The lottery

reason i dont win the lottery is because this shop was too sad to go into... another shop at downtown crossing, boston!

off to sleep... tired, tired, tired....

Snow umbrella

ah, for a change; this morning we had some snow again! but not by far as much as was predicted.... a bit disappointing... :) schoolchildren had yet another "snow day" today; the schools were closed because of the snow... if im not mistaken, it was already the 6th snow day of this school year, and since you have to goto school a minimum number of days, another snow day is only possible by making up for that day later in the year.... tomorrow should be fine, but then the snow is supposed to come back on saturday!

tim doesnt like these photos, but i like my pink umbrella; this is on our way to the orange line from our apartment.

Snow night

we started the day with some snow and hail... then it turned into sleet (im getting familiar with the snow vocabulaire; sleet is snow that partially melts as it falls) and then just rain.... the snow on the streets started to melt and there were huge puddles in the streets, especially since the roads are so bad here... gladly i was wearing boots, too bad they were not entirely waterproof... the puddles were mean! often it didnt look too deep, or icy, but when stepping on it.. your foot disappeared and came out entirely soaked... :( then the evening fell and it started freezing; a slippery mess as a result! and now we are back to snow....!

tim came to my work so we could have dinner at the most romantic place in charlestown, the tavern on the water... above the view you have from there.... this night it was soo pretty and somehow so light, perhaps because of the snow and the clouds? (must be awesome in summer too, its right at the water and they have a roof terrace). its a 5-10 minute walk from the lab. but when we came there it looked pretty deserted... turned out to be closed!! :( as charlestown is pretty deserted anyways, we had to wait for the next shuttle, half an hour later.... then we finally had dinner somewhere around north station, in a (also pretty empty) sport's bar. but that was yummie too!

Snow field

this picture i took on sunday, it is very close to my work in charlestown. although you cannot see it here, on the right side, high above, is the tobin bridge...  ofcourse i took some pictures of  the bridge as well and maybe i will post one sooner or later... :) the light was sooo beautiful this day! it was just before sunset....

this morning when getting up, all paths were still snowfree... but by the time we left the apartment, there was quite a layer of snow! (and no, we did not take that long). it has been snowing the entire day, and snow removers have worked the entire day to keep the roads clear!! i think it now has stopped snowing, but tomorrow it is supposed to start again, bringing even more snow than today. everywhere around me, i only hear the words "snow, soooo much, blablabla inches, aarghhh". but i like it!!! :) defenitely its not only the dutch that can have endless conversations about the weather...

im only a little worried about the glassroof in my building; the lunch area is an open space, ground level, and you can look up all the way to the 8th (i believe) floor, and the roof is from glass: soo much snow is on it now! on the news there are all these stories about collapsing roofs due to the snow....

ah, maybe i should once take a pic inside my building....

No trespassing

 

an alley close to downtown crossing. there are some shops, the boston common is closeby and if you walk in the other direction you will hit the state house and then the boston harbor. i think a lot of tourists goto this area, but i am pretty sure they are all disappointed. although it seems nice at first, there really is not much to do, not many shops and many shops are old, small and dirty. maybe this alley is one of the prettier things around there... except ofcourse the MBTA entrance to downtown crossing.....!

the talk of the day; more snow is coming our way!! since this year we have had a snowstorm every week and most likely this week wont be an exception. im still not tired of it.... :)

Yes, coffee

first and foremost, americans need to hold a large plastic cup in one hand, containing hot or iced coffee (for the latter you need a lot of milk, sugar, some drops of pure coffee and mostly ice-cubes). no matter what they do (sure, there are exceptions; not ALL americans walk around with a coffee, but you get the point..), how hot or cold it is, whether you are in an overcrowded subway-train, or carrying a suitcase or your three children... one of the hands is reserved for the coffee... no clue how they manage it. im always afraid they will spill it over me when someone is holding a large cup above my head when i was fortunate to get a seat but they didnt....

ah, and yes, also during a snowstorm in the boston common public garden (!!) there will be iced-coffee... as above... im just wondering what the other hand is doing with the camera... :)

