Philly, to the power 24

In my last post, my sentiments about this city were lukewarm. There was culture, but no crazy. There was personality, but no pizzazz. Turns out we were just looking in the wrong places. After the busiest and most fun 24 hours in the city of brotherly love, all of my reservations about this move have been eliminated (well, except for the winter, we'll see about that in a few months). Let me take you through my day.

Saturday night, the ladies and I Yelped "Philadelphia nightlife," threw on our dancing shoes, and headed out on the town. First stop was this new place by campus, The Blockley Pourhouse. Opened recently, this place is shiny and spacious, and although the crowds are missing, it has great potential. Because it's new, the bartenders are all trying to buy loyalty and a crowd of "regulars" with free drinks galore. Needless to say, we liked. Buzzin' off of free booze, we hopped into a cab and told the cabbie to take us to the party. He did just as asked, and took us to THE place to be on a Friday or Saturday night, meaning 2nd @ Market. This two block strip was spilling with people coming in and out of the 10-15 bars, clubs and restaurants to fit every need. There were the grungy Irish pubs, the swanky clubs and upscale cocktail lounges. We found our place at the perfect combination of these 3, called Plough & The Stars. It was casual bar meets club, with two levels of dancing, and packed to the brim. Hours of dancing and meeting the locals = night of success.

Sunday morning, with a few survivors from the night before, we headed over to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is free on the 1st Sunday of every month. Getting to the museum involved walking along the beautiful bike/run trail along the Schuylkill River. The museum itself was nothing short of grandiose (and actually more impressive than The Met), and located in the lush green Fairmount Park, it was the wow factor I had been missing.

After the art museum, we found ourselves on a spontaneous, self-guided tour of the Parkway, i.e. the Museums District of Philly. This is essentially the culture center of the city, housing several museums and libraries, city hall, and the stately Cathedral Basilica of Saints Paul and Peter. Even walking around, this is the most safest, most beautiful, spacious part of the city, with historical buildings, water fountains in every direction, and the flags of the world lining Ben Franklin Parkway. I can see that I will be spending many weekend afternoons exploring this district.

We got back to campus just in time for the Graduate Student Center's "Gnome Hunt/Happy Hour". I can't say enough how much I'm love the GSC. They have this ridiculous obsession with gnomes, which seemed absurd at first, but after this event, is very impressive. The entire GSC building is sprinkled with gnomes in the most random places, and they have pictures on the wall of the gnomes all around the world with them (Rome, Paris, California!). Our goal was to run around campus finding all the hidden gnomes, in the mean time, forcing me to go to many important places on campus I would have never known about otherwise: Fine Arts Library, Botanical Gardens, Penn Museum (which houses the 2nd largest collection of Egyptian artifacts after Cairo), Penn Bookstore, etc. Running around campus sweating profusely for an hour, and ending with an exquisite banquet and happy hour! :-D

Banquet ended just in time for Brittany and I to scuttle over to the first ever Philly Naked Bike Ride! I am officially a part of this city's history. I thought I'd done my fair share of crazy things, but this surpassed anything I'd done before. We collected at the Schuylkill River trail again, only to see hundreds of bikers and LOTS of flesh!

Entered the body-painting tent, stripped down and started painting! Once we were all decorated, it was 90 minutes of riding through every neighborhood of the city, yelling and screaming whilst being naked. The best way to describe it is a Critical Mass where everyone's naked. The reactions of unaware people on the streets were to die for, some of my favorites being the wedding happening along the Schuylkill, the hundreds of people having outdoor dinners at the upscale Rittenhouse Square restaurants, and a random guy on the street "this is the best f*****g day of my life!" Finally, the city has personality! I rocked a map of Cali on my back, and thus met many people from California, which is always great!

Finally, I got home, finished off the night with painful yet hilarious karaoke and salsa lessons with the building, washed off the paint, and passed out.

:-D

A Moment to be Pennsive

Although not quite done with my first week in Philadelphia, I have done enough exploring in the past few days to give me a sense of what I've gotten myself into. I now feel I can give a rudimentary judgment of several aspects of my new life.

The School:

Classes haven't started yet, so I can't say anything about the academics, but the campus itself is gorgeous. Taking my afternoon strolls to and from orientations have always left a big smile on my face. With the tree-lined cobblestone paths and the rustic red and gray brick buildings, I found myself thinking several times "ahh, its good to be back on the east coast." With art displays all over campus (notably the Peace, Love and Broken Button), and well-maintained landscape, you can tell it is an Ivy League.

I got my first exposure to Ivy League brats when my professor warned us, as TAs, to "watch out for the donor kids." Yowza, if children of donors are significant enough to mention during a TA meeting, this must happen often. On that same note, EVERYTHING at Penn is sponsored or donated, from entire buildings down to a stairwell in the BioE (here called BE) building.

My favorite part about the school so far is the Graduate Student Center. It is an embarrassingly well-funded organization that puts together very fitting events for graduate students (happy hours, city tours leaving you to do your thing downtown, "gnome hunts", salsa nights). With so many Master's students, it makes it a blast!

