Will of the People

Pretty much all my stuff is in Philadelphia. My main job at CMU is pretty much over. I'm still pretty angsty about this move, despite having finished it, more-or-less.

A lot of it is that (and I have spoken with people who live here to confirm this), there are almost no teahouses/coffeeshops that are open late and good for hanging out. I initially thought Milkboy would be neat, but they play music every night. Martha and Jess have lived here for awhile, and they say there are few late-night places in PHL's metro area and none in my area that fit the bill. So, WTF. This many universities around, and no teahouse open at least until 11? I am ... honestly thinking about trying to open one. I don't know the first thing about running a business, and my knowledge about coffee is limited, but I'm practical, I have all sorts of ideas about how to run businesses as a collective, and most importantly, I NEED THIS KIND OF PLACE.

The lack of a Té Café or Insomnia or Victoria's Midnight Cafe, cozy and rightly-sized so there'd be regulars and an atmosphere... this hurts. I need a new place to plant my interpersonal roots (yes, I need people too, but a place is a good start). I know exactly where I'd go in Boston, or NYC, or Paris, or Columbus, or Pgh. I feel so diminished here, like a fish out of water, starving in an invisible way; I feel the urge to (cheesy, yes) go to $the_social_place_where_everyone_knows_my_name and just have to shrug my shoulders.

I'm also really really missing proximity to woods, and the feel of Squirrel Hill.

I withdrew my application a few days ago to a reasonable job at Penn. I have so much to figure out now that I'm outside of my usual context.

I'll have to explore downtown (*cough* Center City) a bit more. Right now I'm pretty pessimistic that I'll come to feel at home here, and I'm worried about building a social circle. I am *so* looking forward to my little trip back to Pittsburgh next week to work my last day there; I'll be spending some quality time in the woods and then at Té Café. I'm amused at my division of sources of this kind of interpersonal happiness into:

• Place-happiness - When I really like a place per se
• Social-environment-happiness - When I like the crowd of a place
• People - When I like the specific people

Philadelphia is not forever, but I think I'm growing impatient living for the future. I've known for a long time that I'm pretty picky about where I'm likely to enjoy living. This experience is helping me really understand what kinds of things I look for in a living space (even if the city-types I like come in distinct flavours with the permutations of characteristics between them being much less awesome).

I'm kind of tired of making new social ties. I just wish I could have the old ones back from all the different periods of my life, and make them better.

Interesting developments in international politics:

• Tension within Saudi Arabia over Abdullah al-Saud's gentle reform efforts
• Iranian state TV censored parts of a speech by President Ahmadinejad. The power dynamic between Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad has shifted considerably over the latter's term. Irregularities in the last election ended up as a big win for conservatives, as moderates (like Rafsanjani and Karoubi) and liberals (Mohammad Khatami and particularly Mohammad Ali Abtahi) were imprisoned or marginalised. This intensified the divides between the secular-nationalist and the clerical branches of the conservative wing of Iranian politics. Semi-recently, this tension has played out with cabinet appointments and prosecution of Ahmadinejad's allies for corruption.

I also like hearing about self-driving car technology advances. I don't think private car ownership is a good thing, but this is neat stuff.

Those of you who enjoyed volume 1 of the 「Portal 2」 soundtrack will be happy to see that 「Volume 2」 is now up. Hooray!