Category: When I was an undergrad in the late 90′s/early 2000′s, my college roommate (and later, best man in my wedding) worked for the student newspaper. The newspaper used to receive tons of promotional CD’s from major labels to review, of which a stack of various albums would usually land on our kitchen table. Being a music fan and musician, I used to thumb through the CD’s to see if there was anything of interest, which was extremely rare (I suspect I wasn’t near the first to pick through the leftovers). However, in late summer 2001 after looking at quite a bit of garbage, I found a promotional copy of Room for Squares by John Mayer, which finally made the trash picking worthwhile.
Listening to this album, I was mesmerized; around that time, I was playing in a shitty blues band for $30/night, wanting to do something that was a little more unique than playing blues classics too loud and fast in smoky bars. Two songs specifically made me want to become more proficient at acoustic guitar: Neon, which is a jazzy song that has this crazy playing technique, and 3×5, a song about the experience of seeing a sunrise too beautiful too describe and not taking a picture of it. The funny thing about encountering this album by accident (and before the first single was released) was that I later found out that earlier in the same year, John Mayer had played the same bar at the University of Delaware that this band performed at semi-regularly. Had the schedule been slightly different, this story would’ve ended that John Mayer opened for the band I was in (the shows were only two days apart). But he didn’t, and that’s why I graduated from UD with two degrees and am now at Fuqua instead of a professional musician. Well, that and I can’t sing very well…
What’s the point? Yesterday, as I was preparing for the cultural tour, I had planned to take a bunch of video of St. Petersburg in a similar manner as I did when I visited Yangshuo. Earlier in the day, I had gone to the store to get an outlet adapter so I could charge my various electronics. Assuming that my camcorder had already been charged (it usually is), I didn’t verify that it actually HAD been charged; the camcorder power supply has the special plug that’s bigger on one side than the other, and that didn’t work with the 3-prong adapter I purchased. So while I didn’t choose not to take pictures like in 3×5, the end result was the same: I was sans-camera and participated in the tour by watching St. Petersburg through my eyes instead of through a viewfinder.
When I arrived in St. Petersburg, I commented that I thought the city had a distinctly “London” look and feel to it; I’ve since been corrected by several classmates that it really looks more like Paris (which I can’t confirm, as I’ve never been). As we traveled around, we saw several landmarks such as the Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood, The Bronze Horseman, the Old St. Petersburg Stock Exchange, and even St. Petersburg State University.
Traveling by boat through the many waterway channels, under several of the 500 bridges in the city, and out on the Neva River was a great way to spend an afternoon. While I’m tempted to go back on the boat tour again to get the video footage I was hoping for. But then again, maybe I’ll choose to just remember it how I remember it.
Recent Comments