Cheapest produce...

... in the city can be found at haymarket, an open-air fruit and vegetable market close to government center in boston. this picture is quite old by now, i took it on the very first day i had a "real" camera.. :)

we actually never go to haymarket. we were there a few times, and had some cheap stuff, some ok, some good, some really bad. its easier to just drive to our favorite supermarket (the market basket!) once a week and get everything there. the produce selection there is very good (i think there is a wider selection than in the netherlands. and many things are much cheaper (but not the mushrooms..)).

haymarket has been open since 1830. nowadays every friday and saturday...

One photo

actually... i took quite some more than one photo. either it turned out crooked, or a car came by, or tim was not posing the way i wanted.. 

now i see hes standing next to a patched up window or something...? hadnt seen that while taking the pics! ah, and another blossom tree. we drove around a little for those. but it was really cold (from 30 degrees C on thursday to 8 C or so today... ), and some rain too!

How cheesy!!

and its not even a mural... but this is all i got right now. im a little lazy! saw it and ignored it, in boston's chinatown, but then tim said; hey, hey! and well... i took the picture... :)

tomorrow is valentine's day. signs of that are everywhere; the office at our apartment complex asked all residents to pick up their delivered packages as they kept coming in, taking up all the space. shops have entire aisles just for chocolate and other red/heart-shaped candy (they started that beginning of january, some even earlier). and even tonight, at the supermarket one of the employees went crazy over the intercom; "we have roses here, a dozen, they are so cheap, cheaper than anywhere else! we men are in the doghouse, so be her hero, bring her roses. buy some nice chocolate. now do it, really, and here is the place to do it. do your shopping, and get the roses too. and some candy. and since its cheap... you dont even have to spend a lot of money. dont you want to get out of that doghouse... " it went on, and on and on...  (a youtube video about the doghouse (had never heard it before); its rather funny, but a bit long....). 

in the netherlands, valentine's day is not that big (pfew), but here it seems really important...

for some real murals, go here!

Missing action

december already.... pfff. and that means theme day! this month's theme is "action shot". this is (yet another) old picture of mine that i took in 2009, in berlin. here you see a piece of the berlin wall that is still standing (i forgot where exactly this is). we were with a small group, just released from some scientific conference, free to explore the city. we were walking towards the wall, and i knew what all of them would be doing; looking through the cracks.... although we had just passed the other site by bus, and had more or less seen that there was nothing there, no action at all!! so i quickly got my camera ready for this action shot of no action... and yes indeed, they walked to the wall, to stare through the cracks... :)

i remember that during holidays, we once went to see the berlin wall when it was still functioning to separate east from west germany. i was less than 8 years old, and i still remember very well walking there. seeing those guards in towers, asking my parents if what they had just told me was really, really true; that you could not cross that barrier, because if you did, those guards might shoot you. i could not understand that it was possible to be just walking around, in the sun, while being so close to something so scary. not scary as in books or television, but something that was obviously real.

now that wall is demolished, although you can buy little (original or not..) pieces of it (people make money off anything!), and larger pieces are scattered over the world, here you can see a list of where they are. there is a piece in new york, at 53rd street, between madison and 5th avenue, with a nice little seating area around it (although it was 2004 when i saw it for the first and last time.. :) ), and wikipedia just tells me that there are at least 2 more in new york...

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Turkey butcher

today all the scientist europeans around boston gathered (or so it seemed), prepared heavenly dishes and an entire turkey (like the real americans!) and enjoyed thanksgiving like the americans do.. :) i just enjoyed and had lots of food... jeejjjj (there was not one american present, that was kind of funny, being in the us of a)

thank you all!

Three miles!!

a few weeks ago i made myself the following promise; run 3 miles (5 km) without walking in between. and this had to be accomplished before i turn 30.... (iiieekkkk, 30!! 30!). now i know many people run easily a lot more than that.... but im not the sportive kind. i always liked swimming, but other than that, really nothing else. ok, i used to bike a lot, but for a dutch thats just a means of transportation. upon moving here, i stopped biking, as i think its too dangerous. ofcourse i feared not being able to bike properly anymore when going back to the netherlands, and thats what brought me to the gym of our apartment complex (plus i did not want to outgrow all those clothes i brought from home....) the past year or so i spent numerous miles on a stationary bike. my goodness, how boring! (but now i can bike better than ever..)

oh, but actually i wanted to write about running. well, at some point i decided to try running, and i hated it from the first try. but i just wanted to be able to do it!! so i continued... even got some real running shoes, but those turned out to be awful for my feet, and thus i remained with the sneakers above... and today, finally, i managed to run 3 miles in 29 minutes and 10 seconds, without stopping! jeeejj!!!! and im not yet 30... 

and im happy with that picture too! it might seem boring, but i could never have taken it without the photo-course i took. for this pic, i changed the ISO, the white balance and i choose a low aperture, while before all i ever did was changing the ISO a bit every now and then (if i thought about it). jeeeejjj! and also that before im 30, and my camera turns 1 (i got it last year for my bday from tim; hes also in the pic, can you find him?).

Wall street

of course, as real tourists we also went to wall street. as always guarded by a huge amount of policemen.... just to the left of this picture many people were posing with willing policemen in front of their NYPD car. since i saw planet of the apes i cannot watch the statue of george washington anymore without thinking about that movie... that statue is just up on the steps behind... but i was more interested in this homeless man that seemed to pose for me, while standing on this vent.... it wasnt very cold that moment, however...

oh my! and i was just reading up on my wikipedia pages... and yes, also wall street is originally derived from the dutch that named this street "de Waal straat"...

