Mount Auburn Street

I have unpacked (hurrah) by relocating from a small budget hotel room to a budget-yet-fab flat apartment just off Mount Auburn St.

Am sharing with H, who sports a golden ponytail, golden legs plus the ability to wear flip flops all day without cutting her feet to shreds - all features that are typical of the locals - well, the females at least, (though come to think of it...).

All seems very promising - H is fun, sociable and able to make great cocktails out of bizarre ingredients - we spent last evening on the verandah drinking something that involved a number of things including mango and gin. After a few of them I could even forget how rotten/dangerous the verandah is (it's on the first floor and has gaps in it that I'm sure the person who built it didn't intend - does being on a first floor make it something other than a 'verandah'?).

H didn't realise that the Welsh were real - she thought it was all 'imaginary'. I am finding I have had to use Catherine-Zeta Jones, Tom Jones and the Stereophonics as examples of fellow 'real' Welsh. May have to invest in a handy map of the UK and a pointed stick (the latter for smacking ignorant people with).

Also met my first MIT geek yesterday - the place is full of them - you can't swing a Schrodinger's cat without hitting several (ho ho ho )- some of you (no names - you know who you are), would be in geek heaven. At least he knew where Wales was.

The other inhabitant of the apartment is a cat that is so old it's like a skeleton with some matted fur stuck on it. It's very sweet but it's also very ill, and incapable of judging the dimensions of the litter tray. Not the best in this heat.

Which brings me onto the biggest challenge so far - the heat. It was mid-nineties yesterday with a humidity that made it really unbearable. And even after the sun had gone down it didn't seem to make any difference. Now I understand why the room is so cheap - there's no air con. I actually woke up (for the gazillionth time) in the middle of the night, picked up the glass of water on mny bedside table and threw it over myself out of sheer desperation.

Tonight's mission is to buy some sort of a/c unit. And to get it home on the bus.