It's official....

... today we sold our yellow barstools, and also the black ones... :( i was truly sad when we were in the car, bringing them to their new owner...... it officially started something we already knew for a bit (but not that long, really); we will be moving back to the netherlands soon..... we always planned on staying  here for about 3 years, and we passed that time point in april. moreover, our lease is ending july 1st and we are totally fed up with the new owners of our apartment complex. oh, and tim found a job and is due to start june 6!! he will work as a doctor in a hospital in amsterdam. all a bit sudden. we thought to spend the summer here (the dutch summers are less warm and sunny), but well.... sometimes you cannot have it all....

i will stay a few more weeks, my sister will come and we will enjoy the boston sun for a bit, and then its also time for me to leave. no job yet, but i do hope to find one asap....

when we found this apartment with the enormous countertop i wanted nice barstools. most dutch kitchens dont have such a bar, so i wanted it to be as american as possible! but.. most barstools were not to my liking, or too expensive. then we got the black ones. of course right after that we found the ultimate barstools, those yellow ones! the shop was closed and we could only admire them through the window, from a distance... the next day we got up early to be at the shop right at opening time so we could buy them before anyone else. luckily they were still there! (we tried to sell the black ones, as we really didnt need 6 barstools, but never managed). i always thought we would ship them back to the netherlands, but at that moment i didnt know how crazy expensive that is. and... we dont have such a fancy countertop back home..... buuuuhhhhhh... so... this is it... the table and red chairs are up for sale too, and so is the white armoire.... (let me know if you are interested! ;) here is the other stuff we need to get rid of... ) its a very weird feeling, i can say that much.... (oh, and pardon the mess; the advantage of having such an enormous and beautiful table).

I baked

this morning, when i was about to leave the apartment, i checked my phone (which i dont do very often), and saw a message from tim: "whats happening? suspects arrested? public transport closed? stay home, ok?" only then i really looked out of the window and saw that there were absolutely no cars parked; on a normal weekday all spots are taken well before we leave. this monday i had texted tim; "i am NOT at the finish line, i am in the lab. explosions occurred at finish, dont know whats happening." this because tim is in the netherlands (since 2 weeks by now), and im still here in boston. news travels fast and nowadays everyone has a phone, so while thats a good thing, it can also cause worries; why did i not yet hear from him/her?!! when i texted tim, he hadnt heard the news yet, but it was already on the dutch tv...

today indeed i could not goto work as all public transport had been suspended, and everyone was asked to remain inside and lock their doors as one of the suspects was on the loose. while i was still sleeping, tim had been following the news for hours already (theres a 6 hr time difference). when i went to sleep, i knew there had been a deadly shooting at MIT, but had no clue it was related to the marathon bombings. i am not in boston, but a little outside. but "a little outside boston" is exactly where all terror happened today. again, i can only say, luckily not in my area...

 just like anyone else in and around boston, i guess, i couldnt concentrate on much other than the news.... and when the power went out, even though it went right back on again, and i heard something fall at the same time, i just jumped up... something i normally would not even notice, now made me paranoid, although the suspect was thought to be in another area than where i am.

so i baked. something with yeast, salt, water and flour. ooh, and a lot, lot, lot of butter. it was not hard, but it did take a lot of time. in waiting, not in actually doing (as usually is the case with bread). i could have made croissants out of it, i guess, but the recipe said to make knots, and so thats what i did.... long after they were baked came the news that the suspect was found hiding in a boat in someones yard, and from that moment i was even more glued to the screen of my not-so-well-working computer (in the absence of a tv). i am glad they got him now. only 19 years old. i wonder if we will ever know what in the world is going on in his head....

