Mostly Beloved Uber

Did you know that Uber records passenger ratings? 45% of my Uber life has been spent oblivious to this fact. I just feel that every Did You Know should be followed by a statistic, and now you’re a little more conditioned to expect it too.

I think I learned about this Uber feature from a coworker. On a side note, we’re all Uber fanatics here (and there’s nothing not to love about low rates, automatic payments, no tipping dilemmas, automatic payments again, and credit card points). Apparently it’s very easy to find out your passenger score; I know from personal experience! You send a quick email, and voila, 4.6 stars. Is that a good score? Is it bad? It’s very enigmatic, because you don’t know which rides dinged you and which dimension of being a passenger you’re naturally good at.

I’m serious; so the score factors whether you keep your driver waiting on the curb, whether or not you’re overly unpleasant, and several other things. You get matched with drivers who have similar ratings to your own – at least that’s the rumor. So with the power of this knowledge, you may begin to develop a fear that if you’re not chatty enough with your driver, you’ll end up in a swervy, lost, and God-forbid non-black car in the future as a consequence.

The added pressure notwithstanding, I have genuinely loved chatting with Uber drivers, a great proportion of which have been friendly, phenomenally lighthearted, and well-paced conversationalists. I have sneakily gotten their insight into the Uber system more than once and their stances run the gamut from happily and altruistically wanting to take new friends to their destinations, to suppressed anger regarding the low compensation and the overhaul effects on the taxi industry. I’m now a bit wiser to avoid engaging taxi-by-day Uber-by-night drivers on the concepts of marketplace and regulation.

One personally resounding addendum to driver-passenger chats is that car rides have positive effects on conversation-making in general. I'm inclined to surmise that superb quality occurs more often than in other environments, be the reason reduced expectations or lack of alternatives. Try this on/with your acquaintances!

Given the unique service that this app has provided, what a surprise to remember that Uber is not ubiquitous, as we stood next to our broken down car in the middle of Pennsylvania.

This, my friends, was a comprehensive overview of my Uber experience to date.

Zen Mode

There’s a state of mind that I call Zen Mode. It’s a switch you turn on in your brain. It’s helpful to visualize intentionality when you want to deliberately change the way you think, so that you can do things like switch into honesty mode and effortlessly become the honest person you wish to see (in yourself). So Zen Mode turns on when I’m traveling and it means that long waits, changes in plans, cutting it close, and ignorantly missed shortcuts roll off like it doesn’t bother me.

No really, I can turn Zen Mode on. No, you have to believe me.

New York Raises You to the Occasion - New York City, NY

When in New York, make like a New Yorker. In the few days that I have been here, I have already started walking faster and double-pressing “Door Close” elevator buttons more vigorously. A friend and now-native New Yorker calls them comfort buttons, anything that doesn’t actually send signals to the elevator or crosswalk, but makes the person feel more relieved and action-achieved by pressing it. I have no doubt I'll be recycling this term and will probably even accept originality credit occasionally.

The city really does seem tireless. I’ve been to New York before, but the sensory overload of Times Square still seems to augment the sparkliness of everything, albeit between weaving through sweaty tourists and over nasty puddles. It was so exciting to recognize locations from TV and movies when you least expected it, like passing by the Times Square bleachers from Spider-Man and a random park from White Collar (love). There's a lot of good stimulation here, if I can deflect the fear of missing out. We had some delicious food, which I am now obliged to show you, darn. And with some last minute finagling, we also caught an Off Broadway musical, a production that didn’t disprove the point that things are bigger and better in NYC. People do say that, don't they.

Friday Evening Me Time

Travel is entertaining but raises awareness to the plight that Friday evenings are a prime time to feel an affinity for something to do and people to be around, occurring most reliably when you momentarily have neither. This phenomenon occurred in college as well and after some deliberation, I partially attribute this to the adrenaline drop after a long week. It's limbo, the lag of expectations catching up to reality... not denying there’s also something there about knowing other people are out who will always stay out later than you.