In Harlem

we also walked around in harlem; another part of new york named after a dutch city (click here to see the dutch haarlem). the neighborhoods in NY are all soooo different. it was fun to walk through a big street in harlem; at that moment the weather was nice and everyone was on the streets; only a little later it suddenly started raining quite a lot once again. 

we passed by the 2 guys above, and they asked where we were from, and where we would publish the pictures we were taking.... they then posed for me and said they hoped it would make them famous! :D

More leafs

realized yesterday i actually have quite a collection of tim and leafs... here another one. this is in the boston common, maybe 2 weeks ago? there was air being blown out of whatever he was standing on, so then i made him throw leafs in the air... see above.

ofcourse then someone asked whether he should take a picture of the 2 of us. and i declined. i always decline, without thinking whether this is maybe unfriendly! ah well, now with my new big fancy camera; dont want to give that to anyone else...!

Everything different

i changed labs. everything new, everything different, everything scary and everything exciting. the first few days/weeks in a new lab are always extremely tiring (at least to me). new faces, new customs, new techniques, new subject, new rules, finding out where everything is located. trying to do the first small experiments, trying to remember everything in the first go, feeling stupid when having to ask again where something is stored.... then there is also the paperwork part... my employee number stayed the same as i remain at the same university, but since its at another hospital, everything else has to be done again, checked again, filled out again. but mostly im excited and cant wait to be well into a project of myself, and where i am set up to work there as if i never did anything else before...!

above a picture of Don; he delivers all the labstuff at my old building. always friendly, always in a good mood, and when there were packages for "my" lab, he always let me sign for them.. :) his cart always piled up with boxes far too high; me often asking whether they wont fall off. but hey, sure not, as he said himself; "im good at what i do :D !!"

Cutest couple

now isnt that just the cutest couple you ever saw?!! (im not talking about the accidental selfportrait here in the window ;)) while walking on boylston (yup, yet another picture taken on my birthday), we passed by this cafe/restaurant and saw a bee and a bird having an early dinner/late lunch. they invited me to take pictures and so i gladly did! yes, everyone posed for me.. :) i needed tims explanation why they were dressed like that (as usual), although they gave us a card and said we should visit the website increaseyourchances. just had a look and apparently many bees and birds swarmed around boston last weekend, they were there to make people aware that 1 out of 8 couples have difficulty conceiving, and that often this is treatable. for another very nice pic of a bee; click here.
by the way, in dutch its flowers and bees ("bloemetjes en bijtjes"), which actually is more logic from a biological perspective, right?

Everyone poses

i actualy wanted to post another picture for today, but somehow blogger does not want me to... (recently i had this problem quite often, and i do not understand it) arrghhh! this pic is from saturday, in/at the boston common. the dog clearly was enjoying the sunshine, as well as posing for me. this was the most funny one, but unfortunately also the one that is not entirely sharp... :( practise practise!! it really did seem all my subjects were cooperating this weekend, most likely because of my new fancy camera!! :)

October 2

this is at oak grove, orange line, on october 2nd as you can see on the MBTA message board. and this lady was my first model with my new.... yesssss..... new camera!!!! every year on october 2nd since a while now, i become a year older, and yesterday it was that day again. tim didnt ask me what i wanted, and just gave me what i most desired...! great, i didnt have to choose and most likely i would have gone on saying for another year that a better camera... but now i have it! i now can write on the side of this blog.. "i shoot with a... blablabla" HAHAHAHA. but, i am very very happy. i do have to practise, because it is quite different (and more heavy). surely i forgot to remove the lens cap several times yesterday, for one thing.. but luckily the manual really really starts from the beginning; they warn you to take some test shots before going for the real thing.

ofcourse there is still my fear of photographing people, although i like that most. but this lady most likely was hired by tim or so. she was dressed very stylishly and she was walking very slowly, and from behind you wouldnt say she was at least 60 years old. so she stood there for me, turned around slowly, and i took pictures.... :)
i think tim also arranged the weather; it was amazing... october, and sooooo sunny and warm!!

American girls

they actually posed for me!!! :)
real american girls... on the 4th of july!

Photographing people

what i like most, is to take pictures of people. people i dont know, especially. people who look funny, cute, weird, or in whatever way interesting to me. and there is my problem: i do not dare taking pictures of total strangers. i am often thinking too much about it, and then the moment i wanted to capture is gone again... while in fact they most likely would not even have noticed me taking a picture. sometimes i am trying to hide that i am taking a picture, but ofcourse those always turn out crappy. asking is not an option; i surely do not want them to pose.
but here i was in front of the apple store. i was staring at those people for quite some time, taking pictures, and nobody who noticed.. all too busy with those fancy ipads... :)
ah, and there is no hand sanitizer at the entrance of the apple store. i do think this is one of the places that actually could use it. all those different people touching the same fancy apple-products... quite disgusting if you think about it!

Man Fish

a colleague of tim went with us to the beach in Newburyport, an hour from Boston or so. that was nice! there was heavy fog and it looked real pretty on the ocean. but i did not manage to take good pictures of that.. :( saw a lot of fishermen. i asked this man whether i could take his picture, and as you see i could. they told us the fish was meant for the BBQ later that evening.
they say that dog owners look like their dog. but can fishermen look like their fish?