Bye bye.....

above a picture of the fung wah bus that has brought us to new york and back to boston quite a number of times now. going through my blog i see the first time i wrote about the fung wah was already in 2011! just a few months before i had taken the greyhound bus to montreal, and that wasnt much of a success. as it involved crazy driving, hour in traffic, annoying annoucements, too many stops in between, and expensive tickets, i thought we could just try the cheap chinatown bus (many people had warned us that whatever we do, we should never take the chinatown bus), as in fact ALL bus drivers drive like idiots. by now we have seen it so often on the road... being passed by a huge bus going well over the speed limit.

and so we did.... we quickly learned that its best to arrive on time, as you never ever want to sit in the back of the bus; thats where the toilet is (i guess thats enough explanation). we also learned that its really the cheapest and fastest way to get to new york and back. often under 4 hours, often without a pit stop (who needs that anyways when the destination is new york!!), always on time, and it was never a problem to take a bus earlier if you happened to be there and there was still space on board (try that with the other companies that require you to be there well in advance, and then just let you wait). taking the fug wah also turned out to be quite amusing at times. once, when we did stop at the mc donalds along the highway, one annoying passenger was not back within the 15 minute-limit, and our driver agreed with us passengers, and just drove off without him. another time (or was it the same?) we sat right behind the driver and while i was dozing off, i was first woken by the driver singing, quite loudly, and later eating sunflower seeds. also, they do slow down, full on the brakes, when they see a police car along the road, and yet another time, when going back to boston, the bus driver suddenly stopped. just alongside the road. walked to the back, used the restroom and drove off like crazy again.  without a word (they never ever say anything! except when they stop. "15 minute, you be back!") so yes, we took the bus numerous times, and even made it a habit to just go to new york for one day. 8 hours of chinatown bus included.....

but.... no longer. for now, the federal officials shut down fung wah entirely. a first inspection "just" took out the buses that were deemed unsafe; 3 out of 4, on a fleet of 28 (!!). that didnt deter fung wah; they just rented other buses and continued their crazy schedule of (i think) some 24 trips a day. the inspectors found badly maintained buses and cracked bus frames. pretty scary indeed. and when fung wah refused to cooperate (letting the inspectors see their safety records), their operating license was revoked entirely. buuuuuuhhhhh. it has been a while since we last were in new york......

Indelicate & unladylike

one of these stones is from sally morse, whose stone i showed you last week. this cemetery, the central burying ground, was actually established to alleviate overcrowding of the nearby cemeteries that i showed you earlier. as this burial ground was the furthest away from the market center of boston, this was the least popular cemetery. the graves here are from british common soldiers who died in combat or of disease during the revolution, foreigners who died while in boston, and some american patriots.

 a few commenters last week said something like "imagine everyone would would have their cause of death listed in such detail on their grave!" well yes, that probably would be weird. although i really didnt mind in this case. i guess they were just really surprised that "some stomach cramp" for just one hour resulted in her sudden and unexpected death. so much so, that they (her husband?) wanted it engraved on her stone...
a little more googling around about sally morse (thanks julie for pointing out she was named morse, and not morfe!), and i found the same article in 3 different newspapers, published around 1921, about a lady who apparently was not happy about sally's stone either. this lady went to the cemetery office and demanded that sally morse's stone be destroyed as the inscription is indelicate and unladylike! the secretary replied that he is in no position to destroy a stone. the lady then demanded that some sort of action will be taken while she waits in the office, to which the secretary replied, as it is the best/first that comes to his mind: "madam, that stone is of great value. harvard university has just been making an investigation and has pronounced that stone important evidence of the first authentic case of appendicitis. madam, that stone cannot be destroyed". "at the magic name of harvard the visitor retreated, vanquished, and went forth to tell her friends of the "appendicitis stone" as it came to be called". 

i have no clue whether this story is true, or when exactly it happened. i could not find anything about that, nor the original article in the detroit news to which this article refers, but surely it was an amusing find... . here you can read the entire article for yourself (and look at the advertisements too, they are funny!)

for more taphophilia, go here...!

Virtual pinboard

the above picture was taken somewhere in new york, i think in the visitor center on times square. i mostly liked the colors and different shapes.

it also is a reason to write about my newest addiction; a virtual pinboard. ever since i use the internet, i never bothered to bookmark sites. so whenever i find an interesting site that i dont want to forget,i just leave the tab open. and then another tab, and another. and suddenly i have 3 or 4 windows each with too many tabs to count.... until my computer crashes and i loose them all. this week i joined "pinterest", a virtual pinboard where i hope to store all sites i find interesting (currently mostly recipe-blogs). it all looks so pretty with the pictures (as you can see here)! you can sign up "by invitation", or without, as i did, but then you have to wait a day or so before you can start pinning, because you are on some "waiting list" (which i found very annoying).

of course, there is a wikipedia about pinterest. the site launched in 2010, and is growing pretty fast recently. apparently, in the us, 83% of the users are female, and around 35-44 years old. probably posting recipes, just like me.... ;) they have some trouble with copyright, i believe, and some sites wont allow "pinning", like for example flickr. ah well. i hope it will be useful to me, and not a mere distraction from more important things.... (and i hope to stop those endless numbers of open tabs).

