Gillie the legend

Had a great time on Saturday watching the Aussies convincingly beat the Sri Lankans to once again be the champions of the Cricket World Cup. I had no trouble waking up early on Saturday thanks to a crazy neighbour who was up at 5.30 am making a racket and playing music loud enough to wake me. Grrr.

Anyway I made it to the venue, a pub near Harvard square around 9.15 am, ready for the 9.30 start. When I rocked up I was dismayed to learn that rain had delayed play and it was looking shady as to whether the game would be played at all. There were a handful of Aussies sitting around chatting who I didn't know so I grabbed a seat alone, watched the rain fall on the big screen and boringly waited. Bay-buddy soon rocked up, so taking advantage of time to kill, we grabbed a coffee and breakfast.

The room showing the cricket in the pub started to fill pretty quickly and soon enough all you could hear were Aussie accents, and the few American accents suddenly seemed foreign. It was a bit weird. Bay-buddy and I soon started chatting to a young married couple who had driven a few hours from Vermont to watch the cricket. The guy was from Melbourne and worked in finance while his wife was an American nurse. They were pretty friendly and we got along quickly. The bloke started getting stuck into the beers pretty early on and by the end of the day he was well and truly smashed and raucous, much to the embarrassment of his wife who tried to keep him tow. Having little success at subduing her husband she decided the only way to deal with the situation was to be drunk (pissed in Aussie-speak) herself. She was "battling beer with wine" in her words. Thankfully they weren't planning on driving anywhere that night and were staying in Boston for the night.

Everyone in the room was nervous of the game not starting, but when we finally saw the covers come off the pitch there was a huge cheer, even though the match was being shortened to 38 overs. Before the game I was telling Bay-buddy how much I wanted to see Gilchrist smash a hundred since his batting had been sketchy throughout the tournament. I was bloody ecstatic as we watched Gillie slog 149 in quick time and with the beer flowing, I was having a bloody awesome time. There was a significant Indian contingent in the crowd, my Bay-buddy being one of them, who were barracking for the Sri Lankans and I enjoyed sticking it to Bay-buddy everytime Gillie smashed a 6 or sent the ball flying into the boundary.

By this time, the room was packed to the rafters and it felt like it could have been any pub in Australia. Put on some cricket, supply some beer and it's amazing how the Aussies came out of the Boston wood-work.

Even though I was going (rooting in US-speak, root means to have a shag in Aussie-speak) for Australia I wanted to see a good tussle between the two teams and with Jayasuria taking it to the Aussie bowlers it looked like the Sri Lankans were in with a slim chance of running down the massive Aussie total. It was not to be however and the game ended somewhat anti-climatically after a bizarro stuff up of ending play early due to bad light and declaring Australia the champions, only to change the declaration and forcing play of the remaining overs so the Australians could win (again).

Boonie would definitely approve of the Aussie win, as long as he had a slab of VB to celebrate with of course

So 6 hours after arriving at the pub, with a satisfying outcome and a few tasty ales later, I stumbled out of the pub with Bay-buddy and a few other American work colleagues who came to check out this strange sport called 'cricket'. We tried to explain the rules to them without much success, even when we related everything back to baseball, but nonetheless they seemed to enjoy the game atmosphere and were amused at all the drunk Aussies:

Me: "If the bowlers 'pitch' the ball and the 'hitter' hits the ball to the boundary, it's like a home-run worth four points. Get it?"
Americans: *blank stare* " Why are there two people holding bats again?"
Me: *leaves to get another beer*

Oh yeah, mercifully, no-one did the 3 x Aussie/3 x Oi barrack over the entire day.

Aussies FTW!

Tomorrow 9.30 am Boston time is the Cricket World Cup final between Australia and those dodgy Sri Lankans *cough*Murali*cough*chucker.

Saturday 9.30 am is mighty early for a late-riser like me, nonetheless, being the loyal Aussie I'm heading off to Tommy Doyle's, an Irish/semi-Aussie pub near Harvard square to watch the game. Bay-buddy and another work colleague invited me which was nice of them and I also know that a significant contingent of Aussie postdocs will be there (of course).

