19-6
i think my airbnb host thinks i'm a guy. he keeps on calling me bro, or man, and stripped to his underwear the second we entered the apartment. to be fair, it is 35C out. perhaps it's just being french (i don't think it's being in finance). he really likes talking to himself and making grunting, vaguely masculine noises. are most men like this?

i almost died when i ran for the metro and my arm got caught on the door. i am indebted to the strangers who probably saved my life. thank you. it is increasingly obvious that i need to learn how to speak the language better, or really, at all. i wonder if my mother felt similarly when she came to america. actually, she guaranteed had it worse. i'm only here for 5 weeks. the fact that the sun still shines at 10pm is wild to me. i've been trying to replace my "crazy"s and "insane"s with "wild" to use less ableist language.

20-6
my stomach still doesn't adapt to time changes like the rest of my body, which is a shame. how am i supposed to experience the abundance of great food everyone keeps on raving about if i cannot eat more than a couple of bites? i had a three course indian meal for less than ten euro, but i wish i could have finished it. i am writing this in an rer c train that was supposed to leave 20 minutes ago. public transit in paris has never spurred the same frustration i frequently feel with that of the bay, but there's a first for everything. it is so hot and humid i can exfoliate just by applying light pressure to my skin. there's a metaphor to be found in the eraser shavings, in shedding an outer layer. versailles gave me a look into the true origins of "bougie." i'm impressed one person can like himself so much. i fell asleep for 30 minutes on a marble bench in the gardens, after a musical fountain show that reminded me of my childhood and made me feel very sad. only four other people were there to watch it. i feel bad for the water jets, as performers. when i awoke i saw five magpies and two parakeets. when first stepping foot into the gardens, i distinctively recall thinking how lucky i am to live the life i do. the rer went to the next station and now is stopped. there are many things which i do not understand.

my airbnb host asked me if i wanted his make america great again hat he bought before election results happened. i mentioned i had a jeb bush shirt in a similar nature, and he proceeded to say "jeeeeb buuush" in the voice middle school boys do when pretending to be a woman orgasming. he then continued to work from home, cursing at a spreadsheet. "jeb is the saddest candidate i've ever seen," he said later, with aplomb.

21-6
today i woke up without a plan. i used the internet for an hour and then had some plan, which actually looked graphically more like a tree with many branches. it is the summer solstice, and there is music hidden all throughout the city. the time is ripe for discovery.

one discovery: i paid €8,5 to go to a museum attached (but not part of) the louvre on decorative items, which i don't care about, but they had a graphic design section, which i do care about. half of the place was closed because of construction. instead, i ended up wandering into a choir performance from older adults. the audience was entirely their families. it reminded me of my (awful) violin/viola recitals. second discovery: a japanese saxophone quartet played on the street corner as i was heading to a patisserie. i found myself crying and full of joy, the latter emotion taking me by surprise by its sudden reemergence in my life, having not physically spoken to any of my friends for about two weeks. third discovery: while waiting between sets at a show with an actual sound system, i read some of weike wang's chemistry. she is writing about her white boyfriend's marriage proposal. "for a moment, i let myself imagine it. us in a big house in ohio, a yard for the dog to run in. i can't quite imagine it. it is too happy." oh, i think. oh. fourth discovery: when i return to the 19th arrondissement around 23h, there is a huge party by the river bank. everyone is young, attractive, and in tasteful lingerie as they take turns jumping off the bridge. i look at their pretty faces with envy. to have grown up in a city! the suburbs are safe, but debilitatingly predictable. were i afforded all this adventure as an angsty, restless teen, i think i would be less existential, and potentially more beautiful. (to be smart and pretty, when did i want such a female thing?)

all the crows here hang out with their beaks open, panting like dogs. i find them endearing. since childhood i've decided if i could be any animal, it would be a bird. i do not understand yet why so many americans (or, historically, people) come here for "artistic development," but i hope it happens to me soon. i do find my thinking slightly more clear, but i have a hunch this is due to distance from the homeland rather than the inspiration of this (beautiful, but very hot) city.

