Photographing strangers...

...like these fancy ladies a few months back at boylston street (i was sitting on the stairs of the public library and they didnt notice me) is what i like most, but what i also find most scary...  for me, it also depends whats going on, if there is some kind of gathering, or festivity, i feel more free to take a picture than when its just 1 person, or especially, 1 or 2 cops; they are really too intimidating (at least to me). but, in the US, you are allowed to photograph anything, except: (1) certain military installations or operations. (2) people that are in places that are not easily visible to the general public (ie at home). (i stole this from here). you thus can photograph whatever you can see in public space (thus also police officers, or children, for that matter). it happened however already a few times that we were kindly, or less kindly, asked not to take pictures (for example in the cinema (???), or the area around my lab in charlestown, which is rather industrial and sooo cool!).

here is a link i found very useful, and actually i recently printed the statement posted there and now always have it with me (just in case). found it at this photoblog (also in boston!)

Posing proudly

when obama was in town, they released an enormous amount of police officers into boston. they were their charming macho self.... great. as for example those guys with bikes above. they were just standing there, displaying their cool.... suddenly there was this girl that asked whether she could get her picture taken with them and with some small gestures they made clear that that was fine. else they remained as they were.. the girl put herself in front of one and posed until there was a picture that they were happy with. ofcourse, when they did it, suddenly everyone else dared doing that too, so several pictures of people with cool cops were taken..... 

at least they were useful for something.... i guess....

Freaky santa

last week we went out to dinner for tims birthday. we went to a simple place (the pizza is soooo gooood!!), and the "restaurant" was sooooo tiny, i had only been there during summertime and then they have a big terrace, but inside there was space for only 5 tables.... its on newbury street in boston, a street with many fancy, expensive stores. some shopwindows were very pretty, but the one above was rather freaky, i would say..! santa's dress was moving up and down... what about children passing by? or am i too old-fashioned?

Other side

and here are the beach houses from the other side... as said, i cannot choose!!
here i had to cut off tim, he was on the left side, but i liked the pic better without him... :)

Ocean houses

im 2 or 3 days behind with blogging.... :( then this weekend i was sick so no new pictures... 

ah well.. this is in provincetown, where we went last week at thanksgiving. we passed by this seemingly endless row of houses and i made tim turn and stop there so we could have a look and take some pictures. it was deserted!! i could stand in the middle of the road and take pics... (see above). these houses are to rent on a daily basis, but only during the summertime. you cannot see that here, but they are right on the beach.... sooo beautiful!! i took many pictures of these houses, all more or less the same and couldnt really decide which one to take.

ah, its finally really getting colder, its freezing right now! and actually i saw some teeny tiny snowflakes on saturday (or was it sunday) morning... but tim didnt even see them, so...

Boston landmarks

these are 2 boston landmarks, at least in my opinion... :) the sand & gravel, and the bridge behind (and there are us flags everywhere...). the bridge has a long and complicated name i always forget... i had to look it up: Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge. ok, who can ever remember that?! but i like the bridge a lot. it apparently is the widest cable-stayed bridge in the world and carries 10 lanes of traffic. it cost over 100 million dollars and is part of the "big dig", it was finished in 2003. what i like is that the two tops of the bridge resemble the shape of the bunker hill monument in charlestown (that we still have to climb); when taking the ferry from boston to charlestown, you can nicely see that indeed the shapes are exactly the same as the monument, a bit further away.

these 2 landmarks were also shown in the movie "the town"

whenever we are driving, i try to take pictures from the car, but usually they dont turn out well.. this one is an exception....

At home

buuugggghhh... thursday morning i got the second shot for hepatitis B vaccination (as for the type of work i do its better to be vaccinated; i also got a flu shot! in fact here they strongly advise every one to get a flu shot (why?!!), and i heard from a real american that hepatitis B vaccination is required to get into college (?)). thursday evening was a fine evening full of american culture (i had my first eggnog and we saw the tree lighting at the boston common), but thursday night i got high fever, terrible headache, muscle ache and i dont know what... :(  1 in 15 people get some side effects from hep B vaccination, so probably im this 1 person.... didnt get out of bed the entire friday... and also today i spent most of the day in bed....