Having no TV, I haven't really been following the cricket very intensely, and although I'm confident the Aussies will win, I'd like to see a hotly contested final tomorrow. The only question I have is, when will the drinking begin?

Go Aussies. Ponting's men FTW!

Working at lunch

A significant mile-stone was achieved in the settling-in process at work today, I was asked to join a group for lunch. Even though I've been in my new lab for almost a month now, I still feel like the new guy and am still in the process of feeling like 'one of the lab'. Everyone has been very helpful and friendly since I arrived, and my bay-buddy (the guy who works on the bench behind me in what forms a ' lab bay') even volunteered to drive me to Target to buy stuff for my flat (as mentioned in the Kung Pao chicken post), so I've definitely made inroads into being accepted into the lab, but being asked out for lunch had so far eluded me.

I've been asked out for coffee, tea and even ice-cream, and only today had I finally been asked to lunch. Success came with the smell of a beef burrito with jalopenos. It was huge, tasty and shamefully calorific. Yum.

Usually the same handful of friends, out of the lab of 20 something people, hang out at lunch together and it's not uncommon for people to eat alone due to busy experimental days. My usual lunch-buddy is Bing who is working in a lab downstairs to mine which is an ideal situation for scheduling lunch, and we have a selection of eateries on our lunch rotation menu. From burrito places which are really good here and would go really well in Australia where they are basically non-existent, to a Cajun chicken place that has a lunch serving of yummy chicken with rice and veges that is easily enough for the two of us, to a very tasty $2.75 clam chowder soup in our buildings cafeteria.

Apart from the social fitting-in process, my actual scientific work is still in its infancy. I've done a few experiments, but am still figuring out where reagents/equipment are and basically how the lab runs. My boss is a little scary as in my first two group meetings she was yelling at another postdoc for not having any results and basically not having a clue about his experimental methodology. From what I gather he kinda deserved it but I felt really sorry for him, especially since I get the feeling that not many people in the lab like him too much. To be blasted by your boss two weeks in a row seemed a bit much. I have a little expertise in what he was trying to do so I gave him some tips after the second yelling/meeting which he seemed grateful for.

Bay-buddy told me that my honeymoon period in the lab was coming to an end and that I should be wary with The Boss from now. He was only half-joking so now I'm scared of what kind of lab I've gotten myself into. My question is why the hell none of the postdocs mentioned The Boss's scariness when I visited the lab for my interview?! Hopefully I can get enough results to stay in her good books. We'll see.

After dinner tonight Bing told me he has already planned tomorrows lunch. It's a place a work-mate showed him the other day that does a mega steak and cheese sandwich that can easily feed two. Time to loosen that belt.

Reality is a state of mind

Another b'day shout out, today (Sydney time, April 25) is my elder and only brother's birthday. I don't want family reading this blog so he won't be reading this but what the hell, Happy Birthady Big Brother. It's also Anzac day in Australia, a public holiday to commemorate Aussie Diggers who tragically died in WWI and Gallipoli in particular.

For the first time since I arrived in Boston about a month ago, I called home (I did send a few emails though) to say Hi to Mum, wish Brother happy birthday and to give an update on what's been happening in Boston. Brother seemed pretty happy that I called and we had a good laugh over the phone. Although Brother is a year older than me he's still living at home and is unemployed. This is due to him being mentally ill, as he suffers from 'psychosis'. Basically its the same as schizophrenia, in that he thought people were spying on him constantly, putting listening devices in the house, sending him secret messages through junk mail, TV and radio, and it got as bad as him thinking that they were controlling every facet of his life and basically the world he lived in. For a time he thought he was living in a Truman-world situation where even I was part of the conspiracy. Brother's condition is similar to the main character in A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe. It's a great film by the way and I recommend it highly.

Brother and I have always been close although less so since I moved out of home in Sydney. Still finishing his second university degree, he couldn't afford to move out and lived with my parents (that's another saga in itself). I feel guilty sometimes that I was too involved in my own messed up life at the time he was falling ill, a time frame of 3 months or so, to notice that he wasn't well. I became aware of his illness a few months after we had returned from a 6 week trip around the world, a time I'm grateful to have had with him before he got sick. We hadn't spent a lot of time together preceding that trip as I was living away and busy with my PhD, so it was a good to reconnect with him and we shared many laughs and misadventures along the way.

