The most important insights I have to offer is this: Ask for help. Offer it as well, but you _must_ ask for it. Do you want to be friends with invincible people who never need your assistance? Probably not if you are anything like me. Giving to other people makes us like them more, and this goes both ways. This is the Benjamin Franklin effect[1]
You have called out a desire to have more meaningful relationships, so I am not going to focus on meeting people, though the more people you meet the more you will find people with things in common.
Instead think about what makes deep connections? Shared experiences. Fellow feeling. Giving and accepting affection.
I am Australian and I am lucky enough to have moved to New York for work. I met some friends through Australian connections but the deepest connections I have made are through a random conversation at a networking event that led to some drinks, and then to an introduction to a group of like minded poets, artists and technologists.
But even then I felt on the outside.
The thing that changed that has been going to them for help with things in my life (support as I struggled with relationship trouble, homesickness, stress from work) as well as spending time in their company individually and as a group in both casual and more intense settings (camping). Part of the help I asked for I guess was their acceptance and approval of some poetry I was writing, which I performed for them. I guess that my thesis is shallow experiences make for shallow friendships and deep experiences (which by their nature require you to have your guard down) make deep friendships.
"Breaking into a clique" is a bad paradigm I think, you don't want to break in, you want to be brought in.
The only other thing I would say is seek people who are also seeking. They will be the ones who have arrived from elsewhere, the ones who are perhaps on the edges of the society that you are in. They want what you want.
I am reminded of Pratchett and co's ideas on narrativium, which I apparently imbibed and internalized early enough that it has made me one of these life-writers.
"We are not Homo sapiens, Wise Man. We are the third chimpanzee. What distinguishes us from the ordinary chimpanzee Pan troglodytes and the bonobo chimpanzee Pan paniscus, is something far more subtle than our enormous brain, three times as large as theirs in proportion to body weight. It is what that brain makes possible. And the most significant contribution that our large brain made to our approach to the universe was to endow us with the power of story. We are Pan narrans, the storytelling ape. (II: 325)
...if you understand the power of story, and learn to detect abuses of it, you might actually deserve the appellation Homo sapiens."
I had never heard of this guy before, and I'm completely blown away by his work! Especially the fact that he uses more wood to create tools to be more efficient. I might have to get a bigger basement...
Same goes for many of the NYC offices. Our space near Empire State seems to have a lot of consulting businesses that would otherwise be renting out something more complicated (need their own receptionist, water bills, internet bills, blah blah blah)
If you stay within the Apple ecosystem like they really want you to, then you don't need that because your thunderbolt display has an ethernet adapter as well as some extra usb ports. The Apple monitor is their replacement for the docking station. Power and connectivity, as well as a place to put the laptop for reasonable space efficiency.
I actually just read through the last dozen or so articles about the F-35 on breadkingdefense, they don't sound like fans of the F-35 so much as they just are enthusiastic in general.
The DVD ends with the launch. This coda was not part of the film, but appears as a deleted scene, at least in the US version. Maybe it was added in the international version?
One of the things I always feel when I read something like this is that I am running out of time. I'm 29, so this is a comparison that's easy to make. And because I feel like maybe you guys will have the same reaction I wanted to show you this:
There may be a better version of this article out there, but the essence is that it's not too late to start to be great at something. So don't let the stress of a successful 30 year old get you wound up.
One parameter at a time.