Mission accomplished - go to flour

Pre-emptive update: This post (and the triumphant completion of a challenge) dates from before the superbowl, I think it must be 4th February from looking at the dates on the photos. I think I had plans to take some photos of the actual cafe, and not just the food, but I clearly just become transfixed by the cakes whenever I go in and forget. Better late with a post than never though, right? And yes, I'm sorry it's just more blurry pictures of food. I have plans to do stuff, not just eat stuff. And I've taken to hula hooping in my bedroom, perhaps that will minimise my donut podge?

I can formally tick one thing off my list of things to do in Boston (the list on the right hand side). Obviously it's one of the ones to do with eating.

I went to flour, which is a bakery on Mass Ave, a short walk away from where I live. I met my friend there on Saturday and we were really lucky that we didn't have to wait very long for some table space to open up. They are so busy on weekends! We chose flour because it was on a boston.com list of the best hot chocolates in Boston. The fiery hot chocolate is very delicious. Initially it tastes like normal hot chocolate, and then it's suddenly a little bit chili-y. So to ease the fire-y burn you take another sip of creamy hot chocolate...and so the cycle continues until you have numbed your mouth enough to be out of the infinite duckling loop and your hot chocolate is all gone.

Hot chocolate was boring in photos. Look! A cookie in the shape of a football!

Splurgey splurge

It was the Superbowl on Sunday (i.e. the day after we went to flour), and the New Englands Patriots were playing (Go Pats!) so they also had special oreo style cookies in the shape  of American footballs. Flour's oreo style cookies are also semi-famous on yelp. However, they are crunchier than actual oreos, so you inevitably end up with some buttercream filling splurging out of the cookie. Hard to eat in a ladylike manner. Fun though! In some ways it makes me wonder why Oreos don't have this problem.... The runaway frosting was in a variety of Patriots colours, i.e. red, white and blue, as well as the not very patriots-y pink. I think we seem to have had a red one.

As well as the fiery hot chocolate, flour's other big draw is the sticky buns. They are incredible. So sticky (look at all the stickiness on the plate!) and so buttery! They almost taste like croissants they are so buttery. Yum. Yum yum yum. I'm glad that I was sharing it with my friend though as they are incredibly rich. Subsequently I have eaten a sticky bun for dinner from flour (it's on my way home!) and although it is possible to eat all of one, it is not necessarily advisable if you are not very hungry. 

Noms

Flour runs bakery classes, and also has it's own cookbook, so there is no reason for me to keep going there... I could make a (probably vain) attempt to learn how to make their delicious treats. But going to flour is such a delicious treat that I don't want to give it up! 

Happenings in the Infinite Corridor - Laser in use!

It's 7pm, it's spring break and MIT is relatively quiet - the corridor is pretty empty. That means it's the perfect time to get some experimenting in - especially with LASERS!

Laser in use when light is flashing! Eep!

Actually, laser based experiments seem to happen pretty frequently - the light is often flashing. The main effect of spring break was to make me less embarrassed about taking photos.

The Shamrock Shake does not rock my world

I cut this a little fine, as I bought my one and only mint flavoured Shamrock Shake from McDonalds on their last day of sale at 10pm. Even though I (sensibly as it turns out) got a small I still said yes to whipped cream and a cherry because you have to jump in with both feet. Brave explorer etc. So I signed up for an astonishing 500 calories of milkshake. The calorie count was not the only astonishing thing. It really was THAT GREEN. No fancy filters here. Just more luminous, green, enormously processed food for St. Patrick's day. As an aside, so much "St. Patty's Day" stuff, not St. Paddy's.... why?

You see how the shake is kind of stripey, that's because the shake machine squirts green liquid and then white milkshake and then green and then milkshake and so on. I couldn't find a way of surreptitiously taking a photo, but fortunately the history of the shake is preserved in its layers - stratigraphy! The layers are kind of runny though, particularly the green liquid stuff (ug, it all sounds so unappetising - how did I drink ANY?!). I have to admit that I wasn't excited about trying the shake, even before I saw the squirty machine and the layers, and afterwards, well.....

Unsurprisingly, even after mixing the shake remains really quite green.

For some reason, this is still quite layered......

It tasted very green. I mean, it was kind of minty, but it was mainly GREEN. It even tasted kind of familiar, probably like some luminous foodstuff from my eighties childhood, before such bright colours were frowned upon. I drank an inch or so of the shamrock shake over the course of about 45 minutes and then gave up. I even had a jetlagged visitor who I attempted to palm the rest off onto. She agreed that it tasted green and managed about two slurps before saying it was just too sugary. This was a person that hadn't sleep properly for over 24 hours and badly needed energy. So instead of Shamrock shakes we ate Chipotle chips and some nutritious, very green, but not luminous at all (fortunately) guacamole.

