Oh no! A PC among an army of Macs

Thursday, October 14, 2010
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Welcome back!

I'm wrapping it up for today, well, almost . Ennui doesn't drive me for sure...

Where was I... Oh yeah, yesterday's thoughts:
So, this guy was really nice and helpful, he showed me around the labs and introduced me to all faculty. They briefly presented the ongoing research projects and even showed me the famous vacuum chamber, Astrovac, capable of faithfully replicating outer space conditions, where they do all the testing for the microsatellites and some space probes. Coool :)

Today I did another tour, now at the Aerospace Computational Design lab, which is based more on theoretical research, just as the name suggests.

Yeha, the MIT.
Twas founded more than a century ago and it was a mechanical engineering school at the beginning. The big money came with World War II and especially the cold war, when defense expenses boasted the institution's budget and the emphasis strongly tilted towards high tech classified defense engineering like atomic research, aeroplanes, space thingies, non-newtonian and non-einsteinian physics .

Today it has the biggest research budget in the world and it has its own wind tunnel, nuclear reactor, weather station, a bunch of satellites, even portions of the ISS. Impressive huh?
Fortunately, the campus is not comparable to Romanian campuses. As you would expect, it's like huuuge park. (btw, the American movies don't scale up at all and don't overpresent things. Everything here is exactly like in the movies or series. Not joking) The Harvard and MIT campuses are coalesced and it is like in a fairytale. Nothing to stare at why are they the best. 

There are 250.000 students in Boston, which is not much, cosidering that Kolozsvár has 100.000+. MIT takes it's share from that with almost 10.000, Harvard with 20.000. Boston University and Northeastern are big fish in the pond with 30.000+ studs each. And there also the med schools and the arts academys.

There's something in the air in Cambridge, I dont' know . I've felt kind of the same thing in Oxford, UK. It is undescribable, but it's there. It is not uncommon to see glassy kids walking around while reading books or murmuring with their eyes shut.

(This morning I've seen the only good-looking girl on the sub, supposedly she was European :))

And what about the title? I knew that there are more Macs around in the States that back at home, but woow, waaait a minute... Literally everybody owns at least a Macbook Air and an Iphone 4, not even talking aout Ipads. Actually, I've seen extremely few handheld devices apart from Iphones. Strange, isn't it? I bet all of them are (East) Europeans. Wi-fi is everyewhere and that a good thing, somewhat demanded.

I did not really see people actually relaxing during the day. Even if the computer is in front of somebody, Matlab is open, not Fb. So they do take it seriously. Well, for 50k$ a year, they should indeed :) .

Cambridge lives up to the region's historical name, "New England". Boston only honors the first part, "New". Walking around Cambridge I got the feeling that I'm walking around Notting Hill, Kensington, Oxford or the Englih namesake of the city, the "original" Cambridge. Boston is more like New York. or Atlanta. or Charlotte. or Chicago. or Washington. or...America

Hamarosan két nemrég ide költözött diákkal találkozom, egyikük az MIT-n tanul MBA-t. Nagyon kiváncsi vagyok az eddigi benyomásaikra, véleménynükre, itteni meg egyáltalán amerikai tapasztalataikra.

Yeah, Boston's very similar to other cities of North America with a mashup of late 19th century faux-victorian and post-modern buildings. But, still, is very different. How can I say, somehow it's more civilized. People seem to be more educated inferring from their actions ,habtis and their behavior. They don't yell on the street. They don't smoke on street, actually they don't smoke at all . And...more to come tomorrow, when I will have completed the Freedom Trail around the city.

Stay tuned, bye!

Ja, a város elég drága, amerikai viszonylatban is, egy kávé ~2$, egy szendvics meg ~6$. A kajáról nincs nagyon mit írjak, mert konkrétan nincs mit enni. A világ bármely pontján standard és egyárú kaját felszolgáló életmentő Meki is hiányzik, csak Bostonban van, sok májlszokra. Ilyen szendvecskék, mert mindenféle saláta salátával van, de semmi normális, becsületes, pityókás-kolbászos-kenyeres-hagymás székely gulyás-utánzatra nem bukkantam. Leves 0. Kenyér 0. Hús csak műhús van, az pedig nincs ínyemre. Elég durva. Ma kajáltam valami Italian helyen egy laskát (tésztát), de otthon még börtönkantinban is jobb, másnaposan.

A T-n, $2.00 egy jegy, és ezzel a városaban bárhová elutazhatsz. És nagyon gyakran járnak a szerelvények (nem metrók, hanem valójában földalatti villamosok), sokszor közvetlen a megálló előtt kell bevárja a következő vonat az előtte levőt . Bár az utasok meglehetősen sokan vannak, még sincsen gyúródás, hisz nem ül fel a kolléga, ha látja, hogy a táskáját becsípné az ajtó, vagy az előtte levő testesebb, esetleg színes bőrű, utashoz kellene simuljon. Pedig otthon milyen jó amikor a mögöttünk levő az esernyőjét a bordánk közé szúrja, serényen kommentálva, hogy du-te ma si tu mai incolo, nu vezi ca intru, e gol tot autobuzul asta amarat. Vagy coborati, coborati?

Comments

2025-02-14

Comment code: Ask author if the code is blank