My Fall Break

My Fall Break @ Philly and Boston

Oct 9
At 5.15 am I was jolted out of my sleep by the incessant ringing of my cellphone. Apparently my alarm clock didn’t ring and Chiat had to morning call me to wake me up. Of course it didn’t help that I had only gotten 4h of sleep in the last 3 days cuz I was rushing a take home midterm AND a 40 page leadership paper.
7am flight to Philly. At RDU airport, we were subject to security checks. It was really troublesome taking off my shoes and having officers rummage thru my belongings. When the plane took off, I totally blacked out and only woke up when the plane was landing.
We reached Philly at about 9am and contacted Qiuwei. She was really nice to have rented a car so that she could take us around Philly! She had just passed her driver’s test a week ago but I think she is quite a good driver. From my first look, Philly looks like a boring city…industrialized/commercialized but still, it’s bigger than Durham and the shopping area is like 10-15 blocks away from the university. Read “SHOPPING”: one of my few pleasures in life…sigh *envious*
Qiuwei lives in a one bedroom apt. The furniture is all from ikea and there is a kind of uniformity throughout the apt. Right after dropping our stuff, we proceeded on to walking around the campus.

the Quad..coveted living quarters for Freshmen
When I say campus, I don’t mean closed off compounds like NUS, NTU or even Duke. Upenn is an open city campus and it seems to be part of Philadelphia. It’s not very safe because the slums are jus a few streets away.The buildings are of different architecture…some modern and some old (like those frat houses). Upenn is also the oldest university in USA and the famous Wharton Business School belongs there.

@ Wharton
However, Wharton seems horribly exclusive. Business school students use a different email interface, different folders and school memorabilia are all labeled “Wharton” instead of “Upenn”. This was fairly obvious in their nice nice campus book store. When we stepped into the Wharton building, we had to produce our IDs…they have really nice lecture theatres though, something like those in our public policy building.
A classroom @ Wharton
There are also small conference rooms for groups to meet up and work on their projects. The atmosphere of the Business school is very very professional, unlike Duke’s Fuqua Business school, which is more spartan, but has a homely atmosphere. And by the way, did you know that the LOVE statue originated from Philadelphia? It’s the city of Brotherly love. Had a mushroom sandwich from Marathon Grill for lunch. Marathon Grill is apparently quite a big thing in Philly though sandwiches are not exactly my thing.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at Franklin Mills Factory Outlet. Yes, you can imagine what I crazy buying spree I had. I think the Guess factory outlet was by far, the best…nice nice shirts were going for under $10! We spent lots time at Banana Republic, Kenneth Cole and Gap. Haiz…there are some things you can do when you have a car!!!
Then we visited the Liberty Bell and unfortunately, the museums were closed earlier on Saturday. I think that’s one of the few attractions at Philly, besides the murals (but Qiuwei hasn’t seen them either). The fact is that some Upenn ppl don’t go into centre city too often. I can understand that though, I haven’t exactly been around Durham either but that’s cuz the public transport sucks and there is nothing to see there anyway.

Me n Qiuwei @ the liberty bell
Dinner was at a duck rice house at Chinatown. Ooooohhh nicenice Chinese food and also, durian milkshake was extremely sinful. We dropped by the Asian market there and grabbed some essentials, including chee cheong fan.
Met a couple of Singaporeans, including Qiuwei’s bf when we got back to her apt. It seems that they are all rushing to graduate from penn and find a job in the ibanking business.

Oct 10
Oh yeah…more shopping at Chestnut and Walnut Street, Philly’s prime shopping district. Brunch was a huge brownie and ice-cream at Cosi’s…yummy!

Dessert @ Cosi's


cute or not?
Most shops are posh maybe except the Urban Outfitters where I bought a really nice purplish blue skirt. It was real funny when we needed to use the toilet and the nearest one was down the street on the 19th floor. Oh well…we used that opportunity to snap a few shots of Philly’s skyline. For lunch, we were trying to find a famous shop that sells Philly cheesesteaks but ended up buying from a roadside vendor instead. By 1pm, we were at the airport and off to Boston.

Me eating philly cheesesteak on the plane
Boston is a much more vibrant city than Philly. Within the city there are about a hundred schools (yesyes…Harvard and MIT) and quite a number of museums. The last time I went to Boston, I saw the historical part so this time I got to see the “daily life” side. Since Dijun was off for a chamber group practice, Chiat and I wandered around Chinatown in search of food. We settled on some Taiwanese place. Yes, it was cold….and windy…brrrrrr
Actually I didn’t know I was going to stay with Dijun ‘cos she is actually Chiat’s friend. I knew Dijun in sec school but we were always in different classes. What a coincidence! We made a mini tour of Boston University and decided on having a drink at the Prudential tower, the second tallest building in Boston (52 stories). On our way there, we walked past the Christian Science Building that is totally majestic and has a fascinating pool of water that is constructed in such a way that people walking on the opposite side of the pool will appear to be walking on water. They use this engineering illusion to explain how Jesus could appear to walk on water. Hmmmmz.

walking on water
There was a nice view on top of Prudential. However, we got a particularly horrible waiter who insisted on seeing our IDs when we were ordering drinks and later, when we had to order juice, he didn’t serve us well…practically tossed the bill on the table. I had an expresso but guess what? I still fell asleep though I got up and heard Chiat snoring loudly. Do ALL guys snore?

On top of the hub, Prudential


Oct 11

Shopping (continued). I didn’t know that Boston was such a small city. You can travel around the city by foot. We walked around Newbury St on our way to MIT (equiv of Singapore’s Orchard Road) but didn’t really buy much.

Newbury st
On the bridge across Charles River, we saw this women’s Marathon. They made a round around Boston from Tufts and back to Tufts. OMG… a sea of running women and even when we were walking the opposite direction, it took us 15min to get past them!

Marathon!
After a brief stop at MIT, we proceeded to Little Italy for lunch. MIT has this really cool Kendall Band bells set up in between the train tracks. The sound is like windchimes. I realize that I actually have been to the MIT train station before but was too rushed to notice the Kendall Band. This time at least I got to take my time and smell the roses.

Kendall Band
We all had lunch at a quaint shop at the centre of Little Italy. Boston’s Little Italy is unique in the way that it seems like you’ve stepped into Italy. There are cobblestone streets and a general shophouse lay out. The meal was satisfying but expensive. It’s more like you’re paying for a more homely atmosphere and personalized cooking. Each dish is cooked in a separate pan.
When Dijun left to collect her violin bow, Chiat and I proceeded to Harvard. Checked out the usual stuff like the bookstore etc and tried valiantly to find Abercrombie & Fitch store but it closed down (!@#$)! I ended up going to Urban Outfitters and buying another top. Poor Chiat had to wait for me haha. Next time he’ll think twice going on a trip with a girl but hey… actually he likes to shop too!

@ harvard library
At 630 we rushed back to Prudential (there’s a shopping center underneath) and bought take-out from Cheesecake Factory. The avocado rolls are the best…I just love the sauce. Too bad each roll costs $3 and mind you, it is smaller than that of a popiah. We also bought Cheesecake Factory cakes at Barnes and Noble ‘cos they cost less ($4 vs $7). Dijun had to leave again for rehearsal so Chiat and I dropped our stuff at her apt and went to Chinatown to search for asian foodstuffs. Sigh… we reached there too late and it just became a long walk in the cold. ugh


Oct 12
Farewell to Boston but before that, we made another round of Chinatown to get groceries and visited Lindt to get chocolates for our friends.
Boohoo…back to Duke to slog!

Beary good time