I am so thankful to Paul Graham for writing this. Thank you! I cannot pluck myself away from this place and now he has clarified what I just recently started suspecting. I moved to the US from Brazil 17 years ago due to family challenges. I went straight to Framingham MA, like many other Brazilian immigrants. On my second week here, a group of newly formed friends took me to Boston. I felt in love. I swore I would move there in 2 years time. I was living there in 6 months. Unlike many Brazilians, I was in awe with the new culture, and couldn't get enough of it. I didn't want to immerse myself in the local Brazilian community. Soap operas, the national past time of a country up to that time pretty completely closed up to foreign influence (read: low level of choices) had always been boring to me. I wanted to learn English as fast as I could so I could read the newspapers and get in the know of what was going on in such an exciting place! After learning English, I went to college (something of a dream, it was not a prospect in my life back when I lived in Brazil), had a really hard time choosing one career (I wanted to do everything) and found my love in building software.
In two years time I had pretty much shed the longing for the familiar things I grew up with, so the struggle between that and the thirst to experience the new subsided. After a while, I started thinking I need a new "fix": a move to a new (cool) place could do me good. I could never find a place I could justify moving to, but the need for the "fix" kept nagging at me. Until... I worked onsite on and off in Mexico City for 6 months and, despite falling in love with that and other places in Mexico, it was branded in me that no place other than the US would ever feel like home to me.
I kept looking to other cities, however. I naturally like to continuously reassess my choices anyway. It was very recently that I finally figured it all out.
I grew up in complete starvation of intellectual stimulus. I needed it, and didn't get it. Since landing in the Boston area, I have been completely consumed with nurturing this deficiency. I feel like I am behind and must catch up (to what, I haven't found out yet). Although I lived in Cambridge for 7 years up to a few years ago, I feel the same for the entire Boston area: there is not a time when I step somewhere that I don't meet somebody mind bogglingly interesting.
This is so good to my soul. There is no place with the level of intellect found here. He is so right.
And this just in to confirm the Boston and Cambridge areas are top places to work with information technology...
Massachusetts ‘No. 1 Tech State’
on 20 June 2008, 10:41
by Ken Schachter
"Massachusetts remains the king of the hill in technology and science overall, according to a new study, but California overtook the Bay State in the risk capital and entrepreneurship infrastructure segment."
More:
http://www.redherring.com/Home/24371
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