Savour the last moments of a dying year

It really doesn't feel like a year separates today and Dec 31, 2005.

Winter holidays were a good break; had Chea Lu over from the UK, and finally an excuse to do the whole tourist thing around Boston. It still doesn't feel like a home city to me; being still unacquainted with most of it.

The statue of John Harvard in Harvard Yard. Also known as the statue of three lies: no one knows what John Harvard looks like, so they got a student to pose for the statue. "Founder" and "1648" are also etched at the bottom of the statue, though John Harvard was neither the founder (just someone who donated money), and Harvard Uni was founded in 1646.

Does wonders for your confidence in the university, huh.

Oh and if you look closely, the statue's left foot is shiny. That's because tourists rub it for luck.

And undergraduate students are well aware that stupid tourists rub this man-made object for luck. So they pee on it.

Finally discovered what my Harvard ID is good for: free entry into the Museum of Fine Arts (but not the Museum of Science! Argh!).

Popped over to New York to visit Chan Lek, he's doing a Ph.D in Rockefeller there. It was was interesting to see Rockefeller, it being representative of the research institute type of university, versus one with a proper university campus. In fact, it has no undergrads, and very few graduate students. To me it'd be like being a graduate student but without the student life aspect.

Rockefeller is amazing in some ways though. Access to Chan Lek's apartment requires a palm scan (beats my ID card anytime). And the apartments are located in Manhatten (the expensive part of New York), with rent highly subsidized (cheaper than my place!). All Cambridges are cursed to be expensive.

Saw Times Square, Chinatown, Central Park, New York Stock Exchange blah blah etc. BUTthe place to talk about is this Japanese restaurant Chan Lek brought us to. First off the place served good (and cheap!) Japanese food, mmm. However the atmosphere is crazy. They've got Japanese songs blaring overhead, not the modern pop some of you enjoy, but what sounds like World War II era marching songs alternated with 1930s-Geisha-bubblegum-pop. Surreal. Also, umm weird bondage drawings of women on the menus (wtf??); weird as in not sexy, but of some woman licking a skull.....One of the waiters had a Japanese accent...but he's black. You haven't seen it all till you hear a black guy with a Japanese tongue serve you your katsu don.



Someone's obviously thrilled with the place.










Back in Boston now, spent the past four days watching South Park and putting off all my coursework, all due in January. Urgh.

But it's the last day of the year, a time to reminisce.