Figuring that these would be the last chances to do so, Megan and I figured that during our last month on the East Coast, we would do our best to visit Washington D.C. and New York City in one last hurrah before we left the megacity area.

Washington D.C. was first and was such a delight.  Primed by watching the Washington D.C. episode of “No Reservations”, we were set to not only see the sights but the eat some very delicious food.  Even though we stayed outside of the metropolitan area, we were still treated to the excellent Metro service which is simply awesome.  Encountering clean, efficient, well-run transit systems like this (or the “T”) make me even more furious at Philly’s Septa.  Regardless, we were able to get around really well with little effort while leaving the car at a “Kiss and Ride”.

We generally stayed in the central area, criss-crossing the Mall in order to visit the really wonderful (and free) Smithsonians.  After our first one, we ventured down to the banks of the Potomac to buy a bag of crabs, wait in line, have the crabs steamed, wait in line, try to buy other food, wait in line and then eat our bounty with our feet dangling off the side of the pier.  The rest of the day was spent at the rest of the museums, walking around D.C. and finally sharing a meal between 3 other tables and striking up a conversation with our neighbors at a locally-oriented restaurant.  We rounded out the rest of the visit visiting Ben’s Chili Bowl, walking around downtown and visiting El Pollo Rico which is a delicious chicken place that looks like a warehouse in Arlington, VA.  It was very delicious.

Next up was the city that never sleeps, New York.

I have felt somewhat guilty that, despite being $10 and 2 hours away, New York had been vastly underutilized during my time in Philadelphia.  It was a pretty appealing fact and although it did lend to some neat little trips, I found myself wanting to get whatever I could done in Philadelphia instead up riding the bus up to New York.

Essentially, New York is the prototypical American city and it knows it.  Much like the friend you have which you can live vicariously through when it calls regaling its antics or hijinks, you would not enjoy having that person live with you.  This is how I felt about New York City.  Glad it was where it was.

This visit, we hung out with Katharine and generally did what we would have done had we been in Philadelphia, walked around, rode the train, ate some food and enjoyed our company.  One exceptional note was visiting the High Line which is a reclaimed viaduct that is now a public green space as opposed to a rail line above the Meatpacking District.  This is something that could only exist in New York but could spread someday.  On the second day, we visited the MoMA which was a strange treat but eventually we made it out alive.  But much like each visit, there’s a certain sense of relief once you board the bus in order to go home to the quaint-in-comparison confides of Philadelphia.

And thus ended our two week journey of points north and south of Philadelphia.  And of particular note, we have visited the forgotten brother of the East Coast megacity, Baltimore, but decided once was enough of a visit where as another visit to Boston would have been nice had time allowed.

Overall, it is such a great asset to have so many cities within close proximity.  I honestly can’t think of another area that has such a great factory of economic, creative and intellectual energy that feeds upon itself within the United States.  It was interesting to see how the cities interacted with each other, mostly with a tolerance of which you might permit a trash bag full of trash on its way to the curb but sometimes real tolerance and mutual respect sometimes came through.  I can see myself going back for a visit later in life and I’ll be happy to see that family of cities once again.

As part of our journey toward Chicago, Megan and I needed to go and pick out an apartment for us to move into once we arrive. I also needed to meet my coworkers in the Chicago office and present some designs to a client while I was there. This resulted in a trip that was segmented into thirds with little missions within.

Part 1

Warily arriving in Chicago at night with my boss, we were quickly awaken with a brazen taxi driver that nearly plowed the car into a line of barrels blocking off a closed exit. Despite that experience, I slept soundly knowing that I had my first in-person client presentation that went really well. After that, I met up with Simon who treated me to some very delicious tacos and chips with salsa. After dinner, we went to a local watering hole where I was introduced to the idea of Tamale Guy. You see, Chicago is a brilliant city that has a gentleman who goes from bar to bar with a cooler selling tamales at 5 for $5. He bolts in, usually met with cheers of approval, and leaves just as quickly as he arrived, on to the next stop. When I first laid eyes on Tamale Guy, I looked for some explanation from Simon only to be met with a look on his face of supreme pride of his city. You can actually follow Tamale Guy on his Twitter feed: @tamaletracker. Brilliant.

Part 2

Megan arrived on a saturday to O’Hare. I took a train full of St. Patrick day revelers out to meet her delayed flight. Once she arrived, we needed to find the shuttle to the rental car facility. Due to poor signage, we got a little lost and when we asked a traffic directing lady, she insisted that we just wait right there and she’ll flag one down. When Megan looked incredulously at me, I just reminded her that we are in the Midwest.

