Heavy rain

last night it was soooooo hot and humid! and this morning as well. and yes, that had to end in rain and thunder; a lot, this afternoon. luckily i was just in the lab, and now its nice and sunny again. it reminded me of the heavy rain we had when sylvia was here, and the subway flooded. i still had not posted a picture on that. so here it is... :) i like this one, since the water was really flowing like crazy, and the guy is just checking which line to take, as if his feet are not soaking wet.. :) it as really like the titanice, water was rushing down the stairs and from the platform. some people made movies of that, and posted them on the internet, in fact, if you look very careful, in some of them you can see sylvia and/or me!!
pfew... now im back on schedule again with daily pics.. its just... im so busy at the moment!! (sorry, therefore also only old pics... soon some new ones again, i hope)

American beach

however, this picture is from revere beach.. and in fact it was pretty nice there!

Dutch seaside

this was in the boston public library (beautiful library! we went there with sylvia). there was a display of old advertisements for places to go to. ofcourse i had to picture this one... :) and yes, the beaches in the netherlands seem nicer than the ones I saw around boston, so far... and no sharks!

Beach boy (3)

and then sometimes he would lift his shovel into the air, walk away or towards the water... but refraining from joining the others in their play, totally absorbed in his own :)
and yes, this is the last pic of him (unless i find him again at nantasket beach!)

Beach boy (2)

see, how hes just standing there with his miniature shovel, observing the others?

Beach boy

this picture was taken 2 weeks ago, at Nantasket beach, while i was sitting in the lifeguard chair. this boy was sooo cute! there was actually a huge family, and everyone was playing and chasing each other in the water. the youngest of the family however was just mostly observing them, standing there with his red shovel, in which he was most interested... i took many pictures of him, hopefully unnoticed by his mom.. :)
many beaches are closed, or rather, you are strongly advised not to go into the water, due to too high bacteria levels. as stated in a newspaper: "Officials dealing with closed beaches said the high bacteria levels were likely caused by heavy rains washing contaminants into swimming areas." or, in other words: due to huge amounts of rain in a short amount of time, waste pipes overflow and everyone's waste (i.e. shit) gets into the water. yegh....
no, i have not been in the sea yet, and havent been tempted to do so either (the water is much too cold!!). besides, just came across an article about Massachusetts shark sightings...

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! :)

Cleaning apples

a month ago or so i posted about the apple store and everyone very busy touching all these fancy apple-design-beauties and the absence of handsanitizer. thursday we were in the cambridge side galleria (but i call it the "Malleria") to have cheesecake at the cheesecake factory. buuughh, it was too much, even without a decent dinner. anyways, when we left the shops in the malleria had just closed, and all the blue-shirted apple store employees were frantically cleaning all the ipads, ipods, ibooks!! it was really fun to see, but hard to get a decent picture.. and then they noticed me taking pictures and started to pose...
btw, i dont understand why their shirts are blue! apple green would fit soo much better and they would also stand out of the crowd more. but well... im still not an apple store manager...

People photographing (2)

it seems this is the perfect spot to picture the old state house (see previous post). im not sure it was.... didnt check... :) besides, i really wanted the old lady with the pink shirt and hat in the picture. (thats why i got the lamppost there for free.. ah well, you cannot have it all)

State house

the small cute building is the old state house. our travel guide uses such a beautiful sentence: "dwarfed by the towers of the finacial district, the old state house.. etc etc". it was built in 1713, and is the oldest public building in boston. what i like about it, is that it currently is the entrance to the subway! originally wine cellars, now function -since 1904- as a downtown subway station. upstairs there apparently is a "sound and light show" about the 1770 Boston Massacre (gezellig!).

Abandoned carts

this is completely normal here, and i HATE it. people shop. people use a cart. people put their stuff in their cars and they just leave the cart where it is. despite the many places closeby where you can bring your cart. often its windy and the carts just dance around...
why is it soooo hard just to bring it back? dont they care about their own/other people's car?! so wherever we go, there is always someone from the shop busy collecting all these carts to bring them back to the entrance. maybe people just leave them to create more jobs...?!

Kennedy library

on sunday we had a more or less random walk along the Dorchester bay. in one of our many travel guides it was said to be a nice walk, and beach. well, the beach was very shitty and looked so dirty! i think we then went the other way than our guide advised. they really made an effort to construct a nice path along the sea... closeby there is an apartment complex, the first apartment we almost rented while still in the netherlands.. luckily i read some reviews before we made a nonrefundable payment.... now we could see for ourselves, it just did not look nice there despite the nice walkway, the views remained shitty, and the beach non-existent (they have this advertisement: live by the sea, close to the T; both is NOT true!!)
walking along we stumbled upon an interesting building, which turned out to be the JFK library! from the outside it looked already interesting, from the inside it was impressive...! i am not sure whether we had to pay for this (we didnt). there was also a museum about Kennedy, but it was closed already. anyways, there was this huge glass construction, looking out over the sea, with an enormous american flag hanging from the ceiling. looking at the pictures i took i am sooo frustrated! none of them captures how it looked.... :( therefore this one, the guy in the corner was really making an effort while photographing. he placed himself in all kind of gymnastic positions... but honestly, i am not sure whether his pics were any better...