havent been this long in our apartment yet! above it is.. not the best pic, but currently its even more messy, so therefore i choose not to take another picture. its a real american apartment, with a bar, and fancy (yellow) barstools. i also like our dinnertable and red chairs a lot. the table comes from a yardsale, and the chairs we got for almost nothing on craigslist. we also have a map of the US (found in the messy basement of our previous apartment), and underneath is a bench we bought for only 40 dollars. its sooo beautiful! it originally was a bench in a ship, you can open the top and we keep our shoes in it.. the bookcase we got for free, as well as the couch. also the wall was painted purple (i choose the color) for free, since we work for "preferred employers".. (whatever that may mean). although it probably looks messy in the pic, i very much like our apartment and am very happy we managed to get such nice furniture for almost nothing.... :)

ah, the big lamp we bought new at ikea last weekend, as you can see there are no ceiling lights at all in the living room, and it was much too dark...

At work

this is close to harvard medical school, but i dont know what kind of students these are... but surely they are students doing some practical course as judged by the neatness/emptiness of the lab, the amount of people and them all wearing labcoats.... when i still worked at the other lab, i  often passed these windows and was surprised that even around 7 they still seem to have classes...

im about to leave work, and no inspiration for a picture... thats why i choose this one. generally i dont wear a labcoat, its too hot; only when i might get dirty or when working with mammalian cells. as a student you have to buy an (expensive labcoat) and you have to wear it, no matter what stupid thing you are doing. and then you are released into a real lab and very surprised that none of the real scientists are wearing labcoats.... :) in the lab where i did my PhD we were actually obliged to wear a coat, and often they came to check whether we did so (but usually we got informed about inspection beforehand, so.... ). funny.. from my experience, it seems labrules are much more strict in the netherlands than in US...

ok, i guess all that was not very interesting to the general public, off to home now!

Forever 21

above a shopwindow in a fancy mall we went to last sunday. there was a little girl playing with the silver ribbons, but i was too late to take a picture. so instead tim posed for me. as much as i liked all the shiny-ness of the shopwindow, i didnt feel the urge to check the clothes... :)

anyhow, only now (at another photo i took) i saw this shop is named "forever 21", which is funny since its tims birthday today. and nope, he did not become 21.... however, he can just pretend to be forever 21, i guess.... he reached a special age and he was not too happy about it.. (21 + 9). and worst of all, i dont even have a special present aside from a birthday-candle on his donut this morning (yes, i know, thats very very poor). the books i ordered still did not arrive... ehhhmm.. what about going out to dinner tonight?

Cant ignore...

christmas around here..... in our perfect apartment complex, several people planted a christmas tree in their house (as deduced from the tree needles every where on the stairs (is it needles? i dont know. in dutch its "naalden" so i just translated it literally)). christmas lights and so on decorate the outsides of many houses, and also in the lab i heard christmas songs the entire day. pfffffftttt. there is apparently one radio station that plays only christmas songs since the day after thanksgiving until... yes, christmas...

above is on boylston street, the entrance to the prudential mall. the have been throwing some gigantic chrismas balls every here and there.....

no way that you can ignore christmas. (but i already said that) my goodness, everything is always bigger here than i think... :)))

Snow & Ice

its getting a little colder here in boston, but its still well above 0 degrees celsius! today it was arond 8 degrees and very sunny. this picture was taken at october 28, when it was sooo warm that i went to work without jacket and we ate lunch outside.. i then had a walk around and saw this sign which was so funny in the bright sun....

we came here in april when the weather was not that bad and the summer was hot and sunny!! coming from a country where the winters usually are not that cold, and snow is a curiosity (except for last winter) i feared winter, but so far it hasnt shown itself (herself/himself?). in the netherlands, on the other hand, its freezing!! and snowing!! it has been freezing that much, that the first crazy ice-skaters have been on the ice already, and they expect to have the first ice skating marathan tomorrow.....

in the meantime, im actually happy its still not that cold here... :)

Black friday

internet at home is sooo bad, couldnt even upload a picture last night... :( this is a quick picture i took in the supermarket we do our shoppings every week; the market basket! they really made an effort on the christmas decoration, in real it looked so nice! it is by far the cheapest supermarket around, and the only one not working with stupid discount passes or coupons or whatever. fruit & vegetables also are much better (i think) than the much more expensive Shaws. often it is overcrowded (like last week) but yesterday it was amazingly quiet! maybe because everyone was decorating their homes with (mostly inflatable) christmas decorations. truly amazing; thanksgiving is over and immediately on to the next feast. we drove around a little and many people were busy decorating their house.

