Sleep is for chelonians

Rise of the Farming Machines

Here's another guest post from Dad to keep my innumerable readership entertained while I settle back into my Boston life...

Brussels, June 18th. Today, thousands of tractors of all color and shapes converged to Brussels, capital of Europe. They came from Portugal, Hungary, Germany, Poland and all corners of the European Union, dashing (dashing, really? tractors?) through the highways, wreaking havoc on the daily commute. They are mostly desperate milk producers hit by the drop in sell price they get for their product. They lose money on every liter of the white stuff they sell. Consumers haven't seen anything from the price drop so someone is pocketing the change! Nobody understands it because quotas haven't even been lifted: it is a sheer drop in consumption. Today the demonstrations were peaceful but tonight many of the German fellows planned to stay in the city! Hundreds of tractors are squatting a very large park next to the EC institutions around the Schuman plaza. It was an eerie sight: big sturdy guys in work overalls and heavy boots, truly redneck types with big hands, tanned faces unshaven for a couple of days, young and older men, relatively few women, all huddled in groups around camp fires in the shadow of their big machines. Definitely not the usual crowd of eurocrats generally seen around here!

America: where sizes really matter, Part 1

Part 1 of a three-part series by January visitor Mom (with comments by me in brackets)

Small is tall, right?

At least when you order a "small" coffee in any of the Starbucks shops in the US...

You say "one small Americano" and the waitress immediately signals her colleague "one tall Americano". OK, you're just off the plane and think your hearing is still impaired from landing or you're dumb tired  from the trip?

Nope, no misunderstanding here, just that strange Starbucks logic where small is "tall", medium is "grande" and large is ... "venti". [The largest size, yet the only one that doesn't actually mean "large"!]

When you know that "venti" stands for 20 in Italian, you realize "one venti Americano" will be 20 ounces (i.e. almost 600 ml) of coffee served. Your daily allowance in one single cup?!

The knife (or "The one where my Mom almost got arrested")

Hello campers! I know, I know, I'm neglecting this blog terribly. What can I say, I toil night and day for the betterment of humanity... or, possibly, to satisfy my unseemly obsession with Bacillus cereus plasmids.

So, pending another great installment of The Mad Adventures of Gus the Mighty Chinchilla (since that's what seems to be the most popular subject among my modest readership), here's another guest post by Claude (aka Dad) narrating the parental units' misadventures on their way home to the Old World. A cautionary tale it is indeed.

Editor's notes in square brackets.

--

Traveling by air these days can become tricky: ignore the rules at your own peril!

If you go hiking, chances are you have packed a kind of knife with you and probably stuffed it in your rucksack. Not that you need a weapon but to cut a piece of bread, spread butter and cut your cheese or salami, you'll need some cutting implement. [though not everyone chooses to take along a folding Opinel knife with blade stopper - the legal equivalent of a switchblade knife]

The problem starts when you forgot it and bravely show up at the airport, unknowingly carrying with you a dangerous terrorist weapon!

That's exactly what happened to us on our way back from the land of Homeland Security. Well, except that the Boston branch wasn't up to scratch and let us pass through [with such a knife] on our flight to London. It would be ill advised to blame them but after all, isn't it from Boston that some crazy guys boarded with box-cutters 8 years ago on ill-fated flights?

Security screening at London Heathrow is no laughing matter and they use the latest gizmo available. Very quickly you end up on the side with a highly assertive security officer asking you about some object she could hurt herself while emptying your rucksack... "Bingo!" (they must earn a bonus on true positive...). From then on you feel like a piece of shit, they call the police, inform you that it is illegal to carry a [switchblade] knife and that  you most likely will be arrested! Your connecting flight? Don't even think about it!

After you've had plenty of time to melt into a pool of embarrassed liquid, the cops arrive: 2 m tall, 200 pounds of flack jacket, handcuffs, big gun and all the expected paraphernalia!  Very professionally (I must confess), they assess the situation and in a glimpse decide that you are no real threat to international air travel: "Well madam, next time bring some fine Belgian chocolate instead! You came from Boston, aaaah, we are not surprised...!"

By now, a bit relieved, you realize that your much wanted flight home [after a previous transatlantic flight] has departed 5 min ago, you feel miserable and your are left with 3 hours to kill while waiting for the next flight.