22-6
the title of "best wine i've ever had" (not that there was high competition to begin with) now goes to the one matt berninger served me iced and in a teapot. the national show was all about forgetting: my earplugs, so bryce's guitar left me without some high frequencies; my phone charger, so i asked a stranger for directions back; how much i hate men who take up space, how murderous i felt when a tall guy who smelled like beer physically pushed me further from the stage to make room for himself. forgetting how i walked through a poor and predominately black neighborhood to enter one of the whitest spaces i've been to yet. ah, but i got a setlist, is all forgiven?

at shakespear & company i bought another book about an asian-american experience by a female asian-american author. now that these kinds of stories are easier to find, i am afraid i might be addicted to reading them: searching for myself in these narratives, trying to mold them to me (or me to them?) in some universal immigrant truth. literary representation is happening and i am gladly taking what i can get. another kind of story: i found myself enjoying a self-guided audio tour of 'historic paris' and the context it provided. so often are my experiences in new places driven by surface level aesthetics and consumerism, i wish the history and culture around a space could be more readily integrated and upfront.

the weather has cooled, and so have i. at sunset, walking along the canal with the breeze picking up, i felt incredibly happy. (i am afraid i have been spoiled by california.)

23-6
i am unstoppable force, i am newton's first law, i am that who wakes up absolutely mortified at 2 in the afternoon. today i traced efros (image coming soon) and took this walk; i even ordered a delicious macaron from 'One of the most imaginative (if sometimes weird) pastry shops. Not cheap.' at the medici fountain i finish chemistry and find myself crying in public again. then there are baby ducks and i am convinced nothing in life is better than baby ducks.

refilling my water bottle in the bathroom at the louvre i get a nasty look, and at first i wonder what this lady has against tap water, but then i realize i am wearing the shirt that makes me look like a monsieur. monster? gender holds us all captive, or something.

since man of war came out it's all i've been listening to. i write this illuminated by the red light of le hall de la chanson, close to the philharmonie where i will see sufjan's planetarium in a few weeks, streaming radiohead's glasto set on my phone. for dinner i had excellent lamb, and i am very full. a grasshopper jumps on my shirt. a large spider begins spinning a web, so i must leave, in terror.

24-6
my old place was in a courtyard shared with a school, so every day at 08:45 i would awake (only briefly) to the synchronized song of french school children. my new place is criminally large for a single person, has wonderful succulent pots in the windows, and serves as a constant reminder of how lucky i am to be here (work in a field with a lot of money).

at pride, there was a bus (suiting) that said LGBTech (never trans enough, only tech: the hidden fears of my identity confirmed). there was also the french analog of an american "frat bro" in a native headdress. i was disappointed at myself for expecting better. i arrived at the parade's ending point and walked the opposite direction, as to maximize all the things i saw. following the crowd were garbage trucks, pressuring washing the streets and collecting the rainbow jetsam. why does pride produce so much trash?

25-6
i wake up really early to talk to jeremy. then i wake up really late and feel disgusted with myself, like i want to throw my over rested body against a wall. i do not do that and instead go to the flea market. at first i think, what's so great about this, it is a bunch of people trying to sell bootleg loui vuitton sunglasses off their heads, though that over there is a very impressive wall of nikes. one store owner is very excited about my blue hair, but by the time my brain translates his outburst the moment for conversation has passed. another one says konnichiwa. walking more, i realize the "real" flea market is on the inside of a wall, like the one promised to be built in the southern US. they both keep out the immigrants of color.

i go to bois de boulogne and try to write, try to seep out the solitude into some artistic artifact. a large white swan chases around a smaller canadian goose. the beating of his feet against the surface of the water sounds like slapping flesh. the sun is setting and the whole thing is like an impressionist painting.

26-6
work is really great. it is a diverse group of people, and i am excited to be a part of the team for a month. today i heard conversations in english, french, spanish, and mandarin. i have spent the past 6 months, ever since i got out of school, kind of slacking off (with the occasional lapse back into productivity for a paper deadline), so i am looking forward to reentering the grind.

dinner today was some really amazing slow cooked beef. the thinly shaved rings of onion were what made the dish, though. every time i try to converse in french the waiters reply in english which embarrasses me greatly. i was wearing a bra today and they called me sir. i was surprised, but not unhappy.

27-6
thunderstorm today! in the wetness it smells like china. with the change in weather comes nosebleeds. tuesdays are meeting days, yet i am still falling asleep when people speak directly to me. frustrating. the viet restaurant adjacent to my apartment (whose kitchen i can see from my bedroom window) served me what probably was the best mango sticky rice of my life.

