Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Saying goodbye ...

... well I found a new room to stay so I'm going to leave my top floor apartment in the next couple of weeks (no haste please!). No more scrambled egg for breakfast (no roast potatoes either - still didn't try them, but should I start now?!), noone washing my towels. Will I die as a bum? Only time will tell.

Funny coincidence when I had a look at my room ronight: My very friendly roomate Cheh (name slightly changed for safety reasons - Cheh, huhu if you are reading this :-) told me that another future flatmate was around as well and was just studying the contract ... well, then I had a closer look at this guy and noticed that I've known him from dinner at a colleagues' place a couple of weeks ago! Increadible how small this world is, or at least the housing market in a place like this ... but trust me, I found a very nice and bright room which is just lacking some decent furniture (actually any furniture at all). Future adventures to be read at this place - where else!

How do you know that you've been staying at your hotel for too long?

Q: How do you know that you've been staying at your hotel far too long?

A: It makes you really happy in the morning that "we" have a new toaster for the bagles.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

"If you don't like the weather in Boston - just wait a minute" OR: Surviving the First Blizzard

I already realized it some time ago: The weather over here in New England is pretty volatile. When I arrived it was 10 degrees plus (Celsius; 50 F) and now it's a few degrees below zero again (25 F or thereabouts).

As a colleague at work told me people over here even coined a phrase for it: "If you don't like the weather in Boston, just wait a minute" - well, the question is only if it gets better or even worse!

Today I had the pleasure to experience one of the extreme weather conditions up here in the northeast of the US, the first Blizzard of 2006. I heard about it in the news, "severe weather alert", but didn't think much of it - I just stuck to the zeroth-order approximation of tomorrow's weather: It's most likely to be just like today! Definitely not true this time though ... not the slightest snow yesterday, but as impartial evidence a picture taken from my hotel room earlier today is shown below:



Wide-angle live stereo view from my hotel room, 12 Feb 2006, 1:12pm EST. Pretty much snow, uh?

So what do we learn from that? Listen to those weather people, sometimes they even get it right!!