UNA VUELTA INTENSA

I wanted to write this story in the native language of its own. This quest started on February and ends in May 2012 (almost two months late of what was considered at the beginning). As a part of my thesis project, Bea -my boss in Chile- sent me to Boston (MA, East coast), for a internship at the PolzLab, in the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT). MIT, for the sciences of microbiology, is the roof of technology in the world; the latest things for molecular biology are being invented here. 

Massachussets is at the right-up side of the map-flag, the small horn coming out from the second red strip.

Across the Charles river you can see MIT. The great dome at the right of the Harvard bridge (photo taken from Prudential tower, the highest in Boston).

Anyway, Dr. Polz arranged me a residence with Peter McNamara in Dorchester, a suburban neighborhood at southern Boston. Peter Mcnamara was a 60 years old man who lived alone with three small dogs, one of them a rat-like egyptian dog with no hair called Lucy, and rented the empty rooms from his house to internship male students. As Boston is one of the poles of development and inventions in USA, allocating three of the 20 most important Universities in the world (Harvard, Berkeley and MIT), and a student population of over 350.000, the business for room renters was pretty good. There was a german guy living in that house too, Timo, who was really nice and drank a lot of beers (I mean A LOT of beers).

 

Psico-Peter and Timo reeeeally happy 

MIT was a cool place, although everyone was always really bussy and noone was intersted in making new friends. I had to improve my hermit lifestyle out to it's best, and it was not that bad. I managed to get all my data for my PhD, which is quite nice because now I can take it easy here in Barcelona... jejeje.

Anyway, I got out a lot. I bought myself a nice bike and went all over the state looking for cool places. Besides, I finally got a camera as I wanted it, so I had a lot of fun learning new and cool stuf.

I made this photo with high dinamic range imaging. Cool isn't it?  I shot this from Harvard bridge, the building at the right is the Prudential tower.

I always had a strong opinion on USA. I never liked their synthetic lifestyle, and I still don't after experience it on my own. Their alimentary habits, their classism which is almost as huge as their racism, and the bubble in which they live in is unbearable. I had to answer (with a lot of sarcasm of course), if the dessert in Chile was the Sahara dessert, and someone asked me what language do we speak in Chile. Things like that makes me wonder how come this guys got to be the smartest in the world (according to the ranks). Can't we humans do any better? Most of the people I talked with, showed a small smile (sometimes not that small) when talking about the economic depression here in Europe, as this was an economic race: "they tried to do what we did, and didn't work out that well, jaja" is one of the comments I received. And I got this from a guy living in a country where being obese is "genetic", and being gay is a "lifestyle choice".

The next things I got to see, was Saint Patrick's day. It was unbelievable. Never saw so many military stuff, and the people so excited about it. It was like the world backwards. Celebrating war in a day of religious peace.

view of Boston 

  

These were the participants of the Saint Patrick's parade. Boston SWAT (left), Special Ops (right), and Marines (down)

 
 

 Boston Navy (left), and Boston Police department (center and right)

  

My favorite. A senate candidate. That is the face of a lie (left). And of course, patriotism in the form of the American Muscle car (right). I'm not sure if any other country in the world has an army vehicle painted with the flag. And deadly Marines (down), celebrating the killing of Bin Ladden, including tossing the body out of a flying plane in the middle of the ocean.

This was a strange moment... what does Star Wars has to do with anything?? well, at least kids had a good time.

   
 

 

 

"In loving memory for those brave men who gave their lives for freedom and justice during WWII". Someone though important to have a commemoration for soldiers of WWII in Saint Patrick's day.

Someone also thought important to have a commemoration for the veterans from the wars of Vietnam and Afghanistan. This black guy on the left doesn't know that black guys are the first getting killed in every war in history. The guy from the window must be thinking: "Enjoy it while you can, you god damn nigger!"

Finally, another bizarre moment... The ghostbusters escorting Miss Boston.

  

Finally, two hours late and obviously diminished, the Occupy Boston movement, which has been active since  november last year in Harvard Square, just in front of Harvard Medical School. The media managed to keep this movement silented, noone knows that post grades, medics, nurses and several scientists are revealing against the power of stupidity in this place. The Occupy movement in this parade was fun and really looked like other protests I've been in, but this one was escorted by A LOT of police men on foot (like the one in yellow), it was not allowed to join in or take pictures (in a parade???). It was strange.

