Mini Reunion and Madhur hits the USA

After a lovely week in Boston, wherein I got further settled in at my office and moved to my new apartment (though I haven't unpacked properly, but threw all my stuff all over the floor), Madhur arrived yesterday from London for a week of training with his new company. He had really wanted to see NYC for the first time, so I agreed to get us some train tickets thinking that even 4 hours on a train would be faster than all the nonsense and delays and security of today's air travel. Especially considering my own bad travel luck.

Poor Madhur. He had just arrived from London when I whisked him away to South Station and put him on a train. We made it with about 15 minutes to spare, enough time to pick up our tickets and some always-necessary trashy magazines. The four-hour train ride from Boston to NYC was one I'd never done before and I have to say that even though it was slow, it was incredibly beautiful. And Madhur hit four states (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York) by 7pm.

We met Suaye, Carol, Gabe and Mimi at Florent, one of my favorite restaurants in the meatpacking district for a mini-IESE reunion and caught up on our respective work permit troubles (Suaye's beats even mine - he was even deported from the UK a few weeks back!) and apartment and commuting trials (Gabe is in Albany while Mimi is in NYC and even when he's upstate during the week he still has an hour commute each way each day!) We finished off the night with drinks and foosball at Soho House. Fantastic to see everyone again. (Particularly a partial A6 reunion - Gabe, Madhur, and me.)

Gabe, Suaye, me, Carol, and Madhur

So despite the long train ride, the weekend was totally worth it. I even had time to hang out with Annie Bananie this morning, run into an old work colleague, and do a bit of shopping with Madhur today. And then the fun started. First Madhur lost his train ticket... well, he left it on the train yesterday. And after that was sorted out, we got on the train and all was well until we were about an hour away from Boston. The train ahead of us, a commuter train, apparently caught fire. So not only did we have to wait a while, we then had to pick up all the passengers from the disabled commuter train, and then make all commuter stops... like every 3 minutes! So we got to the Back Bay station at 10pm instead of 9 and I missed the whole first half of the Chargers / Patriots game rather than just the first quarter.

Of course now that I'm home they've scored 2 touchdowns... and the first half didn't seem to be something I would have wanted to see anyway. Yikes. So I have bad train luck as well as bad airline luck. But at least I seem to be good at helping my Chargers! For the moment anyway.