On the next morning, I went out and decided I wanted to go to Seattle. The drowsiness really settled in on the way there. I couldn't remember what happened, except for the fact that I ended up sleeping on the shoulders of an old woman next to me. It was very embarrassing, and while I kept on apologizing she just smiled and told me to 'lean the other way'. I thought that if I didn't sleep for that journey, I would've probably died.

Part of what really attracts me to this city is really the architecture. Seattle's city planning brings me closer to the concept of the 'garden city' than any other cities I've been to. Unlike the carefully planned utopia that the garden city is (in theory), Seattle is full of life. On one side, you see the drab, Internationalist office buildings that look more like rows of concrete domino. On the other side, there's the Seattle Library by Koolhaas, which till this day I've only seen in books but never in person. And amidst this crazy mix of the old and new lies plenty of trees and foliage that makes the summer sun just a bit more bearable.

Tourists do strange things to the places they go to. Tourists go to places looking for authenticity, the source of culture, the genesis of where exoticism originates. But the moment a place is crowded with tourists, that feeling of discovery simply disappears, and you are left greeting your own countrymen. This is precisely what I felt when I went to Seattle's fish market. It's pretty disappointing when you see that no one is really buying anything, and everyone is preparing their cameras so they can take a photo of some fish being thrown. I think there is a sort of absurd comedy to know that a fish's 5 minutes of fame comes a few moments before its death.

The phrase 'concrete jungle' might be a bit of a cliché, but it actually describes Seattle pretty well. San Francisco, with its trams and its culture, is a city of history and mysteries. But Seattle is completely transparent. Seattle hides nothing. Just like the brutalist buildings and modernist architecture that dots the skyline, Seattle seems to say that it doesn't have much to say. When form simply follows function, and the function turns out to be that of 'creating square shelters', you get Seattle.

Sometimes I wonder why anyone would bother travelling. Is there still a place in this world that is left uncultivated by humanity, a piece of virgin land waiting to be discovered? If only that is the case! Because this world leaves nothing to adventure. It is methodical, overpriced and a chore. My vacation is now a part of my work. A vacation is a part of a routine. To climb the Space Needle is also, I suppose, a sort of a routine, something you tick off a bucket list. Here's my insight into the experience of climbing the Space Needle: it's the same feeling you'd get climbing any other 300 feet towers.

Travelling is full of surprises. I don't read a lot of maps, so I was astounded when it turns out that Key Arena was in the same place as the Space Needle, and that I get to see what the venue for TI4 was going to like. Well, it didn't look like much. I had to sneak in from the back since the place wasn't open to the public. A dozen people saw me but no one cared. Which goes to show how lax the security is over here. I was very excited to see the giant screens and the player booths.

In every city, there are three types of districts. The old districts, the new districts, and the new districts pretending to be old districts. San Francisco's fisherman's wharf belongs to the third category. Berkeley belonged to the first. Seattle also has its old district, old yet covered with foliage, filled with life. You could smell the marijuana everywhere! It was a mix of homeless people, marijuana and artists (which is not to say that homeless artistic potheads don't exist). But it was absolutely beautiful. I felt at bliss walking there. For it was one of the few genuinely pleasant moments I spent in Seattle.

Seattle is a temperamental city. It likes to rain when I don't want it to. So on the next day, when I really really didn't want the city to rain, it rained. Raining makes people morose. I am a person, so I got pretty morose. The gentle rain made the concrete structures stand out even more against the grey skies.

The buildings are looking towards the harbour and into the oceans like giants standing shoulder to shoulder. At the harbour itself there is a big Ferris wheel. There was no one on it. And yet it kept on spinning, which made the scene even more melancholic than it should be. The ocean waves have found the refuge in the harbour, but where would I find mine? And yet it just kept on rotating, as if its tireless motion would go on forever, without purpose. And then I started thinking about Honey and Clover. Then I looked into the ocean, and the waves crashing against the rocks and the corroding harbour and thought of that quote from Shuji Hanamoto:

"Loneliness comes suddenly like waves and recedes just as fast. That continues on forever. It's the same for you. It's the same for everyone." 

Perhaps it was due to the fact that my friend was supposed to come, and that it would've been very pleasant if he had come to a date with me, but being in the aquarium felt almost unbearable. While the children around me pointed gleefully at the starfish and the sharks and rainbow fishes, I felt indifferent. There was not a trace of excitement to this journey. Not a single moment when I felt that perhaps, I should open myself up to this world of wonders. For I think, for the first time since I'm here, that I've travelled several thousand miles so that I could descend to the valleys of sadness here on the harbours of Seattle, so that amidst the grey clouds I felt homeless.

Back when I wanted to be an architecture major, I spent a lot of time reading books about architecture and one of the names that popped up repeatedly was that of Rem Koolhaas. I remember him most vividly because he was responsible for designing that abomination in Beijing and I really wanted to see in person why anyone would commission him to design anything. Then I came to the Seattle library and I immediately changed my mind.

Libraries are usually places where you read books. It also tends to hold a lot of books. If the modernist was commissioned to design a place where you can read books and hold a lot of books, he'd give you a really big and square concrete and glass box. But that's not very interesting. It's a bore. So instead of a square box, the Seattle library gets turned into a deranged box, a crazy box or whatever you call it.

After that day, I realized that deep inside, perhaps this journey had been a mistake. Despite those rare moments of joy, the return to America had been neither pleasant nor welcoming. Time after time, my mind would wander back to the moments I spent looking out into the ocean on the harbours. Watching the Ferris wheel rotating around and around, over and over. Sometimes, you travel a thousand miles so you could escape from humanity, and just watch the raindrops make tiny ripples on the ocean waves.