House Hunting in Boston

Boston is the only city where I have experienced that in order to find a place to live you also have to enter a competition!!!

Here’s my story.

It actually took place on the other side of the river, in lovely Cambridge. I went to see a gorgeous old-style wooden house there yesterday. 3 floors, a lush garden, the home of 10 students/young professionals. They are renting out 3 of their 10 rooms from September onwards and  had decided to organize an ‘open house’ to meet all their ‘candidates’ at once as not to spend time on showing each person around the house separately. What a great idea in itself! And what a great community of people as I was about to find out!

I really loved this house, the rooms and the intellectual vibe of the people living there who are mostly PhD students or PhD graduates from Harvard or MIT. But as I found out soon enough, liking the place and being ready to say ‘yes’ immediately was not enough. I had entered a competition. There we stood, a roomful of ‘candidates’. After having had a ‘guided tour’ through the three floors of the house, there came the time to introduce myself, to say who I am and what I do. To be open, be funny and impress, make myself remembered.  Needless to say, I felt like being in an interview with a roomful of ‘competitors’ around me and a (very nice) girl, resident of the house, typing my answers into a Mac.  On an excel sheet, I suppose.

There was another Excel sheet I came to see when I understood how long the list of my competitors actually was! Once we had introduced ourselves and talked a bit about the house, it was time to express your interest in room 1, 2 or 3. Everything was perfectly organized so another very nice young man living in the house stood by the door with a printed out excel sheet that about 30-40 names on it! I know 100% that I like this house, I love the room and the intellectual young people living there, but I am facing tough competition. In a way I am really nervous about all this stress, but on the other hand, the surreality of this situation can’t but make me smile.

And there’s one more thing. Just a note on about how small this world of ours is. A couple of weeks ago I discovered an organization in Boston called InterNations. It is a network for expats and foreign professionals living in Boston. So I went to their meeting and also met this young guy from Poland, who mentioned he lived in Cambrige.  And now I saw him again, sitting on that sofa in this very same house, being one of the residents in this wonderful house, being one of my judges.

I don’t know how this story will end, but they promised that this torment will be ended quickly and they will let me know their choice in the days to come.  What can I say, living abroad just enriches you with all kind of experiences all the time.

Isabella Gardner Museum & the Greatest Art Theft of All Times

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is this really sweet pearl in Boston. In the US where it is so hard to find signs of the Old World, this museum transports you to Venice. The building, a copy of the 15th century Palazzo Barbaro on the Canal Grande, is guaranteed to make you feel at home with its high ceilings, lush central garden and oriental charm, if you´re ever been touched by the magic of Venezia.

It was in the Isabella Gardner  museum that exactly 23 years and 1 day ago the biggest private property robbery in the US history took place . On March 18th 1990 while the city of Boston was busy with celebrating St. Patrick´s Day, art thieves masked as policemen entered the museum and left with 13 valuable paintings 81 minutes later. The loss: 500 million US dollars. The paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet and Degas, amongst others, have not been seen since. But today an article in The Guardian reveals that there have been some positive twists in this story. By the 23rd anniversary of the theft the FBI has identified the thieves, but not yet found the paintings.

Meanwhile, empty frames hang on the walls of the museum´s Dutch Room symbolizing the missing paintings. But until this mystery is solved, the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum is still absolutely worth the visit. Whether it is a concert in the modern wing, their wonderful museum shop which you will find hard to leave, or the art collection itself.  And the entrance is free on your birthday!

Nemo´s Aftermath

Find the bikes, find the cars and play in the tunnels on the way!

There was an awful lot of shoveling going on today in the Harvard area. People literally had to dig themselves out of their houses and find their cars in the snow. ´Tis a winter to remember!

The Blizzard of Boston

As the historic snowstorm Nemo gets mightier by the hour, here are some photos of what this evening looked like in Harvard Yard. Like in a Brueghel winter painting, the Yard was full of frolicking students. Snowballs were thrown, many snowmen built and in fact, the statue of John Harvard looked more like a snowman himself.  Even some skiers appeared out there! The stairs of the second biggest library in the world the Widener, were covered so much in snow that students could use it as a hill to sledge down from!

