Cambridge so far...
Well, made it in one piece to Boston (or Cambridge, more specifically). The trip down was pretty smooth - James kindly drove the U-Haul most of the way (except for the border, which was shockingly easy to pass through, and Buffalo), the apartment is nice (I'm still getting lost with all the space compared to my baseline accommodations at the Beverly Hills). Everything is (finally!) set up and things look pretty nice (if I do say so myself). Being a "resident alien" is quite complicated here. I've already done my social security application, transferred my license, and applied for health coverage (yours for a mere $2300US per annum). Registering my car is turning out to be a nightmare though. Let me outline the process: manufacturer's letter confirming conformity with U.S. safety and environmental regulations, clear customs at the port, buy insurance (and no major insurance company sells auto coverage here, haven't quite figured out why yet although I think it has something to do with the lack of a limit in how much liability you can sue somebody for if you are in a collision), get a form from the insurance agent, acquire and process a tax waiver, apply for plates, get safety and emissions test inspection, and then... collapse with exhaustion, far too tired to drive such that having a car is really quite redundant. At any rate, I've done all I can for the time being and tomorrow I head into MIT to... well, start another whole round of paperwork. Good times!
The "Canada and the U.S. are two different countries????" award: to U-Haul. When you rent a truck, you get 1004 free kilometres included in the rental price. However, since the rental was being dropped off in the U.S., the computer printed this figure out in miles (624) - however, it being a Canadian computer, the unit on the distance limit was left in kilometres. So, naturally, when I drop off the truck, the Cambridge U-Haul people claim that I traveled 330-something more kilometres than I was allowed (the truck odometer was in kilometres, even though the truck was licensed in Arizona due to their having the laxest safety laws in North America). They can only go by the contract (annoying, but I get it) so I end up paying $0.40 (American, not Canadian which was the quoted rate) on the phantom extra distance. So I call the Hamilton office where I rented the truck and they are willing to refund me the amount I paid - only in Canadian funds, where as I paid the amount in American funds. Nice work U-Haul. I get the feeling that Mars probe which failed a couple years ago because somebody forgot to do a unit conversion was actually the work of undercover U-Haul spies at NASA. Anyway, it's now in "customer mediation", so we'll see what happens.
Anyway, enough venting. Governmental hoop-jumping aside, Cambridge/Boston is a pretty nice place - I have a great view of the Charles River right out my balcony, with a view of the almost-constant barrage of rowing teams heading down towards the port. MIT and Harvard apparently have a fierce rowing rivalry, so that might be fun to watch. So far, I've explored pretty much the whole city of Cambridge and most of the suburbs to the North as well as some of the older neighbourhoods of Boston (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and (of course) Fenway!). It's really easy to walk to a lot of places, the subway system is quite good, and driving is actually not too bad from my place, which is kind of at the gateway to a lot of major arteries (as long as you don't mind selling internal organs in order to afford the parking fees). However, the city design is about the furthest from a grid as one could imagine, with one-way streets, traffic circles, and converging squares the norm instead of the exception, which makes navigating around the city itself somewhat interesting. At Harvard Square (the worst offender I have found so far) there are three consecutive roundabouts in about 300m of roadway which appear to be totally random - no lane markers, no street names (only general signs giving you city destinations, generally located right at the split such that it is much much too late to do anything about it if you're wrong anyway). Fun fun fun. Can't wait to try that when it snows...
Still haven't gotten to the North End (of Paul Revere/American Revolution fame) or the Quincy Market, probably to-do this weekend. I've also started the church shopping and am at least intrigued enough with the first option (a 200-year old church downtown right on the Boston Common) to try it out again. There's another church about a two-minute walk from me which also looks interesting enough to take a look.
And on the more mundane observations. One of the strangest phenomena I've noticed here is that everybody is in love with organic foods. I had to drive a total of ten minutes before I found a store which would sell me a bag of Oreos, whereas a five minute walk takes me past two stores which would sell me low-fat, all-natural, grain-fed, free-range goat cheese and/or rare coffee beans grown by fair trade farmers owning wind farms. I just tonight tried "Organic French Fries" - apparently a "great source of vitamin C!" The even stranger part of the whole experience is that the parking lot to both these stores is half full of SUV's (motto for these people: "we want only natural things but are working as hard as possible to change this") Also: it is almost impossible to find frozen juices, for some unknown reason. Cambridge prides itself on being "funky", which in the commercial sense can effectively be translated "devoid of most products you would actually want and/or afford".
Stuff that is really cheap: milk ($2.29 a gallon, roughly the same size as the 4L bags)
Stuff that is inexplicably expensive: muffins, ground beef (cheapest lean ground beef I've found so far - $4.99/lb - and that's not even for free-roaming, BGH-free, grain fed! To think!)
Strangely Canadian item: apparently, there is a distinctly Canadian variety of bread - you can buy it here in white or whole wheat varieties. I have no clue what makes it Canadian (flour coated with maple syrup?) but I must try for patriotic reasons if nothing else.
Finally, the winner of the most amusing bumper sticker award (a take off of the classic "If you can read this, you're too close"): "If you can read this, you're not the President" (let's just say that if Cambridge was representative of the entire United States, the Republican party might as well just pack up and move somewhere far, far away)
Enough rambling for one day...