Free speech

i still dont get what the above message has to do with the particular company, i.e. storage, but.... the message is very true. and i guess, taken broadly, it represents one of the things dutch people value very much; do whatever you want to do, as long as it doesnt bother me. which leads me to another dutch trait i like; they are far more direct than for example americans. no "excuse me" in the netherlands; if you block someone's way, they will just say "i need to pass" ("ik wil erlangs"), or even "get out of my way" ("opzij"), and thats not necessarily meant rude, while the american "excuse me" is intended to be polite, but almost always sounds very rude to me (but that could very well just be me! i so far have never managed to say "excuse me" even in situations where it would be the only way to get someone out of my way. i just cant get these words out of my mouth).

anyways, i actually wanted to write about something else! we just found out that rick santorum, still in the race to become the republican presidential candidate, has made up some disturbing "facts" about the netherlands. according to him, 10% of all deaths in the netherlands are due to euthanasia, and 5% of these are involuntarily. because of that, he has said, dutch elderly generally wear a bracelet to let health care workers know that they do not wish to be euthanized, and many of them seek health care outside the netherlands as they are afraid to never leave the hospital again, but in a coffin. here you can watch what a more sane american has to say about this (she also invited a dutch reporter). and here you can see what rick santorum's press secretary has to say to the (same) dutch reporter when asked about his ridiculous and untrue claims (it also shows what santorum said in 2009 about this).

sometimes this country and some of their people really freak me out. once again, this man, or should i say lunatic, is in the race to become a presidential candidate, and thus intends to rule this country! how is it possible that a man with very twisted ideas and values has come this far? or can repeatedly say flat out lies about a country i doubt he ever visited? what else does he make up? america, the land of the free and home to the brave... are you kidding me..?
perhaps santorum should get the above sign in his office, so that every now and then he can ponder about it. maybe one day it would make him realize that just because he doesnt like something, he should forbid others to do so.... ?

Cleaned out

its funny how this morning i read about occupy boston in the dutch news before i saw it on the american... :) they cleaned them out last night more than 24 hours after they were supposed to leave.  in the gym i saw a press conference about it. the square is now really empty... and they are working hard to get it all cleaned up and restored by the end of this week. 47 got arrested. in fact, the police gave them the option to go, if they wanted, without arrest, and so some choose to do so. but 47 remained stubborn and got themselves arrested. how stupid is that? 

anyways.. i also read in the dutch news that occupy boston was one of the biggest movements. dont know whether thats true, but they were one of the few that were allowed to stay longest, and i think where the police really tried to be reasonable with them and gave them more than enough time to leave, so that it wouldnt escalate as happened in some other cities. im curious to see what will happen next. if they really are there to change something, it should not matter that they cannot sleep in a tent in some square anymore, right?

Fruit bowl

once a week, we goto the supermarket to get groceries (i still miss the dutch model where i could just walk to the supermarket and buy for just a day or 2). so usually, when we forget something, it means we wont have that for that week. this saturday we forgot to buy fruit. we always buy apples (we didnt forget those!), but then i also want some other fruit. which one depends ofcourse on whats for sale... and we then put that in the fruit bowl... ah well, we still had some canned fruit, so i put that in the bowl instead, doesnt it look nice? :) it represents (american) laziness, i think. a small cup, just enough if you feel like eating something, and well, its fruit, so it must be healthy! nevermind all the plastic....

speaking of artificial..., i just saw an article about a man who is not happy about his wedding pictures, back in 2003. the last 15 minutes of the wedding were not documented, and years later, he decided to sue the company. he does not just want his 4000 dollars back, he wants some 48,000 dollars to re-enact the entire wedding!! re-enacting?! yes, he wants to recreate the entire wedding. he wants all the guests to be flown in, etc etc, to get all his perfect wedding pictures. but the weirdest part of this story; this man is not married anymore! he and his wife separated in 2008, and his now ex-wife is back in her home country, latvia... eehhhmm... ? yes, everything is possible in the us of a.... (here is the article; the comments are funny too)

