1st Week of September

a lot happened in the first week of sept. chiara and madel left =/ and i started my first week in my new office. the school of public health is housed in a mansion looking building...


working on campus is way cooler than working in a lonely satellite office disconnected from the university for many reasons:
(1) younger people my age are around
(2) more people around in general
(3) i get to flash my university ID card whenever i want to:


(4) i get an office labeled with my name:


(5) very relaxed and chill environment
(6) ever so often there are socials in my department and in the school in general. during my first friday at work, we had a going away party for someone in my dept and celebrated with snack and beer! that's right, beer at work, on campus. so i drank it up with staff, doctoral students, my manager, and even professors!
(7) and the best of all is that i get the majority of my tuition paid for!

another plus side about living in boston is that you do not need a car at all to get around most places. destinations are either walkable or public transportationable. no need to worry about gas, traffic, parking, carjacking, etc.

side note: there are hella cal alumni living in boston. every week they get together at some bar near fenway to watch cal football games. we're everywhere!

From Fenway to Cannoli

(sunday of labor day weekend)

boston natives are extremely die hard sports fans, especially of the red sox. wear anything yankee or new york and you're bound to get jumped by a 5 year old bostonian. ok, that's an exaggeration, but yaddadamean. and it's almost impossible to score tix to the game unless you fork up hella $$, got connections, school field trip, or just get lucky with standby tix. kat and madel failed to get some, but it's ok. the green monster will be there next year.

here's the outside fenway park (not my pic):



here's a place to go nearby if you failed to score tix. it's called cask and flagon and apparently it's ranked by espn as the #2 baseball bar in the nation:




before going to the above locations, we went to church. here's the church just a minute walk from my apt:



and here's a view of boston from the church:



following lunch at cask and flagon was a trip to north end (little italy). you can't leave there without a stop at mike's pastries. mmmmmmm cannoli.

Settling In

the next couple of days involved going to ikea, target, etc. I even dropped by my work to get my ID, talk with my staff, and even to use the comp to look up and print out stuff. at this point, even though I was moving into my new place, it felt like I was starting a long vacation. Homesickness did not settle in yet.

that Friday of labor day weekend, Chiara came into town, yay! She came in late that night since it's a long way from Philly (~7 hours ride). We were gonna go out with Kat and her roommate, but it ended up being too late and us being too tired. The next morning we ate at a popular cafe in Jamaica Plains called Center St Cafe. it's one of those organicy, fresh, pricey cafes. and then we pretty much spent the rest of the day organizing and cleaning up my room until we had to drive to Providence to pick up Madel. my second visitor in 24 hours! yay!

we really didn't spend too much time in Providence. a lot of people were out and about cuz of their annual fire river thingy or whatever it's called. we headed back to Boston and ate in Chinatown at a place called Gourmet Dumpling House. not bad. the only weird thing was the sauce for their sesame chicken. it had the consistency of snot (yeah, not a very nice image). but it wasn't bad nor did it taste like snot.

we walked a bit around town to find a bar to hangout in. we didn't have much luck until we came across this place called Rattlesnake bar. not much colored folk in the crowd i'd say. the place also had a rooftop but for some reason, the bouncer didn't let us up. the reason is prolly cuz we're 'Asian.' cuz a moment later we see him let other people in. later on we ask why we couldn't go up there, and his reason was that there were too many people up there. BS. but he finally let us up there. as we were going up the stairs i swore i heard him say a phrase that ended in the word 'Asian.' some say Boston is pretty racist. fortunately, i have yet to experience any sort of racism or discrimination aside from this incident. Boston is actually a colorful city with so many ethnic groups. the only thing is that it just needs a lil bit more filipinos.

Start of a New Blog and Journey

yes folks, i've started a blog for the first time in my life. i think this would be a good time to do so.

it's day 11, but let's recap and go back to day 1. A LOT has happened since the first day i got here.

DAY 1 (WED. AUG 27)



arrived at around 330pm at Logan International. i had no idea how i was going to get to my place. taxi? shuttle? bus? subway? limo? went with the taxi + zipcar (which is the coolest thing btw) option. i got dropped a few blocks near the BU medical campus (where i work), which is also near kat's place, where a zipcar was located.

before i hopped into the car i called my landlord to give her a heads up. i told her i just came into town and that i am ready to move in. but she tells me that the room i am supposed to stay in is still occupied by the current tenant and is not leaving until the weekend. she told me before that i had the whole month of august free, so i can move in whenever. wtf?! i just got into boston and have no place to stay!

i then hopped into the zipcar and went to meet up with kat at some bar 10-15 minutes away. it is so crazy driving in boston! only driving for a few seconds, i had already driven the wrong way on a one way street. drivers here are crazy cuz they run red lights and don't wait for pedestrians to cross. in retaliation, pedestrians cross whenever and wherever they wish. you also have to often avoid double parkers cuz apparently it's pretty common to do so here.

after picking up kat, i dropped off my stuff at her place and head over to my place to see what the situation is with the current tenant. i ended up meeting my future roommate, Andrew, who tells me that the person who was staying in my future room had already moved out. WOO HOO! i actually have a place to stay! side note: Kat thinks that my roommate is attracted to me cuz of how he was friendly and enthusiastic towards me.

sooo afterwards we had on to target to buy a bunch of apartment crap. on the way back i ended up driving on the wrong side of the road AGAIN! it was night time and i SWEAR i did not see any 'do not enter signs' or signs saying to turn right. for dinner, kat and i decided to eat at this venezuelan restaurant called orinoco. pretty chill place i'd say. small, quaint, good food, and relatively cheap prices! i even had dominican beer.

alrite. that's enough for now. stay tuned for scenes of the next days in boston.