My sadness at Mont St-Michel as captured by Brother

During our travel it was mostly me who organized everything, but there were times when I needed the assurance and help that a big brother instinctively provides. It was Brother in the beautiful citadel of Mont Saint-Michel, France who cheered me up when for no good reason I was feeling miserable and depressed. It was Brother who miraculously located some bandages and burn cream in hot, humid Saigon, Vietnam while I lay in a air-conditioned hotel room, nursing a burn on my leg that I foolishly received from a hot motorbike exhaust. It was the same Brother who had looked out for me during our childhood, and who I looked up to as we grew up. This is now a sad memory.

Brother and me had a great time travelling, he was celebrating the end of his degree and I was getting much needed R&R from my PhD. He seemed a little quieter than usual at times but still seemed the Brother I had always known. I was wrong. Little did I know that his comments that he wasn't sleeping well during the trip would be a symptom of his developing psychosis.

Brother had always been quiet and a bit of a loner. He did have his small circle of close friends during high school but over the years he had seen them less and less, much like the case with his university friends. I'm not going to go into detail about the dreadful process of finding out that he was mentally ill since just typing this is making me tearful, but needless to say it was a massively distressing event for me and the family. The Scot, Ace, GK and Ex-flatmate have an inkling of that terribly confusing and scary day. What I will say is that seeing your own brother in basically a mental asylum is unspeakably awful.

Despite my aforementioned guilt, I take solace that he finally reached out to me to share his problems which finally led to him receiving treatment. At present he's on very strong anti-psychotic medication which has made him less irrational/paranoid but he's still not the Brother I used to know.

Despite the medication, after 15 months or so after getting treatment, Brother still denies that anything is wrong with him, insists that he doesn't suffer from psychosis, and is adamant that everything he 'experienced' was real. Now he's extremely quiet and doesn't seem to enjoy doing anything, although he is more rational than before. He spends his time watching TV, and just sitting, trying to puzzle what 'They' want him to do and what 'They' want from him, basically trying to work out what the fuck is happening to him. I'm told he'll be on medication for probably his whole life. When I think of his long-term prospects as he is now I feel a sense of despair, not just for him but for the extra burden on Mum who is obviously distressed about the whole situation, particularly because they didn't get along for many years, including the time Brother fell ill. However, I hope that gradually he'll get better and one day he'll be able to rejoin the workforce, live independently and just simply enjoy life again.

Even though you'll never read this, Happy Birthday Big Brother.

T-shirt weather

This weekend has been sunny, warm (well relatively warm at up to 15 degrees C) and generally pleasant. I even strolled around without a jacket on for a bit. The only downer about the weather was me having to go into work both days of the weekend, although Lulu, Bing and myself managed to coordinate a trip to the Arnold Arboretum (the pic below is from their site) in Forest Hills, a 25 min train ride away from Downtown Boston.


The arboretum is a large park (free entry) filled with trees as the name would suggest that's divided into different sections like the Rhododendron garden or Willow lane. It was nice to laze in the sun and walk around the park for a few hours but almost all the trees were still leafless so we vowed to go back in the depths of spring to see the arboretum in all its leafy glory.

I'm still new enough to Boston to get childishly excited whenever I see a squirrel scurrying around and it was fun to watch them dig and nibble around the oak and walnut trees in the park. I've spotted a handful near work and my apartment but I expect spring-time to dramatically increase their numbers so the novelty factor should fade soon.

This weekend has also been an eye-opening feast of cute guys, just tonight I bumped into two attractive lads who don't necessarily live in my building but I met them going out the main door. The hotter of the two guys was wearing a gray Harvard hoddie, tall, smoking hazel eyes and had a cute smile as he said hello. I'm looking forward to seeing him around. But at the arboretum, it was just crazy how many cute guys there were; walking dogs, riding bikes or just sleeping in the sun. The typical college-jock, clean cut, All-American type, hot. Must be the weather.

