I moved into my apartment on Tuesday. Many of you reading this have probably already been here, the rest should come by some time soon. It’s a gorgeous little place, perhaps seemingly better to me because of one fact: it’s mine. For at least a year. No moving out, no RCRs to fill out, no RAs. If the last few days of living in Tribeca have anything to say, the remaining 51 weeks will be a blast.

I went to the Taste of Tribeca festival today, in which 40+ neighborhood restaurants offered small samples of something from their restaurants. I had everything from Long Island duck wrapped around a French prune, to a pulled pork sandwich, to a delicious apple strudel by Blaue Gans (from the same people as one of my favorite cafes, Cafe Sabarsky; in fact, Blaue Gans inhabits the site of Le Zinc, a restaurant that closed a while ago that was by the owners of Chanterelle (winner of the 2007 James Beard Award, also where my parents and I dined this week) and was also rather good) and a good piece of Kobe beef. New this year, as I’m told, was the wine tent which sampled wines from various restaurants and wine stores nearby. I met the sommelier from Blaue Gans, Christopher, who was very nice to me. The problem with the wine tent was that no one really wanted to take your ticket as they wanted you to come back and enjoy the rest of their offerings. Consequently, there were lots of drunk Tribeca-ites (Tribecans? Tribecers? I’ll figure it out…).

Then, to end the afternoon, I went on a walking tour of my new neighborhood with history author Oliver E. Allen who has written several works on the history of Tribeca. It was amazing what I had missed when walking the streets in the last few days. The tour made me look even more forward to reading Andrew Dolkart’s “Texture of Tribeca” that I just bought yesterday for a coffee table that doesn’t yet exist.

It was made even nicer because I met a few neighborhood residents who were just really friendly to me.

I went out in search of food at midnight last night, thinking it would be a struggle to find open stores to purchase from. It turns out there is a whole underground culture around here, akin to the Meatpacking District, where clubs and bars (sometimes literally) emerge from the ground. I hadn’t a clue that there is a nightclub directly across the street from my building, viewable from my own window, until I walked by the queue of people waiting to gain admittance.

It’s almost a tease that I’m going home in a little over an hour. I had too few unimaginable days of enjoying the company of friends (with whom my relationships, by definition, are in slight limbo), then too few days of enjoying relative solitude with my new neighborhood. At least I’ve assured myself that coding, basketball, and golf (not to mention family and home-cooked meals) await me upstate.

My mother, however, contends that the food is better down here.

School is over.

I’ve been having a problem recently: I’ve out grown my music collection. It’s just not hard enough anymore. Just not enough screaming, thrashing, and noise. All the post-hardcore is too friendly. Even most Glassjaw isn’t loud enough anymore. (Their amps probably only go up to 10). I’ve turned to numetal for solace, back to where my penchant for loudness started, but it just feels a little silly. The people on DC just aren’t cool enough to have better music. I have resorted to begging some trusted authoritative music sources for input.

My sleep schedule has been inverted because of a few too many last calls since the end of finals. I decided to watch Grey’s Anatomy this morning around 5:20am. I had breakfast at 3pm today. It’s a good thing my family is coming so I can expect a return to normalcy.

I’m excited to be living alone for a while. Aspects of it are going to be unbearable (like having your main foosball competition live just a few feet away or people with whom to play Uno). But I’m excited for waking up in the morning and knowing that the (non-existent) mess in my apartment is mine and I don’t have to clean up after others. I’m excited for people not stealing my food and not hearing the constant roar of motorcycle videos or the piercing sounds of bad whistling.

I’m not excited to stop being a student, though. There are so many opportunities given to undergraduates, between the free admission deals, the academic competition and research opportunities, and the proximity of people in the same age group coupled with the proximity of some of the great minds of teaching and research… it’s sad that I only realized this recently (which will be a future topic here). As much as I tried not to, I spent much of college just getting by, my head just above the water, when there were so many great challenges presented to me or available to me. It’s an exciting time to be an undergrad, even more so if that undergrad knows how to take advice.

I had a great time during my tenure at Columbia. Even though I missed out on a lot, the opportunities that I did take I capitalized on. That’s probably a large part of the reason why I’m going to work doing exactly what I want to be doing right now. Columbia was good to me. I’d definitely do it again, but I’d definitely do it much differently.

I realized last night that these encounters with my friends may be the last time I’ll ever see them. It’s both sad and sobering, given that it’s the end, but also that all good things end. I don’t think I had the same feeling at the end of high school, and I can’t figure out why. As Somudro remarked last night, it’s not the people you know best that you become sad about, but it’s the people you wanted to know best that creates that sinking feeling.

Anyway, I should do laundry so that I have socks to wear during the last real night of being a college student.