July 10th, 2005
Home.
Yep, I'm home. It was definitely a little weird for the first couple days, getting used to life back in the good ol' US of A. But I'm pretty much adjusted now, and things are back the way they used to be. Which is nice, but I guess I never realized how "comfortable" life is here. It's hard to appreciate unless you've been in this particular situation, but it was so nice being able to walk around Philadelphia without being an object of attention all the time. It never really bothered me in China all that much, but man, it was like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
I've been pretty busy since I've gotten back - the day after I flew into New York (took 4 hours to drive home from JFK...grumble...) was the Live 8 concert in Philly, which was quite cool. Didn't really feel like a million people were there, but it was awesome to be part of such a huge event, and for such a good cause. The musical lineup was pretty good, though London's was definitely better. The concert was actually a lot more sedate than I thought it'd be...so many people were milling around that not a whole lot were really getting into the music. Still, great fun.
The next day was Terrence's graduation party, so I was up in Long Island for the day. Wound up staying over his house because we started playing beer pong (and kept winning, so we kept playing) and I was in no condition to drive afterwards. Terrence got drunk, which was highly amusing since I've never even seen him drink at all before. I think his mom said it best: "it's a good thing nobody decided to have a contest to see who could snort the longest line of dope, because Terrence would have been right there in it". Haha!
The Fourth was kind of a lazy day - I hung around Terrence's until about noon, and then took the trains home. Sat around the house for a while, and went over Jerry's for dinner and the Elton John concert. Aside from the irony of celebrating the Fourth with a Brit (not that I have a problem with it, it's just amusing), the concert was actually a lot of fun. Bryan Adams led off, followed by Patti LaBelle, and Elton John last, with some comedy bits in between by Wayne Brady and some other guy whose name I don't remember. It felt more like an actual concert, which was nice, and was a bit more entertaining in my opinion than Live 8. The ubiquitous fireworks were of course quite nice, and a good way to end the evening.
In other news, I will most likely be moving to Washington D.C., sometime in the next month or so. Partly because I'd like to live in a city for a while, D.C. is a great place, I know people there, and there are way more job opportunities there than Boston, Philly, or New York. My best shot right now is a job at the USPTO (patent and trademark office), which I should hear about next week. The job will involve examining new patent applications, and determining a) whether or not the application meets certain criteria in order to be granted, and b) literature searches to see whether or not the same thing has already been done. It's not research, but it is relevant experience (since I'd be working with physics patents, and specifically electronics and optics), and it would allow me to significantly increase my knowledge in the field, which is never a bad thing.
So I'll be making the move south sometime in the near future, and will be living with Colleen (a friend from Jersey). Eric (also from NJ) will be attending graduate school at Catholic University, so I'll be able to hang out with him as well. And D.C. is only 3 hours from home, so coming back for the weekend is certainly a possibility. Long-term I'm still confused as ever about my goals and plans for myself, but for now I think this is a good move for myself.
And finally, I'll be going down to North Carolina for several days, probably this coming week. I have to do some more work on the journal paper I wrote for the research I did at Carolina, as the referees thought it needed some changes before being published. Since some of those changes involve using the supercomputer that I used to do the theoretical calculations, I can't do them from home. But that's fine, because I'll get to see my friends (Pete, Adam, Jonathan, and Roy) from Carolina, and hopefully I'll be able to go over to Charlotte to visit Liyang (friend from China).
That's about it for now, I think - just wanted to update this thing since getting home. I still have a bit more writing to do about China, so that will be forthcoming over the next few weeks. Hasta luego!