The City of Brotherly Love

Yesterday I left Bloomington and came to Philadelphia. I'll be here for 3 months this summer on fellowships from the Philadelphia Area Centre for the History of Science and the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

It was planes, trains and automobiles yesterday: car to Indianapolis, plane to Philadelphia, a train downtown, then a metro. We were a bit rushed getting from IHOP to the airport. I rushed to check my bags, there was a bit of a delay getting to security and after I passed the metal detector I was randomly selected for an extra scan. Then they had to search my bag because a stack of papers in there was thick enough to stop the x-rays, while in there the guy got suspicious of my tin of teabags and decided to swab it to test for explosives. But, naturally, the plane didn't board on time so I had 10 min to spare.

I'm staying in a share-house on the west side of town, near the University of Pennsylvania. It's very close to metro, which will be convenient when I need to go into the city for the CHF. It must be a very multi-cultural neighbourhood because even the normal mainstream supermarket stocks lots more exotic food than in Bloomington, especially West Indian and Middle-Eastern food.

Today I took a walk around the UPenn campus. It's like a cross between Sydney Uni and UTS, it has busy roads running through, lots of private shops etc. But there is some parkland interspersed. In one park I saw a guy had brought his own hammock and strung it between two trees so he could lie back and read his Kindle. And there's another university, Drexel, just across the road. No wonder they call it university city.