The week is already going by nicely, but not too quickly. At least, I enjoy my new job way more than I’ve ever enjoyed my old ones.
The picture in the thumbnail is the first of (likely many) attempts to try to find good urban environments in the vicinity to make me feel less insane — I’ve already spent more than $100 on gas money in the past week (that’s, like, three tank refills), but the isolation of the metal box I need to get anywhere around the city is depression fuel in itself.
Luckily, I have Mt. Hope, Park Ave., and the campus here. Although, all are too far from each other for me to walk between them. Mt. Hope even has 樂生活 Joy Mart, a neat little store where they sell melon bread and 「經典港式奶茶」, which I hadn’t known was a thing at all until this week, but now I drink it every morning. It is like $1.00 per bag, though.
Because I have to start work soon, this is a quick post, but I also wanted to mention the other things that are good for sanity — first, walking to work in the morning (which I can do because both home and work are on campus), sleeping well, eating well (more restaurants are open around here than I had anticipated), and having interesting material to read — especially the last one.
I heard about the book Orphan of Asia by 吳濁流 Wu Zhuoliu (pretty sure I got the characters right?) — for a story about a 20th-century small-town citizen of the Japanese Empire, the main character is surprisingly relatable (I think some things just transcend cultures). I’ll try to refrain from spoilers, but the story has its ups and downs. It’s sort of expensive on Kindle (you can get a paperback copy for cheaper, actually). I will also probably do that soon (after my first paycheck).
I also cleaned out my photo library this morning. The more I get nice art representing the places around me, the more I appreciate them — that might be a little bit of a life hack. I recently opened an account on Wikimedia Commons to showcase (and make public and public-domain) some of my best photos — you can get the link at my new links page.
Actually, this new page seems to be a good way to lend my Web presence a friendly URL without my having to pay for a domain (just look at the URL bar above this blog!). Regardless, I think everything here is easy enough to navigate for now. I apologize for the straight week of inconsistency, things will go back to stable now (Update: it’s been a few days and I just registered the domain brpe.cc to use instead of that chunky old one. It’s for the best).
This shot is not too far from Rochester:
This is nice nature, but I seem to be (at least lately) more into finding places with the right amount of compromise between interest and beauty. More cityscapes will follow.
As the lights in the room next to me start to turn on, I realize I should probably get off the blogging and start being productive an intern.
I’ll be back soon!