Exotic animal

well.... a seagull is not really an exotic animal, but i have been trying forever to capture one in flight... i think the camera course helped me with finally capturing it! and this one was pretty close for a bit... :) this was on coney island, new york, on my birthday!

i just saw on the news that somewhere in ohio an exotic-animal owner committed suicide. but before he did that, he freed all his wild animals!! some 49 animals were on the loose, including 8 bears, 18 rare bengal tigers and 17 lions. it took the police 24 hours to get all the animals (or rather, to kill them all), so that was quite a scary situation; it was getting dark while many of those animals were still out and about. people were advised to stay indoors and it took them till the next day to get them all. yuk... here i read that the owner had a lot of debt ($68,000 in unpaid taxes), but it does not make sense to my as to why he would free all those animals...

Slut walk

on saturday we also witnessed the SlutWalk NYC. above some participants are being interviewed. this was at union square, where they held a rally after they marched through the city. (just before we had lunch at some sandwich shop and that was sooooooo goooooddd!!). mostly young women participated with little or no clothes (a few were topless and they were photographed most; im not sure that was the purpose of their protest). the first protest march took place in toronto, canada, in april this year. they protest against explaining or excusing rape by referring to any aspect of a woman's appearance. why? it was incited by a toronto police officer who suggested that to remain safe, "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized". he later apologized for this remark, but the slut walk was born: the founders of the slutwalk observe that historically, "slut" has had negative connotations, and their goal is to redeem the term. on april 3, they organized a protest, and interestingly, they requested women to dress in everyday wear (to symbolize ordinary women, sexually assaulted in ordinary life), yet many women dressed as "sluts" in provocative clothing. since then, slutwalks have been held in many cities, with women dressed as above.

just last week, NYPD police officers warned women in Brooklyn not to show too much skin after a recent string of 10 sexual assaults in that neighborhood. well.... i dont know what to think. i think i agree with some opponents that say women should not protest for the right to be called slut, and i think it would be better if they protested in ordinary clothes. we, for example, just went there to see how crazy some people were dressed. on the other hand i do understand that a police officer cannot say that you should not dress too sexy as otherwise you yourself are responsible if something happens to you.  at the same time there were protests at wall street, already since 2 weeks, demanding to end the modern gilded age, end joblessness, stop political corruption, end health profiteering and ending war. on saturday they went to the brooklyn bridge and it all became a huge mess, resulting in the arrest of some 500 people. so i guess its good we did not go to either of those places!

Old news

accompanied with an old photo (taken while i was in san diego). a few weeks back i read on the news that someone from jersey shore was asked not to wear abercrombie clothes. of course, that kind of news brings many questions. what is abercrombie? jersey shore... ? well... abercrombie and fitch is a brand of clothes. every mall has a shop that sells this kind of clothes, but we never go inside; those stores smell horrible! from quite a distance you can smell this store, and googling a bit around, im not the only one noticing this. apparently, there are even protest groups asking to stop spraying around... (here; it seems to be also toxic?!). once we were just too curious, and we did go into this store, but it was once and never again; as someone else put it "you go from a bright, bubbly, fluorescent mall to a loud reeking cave. The only light in the place shines on the clothes. The ceilings, walls, and shelves are all painted black, and there’s no escape route in sight" (that person analyzed the entire store).

now... whats jersey shore? thats some sort of american reality series, and one of the stars,  Michael "The Situation" Sorrentino has been asked by the smelly store not to wear its clothes. (this guy is also named "the stiuation"; something just too weird to question). abercrombie stated this person wearing their clothes may be distressing to many of their fans.... hmmmpfff, just weird. i think they should rather just stop spraying their toxic smell and have normal shops...they did offer to pay this person not to wear their clothes anymore! well, i would like to get paid not to wear a certain brand... no problem! :)

