On the Apocalypse

The obvious apocalypse to talk about - this year - is the Mayan blahblahblahblah. I've seen that terrible movie "2012" (my excuse was a 10 hour transatlantic flight), and a dozen other natural disaster movies, and there's actually a certain thrill in seeing national monuments get squished or exploded or vaporized or flooded. They're action movies, they don't want you to seriously contemplate your family dying or the earth being destroyed. Likewise, zombie movies are distant and gory and quite fun.

I'm currently reading Stephen King's The Stand (1320 pages long, according to my Kindle) which contemplates a government-sponsored disease that accidentally wipes out 99.5% (ish) of humanity. Knowing King, it's going to turn extremely paranormal, but so far it's a normal apocalypse story.

Except, other visions of the apocalypse are more final than a disease. Everything is blown up, everybody dies. Or the hero's family pull through and rebuild. A disease is random, inescapable, but significantly, it leaves people behind. One person per town. A handful per city.
And the bodies don't disappear in a fireball. They decay. They stink. They fill the houses, the cars.

It's a typically violent and nasty story, where skulls are egg-shells, brains splatter like oatmeal and someone catches their guts in their hands. Reading it, though, I am reminded of a BBC drama series from 2008 called Survivors. (Which is a remake of a series from the 70s). Survivors is the same story of a disease that wipes out millions with terrifying suddenness, leaving a few behind.

Except to me, anyway, it's disturbingly normal and familiar. King's novel is epic and brutal and totally American. The distances are huge, guns are wreaking havoc everywhere. Survivors is disturbingly close and real. There's no shots of Vegas exploding.

I lay awake for so many nights when I watched those six episodes. I tortured my mind by imagining the discovery of my family. The empty expressions - or worse, pained ones - and the flies and the stench. Then burying them in the family garden, under the lawn with the child's football net.

We enjoy extravagant destruction, but desolation is something else. The same houses, the same streets hideously and permanently changed, and yet the world keeps turning. It keeps me up at night.

The Woman in Black

I went to see The Woman in Black while in Toronto, which is now the highest-grossing UK horror film ever, and I have to admit: it was scary. There was plenty of screaming during the showing, followed by delighted laughter. Cinema is all about horror movies, and The Woman in Black is a fun experience, and part of it is the unbearable, terrifying tension.

We sat near the front of the room, and as the movie started, I could hear lively muzak piped in from the lobby - to save the atmosphere of the film I went and shut the open door (normal practice, don't you think?) even if it made me look weird.

I had been looking forward to the movie ever since this spine-chilling teaser trailer:

**SPOILER ALERT** (Scroll past if desired)

I have read the original novel, and seen the long-running stage play, and in comparison the movie is totally ridiculous.
For a start, the nine hostile and unfortunate villagers are heavily exaggerated in comparison to the lively, quite friendly - and much larger - market town in the novel.
The history of the ghost - the Woman's young son is sucked into a mud swamp in a carriage and she goes mad and dies of a 'broken heart' - is pretty overstated.
I could not believe my eyes when they used a motorcar to drag the carriage from out of the causeway, find the decomposing body of the boy, and place him in the house to 'reunite' him with the ghost and stop the hauntings.

Needless to say, it fails, but the original sad and understated, creepy story is somewhat flogged to death.


**SPOILERS END**

Still, if you don't know the story and just want a well-shot and scary horror movie, go see it. Personally, I think reading the short novel leaves a more lasting chill than the movie, despite the bloody good "jumps."

Finally, today I treated myself to an American approximation of the classic British dish, beans on toast. The beans tasted kinda sweet which was disappointing, but it suited my craving just about.
I got a very strange look from a person on the next table. They were clearly just jealous.

Spring Already?

5 months on, I'll have to give a hasty catch-up of what's happened since October. Halloween I was up in New Hampshire (crossed another State off my mental list) and there was a crazy amount of snow for late October. Sadly, I have no pictures.

After that, winter has been really mild for New England- barely two more snowfalls. I'm glad though, it still seemed freezing to me!

