Philly Living: One Year in Retrospect

Yesterday was my one-year anniversary with Philadelphia. Mind-fucking-boggling.

September 1st, 2009, I flew into PHL with two stuffed suitcases, a box holding TDH (my bike), and the shiny new face of a soon-to-be graduate student. I came in with the mindset that I'd be "out in 10 months," and used that as fuel to get me over the hurdles of my new life. Even though I eventually began enjoying the vivacity of the city, I still had a light at the end of the tunnel, and constantly imagined myself moving back home. I made friends, we had epic (yes, I mean carving in concrete sidewalks with our keys epic) nights, I felt at ease, but even so there was a temporary quality to it all. My entire life at Penn felt like an extended summer fling or honeymoon. I was enamored by my first east coast fall, awestruck by my first (and second and third) Nor'easter, and my jaw dropped and spirits soared at the first cherry blossoms of spring. I had made it, I'd gotten through. Through all this, all the fun I was having, the novelty of my situation was what really made it exciting. I loved telling people "this is my first time ____" and "I've never heard of ___", it made me feel naive and innocent in the most positive way. I learned so much about Philadelphia's rich history, about the Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch of Lancaster Country, UPenn and it's place in the Ivy League and the city. Really, such an enriching experience.

All this being said, if someone had told me a year ago that I would soon be settling into Philly indefinitely, I would have laughed in their faces. Further, if they had told me that I would LOVE living here, I would have assumed they were doing hardcore drugs. But here I am, one year later, and I couldn't love my life more. I'm not much for anniversaries, but I honestly woke up with a huge smile on my face when I realized the date. I do love Philly, and I can feel it loving me back.

Peace, Love and Philly!

:-)

Welcome to the Working World

After two months of blissful free time on the east and west coasts, I have finally shed my responsibility-free college student skin and emerged with a fresh, clean corporate casing. I've been getting many questions about how work is, so I figured this means was best to avoid repeating myself. Also, I'm curious to see how my opinion changes as time progresses, so here it is, my digest after one week of work:

The Good:
1. The people! So far, I've really liked most of the people I'm working with, and my floor, along with the whole campus (of ~10,000 employees) is incredibly social. The amazing tradition that made my day: On my second day, my "buddy" or trainer brings in a box of donuts, leaves them on my desk, and sends out an email to my entire floor telling them to come meet me and grab a donut. It was great, I had people stopping by all day to introduce themselves and I got a great sense of who does what and where I fall in the big picture. Also, while walking around campus, people greet complete strangers all the time with simple "hellos" and "good mornings". This is a stark contrast from most research facilities. This lack of social barriers environment is my kind of place, where you can (and I did) meet new people simply walking back from lunch.

2. The work! The reason I was most excited about this position, and still am, is that it's real engineering. On my first day I sat in on a meeting with my team, and it was four people with laptops, sitting around a table and problem-solving. This casual brain-trust method of trouble-shooting is all too familiar from countless group projects in school, and it is my favorite aspect of engineering. Also, it seems like my position has a good balance of time spent on the computer, on the floor, and in the lab, which is perfect.

3. The routine! I'm a person who loves routine, and although I'm guaranteed to get tired of it, for now I like having a regular pattern to my life. It's especially nice after 8 weeks of sleeping in and not using my brain at all.

4. The clothes! After years of seeing awesome dress clothes in shops, I finally have a reason to wear them, and I couldn't be more excited. I've always hated how restricting and hot jeans are, and finally I don't need to wear them anymore, dress pants kick ass. And as superficial as it is, I feel powerful wearing them. Except the shoes, I've yet to find a comfortable pair of clack-clack-free heels, but I'm working on it.

5. Being one of the biggest Merck sites, we have lots of awesome club activities...a team for basically any sport you could want to play (including softball, which I'm getting back into!), and a great way to meet your coworkers.

6. Summer hours! I almost forgot...we have this amazing schedule where you put in an extra hour each day from M-Th, and go home at lunch on Friday! Its great because it gives me time to come home, gym, nap and then go out like college days.

The Bad:
1. The biggest, and only con so far, is the commute. I love my new place and wouldn't even consider living outside of the city, but that means I pay the price with a 1-hour train ride every morning. However, I am making the most of it- I've subscribed to the NY Times (yes, the hard copy, I'm old fashioned), and read that every morning, and do the crosswords on the ride home!

The Interesting:
1. While this isn't good or bad, it's definitely worth mentioning: there are lots of young, married people. Either I'm really bad at judging age, but for the most part people my age or a couple of years older were all married, something that struck me as odd. For all you working kids, is this trend specific to industry or company, or is it some general corporate feature?

Anywho, that's my work, one week in. I really hope the excitement keeps up and the 6 am wake ups don't ebb away at my vivactiy. Also, this website is due for yet another name change. Suggestions?

Peace, love and the working world!

Kiran

Full-Fledged Philadelphian

Four months I’ve lived in Philadelphia. I’ve biked miles around, bar-hopped night after night, eaten at the finest and crappiest local diners, yet still I feel no connection to the city. The streets of Philly are devoid of sentiment, and the relationships formed there, though valuable, are ephemeral. This is partly due to the nature of my stay. I’m only here for nine months, why bother getting attached? However, I know I will regret it if I leave this city without ever having lived in it, so I’m making changes. No more looking back, no more yearning for home, no more dreaming of beaches.

After a soul-soothing month at home, I’m en route to Philly again, and the minute I land, I am a full-fledged Philadelphian. I will eat hoagies, hate the Yankees, put Cheez Whiz on everything, and ride my bike on the sidewalk. That is, if Penn leaves me with time to spare.

Fall Colors

If there's one thing California is missing, it is a real fall. This is my first time living (year-round) in a region with real seasons, and even though I prefer milder temperatures, the past few weeks in Philadelphia have been absolutely gorgeous. The weather has been fluctuating between warm and refreshingly brisk, and even though sun has been scarce, the gray weather only adds to the vibrancy of fall. I really wish I had a camera to capture this, sadly I haven't bought one yet, but I will share my friend Heather's pictures of fall in Fairmount Park to give you an idea.


One memory I will always cherish is ambling through Penn's Locust Walk (lined with trees and gothic brick buildings), wrapped in a scarf, kicking up piles of orange-red leaves and laughing at Landscaping Services' futile attempt to clear all the leaves as hundreds more fall.

:-)

Things to Note

People here smoke a lot.

Drivers here honk a lot.

Too many people wear too much perfume/cologne (they're probably the smokers).

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