Deadly force

on sunday we were at a cemetery behind our apartment complex. we had never been there before, and it was quite pretty! we also saw a hawk and spent quite some time observing it. or rather, waiting for it to do something interesting so that we could take a picture of it. but... he wasnt afraid at all, it seemed, he was just intently staring... sometimes at us, it seemed. i came a bit closer, and then i saw what he was looking at all the time; underneath the tree, there was a limp squirrel (perhaps because of the hawk?), who was depesrately trying to get away... eventually he managed. then the hawk got bored (and probably angry with us), and flew away...

i learned that deadly force is something else as well. i saw on the news that it is now law in new hampshire that people can use a gun with deadly force in public if they feel their life is in danger. before, this was only allowed on your own property. many people are against this, as it could lead to much more violence. i was a bit shocked by such a law, but i read now that not only the shire has it, but also for example florida, where the number of civilians killed through justified homicides tripled (i stole all this knowledge from here). those crazy americans....

Fashionable bostonians

GQ, which stands for gentlemen's quarterly, is a magazine apparently the male equivalent of vogue (oh, am i glad that wikipedia is there to literally explain me everything! how else would i have known what on earth GQ mag is!). they did a poll, which made boston the worst dressed city of america, which in turn was so shocking, that it was on the cover of the free newspaper, cnn, and on the (local?) news. i found back that article and just had to copy what they write about boston style: "Boston is like America's Bad-Taste Storm Sewer: all the worst fashion ideas from across the country flow there, stagnate, and putrefy. To be fair, it's hard to be a fashion capital when half of your population is made up of undergraduate hoodie monsters, including those unfortunate coeds who don't realize that leggings-as-pants were supposed to be paired with tops large enough to conceal their cameltoes." and this: "For the more proletarian-minded, there are the modest little burgs of Cambridge and Somerville, where everyone dresses like the proprietor of his or her very own meth lab." eh....?

well.. what can i add other than the picture above... the socks might be some sort of fashion statement, but after that it only gets worse, and where did he get that hat or whatever you call it?

Boston's great!

this evening we saw a movie at the hatch shell, as you can see above! next to the charles river, boston organizes free friday flicks starting in june until august. the movie starts at sunset, today that was at 8.14, and thus every week the movie will start a little earlier, funny, no? we got some pizza, sat on some scrubs (tim brought them from work, we fogot to bring a blanket like real americans), enjoyed free salads and beverages... and finally a movie. this time it was despicable me, an animated film. i liked it so much!

on wednesday's you can go to the hatch shell as well, then to enjoy some classical music, as i posted last year. in the meantime, it was really, really hot today. at some point the temperature was 39.5 degrees celsius, or 103 F. the only day it was hotter here in boston was on july 4th, 1911, when it was 104 F. when stepping outside for lunch today, i had the feeling i stepped into a hair dryer, as it was very windy, somehow i liked it! anyways.. authorities take the heat very serious, you can goto "cooling centers" in the city, and i now know that the MBTA has distributed 66 extra fans throughout the subway stations, where it can be real hot. as such, the total number of fans is 276. just so you know! :) here you can read it all.

Sexy cyclist

saw this girl last week at the boston common (there were lots of interesting people there that day!), and she perfectly illustrates a news story over a month old by now... in may, a dutch bicycle company manager was cycling in new york, in a miniskirt. then she was stopped by a cop, who wanted her ID and told her that she was not supposed to ride around like that. she was told that her outfit was very disturbing and dangerous, as it could distract cars. she then told him that she was not aware of any dresscode, and that biking with a skirt is perfectly normal in the netherlands. the cop responded: "I decide what's a dangerous situation".... in the end she didnt get a ticket, but.. next time; she'd better wear pants!!

only later, back home, she posted this pic on facebook and then media saw it and several articles appeared, both in the us and in the netherlands. again somewhat later it was questioned whether the story was true; perhaps it was a marketing stunt to sell more bikes?! she didnt get the name of the cop, and also no ticket. well... i can perfectly believe that something like this happens, i heard several weird stories about us cops showing off their power like this already... like this story, for example, or this one..

