Scenes From Boston (i)

A lot of walking around this weekend. Went by the Museum of Fine Arts (courtesy of the Smithsonian "Free Museum Day"), the Sam Adams Brewery, the North End a couple of times, and an evening walk on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge.

The leaves are beginning to change color. I'll hopefully be able to catch some nice New England foliage soon.

Fenway

I went to Fenway tonight to catch the Red Sox/Orioles game. It was interesting to see the difference in energy levels among the fans here as compared to Nationals Stadium. Boston fans cheer wildly for singles and jeer scathingly at errors. I guess people are more involved when you're not consistently in last place.



I also caught "The Town" last night. It was cool to recognize all of the places around Boston that appeared in the movie. It makes me want to go watch "The Departed" and "Gone Baby Gone" again.

Oh, and the Orioles won 9-1. Suck on that, Boston. Way to go, Maryland.

Harvard Square & Homework

Went by Harvard Square with a visiting friend today. The afternoon and early evening were fairly overcast, but I caught a little light through the cloud cover before dark.



In other news, I am now pretty bad at doing homework (or at least equally as bad as I ever was), which can be evidenced by the fact that I'm doing this while my books lie open in front of me. Also, relearning calculus is like riding a bike after a long time. A really crappy, uncomfortable bike with a chain your shoelaces keep getting stuck in.



That said, it's a little surprising how my memory of undergraduate economics is colored by the couple of weeks of graduate economics I've had so far. In my microeconomics class we've been going over identical concepts to the ones covered in my freshman microeconomics class, except the level of analytical rigor is so much greater. Instead of simply drawing supply and demand functions and understanding their mechanics graphically, we're now asked to derive these behavioral theories mathematically. I keep thinking about this particular xkcd comic:

317 St. Paul & Beacon Hill

As has been customary, here are a few shots of where I'm living while in Boston:



It's an old building in an old neighborhood. Some oddities remain that show its age, like an intercom system (that doesn't work) that looks like a turn of the century telephone, but it's not without it's charms. I don't think I'll mind holing up here for the next year and a half.



Today, I made it out to Beacon Hill to explore and grab lunch at The Paramount. The afternoon had a bout of rain that produced some very dramatic clouds. It cleared up before too long. Beacon Hill is a quaint historic neighborhood that's very photogenic and The Paramount is a small, but great eatery. I'd definitely go back. I hear their breakfast is excellent. All in all, a pleasant day.

Cross Country Redux

Since April 2009, I've gone on three separate cross country road trips. Despite enduring D.C. traffic for years, I really enjoy driving. Perhaps less so in the monotony of freeway traffic, but I find it a calming experience. Driving is primarily an observational activity and once the mania of urban/suburban life peels back, there are few things I find more peace in than driving through an idyllic countryside and watching America unfold through my windshield. Without a plane to catch or reservations to keep, being on the road affords a liberating sense of anonymity. I find it much easier to quiet my mind and be still during these times.



I'm disappointingly untraveled abroad, but through these trips I think I've seen more of America than most have. I'm happy to say that America is gripping and diverse. Rolling through new cities, wandering around national parks, or just stopping to admire the desert, with just a few tanks of gas I've found more than enough beauty and adventure within our own borders.



As if to illustrate the wandering spirit of the road trip, this took much more time and ended up being way longer than I had anticipated. As I went back through my archive of photos and retraced my steps across the country, I felt a similar sense of meandering.

Boston So Far

So, I moved to Boston on August 21 with the help of a few friends. Since then, my time has mostly been spent complaining about the weather, looking for good food, and wandering around the city and the surrounding areas by myself. Thankfully, the whipping rain and miserable heat (compounded by a lack of AC) have given way to the coolness of the onset of Autumn, I've found a few decent spots to grab a burger and pizza, and I've been pleased to discover that Boston is a nice place to walk around. It has the interesting quality of feeling at once decidedly urban and accessibly small. An abundance of historic architecture imbues a sense of history and narrative.



I'd grown somewhat tired of walking around the city by myself and I hadn't started class yet. Without the opportunity to meet and make friends, I'd lost some motivation to continue to explore on my own. Thankfully, a couple of friends, that I knew from elsewhere, were making a day trip on Labor Day to Cape Cod and were kind enough to invite me.



Cape Cod, as it turns out, is beautiful and exactly as I imagined New England beaches to be: clean, serene, and rich white people. Also, Provincetown is super gay. Pink houses with burly dudes in flamboyant costumes dancing on the porch to club music kind of gay. But, otherwise, a nice town.

I started class this Wednesday and it's been an unusual experience. Being in school voluntarily and being responsible for financing it is a totally different experience than it was in college. Also, getting back up to speed mathematically is giving my brain a workout it hasn't had in years. And, wouldn't you know it, instead of doing the readings for my lecture tomorrow, I'm spending time getting this blog back up. Nevertheless, I'll do my best to keep this space updated with the goings on here in Bean Town.

Homework time!