Going airborne

going airborne... sounds funny to me... but not if it is the car you are in..... my blog comes up if you search in google for "car crash tobin bridge mlk day", but i never wrote about a car crash! in fact, i wasnt aware of one, but i did notice visitors landing here because they searched for that. surely that made me curious too... after searching a bit (and ignoring the first hit, haha), this is what i found: during the night before mlk day, a car went airborne off a Chelsea highway (ie the tobin bridge), crashing onto a street 34 feet (!!) below. according to the police the Cadillac CTS (sounds fancy) failed to negotiate a curve, went airborne over a barrier and landed below on 6th street in chelsea.... one passenger was dead (22 yrs old), but the driver (24) and another passenger were not hurt, somehow.. the driver has been arrested for driving with a suspended license, and an initial investigation indicates speed and alcohol were factors in the crash. yuk.....

according to a commentor on the article, the driver had to be going very fast to manage going through (or over) the side of the road, landing 34 feet (~10 metres) below..., while above you can clearly see you are alowed to drive only 15 miles per hour... (or does that only count for the upper level? this driver was coming from boston, thus on the lower level, and perhaps there you can go faster, as there is no toll booth)

Self portrait

entirely indecisive on what pic to take. not yet another snow pic was all i could think. i did goto the gym this evening and there i saw the weather forecast (no tv or connection at home... a good reason togoto the gym?), and yet more snow is expected, maybe even another snow storm the coming week... ?

lets see... so expect more snow photos! 

a self portrait now since i didnt do one for a while... this pic is a little older... when "postdoccing" didnt tire me out yet (as i was not yet one), in the plane to boston...
ah and yes... im frustrated i dont get to photograph strangers as much as i want... :( but too cold, too much snow and too little time..!

Harvesting snow

in all earnest i told a friend in Nice where its quite a bit warmer than here, and no snow, that the excess of snow is currently brought to "snow farms". snow farms?! so, they are now even harvesting snow?!! up till now, more than 50 inches (127 cm) of snow has fallen totally, and last night's storm added another 12 inches.... of course i was again sleepless and watched the snow falling every now and then during the night. by now, so much snow has fallen, it barely fits along the sidewalks, and thus they started to bring excess snow to "snow farms" (while driving we already noticed the roads became quite a bit narrower; especially with a large real american truck...). snow farms are empty fields, parking lots and playgrounds where the snow can be stacked up high (so high that it might not thaw until spring!!). the metro newspaper tells me that boston has 6 snow farms. my plan for the weekend; find one of those and climb the mountains..... :D

above another picture from the window of our apartment this morning, before they had time to clear the path.... doesnt it look pretty? im sure the person walking there took great care to create prefect tracks...

Silver glow

snow has started!!

im curious how much we get this time, and where they are going to put it all....

this was last week, or maybe already the week before... it was so sunny. and then the snow... looked like a silver world to me... :)

Boston common

is really pretty during a snow storm... and i wasnt the only one who thought so... :)

in the back you see people with all kinds of inflatable things to sleigh off the hills in the park..

monday it was freaking cold, -17 degrees celsius in the morning (tim went to new hampshire for snowboarding and there it was -25, with the wind probably even colder; crazy), now its less cold, but its expected to snow yet again starting this evening, leaving us tomorrow with another thick pack of snow!! i dont know where they are all going to put it, alongside the roads is already so much snow!!! :)

