Yes. I am home for the first time since August. For the next two days, I will reconnect with my childhood and experience some serious suburban culture shock. I’ll keep you posted as I go along. But right now, it’s time to eat takeout Chinese food from Kam Luang Kitchen – the same place my family has been going to for over a decade. Okay, so along with culture shock, home also revives some familiar rituals.
Update: Okay, so maybe I didn’t keep you posted while I was at home. Maybe because my tendency toward lethargy and television (they go hand-in-hand) completely overthrew my focus while taking hostage my ability to be productive. To be fair, I did accomplish some reading AND I got a haircut. As soon as my hair actually looks clean and my new Macbook (!) is purchased, I’ll post a picture.
Apparently my current writer’s block (blogger’s block?) is a direct consequence of my week-long break from the interwebz and its plethora of daily Facebook-Twitter-RSS-blogging activities. For the first time all summer, I had absolutely NO work to do – i.e. a real vacation! So please excuse my rustiness while I try to recap my first experience in the midwest.
Despite the three hours I spent waiting for my delayed plane at LaGuardia and the fact that planes make me nauseous, I had a really great time in Toledo with Max. We swam in an old quarry-turned-lake, hung out with his friends and family, canoed and laid in the grass at Maumee Bay State Park, shopped and walked around Ann Arbor, MI, ate dinner in Detroit’s Greektown, laid in the grass some more at Belle Isle, and watched glass-blowing in the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion. Yeah, we’re cute like that.
view of Detroit from Belle Isle
Some things I discovered on my trip:
Suburban Ohio looks exactly the same as suburban New Jersey. Or, rather, suburbia is the same everywhere – strip malls, restaurants, and housing developments, oh my! [makes me want to sing the Weeds theme song]
If I ever want to go to Canada, I just have to cross a bridge from Detroit. Yeah, I didn’t realize that. I mean, when we were on Belle Isle and could see Canada on the other side of the Detroit River, my cell phone registered that it was in “international” territory.
University of Michigan is a good school and has a nice campus – maybe I’ll apply there for grad school?
Each day I don’t post new entries, I lose more and more readers But since last night was my last ever shift at the restaurant (yup, I quit!), I should be able to post more frequently
Also, Max and I listened to Noah & the Whale in the car. This song, “5 Years Time,” particularly made us smile and became a sort of theme song for the trip:
Just a heads up: expect a post soon about a personal photo project I’ve been working on with Don. And by personal photos, I don’t mean n00dz – because that would be weird and awkward on so many levels.
I just got a job as Junior Emerging Media Manager at JWT, after graduating from NYU Gallatin with an individualized major in Internet/new media studies and a minor in Anthropology (read my rationale). On any given day, you can find me talking about Twitter (follow me! read my "tweory" project); galavanting around downtown Manhattan with friends; adjusting to real adult life; or lounging in my West Village apartment.
You can find a list of my online profiles here, or you can contact me at nina.yiamsamatha [at] gmail.com.
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But since last night was my last ever shift at the restaurant (
