day in my life except it’s a live blog by Victor D. '27
11:07-11:33 PM: i got distracted again. here’s what i did the past few hours:
- read a chapter from Orbital by Samantha Harvey which is the last book for my reading seminar (infrastructure systems in theory and practice). so far it’s incredibly beautiful but harsh (it’s about a crew of astronauts on the ISS). maybe i’ll write a post about it in a similar vein to my first post which used Onlooking as a springboard.
- added 4 movies to my letterboxd that i have been procrastinating on (two from my globalization in latin america class [ixcancul, noches de fuego], fnaf 2 because on friday i went to see it with friends, and Pickpocket which i saw as part of an urban planning film series that one of my professors puts on). i’ve gotten more into documentation recently since when people ask stuff like “what kind of movies do you watch” or “what kind of books do you like” i realize i’m pretty bad at organizing this kind of information so i just freeze up, unable to recall the information in what feels like a socially acceptable period of time. being more intentional about what i’m consuming and meditating on i think has been really productive for me.
- started drafting my article for transportation planning and policy class (which was the subject of the first half of this live blog). it needs to be done by 4 pm tomorrow ;-;
- refactored code for my deep learning final project. this needs to be done by tuesday. everything works out in the end.
- sent some emails for club stuff (vgo)
- responded to my mom’s text
- talked to my friend about an essay he’s writing for his class
i’m not sure how to phrase this in a way that doesn’t come off as tone-deaf but sometimes i feel like i’m not doing anything. ironically even though im supposed to be blogging about my life here i often feel like my episodic memory has been really poor recently compared to my peers–or at least my recall is extremely slow (maybe it’s all in my head). at the same time, maybe it’s just that im so caught up in the whirlwind of everything im doing that i don’t have time to really stop and process what exactly is happening to me. it’s an incessant ray of energy blasting you forward even as you try to dig your heels in the sand and stop for a second–the moment already zipped by before you could register it.
this live blogging experiment was fun cause i know i’ll recall this day very well for many years to come. it wasn’t particularly “novel” but overall i enjoyed it (despite the sleep deprivation part that nerfed me). even though i probably won’t do this again because the nature of live blogging alienates you from the present, at the same time, i feel a lot more secure in being able to recall and relish in what i did today, rather than the memories blurring under the frenetic energy forcing me through my life here.
this is a lot of words to say that i’ve been neglecting my diary.
8:12 PM: ended up going to maseeh dining and chilling with people from east campus and then moved tables to talk with friends from mariachi. mostly talked about languages, specifically spanish and portuguese & differences between the european and latin american variants. overall dining was fine i had rice and curry cauliflower.
perhaps i should not have stayed so long given that i have many projects left to do but giving myself less time to complete a task will only help me work more efficiently (jk, unless).
6:48 PM: at mariachi rehearsal my ipad died so reading music off my phone and i forgot my glasses so couldn’t see it really. but really fun overall still. played los machetes, se me olvidó otra vez, la negra, deja que salga la luna, un poco loco y sabor a mi.
4:53 PM: after the vgo exec meeting, i went to the mariachi rehearsal room but there’s people in there rn i should’ve just gotten boba at teado instead of coming early 😞. just sitting on a bench in building 4.
stopping to write; stopping to think and perceive. spending so much time here i find myself blocking out what has become quotidian. a tour group passed by and the guide gestured at the tunnels that connect main group. now 2 and a half years here–i’ve assimilated the novel as normal. can i learn to see the regular again as if im seeing it for the first time?
4:04 PM: ellie (other blogger [also in vgo]) is mad that i haven’t locked in on this. i just finished vgo rehearsal. i tried scraping a new reed for my oboe but i ende up pressing too hard with the knife and i chipped the tip :( i always feel really guilty when i miss up my reeds since it feels like im wasting cane. i have neglected to make reeds for a while so i’ve lost the touch one could say. also throwback to my mit essays cause i wrote one about making oboe reeds 😹 anyways ill need to make some more. speaking of which yall should tune into the mit vgo concert on saturday at 7:00 pm EST by searching MIT VGO on youtube and joining the live stream then!
i should probably pack my instruments (i also have my alto w me)
12:50 PM: back on putz (my hall) in east campus (my dorm), trying to figure out how to organize my thoughts around the airport transit link for the article. unfortunately this pondering will soon be truncated, as i have rehearsals from 2-4 and 5-7 for vgo (video game orchestra) and mariachi respectively, and vgo setup is at 1 so i should probably get going rn.
12:16 PM: caught the red line! it’s satisfying seeing the trains run at their intended speeds; during you freshman year, you could easily out-speedwalk the train on the longfellow bridge because it was so slow. i’m always enchanted crossing the longfellow bridge on the red line since it’s above ground, and you get to see the boston skyline towering over the charles river pass by. during the autumn the entire esplanade (the park along the charles river on the boston side) blossoms with color but it’s already that time of year where the trees have mostly shed their leaves.