Tobin bridge (2)

yesterday we drove around boston a bit. we wanted to go to some forest/park/whatever to walk, but it  was so cold and tim didnt wear suitable snow shoes and we were lazy and and and... (we ended up going to 2 malls and bought heavily discounted clothes; it was so cheap, we couldnt let that pass! :))

but we went on the tobin bridge upper level!! this is from chelsea into boston, whereas its lower level gets you out of boston. we had done the lower level before, but not the upper level. it was beautiful! yes, it costs you 3 dollars to drive on the bridge (1 dollar per km? since the bridge is 3 kms long), but for that you have a beautiful view on boston, and, i decided now; this bridge is pretty! here you see the toll booth, on the middle of the bridge, and behind that you see the hancock tower on the left, and prudential center on the right. now im still wondering whether its also 3 dollars when driving in the other direction; i think not, but im not sure... in new york its like that; leaving new york is free, but driving into new york through either the washington bridge or the holland tunnel costs you 8 (!!) dollars... (we know that because when coming, we went to new jersey on the washington bridge; that was free. we slept close to the holland tunnel, and saw that it would cost 8 dollars! we then drove especially to the washington bridge (oh, dutch)... but, eehh, going into new york is always 8 dollars! (also the holland tunnel is free the other direction))

Wicked cold

its been soooo sunny the entire weekend (its often very sunny in boston! so much better than the dutch weather thats often so grey); this morning it didnt seem cold at all... but once outside you could feel it was defenitely below 0 degrees celsius. brrrr!!! right now its -13, and when coming home it was +11.5 inside the apartment... switched on the terribly noisy heater (its like you are sitting in a plane), as well as the small portable radiator that we usually use (the apartment heater gives me headache... :( the noise is really gruesome; and the air is being blown from the ceiling, so weird! i just want a radiator that i could sit next to....)

anyways... you see the above-pictured icicles hanging down all roofs, some are gigantic! with the sun i think its real pretty...

Another PhD

exactly one year ago i defended my thesis in utrecht, the netherlands, and i was awarded my PhD. for 4 years i worked in a lab, wrote it all down during a few very stressful months and then defended my thesis on the 22nd of january, 2010; pictured above. ooh, i was so nervous! mostly because it was all sooo official! nothing concerning the dutch PhD is official, but the day of your defence.. then suddenly you have to dress up, your family, friends and coworkers are there and you are being questioned for 45 minutes by your supervisor and other doctors/professors (behind the microphones) about your thesis. some questions were not very difficult, some i did not understand at all, like the very first question i got. frankly, i still do not know what exactly the question was (perhaps because of my english? :)). thats the other weird thing; for 4 years, every labmeeting, every discussion, the thesis itself; everything is done in english. but during the defence i suddenly had to speak in dutch when i was being questioned by dutch profs, and english when being questioned by the foreign professors.

in the back you see the audience, around the table all the profs, and in the middle there are my 2 "paranimfen" (wiki; a ceremonial assistant and/or coach in a ceremony), and me standing. i just received my PhD (an enormous diploma that tim later forgot in the restaurant where we had lunch; i was just a big bit angry about that!), and my supervisor is giving a speech...... PhD stands for "doctor of philosophy" and if you want to know why this kind of doctors are called PhD, here is the wiki about that!

ah well.. nothing changed now that i am a PhD, i dont feel different, im not smarter, and my salary is still not very high....

Snow boots

it was snowing the entire morning! and its colder again... its predicted to get very cold over the weekend, leaving us monday at -12 degrees celsius..! lets see...

above my boots in the hallway leading to our apartment. these corridors are sooo ugly! the colors, the light... it looks like a hotel and the doors to the apartments are also "hotel style", they slam shut the moment you let go of them. its so noisy and very inconvenient when coming home with a lot of groceries... but of course thats all forgotten as soon as we enter our perfect apartment... :)

anyways, im so happy i bought these boots! they are perfect with all the snow and salt, as all my other shoes (ooh, i have too many!) would be ruined... so on snow days (or rainy days), i wear my boots, with pink boot liners to keep my feet a little warm. at work i then change to ballerinas or something.... ooh.... shoes.... :)

Atomic bowling

atomic bowling... thats how the bowling place in malden is called! hihihihi... when we arrived, there was still the weekly tournament going on. very interesting to see..... it was hard to take pictures!! :( here you see half (!) of all the lanes.... i think there were 50 or something.

there were also "glow in the dark" bowling balls, but i didnt see those... ofcourse there was a lot of food available as well... and at the desk they were spraying the bowling shoes after usage... hihihihihi (but those people above all had their own pair of bowling shoes, and also their own balls...)

actually, the name of the place reminds me of a ridiculous incident i read in the newspaper a while ago. some fancy food stylist was on a plane somewhere in the US, the plane was about to take off, when the stewardess asked him to come with her. while he as thinking he was getting an upgrade, he was led off the plane and was told by the captain that another passenger had reported him for suspicious behavior. moreover, he had the words "atom bomb" tattooed across his fingers. he explained to them that the tattoos referred to a childhood nickname. he then could return to his seat, posted the event on twitter and it was all over the media pretty soon after... a picture of the guy and his tattoo here!

