Dug out

the ducks at the public garden were also dug out from the snow! but no children playing with them when we were there... :) quite a different sight, the ducklings in the snow or in late summer (picture here). arent they cute? we just went to the public garden to see them! :)
ah, and more snow is expected... it might even be snowing right now... 

Snow removers

and here they are, the snow removers at our apartment complex!!! we had just gotten outside around 11, and they were already busy at full speed to clear the roads....

Snow emergency

these huge snow mountains were formed by the snow removal team, i think most of the snow that was at the roads of our "living community" has been collected here. we climbed those mountains last night and it was impressive! sooooo much snow.... unfortunately the picture by far does not capture the amount of snow...
when we just arrived in boston, i saw everywhere signs saying "no parking during snow emergency", and real americans also told me that parking there during a snow emergency will result in a high fine and towing of your car. this week i learned that the expectation of a snowstorm sets an entire protocol  in motion that results in an amazingly efficient removal of the snow. tuesday night before the snow, you were not allowed to park your car in streets with the above-mentioned signs; this is because these streets are cleared rom snow first, and most of the snow is pushed onto the parking spaces. other people are removing the snow from the sidewalks and making gaps in the huge piles so you can cross the street. at our apartment complex they started snow removal at 5.30 on wednesday morning, and i think they continued the entire day till late into the evening to create those snow mountains. the next day, they started at 4.30 (morning!!!) to clear the sidewalks. the snow has stopped (although not in New York i read on the dutch news!), but they continue to regularly spread salt on the roads to prevent slippery ice formation....
i guess that was boring, but compared to what i am used to; a little bit of snow in the netherlands and everything is down. no trains, no buses, no snow removal, this and last year even no salt.....

Yes, snow!

not the best picture but it was snowing sooo much! :)

just bringing out the trash was a journey.. wading through sooo much snow!! i never ever saw so much snow before.. and its amazing how so very soon they started to clear it away. it has been snowing the entire day now, and they are continuously driving around to remove it...

many tree branches became too heavy with all the snow, combined with the wind, several broke off, leading to power outages (luckily not at our apartment complex; no cables above ground).

here an article about the snow today!

Oh snow!!!

its 5 in the morning and i still didnt do yesterday's post... no internet.

this picture i just took from the window of our apartment! the amount of snow is truly amazing!!! there were warnings about a new snowstorm coming up all day yesterday, it was supposed to start around midnight, and continue trhoughout most of wednesday. i never experienced a snowstorm so i am kind of excited, and is that maybe the reason that i cannot sleep and look outside almost every hour since i went to bed around 1?! at 1 there was still nothing, the paths downstairs free of snow and only some residual snow here and there. the hours after i saw it was snowing a bit, and now at 5 suddenly everything is entirely covered! amazing! in just a few hours... the snow is coming down very fast now, and much more is supposed to come.. maybe i cant get to work, maybe i can and then i cannot get back. ah, oh yes.. thats a worry for later; maybe i should first get back to bed now and have a little more sleep...?

good night!
(wow, i feel like a child waiting for "sinterklaas"!)

Cute dog

lately i dont have much of an opportunity to take pictures, which makes me rather frustrated...  then there is the internet at home that doesnt work (doesnt exist), so often it takes ages for me to upload, if it all..... buuuhhhhh!

this one i took a few days ago, isnt the dog cute?! like "roodkapje"!! but then i looked up the translation for "roodkapje" and thats little red riding hood; that sounds much less cute to me, i have to admit..

this is in the center of boston, close to beacon hill, but i dont know the name of the actual neighborhood....