12:10 PM: park street is one of the oldest subway stations in the us (opened in 1897 i think look up tremont subway). it’s also very confusing because there’s 4 separate green line lines that run through the station. now waiting for red line train
12:08 PM: green line comes into the station screeching lethargically. made my transfer from blue to red, and it’s only for one station so i can transfer back to the red line (gov center to park street).
somebody is blasting joe tex on a speaker on this train
11:59 AM: blue line train arrived. i don’t think i’ve been on the blue line this semester, since i primarily use it to get to east boston but havent had much time to do little trips this semester unfortunately. or just haven’t been super motivated to i guess.
11:53 AM: I forgot that Airport station on the blue line is outside; it’s so cold. my fingers are struggling to type this. why doesn’t the T give us those nice heated shelters on the platform like in Toronto.
11:45 AM: i feel like this airport shuttle bus has too many stops. like im still on this bus i haven’t even made my transfer to the train yet. there should be a people mover here so we don’t have t wait outside in the below freezing temperatures for the bus.
11:39 AM: let’s document more thoughts about this. i am trying to imagine myself coming to boston for the first time by myself during sin limite (actually maybe it was the first time traveling by myself too). when i got to logan it was honestly really confusing, and i was struggling to figure out where the busses they chartered to bring us to mit were (i guess admissions might have had issues with people trying to use the T to get to MIT, or since the route isn’t super intuitive maybe it’s just nice to provide a direct route). this is actually how i met my roommate and really good friend (juarez) of two yrs (we roomed together 2 years in burton conner) bc they sent a message in the sin limite groupme saying something like “i just got on a random bus 💀” and i thought it was really funny so i reacted and responded, then we met up lol.
also throwback to them trying to blue bike to the airport that one time during freshman year
11:36 AM:
11:29 AM: i probably should have done this in reverse bc taking the T from the airport is actually free (you can get on the bus for free and transfer to the red line in south station to get to Kendall/MIT). using the airport shuttle is free but then you have to pay for the transfer to the blue line at airport station. but i’ve actually never taken the airport shuttle cause it’s slower and also requires an extra transfer (as we’ve discussed below) and also now that i’m trying to do it it’s honestly kind of confusing and really cold waiting out here for the bus 😿.
11:22 AM i made it to airport. what terminal should i get off at? i haven’t fully decided. since it’s sunday there was no traffic getting here so it only took 25 minutes! pretty good. normally the bus gets stuck in the tunnel under the boston harbor and this ride takes upwards of 40 minutes (including the red line segment to the airport)
11:16 AM: overall this bus ride is fine but not smooth at all and reminds me trying to balance my suitcases and not falling over myself. silver line lore is interesting since it came about during the big dig (one of the biggest infrastructure projects in american history) as part of an environmental impacts mitigation plan. the silver line was actually originally conceived as a train but it got watered down to an articulated bus (slinky bus).
11:07 AM: reminding myself why this station is so unintuitive. there are a group of people w/ suitcases waiting at the wrong part of the platform. definitely not their fault cause there’s a cacophony of (very uninformative) signage here.
11:02 AM: i just perceived that im actually in one of the old red line cars (vs the new ones that they’re rolling out [pun intended]). so much of this system feels really antiquated but i kind of vibe with the liminal 70s-90s atheistic so characteristic of this metro system.
10:57 AM: i just caught an Ashmont bound red line train (the line forks into two branches later on). in the meantime i will explain the lore. basically, there’s two metro lines that do not connect (the red and blue) despite being about ~2400 feet from each other, which means you have to make another transfer at park street station from the green then take the green one station (a couple thousand feet) to the blue line which then takes u to airport station. the route im currently taking isn’t that one but rather the one that transfers to the silver line, which tricks u into thinking it’s an actual train because it has a color and everything. but it’s a farce bc it’s actually just a bus.
10:50 AM: when i actually post this post. i got distracted eating my breakfast. it’s T time.
10:35 AM: im currently sitting in a dunkin with an ice matcha latte and croissant sandwich in kendall square, in preparation for my trip to the airport. i actually don’t have a flight lol but rather this is for one of my classes (transportation planning and policy 11.540)–we have to write an article about how to improve transit connections b/w kendall/mit station (on boston’s red line) and boston logan international airport (which has no train going to it).
9:40 AM: i woke up and decided i probably shouldn’t sleep to 11, even though i went to sleep at 4 ish (whoops, i promise my sleep schedule isn’t normally this bad), took a satisfying morning shower, and was on my way out of east campus by 10:15.