In a day like this, when all schools, universities, institutions and shops closed down, public transport stopped working after 3.30pm, there is an official travel ban so that the only cars on the streets are those pushing away the snow, there is still one place that is never closed. You might have guessed it already: it’s the Chinese restaurant at Harvard Square! Winter, spring, summer or fall, Christmas day or snowstorm, Sandy or Nemo, at a Chinese it is always just another day. Respect, I say, as I barely made it back home through the storm.

 

 

 

Moving

For weeks now I have seen students moving in the Harvard and Boston University campuses. A week before the beginning of semester very 30 seconds a car stopped in front of Harvard yard, proud parents got out and helped their freshman offspring load off amazing quantities of bags, sport equipment, guitars and more bags. This in contrast reminds me of how many times I have arrived at different countries to study with just one suitcase (or rucksack), a computer and my saxophone. Own only what you can carry …

Another surprise item for me has been seeing the ‘movers’ rolled around the town. The mover is a kind of huge trolley (which you will see in the video) surrounded by strong blue or yellow plastic on the four sides and wheels under it, that makes moving very comfortable. You could fit a sofa, a mattress, a table and some lamps in it. In fact that is what I am going to do tonight, too to finish my moving process! And  since many Harvard student apartments are unfurnished and need to be left totally empty of your furniture once you move out of them (very different from what I have encountered in student accommodation in Europe), the ‘mover’ makes it so much easier. It is a good fitness alternative to hiring a van and two strong men to do the moving for you, an amazingly thriving business at this time of the year. All lamp posts, student accommodation lobbies and lifts are full of fliers and advertisements for moving companies.

Today I came across a video a the Boston University webpage about the process of moving in as a first year student and saying goodbye to the family. North-Americans are good at creating something emotional, stressing family values and thereby simply cherishing the process of being a student. Telling stories. I would not expect to find something so simple yet nice at Tartu University’s webpage, of course. What has value in Estonia and what is transmitted to me through the TU website is formality and facts. So see the video, enjoy the cultural difference and take note of  the all mighty  ‘mover’.

Boston University’s video: Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

The Bliss of Buying

North Americans love to shop to the extent that it is considered a national sport. They also feel very strongly about their views, idols and ideals. But even knowing that, they have managed to surprise me once again.

The presidential campaign to be culminated on November 6th this year, is in full swing.Obviously it is a show that needs many dollars to offer the best entertainment and the required results. Therefore, Obama´s campaign boosts an online shop where there is something for everyone. From pins and posters to T-shirts, baby stuff and even a jacket or bowl for your four-legged friend, the dog! But this is not all – Latinos are targeted with groovy T-shirts both in Spanish and English, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have their own pin. Nurses their own notebook. No one is left out! The prices are a bit salty (there has been lots of clever collaboration with designers to boost the value of the products), but then again, it is like a fundraising concert and the act of buying is more important than the product itself. I am sure they are going to make millions with this. And I am also quite sure that this is possible only in North America.

Check out the store!
Compare it to the Romney shop

 

My favourite: let your dog enjoy the race too with a Knit Obama Dog Sweater for 35$!

Downton Abbey

The Brits (in collaboration with the US) have created yet another wonderful ‘costume drama’ type series called Downton Abbey. The story is set in a magnificent fictional estate of the same name in the Yorkshire countryside in Northern England before, during and after the First World War. Thanks to the US websites Netflix and HuluPlus which allow you to watch films and series from an endless database  for a modest monthly fee of 8 dollars, I have just devoured the two first seasons of the series and anxious to the third to come out in January next year.

 

As the logo of Downton Abbey (the mirror reflection of the estate in black and white) suggests, the story is taking place on two levels of the building and of society. In the center of the narrative is the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants. The upper class lives that are led on the higher floors of the estate are in stark contrast with the aesthetics and linguistics to be encountered in the servants’ rooms downstairs, yet the lives of both classes depend on each other and intertwine in the context of World War and the social changes it is bringing.

