Houston Y'all

It has been quite some time since I've posted on anything. It's just been a crazy summer of working for the Brits, vacationing like a president at my favorite place in Massachusetts, parlant (I think I use the gerund here rather than the infinitive) en français en Montréal, and trips down to that part of Massachusetts that curves so regally and will probably get washed away by erosion and sea level rise. Oh right and shopping. And shopping. And shopping. I think it's true what they say, when you hear someone saying they shop because they're lonely. My biggest purchase was a Macbook Air. Much of the past two weeks has been me getting used to the switch from a PC. It’s been great so far, aside from a few mild annoyances (no cut and paste?! Why can’t I turn off this damn startup boooong and why are there so many precautions taken to prevent me from doing something stupid, like asking me for a password to install anything?). But those I’ve actually learned fromt hose, downloading an apple-cation (bwahah) that silences the start-up chime and I’ve set up a start-up script to play the Windows 7 chime, which is much cleaner sounding. I’ve also downloaded an extension that allows me to cut and paste files. Also, turning off the keyboard lighting makes a huge difference in battery life.

Overall, I'm definitely glad that I spent the summer at home. It was a nice time to transition and take a break-I highly recommend it to anyone who is graduating soon. The extra time spent with family and friends was invaluable.

It didn't quite hit me of course that I was actually moving out until I walked through the doors at the airport. The next time I'm back home will actually be sooner than the length of a typical internship (I'll be home for Thanksgiving, which, in a seeming act of metaphor falls on my birthday this year, just as it did the year I was born). But this time I'm actually moving out. As in, my bed at home is going to be sold (I hope). I think I was supposed to make the listing before I left. Crap.

Having gone to college closer to home than my mother once worked, I never actually went away to school. I never had to worry about packing the little things (when I moved out to college, I packed as I would for a one week vacation and just made a list of what I'd pick up the next week as I went along). I was often home for the big Sunday dinners, and I didn't have to suffer the effect of going away to college and coming back with my siblings taller than I was (I am thankful that they still aren't). My family is a nuclear one, as a friend of mine described it, "The only nuclear Asian family I know." Our relatives are for the most part in Massachusetts and I see my cousins' babies frequently enough that I don't always notice a difference in their growth.

Leaving home of course is very different these days than it was even a decade ago-air travel is ever more frequent and the internet and cell phones mean communication is not a problem. In fact, I won’t be getting a landline in my new apartment, so if the aliens attack I guess I’m doomed. Not many people I know these days actually go for the whole landline thing, but I suppose if you’re living with other people there is then the issue of whose line to make the primary. Other than that, I’ve stuck with the standard home furnishings, which feels strange and foreign to me-knowing that I have bought decent furniture that will be mine for at least a few years assuming it doesn’t catch on fire or get blown up. It’s also odd to think that if I died, I’d have a substantial number of material possessions that would outlast me.

I never really think of myself as a very large person until I try to squeeze myself into a middle seat in coach. Suddenly I find myself spilling out into the seats next to me, likely pissing off my neighbors.

So where is it I’m off too? First stop Charlotte, North Carolina. No reason other than to connect. Then it’s off to my final destination, Houston, Texas. I’ll be working for ExxonMobil Environmental Services as a Project Manager in charge of site remediation (meaning the cleanup of contaminated sites). I’m moving to my first apartment, which thanks to the low rent in Houston is going to be pretty nice (pics to follow!). Having grown up in the northeast (Massachusetts no less), Texas is going to be quite a culture shock. Actually, it already was when I first flew down to sign my apartment. For one thing, everything is huge. The roads are wider than any I’ve ever seen. Whereas 3 hours is 3 state lines back home, any other city in Texas is 3 hours away. If I’m not mistaken, Texas is in fact larger than England. And from what I hear the culture of each city is about as different as the culture in each New England state. (You know, Vermont is dairy, holocaust refugees, and teddy bears. Maine is trees, lobsters, and trees. New Hampshire is granite and vacation homes. Connecticut is a suburb of New York. Massachusetts is, well, the college town, and Rhode Island is small enough to be forgotten.) The biggest culture shock will be politically of course. Although, ironically perhaps, I was seated next to a liberal Greenpeace activist on the flight to Houston. For this post, I will just say that the one saving grace is that at least my vote will make a difference now. I must say, having flown to many places in my life it is definitely noticeable, the general differences in the average person on each flight (fashion, fitness, etc).

I’ll be fortunate enough to get to experience one of these other cities my second week in the Lone Star State (by the way Texas is the only state in the Union to fly its own flag as high as the US flag wherever flags are flown). Pretty much as soon as I start I will be attending a conference in Dallas, diving right into the deep end. I’m pretty excited to be getting such a running start at the job. I have a very interesting career ahead of me, so far from the bamboo grove.

Amusing quotes will soon follow.

P.S. I’ve known since getting my phone that I could root it to open up the wireless hotspot capabilities without the fee Verizon charges, but it was only recently that I bothered to look into this. There are a few options to do this, see either PDANet or Wifi Tether. The former allows you to use your phone as a USB or Bluetooth router without rooting it, while the latter requires you to root it, which is easy enough.