The City:

I was warned about Philadelphia's safety before coming here, but I brushed those warnings off thinking "meh, I lived in Harlem, how much worse could it be?" Turns out, a lot. UPenn, like several other schools located in crappy cities, has its own bubble in the middle of West Philly, which is the second worst part of town (coming in after South Philly). Inside the Penn Bubble, life is great. Students and upscale shops all around. Ten blocks east and west of where I live, you don't want to be caught alone. While every school warns you "never to walk alone at night," here doing so would mean risking your life. Luckily, we have been doing group tours and exploring the sketchier neighborhoods of town in safe numbers. Just two days ago, two women were raped (by the same man) two hours apart in Fairmount Park, which is immediately east of us. Today, two of my friends were followed around a Kmart by a sketchy man who purchased nothing and was just browsing for girls out alone to attack. Needless to say, I am on my guard, and very happy staying inside my Penn Bubble.

Safety issues aside, during the day and in groups, Philadelphia is a pretty cool city. It's no New York in culture, but there are several cool districts with lively restaurants and bars. And of course, the history isn't lost of me, although I was more impressed with Boston in that aspect. But everytime I pass by a food cart or walk into a subway station, I am happy to be living in a city again.

The Liquor Laws

Not that this defines my lifestyle or anything, but the peculiar liquor laws of Pennsylvania are worth mentioning. For starters, grocery stores don't carry alcohol at all. Beer must be purchased from special "Beer Distributors" where it's only sold by the case, and wine/hard alcohol from "Wine & Spirit Distributors." However, one AWESOME side effect of these prude laws is that, because liquor licenses are so difficult to obtain, many upscale restaurants are Bring Your Own Bottle (BYOB)! I haven't tried one yet, but I am excited to.

My Housing

Ahh, my biggest disappointment so far, and the reason I broke down into tears on my first night...my housing. I signed up for university housing because I figured it would be the safest, cleanest deal, based of course on Cal's on-campus housing. I am living in Sansom Place East, the graduate high-rise apartments, or as we like to call them, the Graduate Student Projects. The apartments are tiny, the building is grungy overall, and I think I was just cursed with the worst apartment. My walls are dirty, my kitchen has obvious marks of a huge fire, the previous resident was a smoker, and worst of all COCKROACHES come creeping out at night! Ugh. After 4 days of serious cleaning, and asking the facilities repair for an exterminator, I am finally getting comfortable in this shit-hole. Never again will I take on University housing blindly. My quality of life has definitely dropped, from my awesome, well-stocked apartment this summer to eating soup and most-likely a dining plan at Penn.

However, aside from the actual apartment, the building has great amenities. There are group activities regularly, where I have met most of the people I now hang out with. There is a computer facility, free laundry, and this amaaazing view of downtown Philly on one side (I am the 10th floor), and phenomenal sunsets on the other.

The advantage of shitty housing is that it encourages you to stay out, which is pretty much what I've done all week. The weather has been beautiful, the people and events great, it's pretty much been a mini-vacation. I'm sure this euphoria will die quickly once school starts and the weather heads toward winter, but I am enjoying it now!

Peace, Love and a Broken Button,

Kiran

At the Intersection of Birth, Residence, and Religion

As a child, I read a fair share of books about second generation immigrants facing culture clashes and identity crises (the prototypical example being The Joy Luck Club). Even though I am a second-generation immigrant myself, I never faced any angst about my identity, and hence couldn’t understand what these books were aiming at. Even throughout high school, as I fought my parents for freedom and independence, I never really felt like that reflected on my identity, it was just my parents’ way of raising children.

Self-awareness slowly began to rise in college, as I realized how much American pop culture I was clueless about, and when I was first asked if I was American. In answer to the latter, I said ‘no’, mostly because I have always thought of myself as Indian, and I don’t identify with many inherently American traits (I read somewhere that the average American is obese, monolingual, and doesn’t hold a passport). However, upon hearing my reasoning, one friend challenged me with “well would you identify more with an Indian girl your age or an American one?” A great question, and obviously I would identify more with an American, which finally made me concede that I must be American after all.

The third prong of my identity comes from being born in a Sikh family. I was raised as a devout Sikh for more than half my life, until I realized I believe in science more than supreme powers, and declared myself an atheist. At this point, in my mind, I completely shed my Sikh identity. This is all old news, however, so why bring this up now? Last month, my parents held a Sikh prayer recital, called an Akhand Paat, in honor of my graduation. After spending two entire days with my extended family volunteering and listening to prayers at our local church, I realized that I will always be a Sikh, whether or not I believe. I found my lips automatically moving to the hymns that defined my childhood Sundays, and despite being Atheist, I got a great sense of peace, community and family bonding by being there.

So finally, at age 22, I can understand what an identity crisis is, and say happily, that I have solved mine with the below pie chart.

Yes, I am that bored at work.

:-)