks for me to do more blogging at soon. You’ll know when this is done.

For a place covered in concrete and fencing, this little park has some nice graffiti and demonstrates a clear attempt at making the downtown area more lively, although the city was pretty empty when I was walking around because it was gray and drizzling.

I can’t get over all these scooters. Some time soon, I’ll have to come back and figure out how to rent one of these out. They all have a QR code posted on them, so I think there may be an app or website that I’d have to use to pay. I’m not sure how charging is managed — they might just have city staff running around to docking stations and replacing batteries whenever it’s necessary. Not sure if each scooter has a reporting system for battery charge. If it is this way, they’re already winning against Gogoro — this is the future I’m rooting for.

Cities need greenspace, but I’m always appreciative of designers riding the lines between an urban environment and something natural. I love big, built-up urban regions covered in vines and plants, and this little patch of incredibly well-cared-for, bright-green lawn inside of the part of town called “Innovation Square” seemed like a neat shot.

Another thing that adds interest to cities in my eyes are walkways connecting buildings, which seem to be pretty common in cities where the weather’s never great. Rochester still gets pretty consistent, pretty rough snow and ice storms for a long chunk of the year, so there were plenty of these for me to spot across town. This one had a little curve to it — very retro-modern?

This was another upscale part of town with some restaurants and outdoor seating. It was a nice place to be, for sure, and somebody left their loaner scooter just sitting here — I’d say that the number of stray scooters I was spotting while just passively walking around added a whole lot of character. More cities need city-wide scooter-share. During the summer, maybe I’ll end up at one of these restaurants at some point — today was mostly a sightseeing day, the city overall never got busy.

I’m not sure why this little alley stood out to me. It was surprisingly empty, but there was a pretty large operation going on at this Hilton Garden Inn — it had two of its own parking garages, although one was hotel guest-exclusive and the other was a public one intended for overflow customers, which was the one where I was parked. I spotted this on my way back to the car. I think the little bend at the end of the road is what gives this boring alley a little bit of personality.

In case you hadn’t figured it out already, Rochester was built using SimCity 2000 (and without “disasters” disabled) — we’re late-game enough for the UFO invasions to start. A good enough reason for me to leave while there’s still time — this picture was only about a two-minute walk from the car, anyway, pretty convenient. I was narrowly able to avoid abduction.

I’ll definitely be back here when the weather is a little nicer, although rainy cities are sometimes neat for exploration when it’s not too bad. The rain picked up once I started driving home, so I really did happen to leave just in time — I’ll have to track the progress of that Starbucks online if I can find any info, since that seems like a prime spot for relocation of my blogging activities.

I hope you appreciated my photographic tour, I’d never been here until today. This is a neat place, for sure.

More words will come your way next week!