I hate shooting in shopping malls, especially during holiday seasons, and hate it most when I happened to shop in that mall when it happened-so all stores were closed and I could not shop for the holiday. Even worse, while some people, like me, were pushed out of the mall with the big crowd, other people, like my husband and baby, taking a nap at the comfy couch at Macy’s and were locked in the store at the shooting. While it’s kind of poetic that we had to wave at each other through the glass door of the Macy’s entrance and talked on the cellphones saying silly things (like I miss you baby), catching cold by standing in the chilly wind (left the jacket at baby stroller) was not that romantic. At the end, when hundreds of people were released from the basement of Macy’s, every one of them carry a couple of big shopping bags. Every store loses for the mall closedown, except Macy’s, and maybe Northtrom, for locking customer for an hour long, so they had to shop to kill time, I guess. Turning on TV when we got home, we learnt that one teenager died and one wounded in the shooting; the shooter, another teenager was at large. They got into sort of fight at the food court and one started to fire a couple of rounds. That was a new, chic and fabulous food court at SouthCenter mall; we just dined there the exact afternoon, about 1 hour earlier. Too bad we missed the shooting, missed all those movie-like scenes, where people screamed and ran in panic. I told the story (in a kind of dramatic way) to a friend who moved here from Atlanta, and who just shrugged it off “it happens in Atlanta everyday”.
senseless
boston
Fifi and I took a red-eye flight to Boston. She’s been shy recently, which made the flight easier for me, and maybe for every passenger, since she would not want to walk around the plane like what she did in June when we flew back to China. Bin had come here two days earlier for his conference. We stayed at Le Meridien Cambridge which was used to be Hotel MIT and it was located next to MIT campus. I liked Harvard better, so Fifi and I took a stroll along Massachusate ave. to Harvard Square this afternoon. We had a late late lunch at Borders-Mexican food. It was very gloomy when we got to the campus, Fifi’s still happy that she could finally allowed to run around. Like every parent, I kept telling her, that’s where she would be joining in 17 years. I’m not sure she likes the idea-she’s at the age of responding with ”no” to everything I suggests. Yesterday we went to Boston Museum of Art, but majority of the building and sites were disappointingly under reconstruction. There were more people in the cafeteria than in the exhibition rooms, including the special exhibition showing Assyrian Art from British museum. Fifi took a great interest in a series of stone relief showing an ancient king hunting lions.
The best part of this trip is that I got a lot of quality sleep. I’ve been struggling with the sleeping problem for a while-stressful work, loss of the baby and the sinking economy. I usually tend to worry too much, so insomnia that might be the result of the recent happenings doesn’t come as a surprise. Pharmacy needs my doctor’s approval to give me refill and the doctor wants to see me first to give me more sleeping pills, but I was too busy to visit the doctor-so not too much help there. The laptop my office just gave me (it’s a Dell by the way) has a battery that only lasts for exact 30 seconds, so I end up not to bring a computer for my trip. It has been such a blessing, it turns out, because I did not need to worry about the work, and I slept through whole mornings yesterday and today. I’ve forgotten sleep could be such sweet experience (when the baby’s cooperative and enjoying sleeping in your arms no matter how long)- waking up in the sunny noon of Cambridge, seeing yellow and red leaves against the blue sky outside the large window. On the left, Harvard is all classical with buildings of red roofs, and on the right, MIT is all square buildings of grey or white-you can’t mistaken the two, just looking out from the window, 8 floors above sunny Cambridge.