Jaffe: July 2008

Welcome to Beantown

Turns out staying up until 2:30am having drinks with your friends isn't such a good idea when you have an 8am train to catch!

Anyway, I managed, and after arriving at Back Bay Station around noon (in spite of taking the Acela, which only went fast for about 10 minutes of the trip), it was just a short walk to the real estate agent to get my keys and then on to the new Chateau Jaffe.

Since I had a few days before my things arrived, I brought a pillow and a sleeping bag, and immediately took a nap on the floor... but not before I noticed the nice gift the management company left for me.

A very nice welcome.

Labels: Boston, moving

Countdown to Beantown, Part 4b: Squeezing in some last goodbyes

The night before my train to Boston, some of the people from the lab thought it would be nice to go for dinner and have some drinks. It was a relatively small group (there are only so many times you can say goodbye, so I was glad to keep it small), and we settled on Sake Hana, just a short walk from the lab. It was a beautiful evening, and Sake Hana had seats close to the open windows in the front of the restaurant for us to enjoy some sushi and drinks.

After dinner, we decided to go to the yard in the back of the apartment complex that I've lived in for the last two years. We had plenty of alcohol left over from previous Hall lab 'events', so we grabbed the gin and sake and made our way out to the back to enjoy the rest of the evening.

No need to go into a lot of details, but it's worth mentioning that the evening ended with a slice of pizza with Sean at Pizza Park (not really worth putting a link here) at about 2:30am. A perfect New York moment to end my time in New York City.

Labels: New York

Countdown to Beantown, Part 4a: Squeezing in some last goodbyes

It's clear I have a lot of catching up to do with a three-week disappearing act. I'll start with my final couple of days living in New York.

Not knowing what the Chinatown situation is like in Boston, one of my last dinners in New York was with Songhai and Hang, two friends who moved to New York a little bit before I did two years ago. Songhai was starting his lab (temporarily on our floor, and then upstairs in the same building) and Hang was doing a postdoc at Rockefeller. Both of them learned about my adventurous eating spirit after we went to Grand Sichuan a while back and I ate everything they ordered (including a baby luffa). So two nights before I left we went back to the Grand Sichuan. As has been customary since my days of eating out with Yihong, I left the ordering to the pros. Eat now, ask later...

The highlights of the evening were:

Sliced Lotus Root
Husband and Wife Lung
Salivating Chicken