A Week In Boston

Kyon’s sister goes to Boston

I am back from the States and my body is aching because of the time involved in flying. The orientation, as I had expected, was stifling because of all the young, excited and impressionable freshmen. It is not exactly a bad thing, but just that I am suffering from an old soul especially since I am way older than most of the kids who are fresh from high school graduation. Try spending two years in an army as a sergeant and you will get my point about mingling with so many young people. Despite feeling awkwardly out of place, I still have to give some credit to the university for trying to integrate us into the community. The student leaders, who served as the ‘tour guides’ sure put in a lot of effort into this event.

The opening ceremony involved the new students and their parents gathering in the sports center (I have to write like the way Americans do) where the dean of student welcomed us all. A short clip explaining the breakdown of the students of the orientation showed how many people were from where. It was interesting to know that almost a third of the students attending this orientation are from L.A and that kind of makes people wonder why the hell would they want to fly all the way to the East to study. Then the video finally flashed the flag of Singapore and announced that ‘we have one student from the Republic of Singapore’. Without any consideration, I punched my fist into the air and gave a hearty roar of ‘YEAH!’. I guess I was just amused by the fact that I was one of the very few asians and there were so many white people. lol

Until the last day, nothing interesting really happened and I was hoping this be a good break from anime but I was wrong. Because we are all expected to pick up a foreign language in college unless you are bilingual, which I am but I decided to pick up a new language anyway, I joined a group of students to take the Japanese Language Placement Exam to roughly estimate one’s proficiency and Japanese being the choice since I have been studying it for a while. Big mistake it turned out to be. When we realised that no one was going to show up to conduct the exam (stupid admin mistake), we ended up chatting about random topics and there was this particular chap who tried to start a conversation by asking, “So who watches anime?”.

My first impression was ‘ZOMG. POTENTIAL WEEABOO’ and remained silent so that I could watch anything possibly funny to happen. Fortunately… or not, you decide, no one else actually understood what he was talking about and he gave up. End of story.

This trip to Boston would have been great if Delta Airlines had not left my baggage back in JFK airport for the lulz. I had wasted an hour at Logan airport waiting for a baggage that never came. And the worse thing was Delta making a mistake in delivery address for my delayed baggage despite the fact that I was pretty clear in spelling every single word to them. It was almost two days before my baggage arrived. In all ways, I was very deserving of the right to being angry.

Kyon’s sister is excited.

Across the bridge at Charles River is Cambridge. I think.

And I thought I could escape the humid climate of Singapore. All I did was simply leaping from one hot place to another. It’s summer at Boston and the heat was not dry!

Random shot, random comment.

There are a lot of churches in Boston.

Hoho. I shall refrain myself from commenting on this.

People were running barefooted around a sign requesting that everyone has to have their footwear on.

Whoa.

Supposed to be the biggest Apple shop in the States.

I like how most of the old buildings are preserved for they are the vestige of a city’s heritage.

Granted half a day of free time before heading to Logan, I permitted myself to check out the city of Boston but I was mainly in the Back Bay District. My exploring comprised of unplanned wandering and the taking of random shots so I had no idea what I would expect. Bringing us back to a previous statement, Boston was a pleasant visit during my short stay and I had the chance of wandering around before heading back to Singapore. For some reason, old building are like eye candy to me. And if you are wandering why did I not bring Kyon’s sister along, that is because she seemed rather fragile so I was not really willing to carry her. In fact, the paint on her hair was already peeling off just by having her kept in my bag as I made my way through the airports before I had arrived for the university orientation. Besides, I am sure someone would have mugged me in order to possess her.

Another church.

Oh great… Guess what?

DSLR users are everywhere! I was standing next to two of those as I took the above picture with my pea shooter.

Damn you Barbossa and your DSLR!

3/2 Scale Washington by Kotobukiya

Why so serious?

I am being repetitive but I found my visit very fruitful indeed. In fact, one can learn a lot just by going to the States. One good example is the well known fact that the universe is always expanding and this is reflected by the constant expansion of the mass of some Americans, they just get bigger and bigger. I really look forward to returning in September when my semester starts!

When the time came, I found myself back at the Logan International Airport to board my plane. There was this teenager whose parents was trying to make him work on his vocabulary by making him pronounce the various words on signs and banners. He was rather reluctant to play along, and disregarded his father’s request to pronounce a certain word written on a sign by saying that ‘that’s chinese and I cannot read chinese’. Out of curiosity, I took a glimpse of what that word could be and it turned out to be the word ‘kiosk’.

Much to my surprise, that particular teenager was on the same flight as I was so we were all hanging around the entrance of the same gate. It was then I came to realize that not all Americans are expanding themselves in mass. There was a rather geeky young man, probably a student, who was busy reading a few articles from a BusinessWeek magazine and he was expanding his own existence on a different dimension while trying to making himself more well-informed. Unfortunately for him, the teenager sat down next to him and began to expand his own existence in the 3rd dimension at the expense of the young man’s privacy and concentration. e.g arms went beyond his own seat and constantly nudged the young man.

I was not sure whether to be mad at the teenager for he was really cracking me up. Because I was on my way back home, I did not really want to bother myself with anything else. I was on my way back home, or that was what I had expected it to be…….

FORESHADOWING