I step off my plane, and immediately spot this amusing sign adorned with cowboy hats:
I step outside and breathe in the toasty evening air. Hot like Vegas (where I flew in from), but much more humid.
I get to the parking garage, and my rental car agent greets me with a “Howdy, how can I help?” I meekly smile at the word usage, and answer his question.
These little things reminded that I was, indeed, in a new place: Austin, Texas.
Texas is not what I had expected it to be.
- The state is not just sand and cacti. Yes, Texas has ample desert landscape, but the irony is most people live in the watery areas. Austin is lush green. I found this extra ironic because I’m from Las Vegas, which is super desert-y.
- You do need a car to get around, but some areas are super walkable. My neighborhood and downtown were both easy on foot.
- The state is politically diverse. To be fair, I lived in the notoriously hippie-leaning city of Austin, but still. Though the state leans right, there’s much under the cover. Similar to California, which leans left, Texas has a strong presence of different political views across the board.
Beyoncé dropped her Cowboy Carter album01 brilliant work countering racism in country music right before summer began. Felt made for me. Felt right. It made me look forward to a hot girl summer in Texas.
This ain’t Texas, ain’t no hold ’em
So lay your cards down, down, down, down
I spent this past summer working as a Product Design Engineering Intern at Apple. My job felt meta: working on MacBooks by working on MacBooks. I loved the (almost) annoying extent to which people focused on details. The company cares about every little thing, leaving no stone unturned.
Have you ever wondered how these products are really made? How do products go from idea to mass production? How are design decisions made? I have.
Here’s the answer:02 somewhat cop-out but it is true okay people, lots of them. I can’t unsee the work behind these products. There’s a bajillion people for every nibbly little step. This job made me have a deeper appreciation for not just Apple products, but all products. With modern-day globalization, it can be hard to remember that every product we use is ultimately made by humans.
I learned a lot, and I even got a chance to fly out to the headquarters in Cupertino, CA to engage with the rest of our team and do my final presentation. My god. I’ve never seen slide decks be any more elegant in my entire life. Consequently, the slides I put together were the best I had ever made.
All in all, everything—products, buildings, machines—was beautiful.
Outside of work, I spent a lot of time getting acquainted with the local culture. Austin is awesome at three main things: water activities, food, and live music.
- There’s SO much water! Austin is a green city. You can go swim in natural springs, attend boat parties on lakes, and tube down rivers. Barton Springs Creek is one of the jewels of this city.
- Fooooooood. I feel that most places can claim some sense of pride in their food, but Austin really does. The food scene is so intense that locals have made their own app to pay for someone else to wait in food lines for you. I probably should’ve used it—my friend and I waited 2 hours for some Texan BBQ at a joint called Interstellar. It was so worth it, though: easily the best meal I had my entire summer. Austin is cosmopolitan, so there’s an international array of cuisine outside Texan food, too.
- Austin is nicknamed the “live music capital of the world.” As a concert junkie, I was very excited to attend shows here. I most frequented a bar named The Elephant Room, which had excellent jazz.
I’ve come to love Austin. It’s lively, yet also full of quiet nooks. It’s geographically central in the US, so friends from both the west and the east were able to easily visit. The city prides in locally-owned shops, which is where the phrase “Keep Austin Weird” comes from. It’s family-oriented, so I always felt safe.
Especially because this was my first time living fully alone, peace of mind is something I valued. I’ve never seen more dogs and babies in one place. My neighbors were sweet: they always greeted me when I returned home from work and even invited me to play dominos and swim at our apartment complex pool. Austin’s neat.
Here are some moments I had:
Texan things
art & nature
FOOD
sidequests
This summer was fundamentally different from last summer. I interned at a domestic big company whereas last summer, I interned at an international startup.
You can also think of my summers as nodes: points in which vectors flow in and out.
Last summer, I felt like a source node. Whilst living in the UK, I found myself traveling to a different country every other weekend. This summer, I felt like a sink node. I mostly stayed in Austin, and I was surprised to find that many friends wanted to visit me. A different friend flew in around every other weekend.
I’m grateful to have had both experiences: to have seen different places through my same two eyes (NW Europe), and also to experience the same place through the different eyes of my friends (Austin).
yeehaw