Just as there are two opposite levels of lives led in the estate, so is there a duality about the characters. The servants with thick Yorkshire accents have their agendas and the well mannered gentlemen and gentlewomen have their secrets. All acted out with a superb cast and written in highly enjoyable language. So enjoyable and high class indeed that my boyfriend has decided to watch the two seasons all over again since Downton Abbey has influenced him to speak beautiful English at work!

The series has been filmed at the Highclere Castle in Berkshire, west of London. The castle that owes its current appearance to the same architect that designed the Houses of Parliament, is up to this day the home of an earl and a countess (the 8^th Earl and Countess of Carnarvon to be precise) just like in the series. Other parallels between the fictional series and the historic Highclere include the fact that just like Downton, Highclere was the centre of early 20^th century social life hosting parties for the intellectual and aristocratic elite of the time. And Highclere  was also turned into a hospital during the war. Over the past few years the castle has earned considerable fame and popularity thanks to the success of Downton Abbey. Highclere is open to the public during the summer months. You can plan to have your wedding there or just visit the caste’s own museum of Egyptology. It was indeed the 5th Earl of Carnarvon who in 1922 discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun and is supposed to have died from its curse!

It seems very likely that the success of Downton Abbey has triggered  the Boston Museum of Fine Arts´decision to start a course series on Britishness this autumn, by the name of Cheers! Celebrate Enchanted England, dedicating one lecture entirely on Downton Abbey and costume drama.

Isabel Allende

She is a force of nature. A tiny woman, who wearing her 9 cm high platform shoes still has to stand on a wooden block, like the one young piano students are using when their feet don’t touch the ground yet, in order to reach over the reading stand and speak. And when she speaks, beware! You will be captured. And you would never imagine she turned 70 a week ago.

I had the fortune of listening to Isabel Allende at the International Conference about Women’s Intellectual Experience in the 20^th Century on March 7^th in Mexico City’s Palace of Fine Arts, where she was the keynote speaker.

Allende is a natural storyteller. A woman who Pablo Neruda, the Chilean Nobel Prize winner and one of the greatest poets of all times, advised to drop her career in journalism as she had too vivid an imagination. No wonder, as in her early 20-s working as a translator of cheesy love novels from English to Spanish, Allende changed their endings in order to not let the female protagonist look like a “retardada”, Spanish for idiot.

This brings me to the core essence of this strong soul. Allende is a feminist and according to her own words was a feminist even before the word existed in her native Chile. The way she talks about women is so captivating that feminism seems desirable and it becomes impossible not to want to join the club. Jokes apart, all her work is directed towards helping the women of this world. In 1996 she started a foundation that bears her own name and gives grants towards the empowerment of women and children through the fields of healthcare, education and social justice.  All her books have been inspired by women she has met in her life. Their stories have encouraged her to write and keep writing. And she is a prolific writer. Ever since she wrote her first novel at the age of 40, The House of Spirits (La casa de los espiritus), also made into a movie, she has written a string of books that have become international bestsellers and have earned her the status of the world´s most widely read author writing in Spanish. Allende´s novels have been translated into 36 languages and have  touched millions of people.

I have read two of Allende´s novels – The House of Spirits and Paula, and can absolutely recommend both. The House of Spirits is a wonderful story about a family through generations that Allende started writing when his grandfather, then 99, was on his deathbed. Allende herself has said that it is a book that saved her.  This story inspired by Allende´s own family saga, is covered in ever present mystical veil. The House of the Spirits tells about the special abilities passed on from mothers to daughters generation after generation, about strong  women who carry on the life of the family and about the atrocities of the coup d’etat of Chile of 1973 where the first left-wing president of Latin America, Salvador Allende, Isabel´s godfather and relative, was killed.