Morality: eat sliced cheese & salami!

Land of contrasts

Guest post by Claude (aka Dad) with editor’s comments in square brackets.

I had a lot of expectations, setting foot again in the land of the free & home of the brave. After years of America-bashing during the Bush dark age, but wary of the economic crisis which we do, right or wrong, blame on the "Americans", to see the real people, to be in Massachusetts again after years of being away was really refreshing.

Of course now Obama is there and as much as Americans can rightfully be proud of themselves, we Europeans are pondering how it will impact us. Anyway, there is something in the air that is definitely worth breathing --especially coming from a place where political & policy change is soooOO intricately difficult (no, you can't!).

Among the contrasts, the large number of  "small jobs" in the service industry is always surprising. Be it in the T [public transport] in Boston, in shops, restaurants, parkings, all around... everywhere you see people in what are probably low paying jobs. Right or wrong, where we call home [Belgium], people are unemployed often for lack of proper education and either don't want to take jobs paid below the dole or such jobs don't exist in such numbers. Makes you wonder...

We did not see many big construction projects in housing or public works: is this the effect of the crisis? Still, Boston has been transfigured after the Central artery project: it is much nicer downtown now.

Motivation for eco savings: still so many huge locally made gas-guzzlers around on american highways but so many foreign brands of cars:  Prius everywhere (well, in Newton anyway...), VW, BMW, Saab, you name it, plus all the many small or luxury asian-made cars, it is scary for American manufacturers and the jobs behind those.

What about alternative power? Wind energy, solar panels on roofs? So few are visible [in contrast to the large amounts you can see in countries like China, that are often blamed by Western countries for being big polluters...]. Where are the power saving bulbs in the shops? Shelf-space is minimalistically reduced. You'd expect a technology boom there...

Another contrast: nature. After visiting an Audubon reservation in Pleasant Valley in the Berkshires where we saw beaver huts on the ponds in dream beaver-country, we realized during the way back on Mass Pike that most ponds along the pike were colonized by these marvelous animals that came back from the brink. This makes our little Belgian countryside so poor on biodiversity pale with envy.

What else impressed me? Seeing Old Sturbridge Village once again; an evening at the theater to see "Bad dates" (fun, must see) in Lenox, a (very) small town in Western Mass., and a last magical evening in Boston Symphony Hall with Yo-Yo Ma & the Silk Road experience ("Leyla and Majnun" must see absolutely!).

Last but not least, the lab at Harvard. We KNOW it is at the top, we see the very large campus but it [the level of excellence?] is highly immaterial: it's most surely in the people's brains [why thank you] and the way they collaborate [oh yeah] and are able to muster finances [by sweating blood]. Hard to see in real life labs full of clutter [hey, we think of it as “homely”...] but very real by all accounts! Funny isn't it?

I'll stop here, I hope no one will take it badly, it is only a biased but honest account of first hand travel feelings!

Rare red dino sighting

Guest post item from Mom:

After watching that picture of Braa in the first Bostonian snow, I could not resist sending you the picture of that very rare species of small red dino with missing front teeth found in Cedar street yard somewhere in 1987?

Nice winter pigmentation, although minus several million points for camouflage. Perhaps there is some adaptive value to the offspring having colors that the mommy dino can find easily.

I've got a photo of the same little dino where it has eschewed the bright red pigmentation in favor of something less flashy, possibly in an attempt to avoid being detected, hauled out of bed and sent off to dino school. This was probably taken in 1988, as deduced from the presence of yellow fluorescent panels on the unfinished Construx space station.  Ah, memories, memories.

 

Week-end de dégénérés à Boston (guest post)

Non, on a été un peu sage hein!

Ok I should write in English (Boston required it).

So the translation is (kind of) : I had a very good week-end in Boston learning more about my cousin's life. I have to say that it seems to be a very nice new life for her.

Wonderful city and good atmosphere. I love Boston. I have lot of fun here.

Then I say to all the family: don't worry Geraldine's going very well. She eats good food and drinks good things. She seems in good health (mental health and physical health). And the main point she enjoys herself. Especially at "work" (the wine is pretty nice here as she said).

Maud