The next day, we started one of the craziest endeavors we have taken part of. In short, we looked at 34 apartments in 60 hours. Sunday after noon until Tuesday night, we were a well-oiled machine that was a orchestration of iPhone data synchronization, Craigslist, Padmapper and a Hyundai Elantra. She edited spreadsheets while I drove, I ate while she called, she looked at listings while I figured our next stop, it was nearly endless but yet, we ended up finding a place on our last day. Well, actually, we found two.

It is a question that nearly every city dweller has to think about after awhile. Sacrificing proximity to the city for a safer, quieter situation. And although we weren’t exactly moving out to Schaumburg, what a difference 2 miles makes. The neighborhood we did choose is actually similar to nicer neighborhoods in Kalamazoo but with two trains running through it. It was difficult to decide with the other location being similar to where we live in Philadelphia and much closer to our friends and more interesting places to eat, visit and closer proximity to my work. After a night of debate, we chose the safer solution with much reservation.

part 3

the last part of the journey was meeting and working with my new team in the Chicago office along with just plain relaxation after such an epic search. It really was a great time to be able to work remotely without missing a beat but also be able to feel like I was on a small vacation.

This is a picture I have taken before our apartment is dismantled, packaged, transported and unpacked in the city of Chicago.  That’s right, we’re moving to Chicago.

I find it somewhat appropriate that nearly 3 years after moving to the city of brotherly something or other, Megan and I have chosen to pick up the shallow stakes made here in order to start a family of our own closer to our parents so that they can some day become grandparents.  I feel as though this whole adventure to move to Philadelphia was a successful one in that my main missions were to see if I could redefine the direction my life with a fresh beginning and to see how a life lived more independent would treat me.  In many ways, Philadelphia has treated me extremely well with very little backlash or ill consequence.  In essence, my life has improved dramatically from where I was 3.5 years ago, when I made the decision to pick up and leave Kalamazoo.  Not only has my physical health improved in a couple ways but my mental health with a clearer introspection gained from living in near isolation for close to 5 months at the beginning.  In short, the move here was exactly what I needed.

And so, I find it appropriate that I am choosing to move to a city that was once my nemesis and later a place that I would have viewed as defeat.  You see, I considered Chicago as an alternative to Philadelphia when I was choosing to move away from Kalamazoo.  It would have been the safe choice with an installed job and social set in place, I knew that neither of these (moped-centered) scenarios were ones that I found very attractive.  So, with the advice of one very close friend, I chose the riskier move and didn’t look back.  It’s only now, after having a sense of stagnation and eagerness to beginning yet another chapter in my life, do I feel that moving to Chicago is an accomplishment and a home coming.

So, for the next 2 months, I’ll be documenting and reflecting upon Philadelphia in a way to wrap up my stay in a city that has had it’s ups and downs during my stay.  There will be a best-of series and places that I’ve wanted to go but never could interspersed with a whole bunch of packing and work.  In the meantime, I’ll try to enjoy every moment I have left in a city that gave me so much.

Last month, I received an e.mail from a gentleman in France of all places letting me know that he thought clockVetica was a cool idea but wished it had a 24-hour mode.  If it had that, he would pay his 99¢ and buy the app.  Sensing an opportunity to earn 70¢, I thought about how to implement the idea while stuck on a plane for 16 hours on my way to Hong Kong.  By the time we landed, clockVetica could display the time in in 24 hour mode. I actually might have spent more time updating the icon and artwork than implemented the code but, still, it was fun to crack that nut open again.

You see, clockVetica was an interesting experience in my world to try to learn a new skill so that I could build something new.  Money was never the driving force behind it although it would have been nice to work from Hong Kong when I wanted to.  Regardless, sales were less than rewarding.  In fact, Apple has a $150 threshold in each territory that an application has to reach before they pay money out.  I pretty much figured that I’d never reach that threshold which was okay.

Imagine my surprise when, in the middle of the night, I rose from sleep to get a glass of water. When I laid my head back down, I remembered that I heard my phone chime twice letting me know that I had an e.mail right before I fell asleep.  It turns out that one of those e.mails was from Apple letting me know that they were considering promoting my app and didn’t want to give any more details but instead ask me to alter my icon just slightly.

About a week later, I got an e.mail from Simon letting me know, that after 9 month, clockVetica was featured in the iTunes Store “New and Noteworthy” section which is updated weekly.  This is huge.  I’m not sure what time they put it up but by the first day, sales were in the hundreds.  Viewing sushiGrass’ webpage analytics, I was able to see that traffic increased over 1,100%.  It’s honestly been crazy.

And the weeks not over.  Although I know my clock isn’t the most feature filled or really all that useful, it was a nice little bit of vindication for all those times that real programmers in Philly made a snide remark about it or if I was less than overwhelmed with the results.

