This morning I departed from the hotel I forgot to mention in my last blog post, after saying an all-too-short goodbye to my family and especially Greta. My dad drove me to the Appleton airport where I boarded a plane for Detroit. An hour of air time later, I was in Detroit. A rushed half hour layover in Detroit later, I was on my way to Newark. A 1.75 hour flight later, I was waiting for a train in New Jersey. Then a train ride, subway ride, another subway ride, and two taxi rides later (I got lost), I was finally at my apartment… for an hour.

The apartment is nice but small, and has only one drawback which is the oppressive heat that pervades its thin walls. It was too hot to stay in today (I’m sitting in a sports bar down the street drinking a malibu and coke to beat the heat) but that was when it was rainy and cool outdoors. I can’t imagine how hot it will get when it’s even too hot outside. We’re looking into an air conditioner.

There are three roommates: Nathaniel, who I’ve never seen with his shirt on, who is attending acting school with another roommate and friend of mine from Colorado, Levi. They’re both in their second year. Imogen has the room at the other end of the hall which will be mine in a month when she moves out; she is British, and originally from a British island. Now from London, she was in New York for an internship but has run out of money and has to return to her homeland. They’re all very nice and very laid back, although I have yet to spend any significant length of time in the apartment.

I unpacked a bit but was immediately out the door again to the eBay offices in Manhattan, for a technical presentation by Lindsey, this week’s hacker-in-residence at Hacker School. She’s getting a Ph.D. in programming languages (as far as I can tell) and had a very cool talk that explained a lot about concurrency that I had been wondering for a while. She lost some of the less computer-scientist traditional-training people in the crowd, but I found it very enjoyable and interesting, despite some major sound problems at the beginning.

ebay offices!

I had been traveling for about 12 hours at that point and decided to leave a bit early – I was disheveled and had tried unsuccessfully to slick my hair back so I just looked like a mess and left. Caught the N followed by the R to get home, then realized the apartment was too hot to work in and came here.

Looking forward to lying down.

From Brooklyn,

–Erty Seidel