Food court

above a sparrow having its own table in the food court in the Square One Mall in saugus. i mentioned that before, its such a sad mall! but there were sales and we were too lazy to do anything else, so we wandered around a bit this sunday. 

my first encounter with a food court, when i was in the usa for the first time now over 6 years ago just left me with amazement. a shopping mall, ok, i knew that. but a section of it totally devoted to food? fast food? had never seen that before and found it soooo weird! then later i discovered that also on the highway there exist "food exits". food exits??! and then on the exit board it shows you what kind of (fast) food you can get there. now i got used to it, and actually it is convenient, wherever you go, you know there will be some kind of fast food (yegh, its always fast food). yesterday we behaved as 2 true dutch; we went to the supermarket, got some nice ("europeanstyle") rolls, some cream cheese and ham, went to the sad food court of the sad shopping mall, and made our own lunch! much better than the fast food!

of course there is a wiki for food court and i like this: "common materials used in constructing food courts are tile, linoleum, formica, stainless steel and glass, all of which facilitate easy cleanup." yup! and thats why they all look so sad sad sad!

Beacon hill

it started snowing again; my first snow experience! :) there was snow in the netherlands, and when we came back, there was snow in boston, but i didnt see anything falling until yesterday! :) 

but now its super slippery on the roads....

above is beacon hill, a boston neighborhood close to the boston common. until last week we had not really wandered around there, while it is so pretty! narrow, steep streets, fancy houses... just wandering around, you will find many interesting sights and buildings... according to wikipedia beacon hill is nowadays regarded as one of the most desirable and expensive neighborhoods in Boston. for more beacon hill facts; wikipedia! :)

Without leafs...

i think the trees are quite pretty too!!! :)
got to go now!

Hungry CaT

im tired, hungry and in no mood for writing...

but this i find a lovely picture, taken while we had a great dinner in utrecht with my sister and 2 utrecht labmates.... 

the restaurant is very nice too, its called "Boslust" and is in the center of Utrecht! (but you do have to have some patience... we waited very long till we finally got our entrees..)

Did you...

...ever sleep in an elderly home? even though you are not yet in need of living in such a home?

we did the first 4 nights when we were in the netherlands; we slept at tim's grandmother. not in her room, but in the guest room. as a guest room with only 2 beds in it, it was a decent size, but what if it becomes your living/dining/sleeping room? thats not a lot of space....!

all corridors looked like above (although this is at the cordova museum here close to boston; the corridors of the amsterdam-elderly home were not that photogenic). while staying there, i discovered that the walls are very thin, the shower not so good (not good at all; the temperature was not constant, it kept suddenly becoming hot and then cold again), and the nurses seem to have forgotten that all those people actually live there; in the early morning they were loudly exchanging stories of driving in the snow and what not all while standing in the corridor. maybe they assume that older people feel less and are deaf anyways? or were they just not aware that although they are at work, the people they take care of are at home? i guess it would be good if everyone would once spend some days/nights in such a home.....

anyways... tim's grandmother became 95 today! can you imagine? last year she and tim took a plane to france for a short weekend! and it wouldnt surprise me if her social life  is more active than ours, being locked in a lab for most of the time.... 

Melting snow

although there are still some snow mountains here and there, i saw yesterday night that all the snow pictured above in the boston common entirely disappeared; no more sleighing (i dont know whether this is the correct word for the activity above) there! the picture was taken last wednesday when boston was still covered. 

when looking up the word sleighing i discovered that it actually originates from the dutch word "slee"; it entered the american english language around 1700. the dutch were among the earliest inhabitants of north america, and therefore many words come from the dutch language! for example: boss ("baas), bush ("bos" or, in old dutch "bosch") and landscape ("landschap"). apparently, in later centuries we "gave" the americans the words dope, knickerbocker (??), snoop, spook, waffle and cookie. but for me, the most interesting is the following; also the word "yankee", the most american (word) of all, is most likely a dutch word from origin... howcome? well, the most likely source is the Dutch name janke, meaning "little Jan" or "little John," a nickname that dates back to the 1680s. Perhaps because it was used as the name of pirates, the name Yankee came to be used as a term of contempt. It was used this way in the 1750s by General James Wolfe, the British general who secured British domination of North America by defeating the French at Quebec. The name may have been applied to New Englanders as an extension of an original use referring to Dutch settlers living along the Hudson River. Whatever the reason, Yankee is first recorded in 1765 as a name for an inhabitant of New England. Around the same time it began to be abbreviated to Yank. During the American Revolution, American soldiers adopted this term of derision as a term of national pride.(this latter part i literally stole from here).