Alarmed face! A least the milkshake nearly matches my cardigan?

Shamrock shakes are a seasonal St. Patrick's day McDonalds thing, which were available nationwide for the first time in 2012. I imagine they were always available in Boston though. Unusually, for a luminous minty foodstuff, I do not recommend them. Sorry. With any luck they won't cross the pond.

PS Here is the official McDonalds Shamrock Shake page - but hurry, it'll be gone soon! I don't think I'll miss it.

Beacon Hill. For the 1%. And Brave Explorers at the weekend.

The only time I stayed in Boston proper, I stayed at the John Jeffries House, which is a strange hotel. It used to be nurses' accommodation for MGH and now houses a combination of MIT and other Boston visitors and people who are staying there because it is right by the hospital. This means when you check in you have to answer a lot of medication and general health questions, particularly about ear, nose and throat complaints. However, I thoroughly recommend it, for several reasons:

1. They get the Weather channel

2. Free breakfast in the morning and free coffee all day.

3. It's right by the river (and not expensive by Boston/Cambridge standards)

4. It is on Charles Street, the fanciest of all the Boston streets, in the fanciest of all Boston neighbourhoods, Beacon Hill. Every dog looks expensive and all the signs that hang from shops are black and gold.

A few weeks ago I went for a mosey back to my old stomping ground. The weather was good, in stark contrast to earlier in the week, so I walked from where I live, over the Charles (pretty views) and along Charles Street to Boston Common. It was a good day. 

Charles Street has the business with my absolute favourite name in Boston.

Sorry about my finger being in the photo. I was on my way to meet a friend when I took this and keep forgetting to take another, better, one. 

Oh yes. BosTAN.

It is also has a most excellent cupcake shop - Curly cakes - which does delicious cupcakes in many forms. Most notably in Vegan and Gluten free forms on particular days of the week (Vegan on Thursday and Sunday, GF on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday from the looks of the sign below). They are many people-friendly cupcakes. 

Vegan chocolate mint cake is all gone! Snarfle snarfle. 

It also has Beacon Hill Chocolates, which I'm sure will sell delicious wares, but I like it because of this sign:

It's my new philosophy - "Chocolate is sunshine on a cloudy day". Mmmmm. This is particularly relevant to those of you in the UK, you made need to buy more chocolate.

When you've had a relaxing mosey along Charles Street, you can pop across the common and watch a film at the Boston Common Loews. It is a notable cinema because it has many, many, many screens, a giant popcorn box over the concessions stand and a place where you can dispense butter onto your own popcorn (in the US the question is not "sweet or salted?" with popcorn, but "buttered?"). So naturally I ended my walk down lovely, elegant Charles street with a saccharine film and an even more saccharine white cherry icee. 

Just say no. White cherry icees are much worse than a coke icee, and that was bad.

Maybe next time I will skip the icee, unless they have blue raspberry flavour. I love blue raspberry.

Happenings in the Infinite Corridor - a miscellany

Despite Pi day, this week has been a bit of a disappointment in terms of interesting happenings around MIT. The dome has gone back to being a normal colour and everything. A lot of the poster boards are being redone, so there are fewer unsanctioned posters for crazy stuff. So instead of one crazy story from the infinite corridor, this week I will show you all the weird little things that I have taken pictures of in the infinite corridor since I arrived that don't really warrant their own post. I'll try and do it so they go from the East side of campus to the west, finishing under the dome in lobby 7.

Proof that the infinite corridor is so-called by everyone at MIT, even sign makers.

Here is a helpful light to guide you down the infinite corridor. It was only there for a day, but I saw someone video-ing it as it flashed away, so perhaps it has been saved on the internet for posterity (the lights all flashed, to make the light look like it was moving away from me, down the corridor).

Miscellaneous painted posters from the class of 2008. There were a lot more than just these two, but I couldn't stop at every poster board in the corridor! Also note the nerdily named Valentine's dating site, nChoosetwo.com - oh MIT, you are so MIT-ish.

The cute little beaver in the collage below is an app competition mascot. The little sign for the Green Room reads "The prime location for MIT students to take a break or nap while travelling down the infinite corridor". I have never seen anyone napping in the Green room, but I did once see a girl with a totally fantastic unicorn hat. And not forgetting the robot overlord poster under the dome...

Finally, more pictures of the dome being purple, including a purple ribbon last Friday.

 I still find the robot overlords sign funny. I'm not sure anything will be as good a "happening" as that.

Pi Day ramblings (mostly about donuts, as always)

Pi day at MIT was a bit of a disappointment. I did not find any pie. I think I kept missing it. 314 pies were given away to students in Killian Court around lunchtime. There was a dorm dessert competition too. Maybe next year I will have a more pie filled Pi day.