From this and other experiences -like the presidential debates- I came out with these conclutions:

When an "american" polititian calls out for defending the family, they are really calling for the war against gays. When they call themselves "pro-life", they are saying pro-war and pro-death penalty. When they say "religious freedom", they are saying freedom to spread christianity. And when they're saying "defend the job creators", they are really calling to defend capitalism: "don't you go and bite the hand that feeds you son!". 

The City hall (left) and the twisted city (right). Scary eh?

Sofisticated fashion rats (I met one inside my box of kellog's... just the tail left outside)

Parsons, the building I was o working in

Find the Roy

The Dome entrance at MIT... quite outstanding!

The Strata Center... I don't really know what they do inside, but what I do know is that the architect was a real fan of Picasso

Some places I got to know in my bike:

Rhode Island

University of Comerce. Kind of a Dante's vision of earth... and demon creators.

The minute Man Railroad

The Neponset River

Downtown Boston

And at the end of my internship, I managed to run away (literally) from MIT to Cape Cod, a beautiful Coastal Natural Park south east from Boston.

Cape Cod Bay is at the bottom. The National Park is almost all that horn.

Cape Cod is a bay in which there are a two smal cities; Truro attached to the mainland, and Provincetown at the tip. I stayed in Provincetown, rented a bike, and traveled all around the horn in 4 days. The natural park was amazing, it had a mix of dunes and pine forest with swamps in the middle, and thousands of different birds. It also had beautiful beaches, but the water was still to cold to swim in it. I got to see whales and a couple dolphins while I stayed there, jumping around, inmune to the stupidity surrounding them. Absolutely marvelous and overwhelming.

At the beach, the cycle path went all over the place

Even inside the pine forest... I was expecting a gnome or something to come out from somewhere

Dunes of Cape Cod. So beautiful landscape, and noone to disturb the magic. Many birds came here to nest, so they recommended not to step to much in the beach.

Dunes lead to forests and swamps in and out, a very intereseting mix of ecosystems in which lizzards, birds and bike roads coexisted with friendness.

And lighthouses somewhere in between. The fishermen said that Cape Cod was reeeally deadly for ships because of the fluctuation of sand and tides, and islands were not always in the same place. In fact, there was a place called Great Island which was not an island any more, but a small comercial downtown. So lighthouses are still needed here. You can turn off that GPS captain!

Provincetown was a beautiful small town with two important characteristics: It was first founded by Portuguese fishermen in the late 1700, and later in the 70' it was colonized by gay people escaping intolerance from big cities. And of course, you can see both influences al over the town.

Guess what part of the town was this taken. There is a big clue there...

And here's the other part. I'm sure that Sanctorum (who was gaining popularity in that very same moment) would have scream out to heaven if he had seen this very nice american flag.

This was Provincetown's harbor. The fisherman actually talked in Portuguese between them, even though they are the fourth or fifth generation living here. Very very curious.

And gay people also had their own language. Here you can see the "bear meeting". Bears mean this nice guys in the picture, who share a couple things: they are big, they are hairy, and they are gay. And they were partying at Provincetown, making "leather events". Kind of scary if you are alone and have a beard. For this situation, they used to say "what happens in Provincetown, stays in Provincetown". Pretty much scary...

Provincetown with a nice outline of the pilgrim's monument (the tower), taken from the resort I was staying at (Sand castle I think it was called).

What it used to be the nameplate of the theatre, now in pieces because of a hurricane.

Provincetown's school. It actually looks smart.

And the Pilgrim's monument (up), the fucking endless stairs up (left), and the view of the bay from the top (of course, right).

I have strange feelings with this turn at Boston... I did not had a super great time, but I got cool stuff for my PhD, I confirmed that I don't like that country (although everyone was really nice to me, so I can't really say anything bad.. it's just the last feeling). And because of the initial delay of almost two months because of the bloody Visa, I could not have my vacations there, which could have made everything better. The thing is that I'm not dying for coming back. Nevertheless, with the turns of life, you never know...