(the relation between the dutch and american language is also described in the novel Netherland by Joseph O'Neill; a book i liked a lot, surely its not merely about language, its about a man living in NY, during and after 9/11)

ok... and i didnt want to write much this time... hihihihi.

Coffee & Cookie

im in the cheesecake factory right now (oh, are we lazy! i think we hardly cooked the past weeks (in the netherlands not once); but we did share 1 meal; thats more than enough here). we were just debating whether we should take a coffee or not.... and i voted against because here the coffee, or tea, is invariably without a cookie. whats a coffee without a cookie (or whatever else small and sweet)??

above a picture of the tea i had in a cafe in the center of amsterdam, in the beurs van berlage, a famous monument built between 1896 and 1903 as a commodity exhange, and currently used as a conference venue. the cafe was real pretty, and not only did we get a tasty cookie, also a napkin with a poem by albert verwey, he worked together with the architect berlage and wrote poems for the building. the poem above is about food and laughter, and that this brings you good times (very loosely translated... :)

ah yes, i miss the dutch cookie, among other things.... :)

In 2011...

... i think i should go more often to the gym.. its good our apartment complex has a gym, too bad there are usually sooo many other things i would rather do...

and i actually want internet at home, loading my pics with the free wireless thats available when it feels like, takes much too long...

besides, i would like to publish a paper in nature or science, i should finally read the manual that came with my new camera, and i shouldnt buy any more clothes; our wardrobe is overloaded, and, as tim points out whenever i complain about the lack of space for my clothes; i already take much more than 50% of the available space. other than that, i didnt think much about the year ahead yet...

so..., lets see!

Year 2010

the dutch call the last evening of the year old year's eve, whereas in english its new year's eve, something i never understood.... anyways.. we dressed up and were just in time to see the last bits of the fireworks for children at the boston common (at 6.45 this evening...). we then wanted to have dinner at a certain place, but to get in you had to prove to be above 21, which we could not (tims dutch driver's license wasnt accepted and i did not have any official form of ID, however, if they just had looked at us, it would have been clear that we passed 21 already....). so we went to the next place and there we could have dinner, but could not drink alcohol for the same stupid reason... then we had free espressos at a very fancy hotel-restaurant (after asking twice and waiting much too long the check might have arrived after our leaving.. :) )

we walked around a bit in boston, i tried to picture real american girls with impossible high heels and extremely short skirts, but the alley with car turned out much better.... :D

now we are at home, and in 20 minutes the new year will start! this year a lot of exciting things happened, most importantly our move to the US! now lets see what 2011 will bring..... surely i will document parts of it here, as i very much enjoy posting one picture a day.

happy new year!!!

CVS Pharmacy

the CVS is a very american store, in my opinion.... often these stores are open 24/7. they sell a wide assortment of general merchandise including over-the-counter drugs (here a lot more/stronger drugs are available without a prescription than in the netherlands), beauty products and cosmetics, film and photo finishing services, seasonal merchandise, greeting cards and convenience foods (including candy and chips, but also milk and bread, but no fruits or vegetables). before writing this post, i never wondered what CVS stands for, but i thought i should know this when posting a pic of it! originally, CVS stood for Consumer Value Stores, but the CEO has said he now considers 'CVS' to stand for "Customer, Value, and Service" (all knowledge thanks to my friend wikipedia!). the CVS above is in the center of boston, and does not have a pharmacy, as most other CVS stores; there you can get prescription drugs. 

americans are very concerned about privacy, and the CVS gives you a Notice of Privacy Practices with each prescription drug, in which they describe that they wil not disclose your Protected Health Information (PHI), unless..... and then they virtually describe every possible circumstance in which they are allowed to disclose your health information to others... most reasons are boring; they could have spared me from all this reading by just writing; we will never disclose your information, unless we will disclose it. 

for those of you who made it to the end of this very boring post; the following reason to disclose your health information by CVS to others i found truly hilarious: "We may disclose your PHI to authorized federal officials so that they may provide protection to the President......" (suddenly your harmless prescription drug seems like a very powerful chemical weapon..., no?)