Paula is a series of letters to and memories about Allende´s daughter, who died at the age of 28 after a long coma. The intimate letters were written during the long hours of waiting at the hospital as a means of therapy and as a process of letting her daughter go. This memoir is about of the darkest experience in Allende´s life.

With her stories Isabel Allende has reached, moved and made a difference to an amazing number of  people. This is power. And this was the concept that Allende finished her talk with at the congress. She called on women to see how powerful , connected, educated and  independent they are for the first time in history. How they have access to medical care, have possibilities in life and have the power to bring about change. It is not necessarily the financial means that empower women, but the possibility to influence and move others. Just as she did shook up the auditorium with her speech and earned a standing ovation.

www.isabelallende.com

Article in Spanish in the Mexican newspaper El Universal about Allende´s speech at the conference: www.eluniversal.com.mx/cultura/68039.html

TED Talk – Isabel Allende: Tales of Passion

Dragon Boat Carnival

Here are some photos of the Dragon Boat Carnival of last weekend. Hong Kong has reason to be festive this month as on July 1^st the passing of Hong Kong from the British Crown to China 15 years ago was celebrated. The Dragon Boat Carnival seemed to be a logical extension of these festivities starting on the 2^nd of July and lasting up to July 8^th in the picturesque Victoria Harbour.

Dragon Boats are important for Hong Kong. A festival of the same name (also called Tuen Ng) is celebrated each year on the fifth day of the fifth moon of the local moon calendar. This year it coincided with midsummer -St John’s eve of the Western calendar on June 23^rd. It is a huge celebration where crews of 20 peddlers race in elaborately decorated 10 meter long boats with dragon heads to the beat of the drum. All this is to commemorate the death of the statesman Qu Yuan who in the 3^rd century BC drowned himself in a river in the Hunan province in China, about 600 km north of Hong Kong, to protest against a corrupt government. The race takes place early in the morning in two locations, the Tai O traditional fishing village on Lantau island (where the big Buddha is) and in Stanley, southern side of Hong Kong island. Nowadays it is a hugely popular and colourful tourist spectacle.

Hell money

I live in a very authentic area of (otherwise so cosmopolitan) Hong Kong where no English is spoken on the streets, where signs are only in Cantonese and hardly any tourists find their way to.

It is also a neighbourhood of the funeral business. The streets around my house in this corner of Hung Hom are full of shops for funeral flowers, coffins and incense.

The flower shops business is thriving on weekends. This is the time when the streets are filled with a countless number of lavish bouquets ready to be sold or still in the making. The flowers used are mainly white (colour of mourning in Asia) and the bouquets are standing on a high platform made of bamboo stcks. I could try to take some photos of this, but I am sure that in a superstitous Hong Kong this is taboo and would bring me lots of bad luck…

Then there are the coffin and urn stores. These workshops don’t have any doors, maybe just a grid that will be pulled down for the night, so the coffins stacked one on top of the other are there for every bypasser to admire. They are actually different from what I have seen in Europe. Shiny hazelnut brown in colour, their shape is not that of a rectangular box. Rather, the coffins have the shape of a lotus flower with round petals at the top and bottom sides.

But the true cultural eye openers are the incense shops. In addition to incense, they sell everything that you would like your deceased loved ones to have and enjoy – made of paper! The local culture has it that a family gather around a grave and burn these paper products that they have bought for their ancestors. As the smoke goes up to the sky, so do the products. Or at least the thoughts that the family would like you, deceased soul, to enjoy them.

Therefore, in an incense shop you can find the most incredible full life size paper items –  i-pads, i-phones, sets of rolex wathces, toy size sports cars, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent shoes and designer bags, packs of hell money, whether it is US dollars or chinese tenders, shirts and ties – neatly packed just as you would find them in a department store, cans of beer, sets of ready-to-eat lobster meals with a shiny silver paper fork and knife included, blankets, dresses, footballs, basketballs…. The list is just endless. They have anything you could probably think of. Actually, it feels just like getting something from a  Hong Kong market. The resemblance and truthfulness of the paper products is remarkable. The souls must be pleased!