Why l Love New York (this trip)

I love New York. I always have a great time when I come home. My family and closest friends are here, and this is where I grew up.

Every time I become complacent with Boston, I manage to make a trip to NY and remind myself of what I'm missing here. It always makes it that much harder to leave again.

You can get around here 24 hours a day on public transportation that can take you almost anywhere you want to go in the 5 boroughs. You can get whatever kind of food you want anytime of the day. Anything and everything you'd ever want to buy, you can find here. The diversity of the types of people who live here are unparalleled. I could go on and on, but these are all general reasons I can cite with each trip I take here and ones that most people cite about why they love this place. Here are a couple specific examples of what makes New York the great place it is.

1) As we were driving home through Brooklyn yesterday, Lisa found a Russian radio station (87.7) that was playing a mix of Russian trance and Latino dance music. She also found two reggaeton stations. I don't even think 1/2 the people in Boston know what reggaeton is.

2) Lisa, my mom, and I were food shopping in the Chinatown in Brooklyn and saw several people selling fresh, cheap produce out of their vans that were illegally parked on the street. Each person appeared to just focus on two or three items, and there was no dearth of customers at each van. Boston's one Chinatown doesn't even have the open store fronts with fresh produce and fish on display for sale.

3) Everyone here has EZ-Pass, so traffic flows much more smoothly around toll junctions. In Massachusetts, most do not own the state's version of EZ-Pass, Fast Lane. Non-Fast -Laners almost always make the EZ-Pass lanes inaccessible because they either accidentally go there or there are so many of them that they back traffic up far enough so people with EZ-Pass can't get through.

I'm still only 1/2 way through my trip. I'm sure I'll have more little examples I can rattle off on the drive back to Boston tomorrow.

Cold

I think I'm getting used to the temperature always being below freezing. I remember when this cold spell first started, I would think it was cold when the temperature was in the upper 30s. After our trip to Montreal, where the temperature was, I think, between -4 and -22 degrees fahrenheit, Boston seemed balmy. Now, it's just seems to be a fact of life. I always just wear my long john pants under my regular pants, my warmest (ski) jacket, a ski mask that only has an opening for my eyes (worn when I ride my bike), double layered gloves, and leg warmers I've borrowed from Hillary. I even went running outside today, in even more layers than I usually wear since I wasn't sporting my ski jacket.

I hope my tolerance can last until winter is over. Not minding the cold should make winter pass more quickly. That and the fact that I barely have time to write this blog post, let alone spend leisure time where I'd have to be outside for too long. +1 for my crazy schedule. :)

What I Did During Intersemester Vacation

During what I thought would be a quiet break during which I could finally relax, read, paint and run, I ended up going to a burlesque show and visiting what some consider to be Canada's city of sin, Montreal.

The burlesque show came about after Lawrence, our neighbor/friend/Lawrence's lab mate Jesse, and I browsed the neighborhood for quiz nights on a Wednesday before settling for old reliable at The Druid. The 3 of us are usually helpless by ourselves at quiz night, but we managed to snatch second place, which garnered us the prize of a pair of tickets to a burlesque show hosted by Boink. Jesse wasn't interested in going, so Lawrence and I attended the burlesque show the next night. Sadly, the dancing and teasing by the performers were pretty tame. I expected fireworks shooting out of the women's nipples, or at least windmills. The host(ess) however was the most entertaining part. (S)he was a 6'4", big boned, African-American, sassy drag queen. Her antics for the night included having a frat boy kiss her ass to get on stage, and riding another frat boy's ass on stage, only to pull his wallet and cell phone from under her dress after he managed to wiggle away.

The next day, on a whim, Lawrence, Jesse, Hillary (his gf), and I escaped from a cold Boston to an even colder Montreal, where Jesse and Hillary attended university (not college... apparently when you say you attended "college" in Canada, it means you graduated their equivalent of community colllege. Who knew?) The city is lovely, even in the blistering cold. We were introduced to Quebecois bar food, poutine. Consisting of hot fries and gravy with melting cheese curds interspersed, this delicious and absolutely satisfying dish is every cardiologist's dream. We were given the insider's tour of Montreal bagels, coffee, and bars. We also walked around the old port and one of the outer islands that was hosting a winter carnival, but at 20 below zero celsius, we didn't last more than 5 minutes outside at a time. And everything in Montreal is so cheap because of currency conversion! As Lawrence put, it's like everything's 20% off all the time. We did not partake in any "Canadian Ballet", however, but rather had a pretty wholesome weekend, well relative to being in Montreal anyway.

And that's what I did during my 1.5 weeks of intersemester break. :)