Back home

im amazed by the roads and sidewalks that are entirely cleared of snow!! this is the path next to our apartment. on sunday/monday a blizzard was roaring around in boston, a huge amount of snow fell, but yesterday all roads were cleared! compare that to the dutch and their little bit of snow... just ignoring it thereby making it impossible for many people (especially elderly) to go outside for their daily shoppings etc....

ah well.... cool to see all the snowmountains...!

Welcome back

"welcome back" thats what the officer said to me, after he checked my visa, passport, all forms that had to be filled out, stamped all those documents, took my fingerprints (all fingers) and a photo (would they have an internal blog or something where they display the most horrible pics of people arriving after long long flights...?). i have to admit; i liked that he said that... am i now one of them!?! but then i immediately thought "doe effe normaal zeg" (cannot translate that.. but literally; please, act normal..).

so, we were lucky, the blizzard yesterday/sunday cancelled many flights, yet our flights were not delayed. the only shitty thing is that tim's snowboard did not arrive with us in boston, resulting in waiting in yet another line... 

as we almost doubled our luggage, im now waiting for tim to get the car. great that allmost all airports have free internet nowadays so that i can update my blog! :) above a picture of a real dutch flower; the tulip. i was so amazed by the snow on this poor flower that only after 4 pics i realized these were fake.. its at the airport, so i guess they want to always be able to show visitors dutch flowers. although everyone ofcourse knows that tulips were originally from turkey are were imported about 400 years ago to the netherlands. but look here; in the US they even have a tulip festival! difference might be that in the netherlands you can buy 40 or sometimes even 60 tulips for just 5 euros (~7 dollars), while here, back home (!!), it will cost you probably a lot more...

Lucky santa

maybe im oldfashioned, but i think its weird i now already saw 2 shops portraying santa in a not very child-friendly way... previously we had freaky santa in boston, and now, as the shop decorated, lucky santa in utrecht... 

as mentioned yesterday, the dutch have 2 christmasdays... googling around taught me that we used to have even 4 christmasdays in the year 813, as determined by the catholic church... on those 4 days you were not supposed to work as that might cause bad luck; only work that really had to be done was allowed. christmasday one was a "gezellig" (cosy) feast at home with family, day 2 a bit more festive and was called the big horseday (eh?); farmers would go around on their horses and this would protect the horses against diseases. the 3rd day to commemorate the saint of friendship, and the 4th day was for children; they were in charge this day.... soon, the 4th day disappeared (why?), and then in 1773 also the third day was no longer a holiday. but only since 1964 the dutch consider the 25th and 26th as official holidays... the second day now usually spent at a "meubelboulevard", i.e. home furnishing shops..... (why oh why??!)

Christmasday two

unlike americans, the dutch take 2 days to celebrate christmas... recently, more and more shops (especially in amsterdam and big supermarkets) open at least at the second day. i walked around in my hometown today with my sister and big fancy camera; but most pictures i took turned out to be very disappointing. this is a reflection of myself in the window of the bakery in the center of Weesp. behind me one of the many churches, and on the window a poem from the dutch poet ida gerhardt. i just looked up the poem and its a very nice, apparently very well known poem... i searched everywhere for an english translation, but couldnt find a complete one.... :( but this is a good description i stole from here: "She sketches the sense of hope and beauty she experienced when she heard someone playing the bells of a nearby church. The time was 1941, the place: her city of Rotterdam, bombed the year before. She saw the people in the streets, their faces grey with misery; then, suddenly, the heavenly sounds coming from high up, from the church belfry. Their faces lightened up; the very sound of chimes filled them with awe and wonder. They looked up and listened, enjoying the marvel of the carillon – that most Dutch of all musical instruments." for the entire poem in dutch, go here.

meanwhile, it has been snowing in boston (buuuh, i missed that), and a blizzard has arrived; new york city cancelled 1000 flights... good i have 1 more day in the netherlands.....