on friday most people were off (not me), and this is the biggest (or one of the) biggest shopping days of the year. many things have large discounts. over the years i vaguely remember seeing on the dutch news some images about US shoppers gone crazy, but i never realized it is really true.... thursday, we drove past the closed best buy (sells tvs and other electronics) at 11 in the morning and there were already some people waiting for the large discounts! when we passed it in the evening they were still there... guess what, this shop opened at 5 in the morning!!! (so they were there nearly 18 hours in advance!) but... tickets to get into the store would be distributed from 3 in the morning onwards.... can you believe it?!! i asked my real american colleagues, and yes, they said; people usually gather there somewhere in the late evening, to get a chance buying stuff on large discount.

crazy, those americans.... :)

here some more information on wikipedia about this shopping day....: black friday

Thanksgiving serenade

since everything was closed yesterday, we decided to go to cape cod, provincetown, a 2,5 hour drive from boston. in between we stopped in plymouth, where there was a gathering of native americans; speeches were held about their history. provincetown was like a ghost town, all shops were closed, but in summer i presume its overcrowded. however, there was ellie (pictured above). she had a cardboard sign next to her, saying "ellie, 78 years young, living my dreams". we talked a little, and then she sung a song from frank sinatra especially for us (it sounded really good.) i guess she is a kind of local celebrity as everyone coming by greeted her heartily. brrr, it was too cold to be sitting there!

without planning or knowing beforehand, we made a very historic tour yesterday. i learned from wikipedia that the (later named) Pilgrims from england could not freely worship as they choose and therefore fled to the netherlands, leiden in 1609. somehow they did not like that their kids began adopting dutch language and customs and so they decided to goto the other side of the ocean. they lent money, bought the mayflower and sailed to the new world in 1620 (the dutch then already had founded new amsterdam in 1614!). they arrived in provincetown but did not get off the ship, and instead sailed on to plymouth. the first winter there was very harsh, and nearly half of the 102 pilgrims died. months later they had the first encounter with native americans, and they taught them how to survive in New England. that october they probably held the first feast now known as thanksgiving; it was celebrated together with the native americans that helped them their first year. it lasted three days and included a.o. wild turkeys and five deer brought by the Native Americans. (over the years more and more englishmen came over. in 1675 there was a war and whereas only 8% of the english male population died; the entire native american population of new england fell by sixty to eighty percent.) this first thanksgiving was modeled after harvest festivals that were commonplace in europe at the time. yet another theory is that the pilgrims were influenced by watching the annual services of thanksgiving for the relief of the siege of leiden. interestingly, a thanksgiving-day-service is held each year in the pieterskerk in leiden, to commemorate the hospitality the pilgrims received in leiden on their way to the new world.

nowadays, thanksgiving is eating with friends and family (and shopping the next day; black friday).

pfew, that was far too much writing but i found it so interesting! surely i stole all this from wikipedia and did not check the references. here, here, and here you can read it for yourself, and a whole lot more...

Turkey day!

today it is thanksgiving. its also called turkey day, i learned from various sources, which i find very funny. as the sign above for the liquor store at mc grath highway, leading to somerville where we lived the first 3 months. however, no liquor today. this store was closed as most other stores as well (even many fast food restaurants were closed) basically, everything was closed, aside from a small shop here and there..

i just spent the evening reading up on thanksgiving on wikipedia. that was very informative. maybe i recapitulate all that knowledge here once; there may be some origins also of this feast in the netherlands! but now its time for bed...

happy thanksgiving! :) we had some chicken nuggets... thats what we could find in our freezer being closest to turkey..

When retired...