I do love unwinding when I settle in, so there is only a key period to overcome while making the transition from people mode to me-time. Staying entertained helps. Of course, there's also this secondary issue of whether I ever want to leave chill-out-mode once I'm there, even to sleep or to rejoin productive society when it calls. I say this facetiously because the long-run optimization is yes I should, but sometimes, you have moments where you wonder, isn’t it rational to think on the margin?

Alas, that's all a bit of sophistry, so back to work it is.

A Very Empty Plane

This is not a drill, a recent flight from DC to New York looked like this for the duration of the flight - the back of the plane was empty. I haven't seen this often, having a flight with only about 15 people on board. A major upside was that most people got their own row, almost as if we were on a private jet - so this is me not complaining.

Black Dresses and Lots of Salmon: Family Vacation

Something that bothers my sisters about me is when I care about being classy. Maybe I can generalize that I’ve always liked nice things, as you’d assume everyone does, though my middle sister in particular seems to be the exception that proves the rule. I remember in third grade when we had a creative writing project, with a prompt to stretch the imagination. I described at length the “Ultimate Luxury Liner” which had a bowling alley extending the length of the ship on a lower level and a similarly expansive swimming pool up top. The bowling alley would certainly need to be near the bottom so that people who constantly drop balls wouldn’t rattle too many levels below them. Never mind that bowling balls would definitely end up in the gutter on any ship.

(I wish I had a picture of the essay, but it's long gone and on second thought, my handwriting was embarrassingly atrocious.)

Of course at that age, I had no concept of the real size of ships nor any concept whatsoever of why people would build large ships for entertainment. Now, some dozen years later, I am fortunate to have a stronger grasp of these sailing hotels from personal experience. Because in fact, my mom has progressively phased out non-cruise family vacations in recent years, which is a way of saying that she has been vacationing more during our vacations.

     

Compared to other summer cruises, this one was less sweltering by far and delightfully more nature-centric. Mountains, I realize, are conspicuously refreshing and if air could be called organic, this would be it. We saw a few animals, like brown bears and bald eagles, though I usually preferred reading a book to whale spotting as I hear the latter is even less eventful than fishing. The weather in June was fit for hiking, so we hiked and ate berries off of bushes along the way - very rugged. I temporarily acquired the ritual of breathing deeply, not because of the altitude but because I wanted to store up on clean air. A cruise to Alaska is something one and done for me, because if I get the chance, there are so many other places in the world to enjoy, but this was definitely among the most relaxing trips I’ve ever taken.

Moving Home

My landlady in Charlottesville was generous enough to allow us two extra weeks past our lease conclusion so we could stay for my housemate Sarah's wedding. Once the wedding was over, I headed out the next morning, packing quickly and returning home permanently for the first time in four years.

Thankfully, sentiment didn't strike overwhelmingly on this landmark occasion and I was able to leave Charlottesville with a sense of peace and joy. We're not entirely sure how long it will take for the truth to strike me or whether it's the case that the slow transition out of Cville this past semester was sufficient closure.

My next project, which I have already begun, is organizing all of my belongings and treating my room here as my primary and only residence as opposed to secondary. What on earth am I going to do with my second toothbrush, double set of pillows, on and on...?

Weekend Wedding

My good friend and college housemate of two years got married this weekend and it was a beautiful, lovely wedding in Charlottesville. Cville has become a second hometown for all of us housemates, the others of whom I went with to the wedding, so I think it was the perfect location for the perfect wedding. I obsessively checked the weather the entire week prior to the wedding -- apparently everyone else was doing this too. Predictions had been fluctuating between rainstorm and drizzle, but the actual day turned out to be clear skies with a cool breeze. No waterworks to be seen but for our happy tears sitting in the pews of the University Chapel.

Some highlights included circle dancing in traditional Scottish wedding style and Sarah's pretty and tastefully sparkly veil. As Alumni reunion weekend was happening at UVA, my housemates and I had a fun time reuniting for the last time before splitting off for the summer and our respective full time jobs or job searching.

It's surreal to witness friends getting married. Let wedding season begin, both for the year and for this period of my life.