Oooh, Boston!

a picture of the charles river, taken from the bridge going into boston (or cambridge if you go the other way). today the boston marathon bombings are one year ago.

for me it was just another day in boston. i dont even remember the weather. perhaps, probably, something like above. the lives of many others who were present at the marathon changed forever. just like last year, i dont know what to write as i do not feel its my place to write anything. 

so, well... i read that many books are released today commemorating what happened; one of them is reviewed here.

Friendly reminder

apparently, the dumping of used oil, antifreeze, paints, and other awful (household) chemicals are the primary source of pollution of the charles river. so.... most stormdrains have a sign like the one above, reminding people not to just carelessly dump their sh*t, as it will go straight to the charles river etc...

this one is actually on the bridge that i showed you yesterday.

as a kid, i sometimes used to make "soup" in such drains. we would throw in sand, mud, leaves, anything we could find and then stir it with a large stick... i guess that was one of the reasons they sometimes got clogged and all the rainwater accumulated at the little "playground" behind our house.... ooopss!

Icy Charles

today we walked a bit around in boston and cambridge. it was not too cold, although freezing, so i thought it was a nice idea to walk to cambridge rather than taking the subway. so we took the longfellow bridge, and there it turned out to be really, really cold!! still a nice walk, but much colder than we had expected... as you can see, the charles is kind of frozen at the moment. in the back you see the harvard bridge, the longest bridge over the charles. as i was looking up the name of the bridges (i always forget them), i found that people review bridges. 6 people took the time to write down their thoughts on the harvard bridge, as you can see here...... ("Serves its purpose remarkably well, always there when I need it"......)

Lightpole face

somewhere along the charles river....

it was yet another hot day. but with some rain in the early evening. much less heavy than expected (or than it seemed to be with the big clouds and think rain drops..... but at least it seems a tiny bit cooler right now.

good night!

Some sightseeing

here you see the boston skyline from the cambridge side, close to MIT.

Boston houseboat

somehow i thought houseboats are only something that you will see in the netherlands... then i saw one in/on the charles river in boston! i was really surprised.... then i found out through wikipedia that houseboats are seen in many countries (they describe them country by country here). yet i doubt they are as omnipresent as they are in for example the canals in amsterdam. and the above one is really tiny. you can also move it, which is usually no really the case with houseboats in the netherlands. yes, they are floating, but thats about it... i also doubt that houseboats here are used the way they are in utrecht, close to where i used to live; there was an entire strip of houseboats, all with a red light behind the window.... for each houseboat more or less 4; a total of 143 windows or "workspaces" as they call them! i guess you know what i am talking about.... they also have a website, but its in dutch (here). and guess what, those are not in some backward part of town. right next to the "workboats" are normal boats for families. when i finally (but when?!) visit home again, i should take some pictures there... :)

for more interesting wikifacts about red windows and so on in the netherlands, go here!

Low clearance

its snowing a bit again, so another pic with some snow in it..

this is memorial drive, a road that runs along the charles river. according to google maps, its called memorial drive on the cambridge side, and storrow drive on the boston side (as you can see here), and as you can see above, its only for cars. trucks, buses, anything not a car is not allowed on it. i dont really like this road, its often crowded and everyone drives so fast and masshole style (but you do get a great view of boston)! besides, especially the first few times the signs that you can see above really freaked me out. we have a real big american pickup truck, and every time i was afraid we were not really allowed on this road, and surely would hit this "cars only" sign. if not, then we would get stuck under the low bridge (for which the sign is actually warning..). because thats what this sign is for; trucks and buses do not fit under the bridge and will get stuck. ofcourse, we never got stuck... but every now and then, despite the many, many warning signs, a truck enters this road and gets stuck. as you can imagine, this generates a mess and long traffic jams. we were once watching a free movie at the hatch shell, right next to storrow drive, and suddenly there was this awful, loud shrieking noise... yep, a truck that barely made it, perhaps shaved off a bit of the bridge while just driving on with great speed. on september 1st, when all the new students move into town, often rented moving trucks get stuck, as people tend to forget they are driving something huge..

but the most funny incident i just read on wikipedia... once... a truck got stuck transporting.... scissors! they got spilled all over the road and 30 cars ended up with flat tires. detailed as wikipedia is, 2 cars even got 4 flat tires. the road was closed for hours....

Fancy building

yesterday we went to a "networking seminar". in fact i was not aware that the purpose of the meeting was to network, i was just interested in the topic presented. the presentation was good, however short and very much about protein structures, but i learned something new. besides, it was in a very very fancy building with extremely expensive furniture and very nice glass-walled seminar rooms. the view over the Charles river (see above) was beautiful. we were only on the first floor, so higher up would be even more perfect.
surely it was not a research building. i just discovered Microsoft is in there so i assume the space we were allowed to use was from microsoft. interestingly, i also found out that there are City rules preventing Microsoft from putting up their logo atop the building; it would ruin the beautiful skyline along the Charles river (article in boston globe)
after the seminar was done and all the free pizza (but cold) was finished, everyone left rather quickly; i dont think much networking has occurred. surely i will attend the next seminar as well, if only for the fancy building! :)