... you can do the entire day what you want... no? 

we were having a walk a week or 2 ago, on sunday. got out at haymarket, but there was no market, so we turned the other way and ended up in the north end, where we hadnt been before. small houses, small streets, many restaurants and tourists. in one of the many boston travelguides we have i read that in the mid to late 19th century many immigrants arrived here and by 1920, 90% of the population was italian. apparently nowadays still 50% of the people there are of italian descent (that is something i noticed; many americans are real proud to be a real american. but! dont forget and please be aware that in fact they ARE 1/4, 1/8 or 1/16th european on their mother's/father's side, and yes, still would like to visit that country once...).

anyways.. then we came by a deserted ice-skating rink, and next to it were quite some old men, smoking, playing jeux de boules or watching the game from a comfortable chair. i was taking some pictures through the glass, but then we were invited inside (bugh, what a smoke!), and we talked a little (and i took this one crappy pic..). yes yes, they were all italian (see flag) and all retired and playing this game every (every!) day... in winter here inside, in summer closeby outside....

More leafs

realized yesterday i actually have quite a collection of tim and leafs... here another one. this is in the boston common, maybe 2 weeks ago? there was air being blown out of whatever he was standing on, so then i made him throw leafs in the air... see above.

ofcourse then someone asked whether he should take a picture of the 2 of us. and i declined. i always decline, without thinking whether this is maybe unfriendly! ah well, now with my new big fancy camera; dont want to give that to anyone else...!

Leaves Tim

yesterday the internet really was not working... so today then... :)
most trees now really lost their leafs... :(( its so empty now, although a few trees are keeping up most of them.. maybe there is a contest among trees, which can keep their leafs longest. i guess now the cemetery does not have that many leaves on the ground anymore as above.. but it was so great to be there under the tree, with all the beautiful colors.....
its still not very cold here! it was yesterday morning, but right now and yesterday evening it was very mild...

Turkeys everywhere

the supermarket was no fun today. it was overcrowded... its usually crowded, but now it was insane. i guess because this is the last sunday before thanksgiving, coming thursday. that day everything is closed, all shops, museums, etc. its not a day for presents, but a day for eating with friends and family. what we see in the movies is true; a turkey needs to be prepared and eaten. so there was an overload of turkeys in the freezers... 7 dollars for an entire turkey!

na, we didnt buy one....

im not satisfied with the picture... :( but it was soooo crowded there! everyone (including me) was annoyed, and there were soooo many carts and you could barely take what you want as you were blocking the way for others.. so slowing everything down by taking pictures surely was not appreciated..

at the checkout we still cause confusion, i guess. we started bringing our own shopping bags, a while ago but thats not something they are used to here. they put as little items in as many bags as possible. so even though we made clear we have our own, they kept bagging our groceries. and then put that in our own shopping bags.. save the planet, oh yeah!

Christmas tree!

this is at faneuil hall, the most touristy place in boston. today was the "tree lighting ceremony", which lasted from 11 in the morning until 6.30 in the evening (what did they do?!! was hanging all the lights included in the ceremony?). yes, now there are many, many lights there (this is only a small part). the tree is impressive, at least to me! and i guess to the little girl in the photo.... (she was posing for her mom, but her mother took soo many pictures that she obviously got bored)

there are now 25,000 lights.....

i guess from now on there will be more and more christmas decoration around, and its not even december!

Wild ride

"cah" is bostonian for "car". the accent sounds funny.. i would compare it to the accent real amsterdam people have in dutch... :)

the free metro newspaper here doesnt bring a lot of news. it did already bring 2 days as front page news some wild taxi ride 2 passengers had last weekend. they came out of some club, didnt know where to go, refused to pay the fare and while the man jumped out of the cab, the woman somehow remained in there and the taxi driver drove on wildly and is now being accused of kidnapping a woman. his photo and name are in the newspaper (they even do that here if a college-kid steals some souvenir from a firetruck, or when you pee against a building and try to run off when the police sees you; crazy). during the weekend people often dont pay their fare, and then cab drivers usually drive them straight to a police station. what exactly happened this time is still unclear, so i expect another front page explaining it all next week. i guess kidnapping will not be punished lightly...

another ride from hell on a ghost train (funny what newspapers all make of it) happened in the netherlands. some train was dysfunctional and thus everyone was ordered to get out. the train then went with high speed straight from one city to another without stopping at any station. however, in one part of the train the speakers did not work, so all those people were still inside, wondering what was going on...

ah well.. i hope some nicer pictures than above for this weekend.... maybe i can take some around the lab tomorrow... :)