Friday, 9 Oct 2009 to Sunday, 11th Oct 2009
Well quite clearly I have been a bit remiss at keeping this blog up-to-date.
Friday we finished class and then had a lobster dinner. A lobster is a lot like a crayfish except it has a serious set of pincers as a means of defense. There were several large serving platers of cooked lobsters for our dinning pleasure. So armed with bibs and crackers we proceeded to sample this delicacy with appropriate amounts of gusto and of course a glass of vino blanc.In truth they taste a fair bit like crayfish as well but perhaps not as sweet, so trying to park any southern hemisphere bias and be objective I think I would prefer the humble cray.
However that is where Jasus Edwardsii or the humble New Zealand Crayfish or Rock Lobster, looses its competitive advantage to its northern hemisphere cousin Homarus Americanus, as you can buy a live nice size lobster for around US$8.
Saturday morning we had class. Our working group agreed to do the preparatory work for Monday on Saturday in order to give us Sunday free. Saturday night Neil, Philippe, Steve and I went out to a very nice Italian restaurant called Taranta www.tarantarist.com in the north end of Boston, where there are lots of Italian establishments. Afterwards I caught a few of the guys from class for a beer back at Harvard Square at John Harvard's Bar. Thank you to all the people who emailed or text me to say happy birthday. I felt like I actually had two birthdays as people were ringing me on the 11th NZ time and then I had my northern hemisphere birthday on Sunday which was the 11th here.
Sunday I went shopping at this massive outlet store. There were 170 plus shops all representing good brands, Polo Ralph Lauren, Timberland, Adidas, Columbia, Gap, Hugo Boss etc. The prices were amazing, and even better when I still tend to think that $1US = $0.50NZ (and at the moment it is $0.74). So although I needed nothing I bought quite a bit!! It was a very busy day there as it is a long weekend in Massachusetts, with a public holiday on Monday and sales everywhere.
I arrived back to where we had to pick up the bus about 30 minutes early and cleared a couple of messages off my iPhone, while sitting on a pack-type-bench. When I arrived back at Harvard I was dismayed to find I had no iPhone. Given my track record of loosing phones and the huge inconvenience of being without it (especially as a lot of the HBS course is delivered over the mobile nexus) I was very annoyed. I decide to ring the shopping complex, just in case it had been handed in. Miracles of miracles it they did indeed have my phone, but they closed at 6pm (it was about 3:30pm) and after that they handed it into "SECURITY" which from what they said was like a black hole that was impossible to extract anything from once it had been devoured. Neil was fantastic enough to agree to drive me to pick it up as he has a rental car based on campus. The shopping centre was approximately 60km away so the whole return trip took about 2 hours. A big thank you Neil, I was much relieved to have my phone back in my possession. We decided not to go out for dinner as a working group (the weekends participants are required to fend for themselves) on Sunday but instead stayed in our living area and had cheese, anti-pasta, fresh bread, crackers and good wine. We watched a movie and the evening was very social, a great way to spend my birthday with my new friends.
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