Back from Baltimore, Stepping on the JHU Seal

Well today was my first full day back in Mountain View having been in Baltimore for the weekend for the 5th year reunion.

Unfortunately somewhere along the way I seemed to have caught a cold. Argh. Now I have a sore throat and the sniffles.

Back to the business of Baltimore though, the city sure has cleaned up a bunch (read: gentrified) since I was last there. Property prices have risen dramatically and a friend of a friend who graduated the same year now has 4 properties. WOW.

I’m incredibly glad that I didn’t go to Columbia or NYU or something, and live near my parents. They probably would’ve made me gone home every weekend or even live at home!

While I didn’t always enjoy my 4 years at Hopkins (to put it mildly), the 4 years in Baltimore was definitely an incredible growth experience. Though I was from NY, and spent summers working in the not so nice areas (hello 39th and 8th) Baltimore was still pretty scary at times. But it certainly had its own flavor and its own set of uniqueness. Like other East Coast cities, it has its own feel – not just strip malls that homogenize other cities.

And unlike the Bay Area or LA, diversity in Baltimore doesn’t just mean ‘has different kinds of Asians’.

That said, this claim still a bit of a stretch:

Right. That’s like Californians thinking that California is the center of the world… when in reality everyone knows that it is NY.

And finally, $130k+ and 4 years of toil, I think I earned the right for this picture:

Those who went to Hopkins should get the significance.