It was a brief but quite enjoyable visit.
The signature gate in Chinatown
Inside a Chinese restaurant featuring Xi'An Cold Noodles
Elfreth's Alley, one of my favorite spot
Display in a museum next to Elfreth's Alley
The Wharton School at Penn
Back then, neither of us would expect my later working in Philadelphia or at Penn. But here I am, working at the prestigious Wharton School with a well-known statistician, and another famous biostatistician from the prestigious Perelman School of Medicine. The friend who took me here the first time still lives nearby. This is simply how amazing life can be.
You know, there is always a different expectation when you are looking for a place to live for a few years versus a place to visit for a few days. We seem to expect more from a place if we are considering living there. So I was a little disappointed at the beginning of my apartment hunting journey because most of them look old and dodgy, a very different outlook compared to Ann Arbor. There are a few newly built high-rise apartment complexes, but the rent is so high that I decided to rent a one-bedroom apartment on Sansom Street crossing the 42nd Street, an area that is not too bad. Plus the five story building was advertised to be somewhat recent. Another friend who is based in Philadelphia helped me check out the apartment and informed me of its reliability. I agreed with its security and reliability, but it's only after living here for a while that I learned about the management. Still it is not comparable to what Ann Arbor offers.
Overall, Philadelphia is a city and also has things that Ann Arbor doesn't offer, such as the many museums around the city, a much larger variety of food options, and the proximity to many other interesting places such as Princeton, New York City, Washington. DC, etc. Best of all, the weather here is much more mild compared to Michigan. So I'm enjoying my life here. I like that there is the Reading Terminal Market where you can get fresh seafood, exotic desserts, etc; I like that there are more clothing shops in Center City so I can try out clothes before buying them. Yes, there is also New Year's Eve fireworks celebration here.
Locust walk on Penn campus
A typical street view in Philly
City bikes
Penn is a private university. As someone on a paid vacation (I mean post-doc), I don't enjoy much of the flexibility of being a student. What I do enjoy is the opportunity to hang out with those smart students, post-docs and professors, which is the more important part of work. If you were to ask me about my first job after graduation a few years ago, I would have wished that I become a faculty member immediately. The truth is that things have changed so much in the statistics profession that even those top candidates on the job market would postpone their start date as an assistant professor and instead consider working as a post-doc for a year or so. We call this "paid vacation time", because really there is no one pushing you to do anything, no teaching and you get to manage all your time by yourself. You do get less pay compared to being an assistant professor, but not much. The only thing you need to remember is that you will have to leave in two (or three) years. And in order to make that separation less unpleasant, you might want to push yourself to find the next higher "paid vacation" in time.
