Shot Spotter

There was a shooting in Mattapan, south Boston on Tuesday which involved four deaths including a 2 year old child.

Police were called to the scene by Shot Spotter which is a relatively new technology which utilises sensors placed on buildings and on telegraph poles to detect gunfire and inform the Police of its location.

What a fantastic idea, much easier than banning or restricting the use of firearms.

Harvard Never Sleeps

I was waiting for Peta to finish her reading last night so that I could subject her to watching pre-adolescent girls swearing prolifically in Kick-Ass and I thought I'd see whether I could upload pictures straight from my phone.

Imagine my surprise this morning!

This is a major step forward for blogging and one which ensure our loyal readers can share in even more moments of our life/lives.

Guess who ran 5 miles yesterday?

I know it may not seem like much to fit young types or fit old types but I ran on a treadmill for one whole hour and ran more than 5 miles for the first time in my gosh-darned life.

It was at least partly to assuage my guilt over not going boxing on Monday but I only hoped to run for half an hour at most (well jog I suppose would be more accurate for those of you of a mathematical bent who have worked out my speed) so I was most surprised to get to 4 miles let alone 5. That's 8kms.

It may have had something to do with staying out of the house while Peta stamped her feet, threw her arms in the air and exhaled through her teeth in the completion of a 500 word assignment. Upon my return the huffing and puffing was not quite done with so I headed off out again to submit the paperwork for my work permit...and stand around in shops...and go to the library...before the all clear was issued and I was safe to return home.

Cambridge Common...end of our road

Harvard Yard - interesting fact...man shot himself in the head on these steps two days ago.

The Mighty Charles River

Rockport - very twee, rubbish beach.

Ethos

Yesterday I went for a meeting with Ethos which is a non-profit (whatever that is...probably the same as charity) which aims to help 'elders' to continue to live independently. I was there to speak to someone about the money management side of the service which helps 'elders' to pay bills and budget and sometimes takes over their whole account to prevent eviction or destitution.

Sounds like a very worthwhile project an the woman who interviewed me seemed very normal so next week I will go to meet an elder to see whether we get along or not. Needless to say most of them seem to have a history of mental illness but it sounds like none of them are too hardcore.

There was mention of possible employment as they have recently won some funding to employ someone to deal with their more difficult clients. This sounds like the demanding and smelly ones which might be OK, any sort of income would be pretty good and it would seem more like being a proper person if I had to get up and go to work (plus Peta might go into the kitchen for something other than coffee if I was also 'working').

I imagined that Ethos would be located in a rather more down at heel neighbourhood than Cambridge and my suspicions seemed to be confirmed on the way down there was only one other white person in my half of the train carriage...and that was a Transit Policeman, accompanied by his black colleague. Imagine my disappointment then to emerge from Green Street station and not be greeted with burning cars, street gangs and drug dealers but a rather leafy looking suburb containing a modern looking industrial estate.

Boxing Mk II

So, having paid to join the Harvard Athletic Club and been issued with my fancy-dan membership card I went along to the boxing class again today...and was allowed in.

While not exactly greeted with a warm welcome I didn't feel my reception was hostile (which is probably a definite bonus in a boxing club). The main coach (Vladimir/Igor something like that) took immediate exception to my boxing stance which is pretty much the only thing I was any good at. It transpires that in the Urals/Stalingrad they don't stand in the same position as in Australia.

I toyed with the idea of correcting him and perhaps mentioning the name of my Coach, Don Abnett from the Australian Institute of Sport, coach of the Australian Commonwealth team, the Australian Olympic team and Australian head coach at the Boxing world championships more times than I care to mention. Then I tried to think of all those great Australian boxers and mentally lined them up against all those great Russian boxers and decided that I should try to change my stance.

Regrettably they have mirrors at either end of the hall which is fine when I start out throwing my sophisticated and cultured jabs at an invisible opponent as I'm not wearing my spectacles but the closer I get to the opposite wall the more I'm puzzled to see a stoop-backed, elderly looking gentleman flailing around like a mental in a hurricane.

I met Ben and someone else who was English and from Barnes in West London and after an hour I thought it was over only to be told that we we're heading downstairs for something or other. Drinks perhaps, a smoke and a chat on the verandah or maybe a canape. Instead we all 30 of us piled into a room about the size of our condo (small) and proceed to obey barked orders from Igor and his henchmen which seemed to be variations on the theme of, 'do more press-ups'.

I think there was humour involved as one of them might say let's do 12 diamonds (press up's with hour thumbs and forefingers pressed together to make a diamond) and then another would say, let's do 12 diamonds and another might say let's do two lots of 6 diamonds without a break and so on. This seemed to be a well worn routine with a familiar sounding laugh track which was punctuated by a song, not 1-2-3-4 United States Marine Corps, (which would have been appropriate to the macho atmosphere but rather refreshingly they broke into a manly chorus of You Are My Sunshine which is a song that always reminds me of Peter.

All up it could have been a lot worse, I stumbled home in about 10 minutes and will almost certainly go again (not got my t-shirt yet).

The Good Soldiers - David Finkel

The author spent about a year with a battalion of soldiers that were part of George Bush's 'surge' in Iraq. The result is not exactly impartial, it would probably be impossible not to express some exasperation at the futility of the project but it's certainly not an anti-war polemic either.

It's the first book to bring me to tears for as long as I can remember (I'm prepared to stand corrected if anyone can think of any examples).

I wouldn't claim that it was a literary masterpiece (having just read some reviews slamming the prose) but I found it to be incredibly vivid and realistic.

Great, and what's more I borrowed it from the library so it cost me nuffink.

The Harvard Boxing Club

My first day at the Harvard Boxing Club today, big day.

Boxing used to be compulsory for all Harvard students including Teddy Roosevelt but nowadays it's only for elite athletes like myself. I wrote to Lurie, who's one of the coaches and told him about my glorious career in boxing, my somewhat advancing years and my coaching badges and he told me to come along and give it a go.

I hoped that I would have the courage to at least go and see what it's like. I didn't like the sound of the mouth guards they issued after a couple of weeks as that made it sound like my teeth were so in jeopardy but I do like boxing and would be perfectly happy bouncing around on my own and slapping the occasional punchbag while the others hit each other and sweat and stuff.

Imagine my disappointment then when I was turned away at the door. I even had a shave and a shower for the occasion. Apparently Lurie forgot to mention that I need to join the Harvard Athletic Association ($150) before I'm allowed to join the Harvard Boxing Club ($90.00), but I do get a Harvard Boxing Club T-shirt which is worth $240 of anyone's money.

We're in Cambridge MA

When I chose the name for this blog back in May I was under the impression that we'd actually be living in Boston but it transpires that we're actually living in Cambridge which is a city seperated fromm Boston by the St Charles river. The fact of the matter is that we've not even been to Boston yet (aside from the taxi from the airport nearly three weeks ago) but we're probably going on Thursday and might even go this weekend.

I'm just in the process of selecting who's going to be lucky enough to be invited to read this series of fascinating insights into Cambridge life so I'll leave this as is for the moment.