Battery empty

i have to be very quick since the battery of my laptop is empty. the charger is in the apartment, but i am in the common room/clubhouse with free internet.... :( yup, still no internet and it is really, really frustrating... :(((((((

above an advertisement you see here very often for the dutch beer heineken. you also see it often on  (free) magazines..... someone once told me that for americans this is rather fancy beer, and something special. but i dont know if i should really believe that! anyways, i dont understand it; drops in holland? how do they become pints here in the usa??

this building is a mystery to me as well. its right behind the TD garden. just this one house. it always has a huge advertisement on it (or i guess 2, 1 on either side), but i dont think someone lives there. were there more houses before? what are they going to do with it?

ok, battery really empty...

Yellow fan

the MBTA recently painted the fans in the subwaysystem yellow. when i first saw them, i found them really funny. sooo big! and would they really cool down the stations? soon i got used to them, until we had a visitor who showed me her pictures and said she tried to picture those big fans, as they looked so funny. only then i remembered that i once found them funny as well... :)

See something?

 

when you are waiting at a subway station, you hear a lot of messages. that the train is approaching, then that the train is arriving, that you should watch your personal belongings, that you should not litter the station as that could cause fires. that courtesy counts, and that if you see something, you should say something. apparently, commuters dont really hear all those messages anymore, and so for the "see something, say something" campaign they now started with a different approach. because... people in boston dont see, and/or say as much as people in other cities/countries and thus not that many suspicious people and/or packages are reported. they want boston to do better!! (but, maybe there are not that many suspicious things going on here... :D ?) yesterday at north station there was  this enormous package. i asked tim whether he saw it (its right in front of you when you enter the station), but he said "huh, what package?" so... today i was in front of the package, and i took a picture of it when he arrived at the station. then we went downstairs, and i asked him; did you see the package? guess what his answer was...

ah, and.. "The campaign is funded by a $1 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security’s Transit Security Grant Program.  It promotes a collaborative effort of state and local agencies to work together educating the public to be more aware of their surroundings, and report any behavior that may appear suspicious to the proper transportation and law enforcement authorities." but for sure they didnt reach tim.... maybe he should watch this video....

Lady Fiasco

yesterday i saw large trucks with "monster tour lady gaga" on it. i asked my friend google what it meant, and i found out that today lady gaga was giving a concert in the TD garden. since the TD garden is in north station, where i take the orange line, i packed my camera this morning as i hoped to finally photograph "people going to the TD garden". ~19.000 people fit into the TD garden, so whenever there is an event, its hard to miss when you are in/around the station. tim left work a little later than me, so i was alone at north station, with my big camera, much too heavy bag, and an enormous amount of shyness!! :(( buuuh.. there were sooo many, very interestingly dressed girls (and some guys), much more interesting than these legs i recently posted. that was just child's play. seriously. but i did not dare... i felt so out of place, so obviously an outsider just there to take pictures. it was very crowded, and there were so many policemen and security guards... then tim finally came (usually then i better dare taking pics), but no.. still not... then he took some, and i was jealous, but they were all unsharp (ha! i thought... (how mean!)). finally i took the one above, but i took some time (as thats one of the things i finally learned; if i do take a pic; dont take it hastily...). and yep, immediately a policeman came telling me that i could not just stand there and had to move on. so, that was it. no extreme lady gagas for me..... :(

Subway legs

we saw some legs this evening! tiny skirts and high heels... i took 3 pics but they were right in front of me... so i didnt dare to try more.... the skirts were so extremely short and the heels sooo high, the girls had difficulty walking. this is a very common sight here, for girls/women going out. am i glad im not a real american woman! :)

this was at north station, and they had no clue which train to take....
for another leg photo: here :)

TD Garden

the TD Garden is next to North Station, where i now get off the orange line and then take a shuttle to the lab in charlestown. when its crowded at north station, you know something is going on at the TD garden. often there are basketball games, which you can see by the sportshirts everyone is wearing. yesterday there was a concert from justin bieber! thats some teenage boy with a golden throat, apparently (thats the dutch way of saying that someone can sing well; i guess its not an english expression). but i never heard him sing and only know him for his hairdo. you can now goto the hairdresser and ask for "the bieber-cut"; it makes guys having huge amounts of sleek hair that seems to be artificially spread over their head, which makes them having to "flip" it every few seconds, as to keep it out of their faces... (here a video about the famous hair-flip; but internet here is so crappy that i havent seen it myself) anyways, tim said there were huge amounts of young girls going to his concert. would have loved to see that and taking a picture of all those girls lining up in front of this huge sign.. but when i was there, there was practically nobody... 

i found some noteworthy facts about the TD garden; it opened in 1995, has a maximum of 19,580 seats, 13 escalators and 7 elevators. and most importantly; 17 women's restrooms, and as much men's. just so you know....