No loitering

no loitering.... loitering is a funny word. it looks funny, but i never heard someone say it. when i say it, it sounds funny, but perhaps im pronouncing it all wrong... :) im still waiting for an opportunity to tell someone to stop loitering... haha.

you see this "command" hanging every here and there. for example, at the start of the path to our apartment complex is a bridge leading to a street of (i think) single family homes. every night around ten, this bridge is locked for reasons that are beyond my understanding, and early in the morning its opened again. next to this bridge is the "no loitering" sign. but how can you not loiter there, if you cannot pass the bridge if you fail to come home before 10?! (locals actually know a way past the 2 gates on either side, so i really dont see the point of locking it. perhaps to make the no loitering sign useful?).

so... no loitering means that you are not allowed to remain in a certain public space for a certain amount of time (dutch translation here). wikipedia is not very helpful, other than mentioning its mostly prohibited in the US, UK and australia. in theory you could get arrested for loitering. i dont really like the image, the policeman with baton and the 3 guys, casually hanging around. the one standing is smoking. even with this simple image, they managed to throw in some stereotypes!

the sign above was at the subway station (green line, science park), above a bench. but isnt waiting for a train some kind of loitering too... ? how am i supposed to wait for a train then.. ?

Park street

last week or so we were sitting at park street, waiting for the train to come, the train in the other direction was just leaving (im thinking really hard where we went or came from, i cant remember, and i think its odd we were waiting for a red line, but we clearly were, as you can see...; our home is on the orange line). in weekends and evenings trains come less frequent, and its not that crowded, so i felt more free to take some pics.

when we were in boston for the very first time, we rented an apartment close to the park street stop. it took a while to figure out this station (in fact we didnt manage to figure it out during that week). you can walk to the orange line, the red line, and upstairs you can catch the green line. but it was not clear to me, at all, how to get from one platform to the other. especially when arriving on the green line "outbound"... complete desorientation. "i see the platform i want to go to now, but HOW do i get there?!" to complicate matters even further, there are 4 different green lines "inbound", and i had no clue how people knew which green line goes where (then i found out they have letters, B, C, D, and E, and there are 2 platforms, B & C stop on one side, behind each other, D & E on the other. but this took me months!!). the designation "inbound"& "outbound" was weird to me too at first, they sort of randomly choose the center of the city, and depending on that, directions are given as in- or outbound (sort of like up- or downtown, i guess, only boston is just so tiny!)

hmmm, i guess this is boring, if you have never been to park street in boston. if you ever go; remember that you are allowed to cross the tracks of the green line at park street. you dont have to wait until a train arrives, going in on one side, and leaving on the other..... :) (when someone told me that, i was just glad not being the only one who thinks this station is very complicated...).

Yellow fan

the MBTA recently painted the fans in the subwaysystem yellow. when i first saw them, i found them really funny. sooo big! and would they really cool down the stations? soon i got used to them, until we had a visitor who showed me her pictures and said she tried to picture those big fans, as they looked so funny. only then i remembered that i once found them funny as well... :)

Customized MBTA

on saturday we were in the green line, and saw those 2 chairs! i really had to suppress the urge to go and sit on them, as we had to stand. no clue whom they belonged to. perhaps it was some sort of social experiment? who is going to sit on such a chair?

or maybe it was because the MBTA is trying to renew itself? i read in the newspaper this morning that the MBTA (which stands for massachusetts bay transportation authority, or the T, in short) is thinking of selling "station naming rights". as such, the T would incorporate both the station name and a corporate brand into the renamed facility. in doing so, they could avoid an increase in fare prices, which would be a good thing (although i think the T is really cheap, especially compared to the netherlands, where it is ridiculously expensive) but can you imagine the weird names wealthy people could come up with? or mc donalds could name a T stop after itself? hmmmmpf, i think its not a good idea; we would have to replace our shower curtain that has a map of the subway system each time someone buys a new T stop!

i think they should start smaller; why not selling seats on the T? then you are guaranteed to always have a seat! the bigger the seat, the more you paid... ;) and ofcourse, you can customize your seat, as above. that just must have been a pilot experiment. it worked, nobody sat on them!

Living here...

.... means you live in quite an ugly building!! but actually the next sign said; you'd be home by now... this is next to the green line station science park, next to the museum of science, in boston. we drove past it when tim picked me up from work. the amount of rent we pay for our apartment is far too high, so sometimes we are wondering whether we should find a cheaper place when our lease ends (here you sign a lease for a year or even longer; if you want to rent per month, the rent is even higher. our lease is even 1,5 years, in exchange for living rent-free the first 3 months). we do not even live in boston, but in melrose. however,... the alternative would be the above, for example... would it be cheaper? probably not. and no washer/dryer in the apartment. perhaps no underground parking, pool and 24hr gym.... ah well... we still have a little while to decide as to what to do... :)

today was a rainy day. and not warm. we planned to go shopping tomorrow because of the weather, but i discovered today that everything will beclosed since its easter! so instead we went this evening to the outlet center in wrentham, where they have an enormous amount of shops.. we passed them all... pfff.. but relatively speaking, we didnt buy much!

happy easter! now we have to come up with another plan for tomorrow....

