The Worst Thing Ever

So my time in Boston has been pretty pleasant.

And things are generally getting better. For example, when I moved in, I moved into an empty room with baby-blue walls. My roommate left me this cubby-hole thing, about four feet tall and two feet wide, with eight square-foot openings. And I found a lamp on the street. The lamp does have Ikea-syndrome, and doesn't exactly stand straight. And I just found a bed for free on craigslist. Super. So I have three furnitures in my room.

Today, I just got my Harvard ID, so I was down with my graduate group in Harvard Square..

SIDESTORY: So, my group of 20 future PhD students walk into the Harvard building and ask to be admitted into the elevators so we can go to the ID office. The two "bouncers" in front of the elevators deny us entrance, and request to see each one of our ids. The kid in charge of us says there should be a list, and that we are registered to come at this time. The bouncers tell us that he suspects that we might be trying to "pull something" and makes us individually register. After about 10 minutes of standing in line, someone runs a list down, and we can finally go in. The bouncer awards our group leader one point. When we arrive at the id office, a lady tells us that our appointment was for 5:00, not 4:50, and requests that we go back down to the lobby or at least to the stairwell. We don't dare go down to the stairwell. It was pretty crazy. But at least now I can go into the library and other secret Harvard places.

Anyway, after we got our ids, they took us to this Vietnamese restaurant in The Garage at Harvard Square. I think it was called Le's or something. At any rate, I was somehow convinced to order a xl-portion of Phở. In the future, I'll refer to Phở as "Fu". Anyway, I order this xl poriton of Fu, but right after I had ordered, the girl who had recommended it was like "Did you see what it had in it? Tripe and Tendons!" Thanks for telling me too late. Confidently, I assured her that I had eaten many crazy things. And that if the Vietnamese can eat it, I could probably eat it too.



I was wrong. They brought out this bowl about the size of my head. There was no way it was going to fit in my stomach. I started in on it bravely, and was able to manage eating the Fu noodles. But then I caught some tripe in my noodles, and it tasted like I was eating a cross between farm and octopus. Gross. And the tendon tasted exactly like I expected it to.. like a part of a cow you should throw away.

So, after a valiant effort, I picked up a chipstick and a napkin and fashioned a flag of surrender.

Bleh. This was the worst thing that has happened to me in Boston.

I only have on word to say:

Fu.