28-6
potentially made friends with the lab mates. over lunch listened to expats shit on america. followed the prof to her car, that's a new kind of meeting. waitress at dinner spoon fed me whipped cream, gave me her orange juice and ice cream. these things get more concise as i settle into a rhythm.

29-6
it took 110 minutes to get to work and 80 to return home. "welcome to paris!" responded the labmate. have two potential projects. very excited, very tired. watch more of i love dick, amazon video adaptation (different from the book, yet not bad).

30-6
dinner and drinks with the labmates. on the way to the city the chinese labmate says, you have blue hair, obviously you are not from the mainland. (flashback to earlier convo with my german almost-advisor--me: oh, it looks like i would be the only american in your group! her: i thought you were chinese?) again: never chinese for the chinese people, never american for the white people.

the danish labmate is more american i am, i think. he grew up immersed in the (his words) great american online cultural hegemony. (we both had formative experiences on the internet because we were socially awkward and assholes). he questions my senior quote and i realize i have forgotten all the vonnegut i've read. i show him and the texan labmate my airbnb, which has been professionally cleaned when i was at work. we all agree anyone who uses airbnb is The Elite.

st vincent's new york replaces man of war on repeat. it is a very sad song but i cannot stop listening to it. i refuse to associate it with the only friend i have from new york, because we have never been there at the same time, and because i do not want to miss him more than i already do.

1-7
lots of sleeping. got drunk on 15cl (quarter bottle) of white wine that came with lunch. after sobering up, argued with people in montmartre who probably thought i was an easy target because i am asian. had an hour conversation with the owner of the chinese duck restaurant across the street, where he complained about how 63% of his wages go to taxes, and said racism only affects you if you let it. it ended with him giving me green rice cake.

2-7
radiohead in arras! took an early train there which paid off when i snagged rail. then: waiting. a lot of smoke. a lot of white men on stage. then: it was thom, with his black jacket with a single white racing stripe stripe, and i looked at him and felt so much adoration, still, even after first seeing him 8 years ago. they were a bit off; thom stopped the gloaming and fucked up the end of no surprises, but did i love them any less (no). the best bit was separator (the little vocal riff!) to reckoner (with a frikkin' tease of big boots beforehand, they heard me yelling it out...!) to there there (which i, after 5 shows, have finally heard live). then: needing to pee, so badly. but the train station didn't open until 4:45am. so i slept on a bench, and it was cold, but there were lots of other people there too. lots of thoughts on homelessness, and if i could even say that for myself, because i was in transit to a (really nice) place. probably not. probably i'm being very offensive.

3-7
when does a day end and another one start? get back to the paris apartment at 7:45am and feel exhausted. sleep deeply, still feel exhausted. get to work at 2pm but the profs aren't in so i don't feel that bad. good design conversations. after: drinks and karoke with a lot of the labmates; one has a birthday today. immense fun; i missed dancing. more good conversations, this time not about design. ("i've been drinking since i was nine," says the french one.) walk back home realizing it's america day and feeling like i'm managing my American™ identity crisis a lot better in this land. don't dry swallow 400mg of ibuprofen; it'll get stuck in your throat.

4-7
slept through my alarms and woke up, mortified, at 11. now feel really bad. this seems to be a common theme. i guess i know not to week-drink, or something? went to choisy in search of good chinese food, and it was meh compared to the stuff in the bay area. i'm continously impressed by how many languages people speak here as compared to the us. thinking about writing a break up letter to america, but i know that, in the end, she is the reason for my identity/existence, and i couldn't be with anyone else in the long run.

5-7
even though i got to lab at a normal hour for once, i feel like i didn't do anything today? met up with an ex-cloaca ex-uber employee for dinner. within 5 minutes he told me he's going to make $240k at his new job at twitter. despite that, he booked a cheap ass hostel so he's crashing in my living room right now. "even though i have two cars, i just uber everywhere." we talked a lot about tech (welcome back to my life, tech) and a bit about privilege and him giving up on being ambitious with his career. it seems to be a theme with these wealthy 23-year-olds in tech. you make more money then you can spend. and then what? where's the privilege, excitement of worrying? (largely this is what scares me about my private school heart-of-sv sanctioned future. ha! look at me complaining. who am i, but staying in this beautiful city because of my vocation and connections.)