Very American

saw this sign saturday when we drove to Saugus. we especially stopped there on the way back to take a picture. its sooo huge! and soooo american!! wonder how it looks like when its dark.... i think the steak house was well visited, but we ate something at home.. :)

Nantasket beach

i have been asking tim since May to drive to Hull with me. or Nantasket, i do not entirely know where one small village starts and the other ends (like boston: i thought cambridge, somerville etc is all Boston. but NO; these are separate towns. this already led to quite some confusion. all these small towns have the same limited set of street names and it happened already that we were in street so-and-so in boston, while we were supposed to be in Roxbury..). anyways, there is a long shore drive and a nice beach. with sand instead of pebbles. and the people there are superinteresting!! :) i took quite some pics. the entire beach was full with huge families and i guess they just sit there the entire day. me and tim climbed in a lifeguard seat, and from there i perfectly could observe this large family in the front of the picture...
oh, that was a nice evening. we got a pizza (a very GOOD one) which we ate on the rocks while it started to get dark (and the musquitos came.. buuuhhh), together with a beer brought from home. but i just learned that alcohol actually is not allowed on the street/beach. luckily there was no policeman on horse wanting to be photographed...

People photographing

one of the things i like to take pictures of, is other people taking pictures... i like to photograph the entire scene, or only the photographer.
this is in a park but i am not sure of the name, it is next to the boston common (the park with the frog pond in it), and you often see these police officers on a horse. i think they are there only for show, and whisper to all kids and parents that they are available for pictures (im not sure about the whispering but i assume they do, how otherwise would anyone want to be pictured with a machoguy on a horse? (what was the joke again, Per? Ein Bull auf einem Pferd? oder so etwas?). this poor boy obviously does not want, although both his mum and dad are taking pictures.. :)

Playing lifeguard

this was saturday, at revere beach. the boy was sooo cute! he was really into his role of lifeguard. i tried to take a piture of him while he was holding his hands like binoculars, watching out over the sea, but i was too slow and got this instead, which i liked even better (too bad its not entirely sharp.. :(

on sunday we went to another beach, and there i climbed into such a seat (pretty difficult to get off!); an excellent place for people watch and taking pictures!! surely you will see more of that one day or the other... :)

Self portrait (4)

i thought it was time for another self portrait (its a double self portrait, im also in tim's glasses)
we finally bought a mirror!!!
now i know before i leave home how i look.... :)

Enormous cinema

when bringing sylvia to the airport- :( - we passed this enormous cinema. ofcourse i wanted to go there, what is more american than a HUGE cinema? (too bad we didnt discover it earlier, we actually wanted to go see a movie with sylvia, but the cinema we went to was closed due to power outage). you cannot really grasp the enormousness of the building, and the surrounding parking lot from this picture, unfortunately. but it was huge. many of the people in the cinema were also huge, btw. there was a LOT of food also. i took one picture inside, but it was crappy, and just as i was adjusting my camera to take another one, an employee came to tell me photographing was not allowed. why? "ah well, management does not want it". there was also a police officer with a gun at the entrance. i didnt ask why.
we went to see Inception. but the movie only started at 10.30 and i was rather tired already. the chairs were comfortable and the movie quite difficult to follow... thus i slept a bit.. :( i couldnt help it! besides, in the movie they sleep all the time!! :) and i liked how it ended!
also funny, people here IMMEDIATELY get up as soon as the movie is done. no contemplation while the "aftiteling" is passing by, as happens a lot, especially if you go to more "arty" movies in the netherlands. that always annoyed me, but to be rushed out of your seat while the movie is not even fully ended, is more annoying, i now know...

Revere beach

yesterday we were at Revere beach. there was a sand sculpture competition going on since a few days, and on the last evening there were fire works! the sand sculptures were nice, and the people interesting....
during our first weeks in boston, i hoped we could get an apartment at revere beach, until we went there and saw the building and the location...... the beach is quite nice, but is said to be dangerous after dark, and the neighbourhood looks awful and i can imagine it is dangerous there. but this evening it was all fine, with everyone being on the beach. as opposed to the 4th of july, we had a perfect spot, very few people around (everyone was accumulated around the sand sculptures as it was right across the fire works, but our spot was definitely much better!), and i could even take some pictures.... i liked the reflection of the fireworks on the water, and the large family sitting all together at the beach.

By boat

a picture of Boston as seen from a boat! not a pic form last night, it was too dark already, and i generally do not like night pictures of cities. this was last week, when we were on a ferry with sylvia! very cloudy... and rather heavy rain can come from them quite suddenly (luckily it happened after we left the ferry).
today its very sunny and hot, and i am in the lab. yegh... but about to leave!!