Toronto!

EDIT: I suppose I should be more clear: the following is a post about how much I like Toronto.

This is a city! This is a city with the tallest building in the world whatever, and parks from which to look scoff at it.

This is a city as griddy as New York. If Bombay's a grid and Delhi swings, well, Toronto doesn't swing. Which is nice. In Toronto's case, it's easy to find anything and easy to get anywhere. You can ride bikes and people do.

There's a nice subway but you don't even need it. The University is right in the center of everything. Fifty thousand students clustered at the heart of the town.

Churches. Old churches!

Neighborhoods where one might live.

Shiny downtowns, if that's your bag:

All of the cultures. (I wandered through at least an Italy, Portugal, China, and Korea.) A guy named Kevin who knows what's up.

Umm... architecture! Museums. Big city niceties. Biggest-city-in-the-country kind of clout.

Occasional weirdnesses.

Art galleries just hanging around. You can get your fancy coffee or your 50 cent donut and coffeepot on the same block. The Second Second City, the world's biggest film festival, and even some sports if you like. All of the wonders of being in the biggest place, and seemingly more affordable even than Seattle.

Toronto! How about this place!

Planning again

Well, if I'm going to ride a motorbike through Eastern Europe, I have to plan some things, and there are a ton of choices.

First: where to go? I'm thinking about starting in Bulgaria (or maybe Turkey) and heading up to Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine (or maybe through Albania, Serbia, and Montenegro) and then across to Poland and the Czech Republic, and then to Holland through Germany (or maybe south through the Alps and Switzerland). Well, at least I know I want to end up in Holland. But knowing where to start, well, that is important, if I'm going to buy a plane ticket.

Second: is it even remotely possible to buy a motor scooter in, say, Bulgaria? I guess it is not very easy in Turkey, because you have to have an address there to register it, and you have to get a permit to take it out of the country.

Third: will I have to get a carnet de passage, to prove to some countries that I won't try to sell the scooter there?

Fourth: wait a minute... then how can I sell the scooter at the end?

Fifth: most motorcycle tourers use big bikes. I think it's because most motorcycle tourers like big bikes, but is it possible that I'm going to get totally schooled trying to ride a little dinky thing around a whole continent?

Frustratingly, I rather need to have answers to all of these before I start, or else the plane ticket I buy will go to different places. Hmm hmm. Let me know if you have any advice!

Seattle!

Man! This city is the most beautiful place! Even the air smells better!

And I have a lot of friends here! This is very pleasant. Daniel and Killian have this cat:

I have not created many great stories this week. I have met up with friends, drank some uppers with some, drank some downers with some, ate some food with others. Board games have been played, a little bouldering and meditation have happened. No camel safaris or Himalayas or visa issues or idlis and vadas. But I would just like to record, as a memo to my future self, that I am thankful for weeks like this one, as well as months like this one and years like this one.

I could have the same alma mater as Mark Price

So I'm doing the grand tour of grad schools, and I thought Georgia Tech would be a bit of a backup. I mean, it doesn't have the brand name of a CMU or an MIT, it's not a known entity like UW, and it's not in an awesome location like Toronto. I mean, it's in (ominous voice) the south. But it turns out I'm hella excited about it.

I'm not sure the research is all that exciting to anyone on this blog, but I met with one lab that's all about wearable computers and one lab that's about all sorts of stuff (somewhat relating to home networks but not necessarily) and that I'd be stoked to work with either. They've got a whole school of Interactive Computing, their building is new and inspiring, they've got tons of connections, and the department feels like a big happy family.

But more about Atlanta: it's nice! Think about Pittsburgh: if you'd never been there, you might think of old factories, but it's actually a great, happening, up-and-coming place to live. I guess there are parts of Atlanta that have problems, but overall, there is a chance that even bike-riding farmers'-marketing coffee-swilling Indian-cooking I could find a place there.

Concrete upsides:
- housing is reasonable (cheaper than Seattle or Boston, pricier than Pittsburgh)
- it's bikeable (I guess car ownership is common, but all the neighborhoods I might live in are within 4 miles/30 minutes)
- it's pretty (mostly houses and green space)
- major airport
- weather is nice (I do like clouds and cold weather, but I could deal with springlike weather for most of the year)

Concrete downsides:
- once you get outside the city, it's (ominous voice) the south. (maybe this would be an upside; a bit of diversity might do me some good.)
- you can throw a stone without hitting an independent coffeeshop
- I guess bugs get in your house sometimes. (again, this might do me some good. I've got a bug phobia and, well, good to confront it sometime.)
- summers are hot. (more incentive to get an internship somewhere else!)

I've been here a month exactly.

That's a bit of a surprise; I didn't expect to be here so long. It's been nice to have no time pressure. This leg of the trip has been the most vacationey, I think. New Zealand is culturally easy and naturally pretty.