6-7
once every few months i have a day devoted to an identity crisis, and today was the day. perhaps it's because i didn't go to lab today: i helped run a user study--er, 'technology probe'--at a dance studio in the city (which was all conducted in french; boy, how do you gain insight when you barely follow the language) and ''worked from home'' afterwards, by that i mean wrote maybe 10 lines of code and got very distracted. then i felt frustrated with my distraction, and decided i need to take some major steps in greater self discipline. overcommitment, procrastination, not using my time wisely: these are the great thematic overtures of my life. while i was a student at berkeley i was so stressed out i kind of had to be good at managing my time (the alternative was not sleeping, which leads to all kinds of trouble). but now i'm awkwardly occupying the interstitial space between researcher and tourist and letting fomo and 'going with the flow' dictate my life of affluence, abundance, excess and, for the first time, i am seeking more structure and direction. ex-grad students frequently talk about the great soup of ideas that many spend years struggling to navigate, and i totally feel that, but also as a larger life metaphor. is this, again, the parisian goal: to clear your thinking, to impart grand realizations (such as how i am going to start recording what i spend my hours doing)? i wish i were producing more art. i foolishly did not bring my pen tablet, or any paints.

some homeless young folks have started to camp outside the courtyard door to my apartment. i think they change daily, which is confusing to me? one day it is two guys, the next, a different a guy and a girl. i want to invite them in, but i do not speak this language, and they have dogs. the dogs stay the same, at least. their money jar is always full (maybe because they are young) and they seem happy. needlessly said, a stark contrast from the states.

second big feeling: missing the east bay. i blame chaz b's new boo boo video, where he drives through it. i am fortunate (?) enough that the majority of important people in my life have been largely geographically co-located, that i am no stranger to my own self, that i am so fascinated with being immediately present (and so often tired) i have no room in my life for 'homesickness.' i hate that term. sickness is bile and vile and home is a place for healing. anyway, i miss it. home. how absurd.

7-7
the lab had a chi writing workshop, which was such a stark contrast with my previous advisor's method towards writing chi papers (e.g., no guidance). everyone here is so smart and full of good ideas. i aspire to be like them. labmates and i went on a quest to find properly spicy sichuan, and as a result i experienced probably my first really, really good chinese meal here. the internet is inescapable: afterward, we passed by a vape store called clop, and then went drinking at my little pub. why do people call it drinking? for me the activity is usually talking, but then i drink, and then i talk more while the bottoms of my feet itch in protest of the alcohol. on the subway back, i get stopped by the police because i did not buy a photo of myself to stick on my transit pass. (i have never gotten a ticket in america before--france is full of novelty!) i try to argue my way out of it but i am too tipsy. in the long run the fine is trivial, but i am frustrated because the employee i originally bought the pass from explicitly said 'oh, it works, you don't need a photo' when i asked for him to take one of me.

the danish labmate and i talk some more at my place. i had no idea 'my beautiful twisted big mac fantasty' (his words) had an (abridged) album video, so he shows me that. then i show him lemonade. then it is 3am. if life were a research project, i want to encapsulate these functions for formative friendship, and see how old i can get before the output is all wrong. but, unlike research projects post-publication, i think my personal codebase is changing all the time.

8-7
went to a comic book store with the labmate. later, ate lunch on the bank of the sien and read poetry. how much more of a french stereotype can my life get?

i think i oversaturated myself with museums my first week here, but it has since pooled out, so i went to the orsay. (i'm going to live in the museums, i told matthew before coming here, but they are too bright, too powerful. matthew tells me: you are the white man.) amongst ineffably compelling artworks in my favorite non-contemporary painting period (which is basically the broad range of impressionism, because it's that or jesus paintings, right), i realize most of the things in life i have learned that are not from my mother are from white men. but maybe this does not have to be a problem. maybe i spend too much energy scratching itches that i just irritate further, like mosquito bites.

9-7
the only thing i did today was really embody being a weeb. i was at an anime convention for most of the day. actually, it was japan expo; there was more than anime (though anime was a huge part of it). for example, there was a rope tying demonstration of an older japanese woman tying up a thin, expressionless younger girl, and a lot of old white men recording the whole thing. needless to say this made me incredibly uncomfortable. another point of thought: do i only want to cosplay todoroki because i want to be him? like, beyond the embodiment of a cosplay. how many layers of fictionalization and performance have i already constructed for my identity, anyway. when i get back, i read 60 chapters of the bnha manga. it is so embarrassing and frustrating to not to do work. i take a few steps outside in search of dinner before it starts flooding. i learn that my adidas can withstand downpour for 3 minutes before they get soaked. there's definitely a metaphor in the deluge, but i don't want to make it.