I spent my first ever Thanksgiving in Boston with a uni friend and some of her German exchange friends from up-state NY. We had a fabulous Thanksgiving meal at Legal Sea Foods, but during the day eeeeveeerryyything was shut.

We did wander round the city's Freedom Trail, (museums all closed, of course) and saw this 17th century graveyard with weird winged-skull motifs.

Moving on, I got through finals unscathed, and just before I headed home for Christmas, I met the same friend, plus another shorter English friend, in New York city! Here we are shopping on 5th Avenue, near the obnoxious Apple cube.

We stayed on the upper east side in a really nice area, using www.airbnb.com.

I used the same website to find a room in Boston, and ordinary people become hosts by putting up their apartments, houses, rooms and boats for travellers. Go check it out next time you need a hotel! It's way cheaper.

Since Christmas - well, I came back in mid-January and I've been going to class and willing Spring to arrive. Tomorrow is forecast to be 17C/63F so things are looking up!

I spent last weekend in Toronto, visiting a sister, and as nice as the city is, it was bloody freezing. I enjoyed seeing my lovely older sister though. 

In just a few more weeks the semester will end, and I'm looking forward to being back on English soil. First though, I'm going on further travels with the two Brits mentioned above, and I know it will be incredible.

Rhode Island & Cambridge (Cambridge Mass, that is)

Just reached the end of Fall Break, basically a 4 day weekend. (Columbus Day + 1 day off) Plan was to take it easy and catch up on all that work, but things were more interesting than that. First trip was to Rhode Island for a big art/craft/antiques festival.

There was mostly the kind of stuff you look at but probably wouldn't buy. Lots of knitted hats - not that they were needed, it was insanely hot for October. And, I got to tick off another US State. Just need to pop up to New Hampshire and Maine now!

I just spent two days in very-nearly-Boston, visited Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's a lovely place, I haven't got any photos of it because all of it just looks so nice. Old brick buildings, green spaces, cute cafes, very pedestrian friendly. I did get this photo of the river with Boston on the other side:

Walking round Cambridge gave me hope that I could live abroad after all. So far, I feel like England is the only place where I could live for the long-term. But maybe I just need to find the right city.

While I was walking round the area with all the MIT buildings, there was a small memorial service for Steve Jobs. There was a plaque on the ground - put there a month ago - covered in tributes of flowers and, of course, apples.

So... Much... Work...

I've been in Massachusetts for a month, and my excuse for starting the blog now is that I didn't take any photos. Today I grabbed my camera and pointed it at everything that moved, so at last I have something to show from my adventure.

It was overwhelming when I arrived all those weeks ago, partly because the accommodation people weren't expecting me for 2 days. When I got the keys to my room, it looked like this:

 

 Now, with some help from Walmart and Target, it looks like this:

Yeah, I couldn't cope with a double room.

At this stage I've slipped naturally into a routine. It's a new place but nothing is surprising, thanks to growing up with American telly. The only thing that has unsettled me is making card purchases with a signature rather than a PIN.

Today - my first photo day - I woke up at 6am and made it to breakfast for the very first time. They had an entire table dedicated to a doughnut mountain, it was beautiful. I came across an associate at breakfast and we headed down Main St to pretty Elm Park.

It's already starting to look like autumn!

Before going in the park, we decided to climb Newton Hill. It's basically fenced by trees and very quickly, you feel like you've left the city behind.

We found some steps leading to nowhere

At the top of the mighty hill (walk took about 10 minutes) we found

A pole

 A tire swing

And Fall

After we considered Newton Hill to be thoroughly explored and conquered, we continued on to Elm Park. (My sources tell me that it was the first city park in America). It has a rather pretty lake

Some intriguing art

And some stoic waterfowl.

On a final note, I naively and perhaps arrogantly assumed I wouldn't have to work too hard this year. But the workload is terrifying. Essays are the main cause of my mental breakdowns, so let's hope I can last until December without crying in an exam or running away to Alaska.