Happy Birthday Ex-flatmate

Today is Ex-flatmates birthday, so happy b'day mate! Well technically it's tomorrow, but with the 14 hour time difference, I gave him a ring today and said g'day/wished him well using Skype. With free Skype to Skype calls and really cheap international calls, it's an awesome program for calling overseas, especially in my situation of only having the opportunity to call from a cell phone with expensive international rates. Wow, that reads as a cheesy ad for Skype, but you get the gist that I'm a fan. Even though it's only been a month, it was cool to chat to Ex-flatmate and catch-up on recent happenings, plus it's always nice to hear a familiar accent via +61.

I've known Ex-flatmate since high school (as with most of my close friends). We shared an apartment for around 2 years and have had countless adventures through our friendship. Ex-flatmate is one of those high-achievers who works unnaturally long hours in the ruthless corporate world, yet manages to be positive, cheerful and modest, plus he still manages to take time out from his commitments to hang out with his mates for a beer or a rock concert. A more decent, likeable bloke I couldn't imagine. Over the years, me, Ex-flatmate and The Scotsman have made a tradition of being the rock gig/music festival-attending trio, and some of the highlights of my last few months in Australia was moshing out to Tool and at the Big Day Out festival (where Tool was also headlining) on consecutive days at the end of January.

Big Day Out crowd 2007, by Matt Booy

The lineup at Big Day Out this year was stupendously superb and Tool and Muse rocked out completely, while Aussie bands like John Butler Trio, Expatriate and the few songs we caught from The Vines were also top notch. A significant number of young, shirtless, amazingly hot guys were a fitting accompaniment to the superb music; especially in tight, crowded situations, as in the mosh pit. I mean let's not beat around the bush, a music festival is 80% music, 20% pervfest, well for me it is. If you are a tourist in Sydney around late January and want to visually sample the most gorgeous guys (or girls) Australia has to offer, I strongly suggest trying to snag a ticket to the Big Day Out. A diverse range of music, a hedonistic mass of shirtless guys, beers, good mates and a sunny clear blue sky, need I say more?

But I digress, back to the birthday message, I hope the golf God's favour Ex-flatemate for his birthday round and that he has an overall awesome weekend off, despite being another year grayer :-). I know Ex-flatmate is a Star Wars fan and although it's not sold anymore, if I could mate, I would have sent this to you:


More vintage Star Wars stuff and the above image can be found here.

Fine art and Kung Pao chicken

I'm cozy and warm in my new studio at the moment. There's no hint of the supposed springtime outside, instead it's grey, freezing and rainy. My temporary lodging at Lulu/Bing's place finished two nights ago and although it was great fun living with them, it's nice to have a personal sanctuary to really call home.

A work colleague was kind enough to volunteer to drive me to Target so I could stock up on essentials for my apartment, so I'm now equipped with kitchen stuff like knives and a microwave, bathroom crap like towels and other random paraphernalia that's made my place liveable. I've also done numerous trips to homeware shops like Bed Bath & Beyond and the department chain Macy's for other stuff. It's bloody amazing how much crap is needed to make a place liveable! Needless to say my bank balance has taken quite a hit recently so the plan is to go without furniture until I can find something cheap on Craigslist. Who needs a set of drawers when you've got a suitcase dammit.

So with a comfy queen-sized futon to sleep on, cereal in the pantry and bowls to eat from, I'm content. I've even acquired a plant who I've called Eli. He's a Madonna Lily which are apparently pretty hardy. Despite my abysmal track record in keeping plants alive, I'm hopeful he'll survive, although he does have a few yellow leaves on him already...



Apart from my new place, I now have a swanky new cell-phone with Verizon Wireless. Courtesy of being staff at Harvard, the phone came free with a 17% discounted calling plan (the cheapest plan Verizon had to offer of course). Plus, my social security number got issued so I can get paid, woohoo! The internet guy came today so I've got high-speed internet of course (hence the blogging update), and with the net comes the sweet sounds of Triple J online. Lulu and Bing don't have a TV and I haven't really missed it so I'm not getting a TV, which makes the net my lifeline to entertainment.

Work-wise, I'm still settling in and it'll take a while before I get into a defined project. Most of my lab are older family-orientated postdocs so there hasn't been much social interaction with the lab. They've been friendly and helpful so far but I don't see the same level of out-of-work fun that I had with my previous lab who were mostly close to my age or younger. Time will tell.