10-7, 11-7
two days one entry; i'm slipping. on monday we were supposed to have a lab picnic, but got thunderstormed out. i spent the day alternating between clobbering together a presentation and reading more bnha. in the evening, i saw planetarium, my fifth sufjan show! aptly, my first sufjan show was planetarium at the walt disney concert hall over 4 years ago. both shows were in concert halls complexly carved from metal. the LA one was more intense: giant rotating orb, 7 trombones (they downsized to 3) -- but i think the paris one was more enjoyable, since the record has been out and i'm not hearing the songs blindly.

on tuesday i presented my past work to the group to great comments! one professor said, on the chat bot research i did with a start up, this just seems very capitalist, the automating of interviews. and i thought, yes! would i ever hear these kinds of opinions back in the bay? at lunch, she started talking about how much she disliked america(n ideology). while i agree wholeheartedly, i could not bring myself to vocally shit on the place so seminal to my experiences. (on the way to lunch, i was saying, to me, america is the entirely immigrant apartment complex / the white upper middle class suburb / the student housing cooperative, the qpoc) so i ask: where's the line between nationalism and solidarity?

i have just now noticed four small moles? freckles? on the back of my right hand. perhaps i'm getting old.

12-7
the buses stop during the summer so my commute has gotten longer. but since i have started saving articles to read on it, i do not mind as much. for dinner, i go to an efros sanctioned™ place and order what he recommends. i should have gone with what i wanted to eat instead, but i pass by a bakery and get a pistachio eclair so good i want to die.

there are a lot more people who publically sign here than in america! that is, i have seen 3 groups here (and, obviously, none there). one was full of hip queer older teens who asked me to take their picture. surprisingly it was through snapchat--do they know the quality is lowered? another group i sat next to during dinner, and another i shared a train with while going to the anime convention. language is abundant, once you're out of america.

13-7, 14-7, 15-7
i wake up in (what i assume to be, my phone died) the middle of the night to find out i fell asleep while reading manga. when i wake up again to my alarm, i feel embarrassed, but refreshed. (i feel like 99% of my self embarrassment is from either being really late or oversleeping. actually, the latter often causes the former.)

this is okay, because the labmates leave the apartment at 6am for the first train home. after some hella good hot pot (the food here, clearly, is something to write home about) we decide to cool down at a 'firemans ball,' a pop-up dance for bastille day. but the unmoving line stretches down the block, so we improvise in the apartment. and so: there is swing dancing through mbp speakers, there is cheap vodka, and then there is the sun rising. this is a much better way to spend the night than wandering outside a train station, i think. this is also the first time i've fulfilled knox fortune's verse in chance's all night. is it the land i am on? or is it that i have become less of a sad nerd?

wake up halfway into bastille day, which is celebrated with the danish labmate. a day of collaborative breakfast, of media, of crowds, of long bathroom lines, of gunpowder and poorly disguised eiffel tower euphemisms. i decided i've been too untroubled lately, so the good old existential crisis says hello the next day, which is spent thinking over the best crepe (also efros sanctioned™) i've ever had and, and, in a shocker to none of my readers nor myself, in lieu of doing any real research.

16-7, 17-7, 18-7, 19-7
for five hours i am an ice witch called bey(oncé) in my first table top rpg adventure. the experience is so nerdy and fun and quite allegorical, in contrast to my deviantart comment rp-ing days. afterwards we are hungry and find ourselves in another hand-pulled noodle sichuan place (note, america, please get in with this hand-pulled abundance): every time i have gone out to eat with the labmates, it has been chinese food.