In lieu of pie, here is a picture of my breakfast at the Friendly Toast in Kendall Square on Saturday. It's circular, so I feel that gets me Pi day points.

The Friendly Toast has a friendly breakfast

It's two yummy m&m pancakes! The m&ms go all melty and delicious. Mmmmmmmm.

The Friendly Toast was pretty great, and I had pancake leftovers for supper on Sunday! Win!

In other dessert news (I am treating Pi day a lot more like pie day), I can also report that the donuts are more rainbow at the airport than in my regular haunts, and that there is a giant Dunkin' coffee cup in terminal C at Logan Airport. Here is photographic proof.

Note rainbow jimmies on the airport Boston Kreme donut. Partial brave explorer for scale on cup. 

Mmmm...sprinkles. I mean jimmies.

Update: Now (15th March) I see Pi Day activity posters EVERYWHERE! 

When the weather is bad, you could miss Boston

The weather here has been changeable. Last week, on Wednesday it snowed horrible wet snow that didn't settle all day. It was nasty wet weather that inspired me to get my broken wellies replaced. Then at the weekend there were patches of nice sunshine, so towards the end of the day I went for a wander into Boston and this took me over the Longfellow bridge (or the salt 'n' pepper bridge as I prefer to call it). The Longfellow bridge is one of my favourite bridges, because the T goes over it, and you get this great view of downtown Boston which is particularly beautiful (and hard to photograph) at night.

Now on the snowy day I had walked from MIT to the bridge to see if I could see Boston through the snow. So now I have a bunch of photos comparing the views of Boston on a snowy Wednesday and a sunny Sunday - behold!

This is so close to being exactly the same photo on different days - I think just the angle is different. I even have my ear buds in the wrong ear in both photos, because apparently I can't tell my right from left. Or I just don't care.

Note how I am much happier when not being pelted be wet snow that refuses to settle on anything but my coat.

It really was a much nicer day on Sunday (right). You can see buildings in the background because there isn't terrible wet snow. Also the street lamps are more vertical. They are like flowers that have been able to grow towards the light.

The red line train is going across the bridge in the left hand photo above. The passengers will not have had a very good view of Boston on that particular day.

Here is a view of a tall building in downtown Boston. The right hand one is just as the sun is beginning to set, and has gone behind a cloud, so maybe taken around 4:30 in the afternoon. The left hand photo is taken at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, in my lunch break. The visibility does not reflect the time of day very well.

Note shiny, shiny dome of the State building is in the middle in the non-snow picture

The photo above appears to have been actually taken from the same spot (get me and my photo skillzzz). I love the way that the State building (the big gold dome) is nearly invisible on the snowy, sleety day. If I had taken non-snow photo a little earlier in the day, when the sun was higher and shining directly on the State building it would have been much more dazzling. It really does catch you attention!

To conclude, bad weather can affect visibility. 

This work was supported by Mat's old iPhone.

PS In the wikipedia article for the Longfellow bridge, did you notice how the river is frozen? The main river hasn't even got close to freezing this year. 

Happenings in the Infinite Corridor - Divided by a common language

Being in a different Cambridge can be confusing, but also reassuring. There are lots of very similar street names, with my personal favourite being Sidney Street, for obvious reasons. However, there are also common words, like "punt" which have completely different meanings in different Cambridges.

Here is punting in Cambridge, England.

Oh my goodness! We all look so YOUNG! Photos from the time of film.

Here is my understanding of punting in Cambridge, MA. Or at least Cambridge, MIT.

Every day I'm facebooking.

Here is what the MIT admission blog's MIT-ese bit says about punting:

"punt (v.) - (1) To slack off, e.g. by checking Facebook, playing Rock Band, or blogging; often contrasted with tool (v.) (2) To skip something, e.g. a problem set or meeting ("I'm so hosed with 8.022, I'm going to have to punt this 7.013 pset..."); generally bad things happen to students who punt too often."

I didn't know that when I saw this sign in the infinite corridor though. So I was confused. Mainly confused about how you would punt in the traditional British Cambridge way in the Charles, as it is MASSIVE, particularly compared to the Cam.

Punt more and kick back - good advice

Then I found that the sign had some friends.
I became one of the annoying people in the infinite corridor that stops dead and causes near collisions. Let's pretend that's why all the photos are so blurry.

"Ignore alarms and cook on" = Maybe something about setting off fire alarms in dorms?
"Long nights and infinite corridors" = MIT in a nutshell?

I think that the posters had something to do with the engineering department, but my Googling has turned up nothing to that effect. Let me know if you have any more luck than I did.
My Googling did find this poster though, which I encourage you to click through to, because it is the best of all the MIT "Keep Calm" style posters.