At the moment I've been eating out almost every meal with Lulu and Bing who have been giving me the culinary tour of the neighbourhood which has been draining on the wallet but heaps of fun. I think we've only had dinner at home 8 times or so in the almost 4 weeks I've been here. My social life has been hanging out with Lulu, Bing and their work friends which has been cool and welcoming in a foreign city.

The other week we went to the Museum of Fine Arts as part of a meetup event for Aussies working in Boston, although we went and did our own thing after greeting everyone. The exhibits of art and artifacts from all over, including traditional masks and costumes from Africa, pottery and goldwork from South America, awesome calligraphy from China were interesting, but as part of a special exhibit, the marble piece called Madonna of the Clouds by Donatello was the winner for me.




I'm not an artsy person, and religious art usually repulses me, but there was something intangibly appealing about the piece. Up close, the detail and emotion conveyed by a freakin' slab of marble was pretty special.

The event at the museum was on the first Friday night of the month and as such, there were drinks and canapes in one gallery. Having spent too much time admiring the art downstairs we arrived late to the drinks and were glad we did. We expected complimentary food but it wasn't free and to make it worse, the gallery was filled with a pretentious looking crowd of glamour wannabes (admittedly, there were a few incredibly cute guys there sipping their champagne, effortlessly looking hot and making a large blip on my gaydar). Surprisingly, there was dance music blaring and a lot of atrocious dancing by a drunken mob of the generally less attractive too-hip-for-society people. It was a weird scene; classic styled paintings hanging on the walls of a stately, cavernous museum room clashing with the beats and dancing of wasted people. It was an interesting experience, but not my our Lulu and Bing's scene, so after a bit of gawking and feeling slightly uncomfortable we bailed for some really good pizza at a local Italian restaurant.

I've just returned from dinner to finish this post. It was at an awful Chinese restaurant about 5 mins walk away. Think lots of MSG, cheesy 90's music being piped into the dining room, fluorescent sauces on inappropriately flavoured dishes and then double the overall horror. Oh, did I mention is was attached to a cheap motel? Not good. Even my fortune cookie didn't make sense. It said something like 'A handsome man means a handsome does'. At least the Chinese Tsing Tao beer tasted good. Lulu, being a lover of authentic tasty meals of any nationality, and having high hopes of finding a good local Chinese restaurant, was thoroughly disappointed and grimaced with disgust throughout the meal.

Now that I've got craploads of MSG coursing madly through my body and making me hyper, I'll probably be awake all night. However, one good thing about dinner was that I finally found out what Kung Pao chicken tastes like. It doesn't exist in Australia but I've heard it mentioned in countless American shows like Seinfeld. Having tasted it, I'm glad it's a dish confined to the States. Think chicken pieces, extremely slight chilli, celery, bell peppers (or capsicum in Aussiespeak) and a few peanuts in a nondescript oily gravy. With plenty of MSG of course.

Lucky 7

I saw at least 16 studio apartments and visited 3 share-houses in two weeks of house-hunting. The apartments were in buildings that ranged from well-kept and comfortable, to shabby blocks of brick with dirt caked in the corridors and with basement laundries that wouldn't be far from what I'd imagine a room in a crack-house to look like. Although I investigated share-house living as a way to save money, in the end I decided that living solo and not saving money was fine. I had lived alone in Sydney and knew that it suited me.

I'm happy to write that almost two weeks of searching, that seemed desperate and hopeless at times, has finally rewarded me with a nice studio apartment. It's $1200/month, located on the second floor (in Australia it'd be called the first floor) of a professional building with 24 h maintenance, has hardwood floors, a separate kitchen and of a decent size. My windows overlook the internal courtyard and the apartment gets decent, but not spectacular outside light. It's actually about 5 buildings away from where Lulu and Bing live, so it's a 12 min walk to work, has plenty of restaurants nearby and 2 supermarkets for groceries within walking distance.