with the help of the danish labmate (do i ever switch to using their names, i wonder, surely the intimacy and rapport (no t, he corrects me) have been cemented by now) there has been a lot of resolution around the crises and questions i carried into this country. answers developed around celebrations of 'freedom': on the morning of 4-7, when i am drunk on the subway and see the same beauty and dirt in these cobblestone streets as i do in the pavement back home (american exceptionalism--at 16 i made a whole project about how it was a myth, yet i still allowed myself to believe it was america that played the biggest role in the formation of my identity (see 4-7), that my educational opportunities did not only enable the "dream" but were, in and of themselves, the dream). two trite aphorisms for clarity: (1) love knows no borders, and (2) when sufjan says the world is abundant, i had always emphasized the abundance, but now i am drawn to the world. to answer my 14-7 question: what is land but a container for the people who fill it, people, with their disparate experiences yet open hearts, enable me to evaluate the straightedge intellectualism and shame of nerdom i so comfortably nestled into in america. did you know that desire and abasement do not have to be inherently linked, that you can (21-6) feel both smart and pretty, and that, after earnestness and vulnerability, it will feel fucking fantastic? which brings in another resolution: the binarism of thinking-feeling is starting to crumble.

on tuesday the postponed lab picnic happens. i make egg tarts which kind of taste like shit because the dough has been in my fridge for a week. with the chinese labmate (whom i've been flirting with too much, i think) we recreate the sapphic statue our group sits next to. "this is the gayest thing i've ever done," she says, and i think that if one of my life missions was to queer up people's experiences, that would be fine.

here are some things i have learned about european countries:

1. french residents pay €3 a month for unlimited calls, texts, and 50 gb of data (i, a us resident, pay $25 for 2 gb)
2. the french government pays for half of its residents' transportation costs

1. in bavaria (a german state), beer is legally considered a food, and not an alcohol
2. after graduating from gymnasium (german high school), the entire class parties for 10 days in a row on a greek island

"everything you do is so poetic," says the old housemate, which i disagree with but then they elaborate and then i feel like i'm in a goddamn movie or something. you know, master of none, 20s and lost, escape to europe, learn a trade, learn something about yourself. it is embarrassing how lucky i am to be such a stereotype. here, then, is my climax. the denouement should involve working harder on research.

20-7, 21-7, 22-7, 23-7
it was wishful thinking. i think i would be a lot more successful if i were at all disciplined, but instead i am good at communicating and going into meetings prepared, so i think the prof is happy (we had a great talk, she tells the other prof/her husband) despite my not doing much of anything real. well, the future is open.

a blur: send-off dinner friday, which takes 3 hours. french food, a first! then drinks, which take another 3 hours. the chinese labmate is really, really drunk and i am worried that she cannot get to her illegally subletted dorm safely alone, so she crashes with me. on saturday i see bones in the catacombs with the german labmate, who isn't really a labmate but another visitor like myself, and takes up too much of my time and space. i think i am pickier with white men because they tend do that, taking up things--i would too, if all space saw me as their default customer. but we do have some good pie for dinner. the guy who sells it to us throws in some sweetbread he made himself. he says this proudly, beaming.

on sunday i go to mont st michel, which means spending 9 hours on a bus. it is old and i am reminded of how many old things i have been lucky enough to see in my life, how new america is. it ends so well, so metaphorically, it is kind of pathetic. my last meal is in the same place as my first, the delicious and cheap sichuan noodle store with a narrow spiral staircase. this time i am with the chinese labmates. "you're american," says the waiter, in mandarin. "from berkeley." he points at my sweatshirt. "yeah, i'm the american!" i reply in mandarin. "but everyone else studies in europe." once we are seated, he joins us at the table. "which is better, america or paris?" he asks me.

i am momentarily unable to answer. how is this even a comparison? paris is a city. america is many, many, many cities, and many other things. i have spent 5 weeks here, and 18 years there. "i'm going to america tomorrow," he tells me. "to study physics. so which one do you like better?"

i try to explain that i don't think it's a fair comparison, but my mandarin is like a first grader's and i am having trouble expressing complex thoughts, and he insists on me picking something, so i switch to english. i say that my heart is in the bay area, but the american government gives no shits about its citizens compared the french one, and the cultural repercussions are obvious when living there. i say it is probably better to work in france, there are more holidays. i say that i value and cherish california's diversity. i say the food is excellent. i am not sure if he understands any of this.

"so, uh, i guess...i like america more? i've been there longer, and that's where my friends and family are?" i answer in a question. he nods, satisfied.

but am i satisfied? after all of this, after the escape and the embrace and the broken french and the hours spent on the rer and the good alcohol and the hanging out with co-workers while not talking, never talking about tech, did i just cave into a binarism a chinese guy constructed for me?

outside the rain falls in thick streaks. on the bus home, i wrote post cards. to the prof, a haiku about the landscape outside:

golden hay, green trees
where do these colors come from?
oh, it rains in france.