Like a boat. These ones are from a public domain image I found on Wikimedia Commons, which has that old-time postcard feel. I’m a fan.

As in, when you’re first leaving port, everything happens so fast, when you’re in the middle of the ocean, everything is so monotonous that you can’t really tell time at all anymore, and when you get close to the destination everything slows to a crawl.

That’s a good quality analogy for the day.

There are only six days left until I get my first paycheck, and that’s really the only thing I’m waiting for by now. After that, I’ll have money to go do interesting things and visit places. I might even be able to afford a train ticket somewhere neat. Or a plane ticket — but planes just aren’t that cool.

Since photography is the best way to feel like a tourist in your own city, the other day I went around Rochester trying to find some neat environments and take photos that accurately represented how nice they were. I was more successful than I thought I’d be, and I’ve already posted some of these photos on Wikimedia but I’ve made a few touch-up edits since then (using the built-in photo editor on my iPhone, which is still where I take all my photos).

First, I discovered the nicest place to visit that I’ve seen in Rochester so far — probably its most famous landmark anyway (or one of them) — the area around “High Falls”.

The waterfall itself looks like this:

But, even nicer, there’s a really nice pedestrian bridge over the river in front of the waterfall (which is where I took the photo). Complete with Rochester’s public scooter rentals, there’s a bike & scooter lane in the middle painted green for good vibes.

And on the other end of the bridge, there’s a small historic district called the “Genesee Riverway” with some office buildings, restaurants, and some public spaces. As is apparently a good indicator of a quality city, there were even some children playing around by a small park on the side of the road (not visible).

So, overall, it doesn’t seem like I have to go that far to find neat places to walk around. I just need my exercise!

I also walked around the East End a little bit and updated my since-deleted collection of photos from the first time I discovered downtown. It still looks nice, and its bike lanes are even green now, too:

The nicest downtown neighborhood in Rochester is definitely still around Gibbs St., which is where Eastman and all the downtown performing arts are. There are also two coffee shops, and Java’s is still on my list of places to go sometime (I’ve been holding out because I think it’d be better with a friend).

And, finally, since it was around sunset time I was able to get my best-yet photo of the “I <3 ROC” sign in the city center, now with the lighting just right. This has a few touch-ups as compared to the Wikimedia version that I uploaded, and I might update that one soon.

With all these photos as of late, I’ve had to move my blog to GitHub to be able to manage the data sizes and be able to post on a Starbucks internet connection reliably!

I’m back at the Mt. Hope Starbucks — as always, since the Five-Star Bank Starbucks (easily punnable but I’ll withhold) — still hasn’t been finished yet. There’s a market going on just outside, which is pretty neat. I’m not sure there’s anything there worth buying, but I’m all for public events in neat neighborhoods.

All of this talk about cities and environments is just myself trying to make myself feel better about being otherwise bored and feeling a little held back. If I could find an internship in a neat place, I’d be happy, and if I could get rid of my car, travel more, that’d be cool. I mean, everyone feels that way, especially at age 20, I’m sure.

There’s an airport so close to my apartment that I see (and often hear) planes come up and touch down every day. If the tickets aren’t too bad and I can get enough free time, I could use some of my summer money to at least go to Boston or somewhere more interesting than here.

I want to live in an interesting place first, and then not backtrack on my 中文學 second. I’ve been listening to exclusively Mandopop for quite a long while now, and occasionally I get a song with simple enough lyrics that I can comprehend the general feel of it without having to use a translator — I often have to use the karaoke feature on Apple Music, though, to see the lyrics in writing, because without the tones it’s kind of hard to tell what singers are trying to say (if you’re like me and don’t have whatever linguistic intuition would come with being a native speaker, I assume).

I don’t know if it says something about my personality, but all the Mandopop that I’ve liked the most have been breakup songs. I’ve never even been in a relationship.

Other than discovering myself through 25-year-old pop songs, I started using Anki, too (and I haven’t done my deck yet today, so I have that to look forward to). Nothing I can come up with here seems to be quite as high-quality as shopping at the Dongmen Market, but determination is the most important thing not to lose.

For now, though, I’m at my research internship learning how to blow up nine-stage oscillators. I really understand how competitive overclocking became a sport, now — especially since I can go to work to “experiment with old wafers”.

So, from now until next Friday, it’s amateur attempts at process improvements, a blazing fast (or maybe lightning fast) 10 MHz oscillator, and some presentation skill development. Then I can decide what to do with my newfound monetary freedom. At least I have a nice job now.

See you all then!