First impressions of Harrisburg

So, I haven't written much in the last few weeks. Maybe it's cause I've been stressed out by the move to Harrisburg. This place is not forgiving to car-less people. Coming from Boston where the public transportation was just fabulous, this place definitely stinks. Then, the closest Bank of America is like 35 miles from my apartment, and I live right in downtown Harrisburg. Thanks to the non cooperative banks, every time I withdraw cash, I pay $2 each to the ATM and to Bank of America, just cause I don't have a Bank of America location close by. Downtown is nice for the most part, but there are some VERY shady areas. Had it not been for Crown Fried Chicken, I wouldn't even think about going to these areas. So, this fried chicken joint is serving fine, economical Halal food in the middle of a ghetto. We ate there yesterday. There's no place to sit down, you gotta take out, which is good, I don't think I could sit down and eat here after sun down. But the chicken was good. I'm sure we'll take out again in the near future. What else? Now, I'm totally ecstatic cause there's a couple of Shisha bars like walking distance from my apartment. One of them, the Citadel, also serves Halal food. We have yet to try the other one, Skewers is the name by the way. There's a few masajid around, one actually close to my apartment, which would be good since Ramadan is coming Insha Allah. Once again, it's almost like I'm working at IBM in Bangalore or Trivandrum or something. My lead, who's not an Indian, asked me whether I have any experience in India... I'm like dude, I'm not even from there. No offense, this place is FOBville. Time flies, first couple of weeks have gone by already and the long Labor Day weekend is upon us. I'm driving to Toledo this evening after work to see Umar and Usman, it's been a while. Really looking forward to the long weekend after stressful couple of weeks. I'm missing Wichita for sure... Harrisburg is better than Boston in a sense that at least I knew one person really well before coming out here, as opposed to Boston where it was more like zero. And that person is my roommate now, I hardly get to see him, courtesy of the hospital he's interning at. He's hella jealous when he comes home late in the evening and I'm sitting down sipping on Chai while watching crazy Saudi drivers' drifting videos on
Youtube.