This is part of a new series of posts describing photos I’ve taken. They should be less long-winded than some of the other content.

Often times, when I photograph animals I end up following some real great processes, like:

1. Oh shit! Is it in the frame.
2. Oh, maybe I should zoom in.
3. Hang on… is this in focus?
4. Oh hey, I can probably take a nice picture.

Most of the time the time I can’t even get to step one before the animal has scurried away. And, I mean I don’t blame the animals for being afraid of humans. I’m afraid of humans.

But, sometimes it feels like I can’t catch a break.

This post is the second in a series recounting how and why I moved to New York City.

The first post is here.

So, I moved to NYC. Not out of passion, but out of the desire to continue working in the field of natural language processing, but with a change of pace.

A new team, a new location, and more readily available pelmeni. What more could one ask for?

For various reasons that I might explain in another post, I spent November and December of 2018 mainly in Berlin, and returned to the U.S. to spend a jetlagged week in Pittsburgh before starting my new role in NYC. It was an internal transfer, and I didn’t plan things so I had much time to situate myself.

I landed there, determined to make a life for myself and to secure housing.

But NYC is a place that rewards some advance planning…

This is a public service announcement.

I am still at home with nothing to do except for making coffee, listening to music, photographing flowers, walking through un-built housing developments, working full time, watching baking shows with my parents, and desperately awaiting the end of a global pandemic that certainly hasn’t been used as an excuse to further disenfranchise precarious workers while quietly abolishing regulations and restrictions and ethics for billionaires. As someone with a grand sense of perspective, I can only assume that my current plans for this blog are at the forefront of your thinking…

I cough into my shoulder.
I sneeze into my shoulder.
I watch as the dates marked on my calendar
for something exciting
pass me by.

I’m thankful that I celebrated my
birthday just before people started
taking COVID-19 seriously,
so I got to hear the sound of Miguel Zenon’s sax,
taste a last frozen margherita,
and blast… R.E.M. one last time.

On one particular March morning I rolled out of bed in South Brooklyn, and I have to be honest, I think I had a slight headache.

What was the cause of this ailment? Was it COVID-19, or the glass of whiskey I had last night?

Actually, I think it was caffeine withdrawl. Definitely, caffeine withdrawl.

Luckily, the cure was at hand, despite self-quarantine. I only had three pounds of coffee and no one to drink it with. Things were gonna be fine.

So, Coffee

Sometimes, the distance between being a novice about something, and becoming something of a snob about it is a relatively short road. I believe I transitioned from stirring instant coffee granules in a cup of cold milk with a fork to doing fancy pour-over with a scale in… about a year’s time. Is this an improvement? My palate seems to think so… Well, there’s less weird chemicals at least.

My headache-addled state this morning is ironic, because I avoided drinking coffee for quite a long time.

In my childhood, I looked down on people who required their caffeine dose in order to start their day, becoming dependent on a substance that offered no escape from rote daily routine. However, I did really like the smell of coffee.

I avoided drinking coffee (whilst being quite partial to tea) until I was three-quarters of the way through undergrad.

I started with the most ritualistic gateway drug of all.

This site seeks to answer one question and one question alone: “Where is Steve?”

The answer: I’m in New York City.

So, how did I come to this place, what are my thoughts and feelings about it? How long can I continue to tease thus? To answer these questions, I henceforth christen this the first in a series of posts tentatively entitled “NYC Days.” And get started we will!

As Coronavirus rears its ugly head, I thought it would be important for me to finally get around to focusing on the important things in life. By which, I of course meant the Eurovision 2020 song competition.

For those of you not in the know, Eurovision is a song competition designed to help foster a sense of “European Community.” Each country sends one artist to perform one song, and people in each country get to vote on which of the other countries’ songs they most preferred.

The songs vary in quality and style, but they can basically be described as pop, mainly dance pop (yay!) or ballads (eh!). (Oh, look, I’m outing my prejudices right here.)

Perhaps one of the most prominent artists that Eurovision can really be thanked for bringing to widespread attention is ABBA. So good on them for that…

So without any further ado, here are my thoughts on all entrants.