maggied’s blag

I’ve had a lot of down time after work and on weekends over the summer, and have spent a lot of it watching movies, reading, and getting out on the town. I’m sure I have forgotten about some things but this is as comprehensive as I can remember. I’ll try to avoid any serious spoilers.

Let’s start with movies. In no particular order:

• The Incredible Hulk - I had low expectations (other than Edward Norton), but this turned out to be pretty good. They didn’t focus on the back story as much which I think was a good thing.
• Wall-e - Most.Adorable.Movie.Ever. I love Pixar movies but I still think this one takes the cake. When I saw the trailer I thought it looked dumb but I could hardly control my giggles during much of it.
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army - Vinayak and I had an argument about how good this movie would be. Vinayak loses (sorry Vinayak). I really enjoyed it; definitely way better than the first one.
• Requiem for a Dream - A lot of people told me I shouldn’t watch this movie or I would be super depressed afterwards. It was definitely a bit of a downer, but I wasn’t particularly upset. I thought many of the scenes were kind of ridiculous, but really enjoyed the cinematography.
• Wanted - I read the graphic novel (which is nothing like the movie), and didn’t have particularly high expectations. The movie was ridiculous, and if you had any hope for it, you probably hated it because it was pretty silly.
• Equilibrium - To get us pumped up for The Dark Knight, we decided to watch a bunch of Christian Bale movies. I had seen a few of the scenes from the movie. It had similar crazy-action moments to Wanted or the Matrix, but I thought it actually had a reasonably decent plot.
• Batman Begins - Had already seen this one, but it was part of our Christian Bale stunt. Still enjoyable the second time around.
• The Dark Knight - We waited 3 hours to see this at midnight Thursday Night/Friday Morning. Totally worth it. Heath Ledger was impeccable. I loved his performance, and the rest of the cast also did a terrific job. Definitely intend to see this again at some point.
• Pink Floyd The Wall - Believe it or not, I had never seen this movie before. It was pretty crazy and took me until the end to figure out what was going on. Even then I was a bit confused.
• Persepolis - Second time seeing this one as well. Enjoyable in a sort of dark way, Persepolis is one of those movies that puts you in the shoes of something that you otherwise might not understand.

So that’s a lot of movies. Now books:

• Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez- I finished this early on in the summer. It took me a long time to get through with term and all, but I wound up enjoying it. Despite being different from the books I tend to enjoy, I thought it was a worth while read. Didn’t really like the ending all that much, though. I would like to see the movie at some point, but have not gotten around to it yet.
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely - I started this on the train to New York before my trip to the Caribbean; I finished it 3 days later. Loved it. The book felt highly relevant and had a lot of room for introspection.
• Wanted by Mark Millar - Crazy. Adrenaline filled ridiculousness. No wonder the movie was nothing like this.
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson - Stereotypical cyberpunk. I started the book and there were a few things about it that I thought were completely nuts and over the top. People had hyped the book a lot so I didn’t really know what to expect. Overall, it turned out to be fun, and Raven really is a total bad ass.
• Neuromancer by William Gibson - Haven’t finished this one yet. Just started it a few days ago; it’s been hard to get through (I don’t really know what’s going on…) but I’m trying to persevere, for now at least.

Other outings:

• Laser Dark Side of the Moon - The Museum of Science Planetarium has Laser Light Shows. A few of us decided to to one a few Saturdays ago. Holy crap. It was totally incredible. Definitely planning on going to another one some time.
• ArtBeat 2008 - Freezepop played this year! They played a fun set and even gave everyone lots of freezepops. Very tasty. We also saw Rota Temporis and Akrobatik. I took a few pictures.
• New England Sand Sculpting Festival - The Sand Sculpting Festival happened at Revere Beach again this year. This year the center piece had a bunch of comic book characters including the Hulk and Batman. I took pictures of most of the competing pieces. Sarah Hopp and I decided it would be a terrific idea to submerge ourselves in the freezing cold water, which didn’t work out so hot. Unfortunately it started to storm when we had only been there for a little while, so we came back to hall early.
• New England Aquarium - We went because I wanted to see the Sharks and Rays exhibit, the advertisements for which are all over Boston. Also Sharks3D. The aquarium turned out to be small and underwhelming compared to Monterey (I’m spoiled now, I think), but we saw a gigantic sea turtle get fed a head of lettuce and pet some sharks and rays. The IMAX 3D show was unlike any 3D film I had seen before (no more red and blue glasses). It made my head spin but was also pretty neat.

