I can't believe I've gone all this time looking at IdiotProgrammer's very sporadic updates, and never knew he had another, also sporadic but filling-in-the-gaps weblog called AsiaFirst.

Check it out for some interesting thoughts, links, and articles on Asian culture.

Princeton, Day 2 Monday, June 24, 2002

After finally hitting the bed around 3am following the Sunday-night trip to Manhattan to see Rainer Maria, I woke around 8:30 to begin the first day of actual work.

My ears still ringing from the concert the night before, and my face still yawning from the curtailed period of sleep, I muddled my way through the morning routine and an overpriced breakfast at the Hyatt restaurant.

The Hyatt is in the midst of a big, labyrinthine corporate park called Carnegie Center. The directional signs in this park are completely misleading. I am planning to arrive at the parent company's offices—also in Carnegie Center—by 9:30am. Instead, I get the grand tour of Carnegie Center before finally finding the building, which was in the opposite direction of that recommended by the "helpful" sign. This is what we call foreshadowing.

I find the offices without much further trouble. Like most modern offices, they are dominated by cubicles, but they seem palatial compared to our cramped, cube-sharing conditions at home. There is no call center, so a gentle, pleasant hush rests on the entire office suite. No one is sharing a cubicle, and indeed many of the workers have a double-size cubicle with two workstations.

My cohorts for the week are the staff of the development & database group. They are almost all directly or genealogically from the Indian subcontinent, not an unusual circumstance when dealing with database professionals in the Northeast. They are also all very polite, friendly, and brilliant. The work portion of the week ahead begins to look like it will be quite pleasant and stress-free.

We work through lunch, with catered food brought in, a practice which seems to be de rigueur for such visits in today's corporate America. Our country unfortunately has no sense of the value of breaks, rest periods, or extended vacations. I dare say if this meeting had happened in France, we would have adjourned for two hours to a nearby cafe for a leisurely lunch punctuated by regular infusions of delectable wine.

Despite the American locale, the day's work does go smoothly, and I depart with directions for locating the local restaurants and shopping centers, in case I need dinner and/or amusement for the evening.

Exhausted by the day's activity and the previous night's late-running Manhattan festivities, I opt for a brief excursion to the nearest restaurant I can find, and then a return to the hotel for relaxation and rest.

As it turns out, the first restaurant I spot is a Chili's. Not my ideal choice, but it will do. (Note to kitykity: I have nothing against Chili's other than the fact that it's the same everywhere. I thus try to minimize my patronage of such places so that when I have no other immediate option, as in this case, I'll actually enjoy the visit rather than be bored with everything on the menu.)

The waitress and hostess at Chili's both give me their special look reserved for the solo diner reading a novel. I really should start a website listing reader-friendly restaurants.

Overall, though, the service is pleasant.

It is on departing Chili's that I make my fatal mistake. I turn right on Route 1 and move into the left lane, so I can take the next available left or U turn for a return to the hotel.

Big mistake.

At this moment, I acquired my deepest, most intense dislike for any particular feature of Princeton; namely, that there are no left turns.

In order to turn left or U-turn from any road wider than a carriage path, you actually have to turn right and negotiate some variation of a cloverleaf, double-back, or pile of spaghetti.

Needless to say, from my viewpoint in the left lane I caught a glimpse of the "All Turns Here" cloverleaf as I helplessly zoomed by it.

Then things became truly infuriating. I was presented with a fork leading to two major highways. No further option of a U-turn. I took the right fork, hoping for an eventual opportunity to turn around and find my way back to Route 1.

I drove for about a mile and a half before finally seeing an exit for the northbound Princeton Pike. I took the exit, expecting to find an opportunity to turn around—a common feature of most exits, after all.

Instead, I was spilled into a northbound 2-lane highway with no turn opportunities, or even driveways, in immediate sight.

Having no other option, I resigned myself to my fate and decided to adopt the Taoist wu wei approach. I was now on the southernmost edge of Princeton, on the northbound Princeton Pike. If I went with the flow, it seemed reasonable that I should eventually arrive in downtown Princeton.

I drove calmly northward, getting the grand tour of Princeton along the way. Eventually I reached a major, traffic-lighted intersection. The intersecting road appeared to become the new major highway, as the pike reduced to a small tree-lined residential street. I turned right, following the two cars that had been ahead of me at the intersection.

Within moments, I was...on a tree-lined residential street. Joy.

After a considerable amount of aimless meandering through the neighborhood, I re-emerged at what I suspected to be the Pike, and took what my internal orientation mechanism deemed to be a northbound turn.

Eventually, the tree-lined residential street deposited me on the edge of the tree-lined Princeton campus. I now had a vague idea of where I was. Washington runs east/west through the heart of campus, and Alexander runs east/west just south of campus, and right past my hotel. I just needed to spot one of these streets.

Which brings us to pet peeve number two: minimal street signage in downtown Princeton. After continuing northward into the campus area for a while, I eventually deduce that I have missed at least one of my turns, so I turn right on the next promising street.

The Princteon campus is lovely. Old stone architecture, green grass, elderly trees. It's quite picturesque.

The downtown area is nice, too. Unlike the increasingly chain-store-commercialized campus ghetto adjoining UT here in Austin, the area adjoining Princeton seems designed for description by the word "quaint", with little independent shops and cafes and bookstores, and stately little houses.

Nice place to visit, although if Caithlin's characterization of the campus culture is anywhere near accurate, probably not the sort of place I would have wanted to go to school.

So, I'm eastbound on an unknown street through the campus. Suddenly, my eastbound street takes a hard right turn and veers south. Oh, dear.

I arrive at a traffic light behind a very large moving truck. I can't see a thing—traffic light, street sign, whether the street continues or I will be forced to turn right or left...

The light having apparently changed, the truck departs, magically revealing a street sign reading "ALEXANDER". Calloo! Callay! I am saved!

I turn left, and wend my way along the weaving turns of Alexander. I pass a park, and then a historical battlefield with tall grass waving in the breeze under the darkening gray of dusk.

At long last, I cross Route 1, turn into the hotel, and breathe a sigh of exasperated relief. All this because of one missed turn.

In the end, I did get a nice grand tour of Princeton.

I suppose I should just be glad I found my way when I did. I might have sailed right past Washington and Alexander to Hannibal, Caesar, and Napoleon, or whatever the streets after that were.

Napoleon. Caesar. Where would that have left me?

Jessa asks "Is Nabokov usually classified as an American writer?"

Or, to answer the question rhetorically, was Joseph Brodsky an American poet?

The permalink to Jessa's article is behaving badly, so just go to the main page and find the July 15, 2002 entries from there. This is the second time this week I've had this problem on a Blogger site. What's up with Blogger permalinks?