So.  We had some snow here in Philadelphia.  Not just snow but 28.5 inches of snow followed by 16.8 inches of snow within a week.

I’ll let you think about that for a second.

That is crazy.  Even for Michigan that is crazy and this is Philadelphia which, according to Wikipedia (so it must be true), falls in the humid subtropic climate zone which, unlike Michigan, isn’t in the Arctic.  The first snow happened on a Saturday so it was really no biggie other than Septa’s buses stopped running in the afternoon and was only slightly slower on the El and Subway.  The second snow happened on Tuesday night into Wednesday which wreaked all kinds havoc towards people working and getting things done business-wise.  It did not stop bars and restaurants from being open all day and literally giving booze away.  (Don’t worry, we didn’t go.)

The funny part about Snowpocalypse II was that I got two days out of the office as the office manager must have been jealous about his kids having the days off as well.  This resulted in two days of playing Mario alternating with checking printer’s proofs.  While I’m not complaining about that scenario, it did lead to some stir-craziness.

Philadelphia, of course, handled it like it would.  The funny thing about the East Coast is that much more people walk around here as compared to the Midwest so sidewalks are nearly always shoveled immaculately which makes my walk to work much easier than back in Kalamazoo.  Regardless, people still feel the urge to walk in the middle of the road during a snowstorm for whatever reason.  Also, it caused people to lose their minds when it came to food shopping but it was kind of warranted as even though they were giving away booze at bars, the state-ran alcohol stores decided not to open the entire time.  The disappointing aspect is that Philadelphia is a generally flat place so as a result, I couldn’t think of a place to go sledding that was close-ish to mass transit beyond the Art Museum steps but even those looked uncomfortable. Even worse, snowboarding was out of the question as they closed down the highways and, even to this point, we haven’t dug out our car.

But on the bright side, Philadelphia did smash it’s record of the snowiest season ever so it will be fun to look back and say that, yes, we did survive that.

Last week, I boarded a plane in Newark, New Jersey for a 16 hour flight to Hong Kong to see Megan.

What an unbelievably fun and bustling city.  Just an amazing amount of people flowing out of every corner, nook and cranny of each layer that is Hong Kong.  Hong Kong, in general, is very materialistic and opulent in many ways due to the fact that it is much less regulated than mainland China.  As we discovered by talking to a Chinese couple later in the week, the taxes on the mainland are much higher so as a result, some Chinese come to Hong Kong just to shop.  The result is just so many malls and shops.  Everywhere you go, there was a mall.  Top of a mountain?  Mall.  Airport?  Mall.  Hotel?  Mall.  Tallest building?  Mall. Subway stations? Mall. Each one of these malls were full of people buying western brands and carrying around bags.  It was just so surreal to see how many Burberry or Louis Vuitton places could exist in such a small place.

Megan and I didn’t do any shopping, though.  In fact, I declared nothing on my return trip.  What we did do was explore so many sections and areas while not really overlapping much.  Megan’s hotel, provided by work, is on the mainland side of Hong Kong in Kowloon.  We walked around plenty of Kowloon to eat and visit the electronic market but moved over to the island for dinner a couple nights as well as seeing the zoo, the resort side of Stanley and climbing to the top of the peak.  We also traveled over to the Lan Tau island to see the Lan Tau Natural Park which was awe inspiring.

Overall, it was just such a fun time mainly because Megan was there but also because Hong Kong knows how to shuttle millions of people around with us using mass transit all the time with no problems and rather cheaply. On top of that, because it’s a former United Kingdom colony and still is a foundation of western business in asia, speaking English was no problem at all.  Megan actually termed it “asia lite” on our trip.

It was the fact that they cater to foreign visitors that made it so friendly to visit.  We ate Chinese food a couple times but had some of the best Italian, Indian, Japanese and Lebanese food in a long time.  Strangely, we didn’t have pizza as for whatever reason asia hasn’t figured out that mysterious food.

The only problem was the 16 hour flight to and from there that was somewhat like being in purgatory without water.  I’d seriously like to see an airline executive take that trip in coach and see what kind of changes take place.  Other than that, though, it was a really spectacular trip and I am more than glad I had the chance to go and spend that week with Megan in one of the craziest cities in the world.

While most people have recently been reflecting upon the last decade, I recently stumbled upon a meme that was floating around Twitter called #tenyearsago.  That’s what brought upon the real sense of reflection as 1999 was a huge year.  And don’t think that 2000-2009 were wasted years, they weren’t.  Tremendous things happened during that time and 2009 wasn’t the terrible year for me as it was for many people.  In general, thumbs up to the aughts.  But back to 1999, it’s was one of those years that was just a tempest of possibility and excitement with not only the personal milestones of graduating high school and having my first serious relationship but in general with the Internet dawning and the new millennium.  It was just such a hopeful time in that personal drastic change was going to happen but it was certain as college was a definite yes (even though it wasn’t).