Observing people

this was last week in the green line. the girl in pink was sketching fellow passengers, without trying to hide it in any way. i therefore felt more free to take a picture of her in return.... :) 

my post about the subway legs got posted on a boston news site with quite a bit more readers than i generally have (it actually happened once before with this post). flattering... but.. suddenly i worried.. did i write something that i shouldnt have? is it ok, even though i didnt ask those girls? normally, they would maybe be seen by maximal 50-100 people, now it suddenly were 2000.... does that make a difference?

and then someone posted a comment on that site "good thing he took the picture in the station as opposed to the train, there would be tweets out demanding his arrest!" (the MBTA here has a twitter site where riders can post for example pictures of people behaving indecently in the T; this has helped arresting some people already). and that did make me wonder.... i know you are allowed to take pictures of strangers. but when they are dressed like that, does it make a difference? does it make a difference that i am a she, would it have been less OK had i been a guy? what if they had worn jeans? what does it say about our society? why is there a difference in the first place, is there a difference, since they were "dressed like that"? and what does that mean, "dressed like that?" didnt they themselves choose to be dressed like that? and am i judging them, just by picturing them? and... so on and so on.. then, even... could i be arrested? :) how to explain? ah well... i have this blog, you know, and i like to take pictures of strangers... 

hmm..., i am just an observer, and try to capture what i find fascinating/typical or otherwise interesting.... be it women in short skirts or ice on a fence.... :)

Subway romance

this picture is crooked. nevertheless.... i liked it. this is an advertisement from a bank, and currently many subways have such big green shouts on the ground. i like this one most (or rather, the other ones are just boring texts, this one you can still take in a funny way; and yup, i did wait a little for this MBTA worker to look down. although on his phone... :)

apparently they did a craigslist study, and found that Park Street, where the red and green line get together (and to which you can walk from the orange line, undergrounds), is the most romantic T stop in Boston. hahahahahaha! how did they determine that? they studied the "missed connections" posts on craigslist, and park street came up most... how scientific! no really, they even have an abbreviation for it; the TRIST index (Train Romance Index Score Total), and they did some real calculations, taking into account the number of average daily users of the particular stop divided (or multiplied, i forgot.. :D) by the number of missed connections on craigslist... 

so, to sum it all up: in Boston, Park Street is the most likely place to find a mate. (above is at harvard square; is he checking the missed connections-section? this stop is on third place by means of TRIST score)

ah, but actually i do not agree with that! its the most likely place to find someone of interest that you then let go, and then have to find back again by means of craigslist... pfew... how complicated...!

(oh, btw... i read today also that transit officers are more often checking whether you paid your fare, so... when seeing your "mate", dont just jump after her/him into the train; pay first!!)

North station

at north station i change from the orange line to the slow green line. in fact i can also stay in the orange line to Ruggles, but then i have to either catch a bus or walk 20 minutes. the buses here dont keep their schedule very well, and thus i almost always take the green line, however slow.... :) besides, I prefer north station over Ruggles. and usually tim is already there waiting for me..
what i notice here, is that people do not like to sit next to me. whenever there are free seats available, people next to me move away. the first 3 months i thought there was something specifically wrong with me. so then it is good again to have american colleagues... :) apparently many americans have "problem with personal space" and thus keep as much distance from strangers as possible (unless the train is really really full; then they just push themselves in, as everywhere else). pfew. that was good to hear... :) i also asked if i am expected to do the same when sitting next to someone and another free spot becomes available, but they said i am not.. pfew again... (at first i though i should have listened to the advice in my "orientation" handbook, namely "do not use any perfume, as americans are oversensitive to that". ah well, maybe it is me after all... :S

Prudential center

prudential, as seen from the first (or last) stop of the green line, lechmere. actually only yesterday (after already almost 3 months!) i noticed that you can nicely see it from there. but thats most likely because im always reading, except yesterday, when i had forgotten my book!

Lechmere station

today was the last day we had to take the bus to and from Lechmere. i spent quite some hours already waiting for the bus there.... but tomorrow we move!!
left work early today and did some packing already... so much stuff collected in so few months! amazing... and tomorrow will be hot... :) a good workout.

Green line

this is the tram, the Green Line, i have to take to get to the lab (to get there, we first have to take the bus, and thats the problem; it doesnt run very frequently). it is very old, and very very noisy. and... very slow. the reason it is so slow is because it is mostly not underground, and it is the very first tram in the world, or so they claim....it takes almost 30 minutes to get to the Longwood-stop, sometimes longer, depending on the traffic. good thing is, i get on at the very beginning, so i can always sit. then later it gets very crowded, and when i get to Longwood, it is almost empty again. also very frustrating is that often trams come by, but do not stop, or that just a few stops before the last, it suddenly is taken out of service, and i have to transfer to another tram. nice thing: i have read already several books since we are here.....