It's been rewarding too. I learned I can bike a long distance and that I can do productive work for at least a week at a time. I've caught up with family a bit and seen some sights. I've met a few excellent Kiwis and absorbed a bit of NZ culture. It's all "shallow" culture (Cricket! Marmite! "Sweet as"!) but if you dig deeper, our cultures are really similar anyway.

I've got an exciting 3 days ahead: WLG-AKL-SYD (catch up with friend Anika)-LAX (catch up with cousins Jessica, Matt, and Colette)-IAD-ATL (see the city with friend Brad and visit Georgia Tech).

And then, here I come back to the States, inspired again. Inspired by a couple of fresh canvases, of the next few months and the next few years, and the confidence that I'll paint awesome stuff on them. Inspired by all the grad schools I'm going to visit, and the chance to work with some people who will help me turn my enthusiasm and energy into actually useful things. Inspired by an increasingly constant notion that everything is okay, and an urge to create and hopefully inspire creation and otherwise forward progress in others.

And let's not lie, inspired by some more great coffee. (Seriously. All over NZ it's good-to-great, but I think Wellington rivals Seattle. New favorite: Brewtown in Newtown, next to, and affiliated with, People's Coffee.)

Well, I didn't leave.

Here is what I have done in Wellington this week:

• started and finished Radiohead or Horse_ebooks?. Err, it's a little internet-memey. But I think it mostly works, and it's live, so that's a good feeling. Exciting showing up in a city and working on a project.
• saw The 37th Situation. Brilliant! The premise: some guy once wrote a list of 36 situations that encompass every play ever. This ensemble staged a short 1-2 minute bit for each of the 36, running through them all in an hour. Reminiscent of Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, which is exciting because either:
• they saw TMLMTBGB and were inspired to do a similar show (sound familiar, Sarah, Julie, Todd, Josh?), or
• they developed it independently, which means there's a bit of subgenre of this kind of thing, and therefore more of it
• met some Wellington CSers, and went to see another show that was not so good
• planned all the travel (this takes a surprising amount of time)
• drank all of the coffee; I think my favorite spots are Lamason downtown and People's in Newtown, but Memphis Belle is a close third.

"Careful, you won't want to leave."

So said a fellow I met on the bus up from Christchurch, about Wellington.

It's like a small San Francisco, with the hills, artsy reputation, and cool rainy weather. I'm couchsurfing with a cool guy named Joe, who lives in a pretty great spot, where the above picture is taken from. It's up in the hills, but only a 20-30 minute walk (through a gorgeous lush park) to the city center. Best of all worlds.

I kind of don't want to leave. It's big enough to have a good downtown, a couple of arts festivals, alternative newspapers, restaurants from all sorts of different cultures, etc, but still small enough that you can walk around it all. It's got all the consumable things I like: single origin coffee (at Peoples and Flight, at least), amazing ice cream (Kaffee Eis), craft beer (e.g. Hop Garden), and even passable wifi throughout the city center. (in NZ this is a big deal; you usually don't get it free with your coffee) And the weather is perfect.

What have I been doing in Wellington, besides talking about how great it is? The other day I went to the Weta Cave, a tiny museum and gift shop by the Weta movie-special-effects company. The company is super cool: a video showed a short bit of how they make effects for all these films (incl LotR). They're the second biggest such company in the world, after Pixar. That's neat. The Weta Cave itself is... really small. Not sure it's actually worth a visit.

I did meet this guy though.

Other end of the spectrum: Te Papa. This is like four museums in one. I got museum fatigue, but still enjoyed the modern art bit and the colossal squid.

Also, I went to my first ever live cricket match.

The pitch before the match

tl;dr: American goes to foreign country, loves foreign sport. It was great, though! New Zealand beat South Africa in 20/20 cricket (a short form that just takes 3 hours, not all day or multiple days). Pretty down to the wire, too: they needed 6 runs from the last 6 balls (not difficult, but not a given), and they got them. Martin Guptill hit something like 73 not out on 58 balls, which is really good.

This week, I had planned to go to Tongariro National Park, to hike the famous Tongariro Crossing (and climb Mt. Doom). Look at the pictures! But you need good weather, and this week is all rain and gale force winds. So now I'm not sure what to do.

I'm thinking about hanging out in Wellington for a week. Cons: vague feeling like I'm missing out on something. People would scoff at me because you don't go to NZ to hang out in cities. Pros: I'm thinking about working-vacationing, like my friends Jay, Raph, and Gary have done, and this could be just the rest period/kickstart I need. Also, it'd be pretty cheap. Also also, seeing things because other people think I should see them is boring, and the only thing I know of that I personally wanted to see on the north island is the Tongariro crossing.