Cogito, Ergo Sumana for 2006 January 18 (entry 0)

# 18 Jan 2006, 01:01PM: The Golden Ticket: I signed a lease on an apartment in Astoria, in Queens. Astoria feels like San Francisco's Ingleside/West Portal with a bit of the Mission, only lots of Greek instead of lots of Spanish. Many thanks to Fog Creek and to John for their instrumental roles in getting me the place.

The shipping container gets delivered Friday morning; anyone in NYC want to help me move boxes for an hour?

I am getting used to the tradeoffs of living in New York. Various protocols are byzantine and efficient. One enters it after many players in all the markets have brutally competed and iterated through a lot of opportunities and loopholes, and though "[i]t is usually incorrect to believe that you are on the efficient frontier", businesses in NYC seem nearer the efficient frontier than in other cities I've visited.

The best preparation I had for living in New York was probably living in St. Petersburg for a summer and visiting Tokyo for two weeks. I learned how to get out of people's way.

In conversation, Adam and I decided that living in New York City is a skill with a big learning curve, like knowing Unix. Many people use it all the time without really mastering it, which is fine, because you only need to know the bits you use. And having a goal, or a set of tasks to accomplish, directs and facilitates one's study.

Off to change my address in a billion places.