During that time, I happened to work at the freshly built Kalamazoo 10 theater. That job was extremely fun in that, at first, they had no idea what they were doing.  The result was just the right mix of people that led to some really great moments.  It also lead to me watching what I thought of as a bumper crop of really interesting movies, the likes of which really haven’t been produced in one year.

And so, in commemoration of the 10 year passing of 1999, I held my own little “films of 1999″ festival.  What did I watch?  American Beauty, Election, Fight Club, Star Wars: Episode 1 and the Matrix.  I did miss the Sixth Sense, the Green Mile and Magnolia but I can save those for 2019, I suppose.

Surprisingly, some of the films hold up better than others.  Election, Fight Club and the Matrix held up well while Star Wars and American Beauty have lost their sheen.  The biggest surprise, for me, was the Matrix as 2 and 3 were just so terribly bad.  In fact, I recently watched 2 just to make sure it was that bad and, yes, it was that bad.  Knowing that, Matrix one really wasn’t that bad and must have been quite extraordinary coming out of nowhere like I remember.

Overall, this little festival wasn’t about nostalgia but more about seeing whether somethings hold up through the test of time.  Seeing movies 10 years later is a very strange because the experience of viewing the movie can be extremely different even though the movie hasn’t changed but you, through your experiences and growing knowledge, have.

Listen.  I’m not going to get into how my wisdom teeth absolutely wrecked my Christmas in Michigan, nor am I going to talk about how my resistance towards the idea of Christmas in general is slowly breaking down.  Instead, I’m just going to leave my description of Christmas ‘09 up to a photograph of my nephew, Luke, climbing into a Taun Taun sleeping bag.  For all the travel and all the pain, that alone was worth it all.

Hope yours was as good.

In just about 24 hours, Philadelphia received 22.5 inches of snow resulting in snow like I have never seen before.  In fact, I had to dig out our car in order to park not once but twice.  Of course, I couldn’t enjoy this because of my stupid mouth and it’s recovery.  Yup, no sledding down the art museum steps or snowball fights because I have a baby mouth that can’t handle sliced turkey breast.  I did have the chance to walk around a little bit during and after the crazy snow storm which was nice.

Philadelphia, of course, doesn’t know how to handle something like this.  In a city full of people too lazy to carry a wrapper to a trash can, this was an inconvenience that made people freak out in a manner reminiscent of the last days.  I got to see people walking in the middle of really busy streets lest their sneakers get dirty or wet.  I witnessed people shoveling a huge pile of snow right into the middle of another busy street.  Busses and subways (really?) were late or no shows. Also, people just seemed to park wherever they saw fit and the city found this as an excellent revenue source as ticketing for not shoveling walkways was rampant while streets themselves were a foot of mush themselves.  In short, it was a mad house but yet a beautiful mad house covered in a white blanket that hid all the filth and absorbed all the noise that the city normally produces.

At my finest…

Earlier this year, I went to the dentist to get a cleaning and drop off $400 for fillings.  To further the fun more, I learned that I must have oral surgery for my wisdom teeth.  Well, scratch that.  I should go get a consultation at an oral surgery because, I’m sure, the oral surgeon will really turn down a slam dunk like that.

Much like the 1960s-80s with tonsils, wisdom teeth are the new must-have surgery!  Have your teeth been having problems?  Are your teeth going out of alignment?  Issues with your nerves in your jaw?  No?  Nothing?  That’s great!  You need surgery!

So, when I go in for my consultation, the doctor, just about reading the paper, says that I must have all four wisdom teeth removed.  You see, the wisdom teeth could cause problems that, according to a DVD that told me all about it while I waited for the doctor to roll in, would deform my face like a boxing career.

So, I begrudgingly agree. Not only because of Megan’s insistance but because we are switching to a different insurance model where we pay essentially out of our health savings pocket until we reach the deductible.  Not wanting to blow that immediately, I figured I’d get it out of the way now.  Plus, I could save the narcotics for when I’m home for Christmas.  Kidding.

Anyway, I’m sitting on my couch after being asleep pretty much all day with little interludes of eating apple sauce that Megan made and Ice Cream that Mrs. Pinkerton had shipped overnight.  And, even though I was dreading the operation up until I woke up to Megan talking to me in a waiting room and had some slight frustration as to having gauze in my mouth for 5 hours, it has gone pretty well.  It’s not all bad.  Megan has a funny story about me insisting to have the phone so I could call my boss while still messed up from the drugs.  Plus, the photos.  Priceless.

It’s just another facet of life that just has to be done and an important lesson to learn.