Tommy Collison

I arrived in early yesterday. The journey was uneventful, apart from crashing the TV screen, as shown in the picture:

I reached the terminal at about 15:30, thirty five minutes before schedule. After getting someone to fish my cane out of the overhead bins (I never knew I wasn’t tall enough for my hand to reach into them) I left the plane, whizzed through customs and out the door. Turning right, I found the bus station, which I presumed was the one I needed. This was confirmed when I examined the map and saw it went to South Station.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I needed for this in terms of tickets, so I just put in the ticket Mom gave me from when she was over there, which worked. The bus ride itself was rather crazy – I slid across my seat so many times as it flew around corners and was jerked back into my seat when we braked. Honestly, it felt like the bus from the Harry Potter movies. I don’t use buses back home very much, but the one or two times I’ve used them were totally more dulcet than this journey was.

I arrived in South Station, which looks like every other metro station in the entire world. I quickly found the outbound red-line T platform, and waited for the train to arrive….

….until I remembered that it was the inbound one I wanted, and quickly switched sides. There were a ton of Windows 7 posters around the place; and I got the impression that they were trying to appeal to the student population of Boston by making all the people in them young adults. They carried captions like “I wanted to worry less about crashes; now I worry less about crashes. It must have been my all-caps email”. They’re good enough, but they smell of desperation on Windows’ part.

Once I got to the Harvard Station, I took the first set of stairs up to ground level. John had given me directions to the café I was to meet him at, and they began with exiting the subway and being faced by some ‘grandiose Harvard buildings’. As I debated whether or not the buildings in front of me constitutes grandiose, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and continued my journey onto the café. The café itself is a small little place, tucked away in a corner, and I walked up and down Brattle Street about 5 times before finding it.

The Crema Café itself is wonderful – very bohemian and yuppie. The food is delicious too. I deposited my bag on the ground, retrieved The Da Vinci Code from its depths and began reading. Patrick came along about 45 minutes later. I haven’t seen him in a long while, so it was great to catch up. He recommended a dessert for me which was beyond awesome. I don’t remember the name of the dish, but I’m totally going back there before I leave here on Sunday evening.

After that, myself and John, who joined us while I was finishing my dessert left and he showed me round the place. The evening was spectacularly mild, so as we wandered around Harvard (with me forgetting the names of the dorms almost as soon as John told me) I decided that this place was truly awesome.

We caught some food in the dining hall after that, which was turkey and ham. I think it was like a dress rehearsal to Thanksgiving. Then again, isn’t Thanksgiving just a dress rehearsal for Christmas? It’s the one American tradition I just never got. I was introduced to some of John’s friends there (the names of who I, er, also forgot as soon as he told me). There was definitely one called Ellen.. or Eva.. or Erin! Ah yes, Erin, that was it.

Tomorrow, Harvard play Yale in American football – it’s a massive occasion and we stopped by a pep rally for it last night. There was an epic marching band and everyone had tshirts wittily proclaiming Harvard’s awesomeness (a sentiment I now agreed with). They included: “Fale” and “Today, I woke up and remembered I went to Yale. FML”.

After the pep rally, we went to John’s (different one, not my brother) dorm, to watch the Office. After that an impromptu Charades game took place. The opposing team gave us crazily difficult ones, such as “Alexis Zorbis” (a movie, we’re told) and ‘A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” (a book). Then again, we weren’t a whole lot better. “Sense and Sensibility”, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” and “HMS Pinafore” were all ones the opposite team had to perform. The latter was insanely hilarious because, as we found out, Gilbert & Sullivan are virtually unknown to Americans.

At around 12.30am Harvard time, I realized that I’d been awake roughly 24 hours – and decided to call it a night.

It’s currently coming up to 11am here in Harvard. I sit in the common room of John’s (my brother) dorm. I’m not sure what we’re doing today. Let’s just say a visit to Crema wouldn’t be out of the question…