A niggling concern about my new place is the fire-escape outside my windows which is a potential burglar point of entry. But then again, there are plenty of ground floor apartments and less secure buildings around. Anyway, getting broken into is more likely to be due to bad luck than having a fire-escape nearby. If you think that I'm being a bit paranoid, having woken up with an intruder in my room whilst living in a 5th floor apartment, security is a concern for me.

The studio is completely bare at the moment but I've got a queen-sized futon arriving this Tuesday, so I won't move from Lulu's place until then, and no blogging from my new pad until the internet gets setup sometime. It's been overwhelming when I think of all the stuff I need to get for my studio, but one good thing about most Boston apartments is that they come with a fridge and sometimes a microwave. No microwave in mine but they're pretty cheap second hand.

With a new apartment a significant part of The Big Move is over. It's a huge relief and bloody exciting, and it cements the previously surreal thought that Boston really is my new home.

My studio and building isn't as nice as Lulu and Bing's but hopefully it'll feel like home soon enough. It's also apartment number 7, so with enough luck I won't wake up with another stranger by my bed. Uninvited stranger that is.

House-hunting

It's been a little less than 2 weeks since I moved to the States and the attempt to establish myself in Boston is moving slowly. So far, there have been some successes such as; opening a bank account; filing for a social security number (extremely important for pay purposes and a tonne of other things); and settling into work, although this is an ongoing process.

However, I still haven't got a cell phone and most alarmingly, I haven't found a permanent place to live. Luckily, I'm residing with two good friends, Lulu and Bing, who moved from Sydney to Boston 5 months ago. They moved for similar reasons to myself, that is, they are both scientists who are doing their postdoctoral research in the US. I did my PhD in the same lab as Lulu and got to know her then-fiancee-but-now-husband Bing over the years. Both are extremely nice and accommodating, and I have no idea how I would have survived The Big Move without their advice, support and of course their generous offer of temporary housing in their enviably nice, rented apartment.

My fishy room-mates at Lulu and Bing's place

Their apartment (or flat, in Aussiespeak - say flat to an American and you'll get a 'What the?' stare in reply) is a one bedroom place, hardwood floors, cool tropical fish tank, many indoor plants and a comfy futon that makes the apartment a pleasant refuge from the cold conditions outside. The surrounding neighbourhood is safe and full of good restaurants within a few minutes walk, and it's the kind of area I'm looking to live in.

Housing in Boston is terribly expensive when compared to the rental market in Sydney. Amazingly, a $100-200 difference makes a huge difference to the quality of the apartment. I know it's not exact to compare across currencies, but I was paying $A600/month for a studio in a decent area in Sydney, while it's about $1200/month for a fairly nice place in Boston. There are plenty of decent studios for less than $1200, but since I'm a stranger in Boston I wanted to have a place that is homely and which offers a bit of comfort when I get home.

Another thing that's different here is the separation of buildings between 'professionals' and 'students/undergrads'. Profession counts in renting and you get asked about your occupation. Some rental groups that manage the buildings only take professionals. Generally, the professional buildings are better maintained than the student blocks.

I spent today running around in the frigid, snowy/sleety conditions to inspect studio apartments and share house options in various Boston locales. This is spring?! My jeans are absolutely soaked and clammy on my skin which unsurprisingly, I'm not too happy about. However, due to my new Boston-bought waterproof boots (thanks REI!), my feet are mercifully dry. Worst of all it's just past 11 pm and I'm writing this at work. I've still got a few things to do before I can go home and I'm writing in the breaks.

The major difference between the Sydney and Boston rental system, is that here, the Realtor gets paid a 'brokers fee' for every apartment they rent out. The fee is 1/2 to 3/4 of the monthly rent and is paid by the tenant or in some circumstances, the landlord. So with a brokers fee + first and last months rent, renting an apartment is an expensive procedure.

Although it's only been a week, I'm sick of trawling Craigslist and calling realtors. Craigslist is almost unknown in Australia as far as I know, but it has turned out to be a great resource here in Boston. You can find share accommodation, rentals, furniture and a bunch of other stuff there.

The good news is that I'm ready to apply for an apartment tomorrow. It's just around from Lulu and Bing's place and close to work. Fingers crossed the application goes through.

It's been a long day; bed-time (finishing this post at home). I'm excited that maybe my next post will be from my new apartment. Later.