Customized MBTA

on saturday we were in the green line, and saw those 2 chairs! i really had to suppress the urge to go and sit on them, as we had to stand. no clue whom they belonged to. perhaps it was some sort of social experiment? who is going to sit on such a chair?

or maybe it was because the MBTA is trying to renew itself? i read in the newspaper this morning that the MBTA (which stands for massachusetts bay transportation authority, or the T, in short) is thinking of selling "station naming rights". as such, the T would incorporate both the station name and a corporate brand into the renamed facility. in doing so, they could avoid an increase in fare prices, which would be a good thing (although i think the T is really cheap, especially compared to the netherlands, where it is ridiculously expensive) but can you imagine the weird names wealthy people could come up with? or mc donalds could name a T stop after itself? hmmmmpf, i think its not a good idea; we would have to replace our shower curtain that has a map of the subway system each time someone buys a new T stop!

i think they should start smaller; why not selling seats on the T? then you are guaranteed to always have a seat! the bigger the seat, the more you paid... ;) and ofcourse, you can customize your seat, as above. that just must have been a pilot experiment. it worked, nobody sat on them!

Street photographers

on sunday i finally saw "the guys with cameras hanging around downtown crossing". i came to know about them here, after watching the short news item. apparently, they are around downtown crossing very often, taking pictures of strangers. some people claim they do this in a very annoying way, following people, and taking pictures of "body parts". here is another article, that generated a lot of responses. i dont know... when i saw those 2 (but there are supposed to be more men..), they were just talking, and not taking pictures. ha, i took a picture of them! 3 pictures, even...

i dont know... taking pictures like this should be fine, no? im doing the same! actually, they have an exhibition coming up, starting tomorrow, as you can read here. 

ah, and look at the advertisement behind them! about the british prince and his wife... :)

He lives!

 

this pic is a little crooked; i took it quickly while driving by yesterday morning...

i didnt know which picture to choose for today, until i came across this one again, and thought it kind of appropriate. when walking to the subway station this morning, we saw the headlines of the newspapers that are for sale at the station. DEAD was the prevailing word. only then we knew, as we dont have a tv. but during the day it was hard to miss; it was all over the news, everywhere, osama this, obama that.. etc etc. apparently, many students were out on the streets of boston, last night, to celebrate. isnt that a little weird, in a way?

this i think is a weird/scary video about how boston might be affected by this "significant death". and here a short video of "the celebrations".

Hiring day

april 19th, mc donalds had a national hiring day. i think it meant you could walk into any mc donalds and could fill out an application. there were 50,000 positions available! i missed it... ;)

today i read in the newspaper that the day was a great success, many people came, more than 1 million filled out an application for either a part- or fulltime job.. and they hired even more people than planned! 62,000! worldwide, mc donalds has 400,000 people employed. 

so... all in all i think its not bad mc donalds exists, children love it, for us, lazy adults its useful after another too long day in the lab and no mood or energy to cook anymore, and it provides numerous jobs. but it seems most people despise mc donalds, or perhaps they feel they should express that they never goto it! :)  (howcome all those jobs available then!)

here in the US they want to ban all advertisements focused onto young kids that have to do with unhealthy food. that might be good. but i think the problem is and will always be their parents; they should take care that their kids get healthy meals and goto mc donalds only by exception. then it also remains fun for them.. 

but well, thats just my simple opinion and now i should attend to my non-mc-job!!

Being told..

... what to do is sometimes very weird, unnecessary and even counterproductive, i think... and very weird if publicly displayed, like above. does that mean that uniformed men/women working for the T prefer to have their shirts out of their pants? and they prefer to wear other hats than uniform hats? such signs just make me wonder...

also read today that the city of boston is prohibiting "sugary drinks" on city property. no more cola, no more energy drinks etc can be sold at, for example, the boston common. sugarfree drinks however, are still allowed. are they out of their minds?! it instantly makes me wanting a coke! im wondering whether the building i work in, also is city property. every now and then, lets say 2 or 3 times a month, i go down to the cafetaria and buy myself a coke, and i enjoy that very much. they want to take that away from me? can i please decide for myself whats good and whats not?! sugarfree drinks are not healthy either! reasoning behind this: "the majority of boston residents are overweight or obese." drinks that still are allowed include water and skim milk, diet sodas, iced teas, and 100 percent juices. well... 100% juices perhaps contain even more sugar than a coke; and most vitamins are gone out of those drinks before you can drink them! i propose they also shut down all starbucks... the amount of sugar they pour into their "latte-coffees" is rather unhealthy too.