Native speaker

i am not a native speaker in american, and i notice that every day... funny, i have always worked in international labs; english was the everyday language and talking about my work is difficult for me in dutch (some words dont even exist in dutch). but only here in the US i realized that my english is not that good (my excuse for everything nowadays! useful!); we all spoke english as a second language, and i guess that is why we never had a problem, we were all as limited; the pace was a little slower when speaking. now it sometimes goes soo fast for me! on top of that, often americans mumble, and i just have no clue what they are saying... ( i do not at all like to call, call centers are the worst).

there are also a lot of expressions and words i never heard of ("wicked funny", "im sweating my balls off" (for guys, i believe.. ;), "anomaly"). and i still have trouble with "hey, how are you?" or "whats up?" when just walking past someone in the hallway. i always think i have to answer this question..... then there are expressions i am now familiar with, but cannot get myself to use, as i think everyone immediately will notice i am not an american! like "like", or when giving directions: "you hang a left after you turned right". going out to dinner: "yes, we are all set" or "no, we are still picking away on this". when saying bye "have a good one". i could go on, if only my english was not so limited... ;) ah, and "awesome" of course...

the very first time i entered the US and was questioned by a bored officer i could not understand one of his questions, no matter how hard i tried. i asked him 3 times to repeat his question, and got so embarrassed that in the end i just answered "yes". but what he then said i did understand; "to this question you should have answered NO!" however, i still do not know what the hell he asked me!!

(i know i told this story already a million times, by now having i written down here, i will stop telling it... :) )

Immersing ourselves

ofcourse we are immersing ourselves into "very american things"..... :)

last weekend we got a little lost and discovered this enormous bowling hall not too far from our house! we went inside and it was just like in the movies... !!!

so, yesterday me and tim and two other dutchies (who studied with tim in utrecht) went bowling, voluntarily! buugh, why do they make those balls so heavy? certainly im not a very talented bowler... 

i took some pics but havent sorted out which one to post yet, maybe tomorrow....

Cloud factory

 

yesterday tim drove me to work. it was MLK day (first i thought: Milk day, whats milk day?! but it was martin luther king day), so there was no shuttle since essentially it was a day off... it was soooo sunny, but very cold. on the way from home to work we pass this industrial area, and often the cloud factory is workin, as can be seen above...

well... thats what i thought these pipes were doing when young; i thought they were there to produce the clouds in the sky, and although usually rather ugly,  the clouds, although sometimes brownish, were usually pretty...! until my mother once told me that these were not quite cloud factories... i even think to remember where it was when i got this news; in the car on our way to the maxis (a long gone supermarket)? but it could very well be that that is just a memory i invented.

yet, i do still always think "ah, cloud factory".....

it is COLD here! last night it was defenitely below 10 degrees celsius, so cold that we couldnt sleep and i had to switch on the heater. besides, it started snowing again and its predicted to snow for a few days at least...

Snowy dogs

in/at the boston common! arent they cute?! (but i didnt like their coats; its with a skull on it) both had their faces covered in snow; that looked so funny!

dogs are a common sight at the common, but i just read in the boston news that residents in beacon hill (close to boston common) spotted a coyote in their streets..

ah, actually it was even first seen around the frog pond at the boston common. according to the police, it is not uncommon that such animals are living in boston (too), but seeing them is... the most important advice from the article: "Police said if residents do see a wild animal like a coyote, it’s best to stay away from it and call police", just so you know...