St. Patrick's Day donuts

Good news everyone! The seasonal St. Patrick's donuts have appeared well before St. Patrick's Day, allowing me to have donuts last week! Yay! My particular favourite is the chocolate donut, with chocolate frosting and green sprinkles. The green sprinkles are mint flavoured, making it a chocolate mint donut! My ultimate donut surely! Actually, it isn't as tasty as the kreme filled, heart shaped donut - my one true donut love. 

You've got to eat your greens....

And just in case you think that the green donut is that green because of some kind of hipster instagram filter, allow me to show you a unmodified picture, with iced coffee for colour scale (you've got to have something for scale).

Have you seen Re-Animator? It's not far off being as bright as the day-glo re-animator fluid....

Luminous, eh? I feel I use the word luminous a lot in this country, particularly when talking about food. The other disturbing thing about the bright green donut is the fact it doesn't really have a flavour. The icing just tastes of sugar.

So I have obviously used up my seasonal donut allowance for March now. Sad face. However, I did learn something new in Dunkin' Donuts last week. Sprinkles here appear to also be known as "jimmies" (here is wikipedia proof!). I discovered this useful new word by eavesdropping on the man behind me in the queue asking for a donut with jimmies, and receiving one with sprinkles. New country = new language! Now I must find something with "jimmies" on, and try out the new word. Perhaps I do get to go to Dunkin' Donuts next week after all......

In other seasonal food news, McDonald's is doing a Shamrock Shake for March. It's very green and mint flavoured. A small one also has a staggering 540 calories. Don't worry. I'm on it. And I promise to go to the gym for an hour and a half afterwards. You can look forward to more brightly coloured photos of food in the future. Because I am the BRAVE EXPLORER! 

I'll adventure more soon - I promise.

Happenings in the Infinite Corridor (nearly!) - MIT turns purple

On my walk home this evening I noticed that lobby 7 seemed different.

There was no disembodied voice talking about MIT because the "Under the Dome" video screen was broken, but that was not it.

Instead the mood felt different.

Then I looked up....

The middle bit is kind of turquoise. I would totally keep the dome like this all the time. 

....the dome was purple!! 

And hard to photograph. I was not the only person repeatedly waving my phone above my head.

Then I left lobby 7 I saw that the symbol dude (or, more properly, Alchemist) was also pinky purple.

You can see the pinky purple ceiling of the dome through the entrance to MIT. I also particularly like the Pi themed graffiti on the Symbol Dude. Not that I am pro graffiti, but I like the fact that MIT graffiti is nerdy.

Unexpected. But just what I needed at the end of a long day arguing with compilers. 

Of course, people didn't turn MIT purple to cheer me up. I hope it is a statement for marriage equality, and will keep an eye on the Tech to confirm/deny my suspicions.
Update: It's actually been turned purple for the Relay for Life according to the Tech. The Tech also has a much better picture! You should click through and have a look-see.

This is one of the things I really like about MIT. There are these big shared spaces that get creatively decorated for a whole variety of reasons. Not only is it a sign of an engaged community, which considerately draws attention to the causes it is passionate about, but it always makes walking around campus an interesting experience.

Embiggened hipster (i.e. instagrammed) symbol dude.

Happenings in the Infinite Corridor - Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

MIT has this corridor which is known as the infinite corridor. It is very long.
I walk through it everyday on my way into work. I start out under the dome in lobby 7 (where I first saw a real life MIT hack). The infinite corridor and lobby 7 are the source of most of my little MIT stories. So I thought I'd collect all of the cool little things that I have seen in and around MIT into some kind of series. A lot of the time I'll put photos of stuff like this on facebook, so I'm sorry if you end up seeing the same photo twice, but I know some people read my blog that are not my facebook friends (for example - Hi, Grandma!)

When I walk into lobby 7 at the moment the first thing I see is this:

Banner for MIT's 150th birthday, complete with the 2011 brass rat

MIT turned 150 years old last year! Happy Birthday, MIT! 

Sadly Harvard also had a significant birthday last year. They turned 375 years old had a giant red velvet cake (Harvard colours are red velvet cake colours). I haven't heard about any giant cakes for MIT's birthday celebrations, so maybe I'm not so sad about missing them. Maybe MIT makes up for the lack of cake on Pi Day? Mmmm... pie.

These are the views from under the dome in lobby 7 down the infinite corridor and straight up into the dome.

Even at 7:15 pm there are people going places in MIT

So now that the scene is set (a little bit) I'll show you Friday's lobby 7 happening / hack.

Just in case you can't read the banner in my ropey photo (sorry, I was in a bit of hurry!). Here is a zoomed in and instagram-ed version...

But not only was there a banner, the pillars under the dome were also decorated.

The right hand column pillars are either side of the entrance, hence the weird light.
My favourite is the blue one. Obviously.

It certainly brightened up my Friday morning!
Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!