And I think that’s it. Things to look forward to:

• Six Flags, July 27th
• NYC trip, August 1-3
• REX planning (for EC and Dorm Con)
• The rest of the summer

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It’s finally time to write about my trip to Sint Maarten, Dutch West Indies. You can find more pictures here. I went with 5 friends from home (Emma, Erica, Jillian, Meredith and Michael). We departed from JFK on July 1st, and arrived in Sint Maarten in the early afternoon. The island is known for having a crazy airport. As we were landing, all I could see was ocean out the window, until all of the sudden we were touching down on the island:

Emma reserved us two nice rooms at The Atrium in Simpson Bay. There was a very nice view up the hill, and the beach was probably the best I’ve ever been to.

We spent our first afternoon relaxing on the beach, and went to a restaurant recommended by the hotel for dinner. Things were very different for us on the island (one can gamble and drink at 18), so we all tried our luck at Black Jack for the first time. It went well for me this first time, but we all quickly learned that we weren’t cut out to be gamblers.

Our second day consisted of lots of lounging around on the beach: I spent time finishing Predictably Irrational (which was great, btw) and took a few more pictures of the beach. I was particularly fascinated by the crests of the waves on the sand so I took several pictures of them.

In the evening we went to what is (arguably) Sint Maarten’s best night club on the Island: Bliss. I enjoyed myself even though I’m not really big into the night club scene. There was a lot of dancing and the music was really fun.

The third day I finished Predictably Irrational and started on Snow Crash. Keeping with the tradition of the past two days, we spent most of the early afternoon on the beach, and we took some pictures of the sunset.

On our fourth day we finally went to the French Side of the island (they spell it St. Martin there). The city of choice is Marigot. We took the local bus service (which is actually a bunch of privately owned vans that seat 12 people) over to the Marina and had a great experience with conversion factors to the Euro. There were a whole bunch of fancy shops, but as was pointed out by several of my friends, you could just shop at those places in the city and it would probably be cheaper.

After our evening in Marigot we went to a fancy club called Mansion. The club was so “nice” that they gave Mike a hard time about entering in his shorts. It turns out that Mansion is basically a place for people with a lot of money to schmooze and buy handles of expensive alcohol. Not really my thing; there wasn’t even any dancing, but the music was so loud you could hardly hear your neighbor.

The next day we resumed the beach-bum tradition, and made dinner in our awesome kitchen. Fully equipped, we prepared a nice meal that was much more affordable than eating out all the time. We took more pictures in nice outfits, and headed over to Mansion again.

Day 6 graced us with a wonderful rendition of Yes’s Owner of Lonely Heart over lunch. I was very tempted to text someone the lyrics, but alas, I didn’t have my phone on me. We spent more time hanging on the beach and I read more and more Snow Crash. For dinner we went to Topper’s where the waiter was very friendly. They had fish on all the tables and ours was named Dick:

I don’t have any pictures for day 7, but it was totally awesome. We decided to go snorkeling on Creole Rock, which is one of the best spots on the island to do so. We took the scenic route; over the water from Simpson Bay on speed boats called Rhinos. I had no idea how much of a need for speed I had until I got behind the wheel of that boat. Sooooo much fun! Unfortunately being on the water for so long resulted in a fabulously streaky sun burn that lasted the rest of the trip and into the following week.

Day 8 was totally great. My good friend Jesstess also happened to be on the island, staying on the French Side with her family! We decided to meet up in Philipsburg (on the Dutch side; cruise ships frequently stop there). The beach was so picturesque, and it was nice to meet Jess’ family. We had lunch and wandered around Philipsburg for a while before I headed home for the evening.

I spent our final morning packing up while the others headed over to Philipsburg. We took a few pictures before going to the airport and waiting around (they kicked us out at noon and our flight wasn’t until 3pm). I had a great vacation, but I was also pretty eager to get back to MIT. Overall, a good decision I’d say

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