Thoughts from Tyexas.

Was in San Antonio, Texas for the March Meeting this year. Good things about the trip: physics, lots of walking, interesting Texan people, didn't feel tempted to suck on the old 84mms even when drunk and amongst smoker friends. Bad things: only one, food. Tex Mex is only OK up to a point and you even start to hate cheese beyond a point. Also, the steak here is massively overrated, at least going by the one time I tried.

A collection of random thoughts about Texas from the trip :

1] The Mexican influence is strong. After all, Texas was a part of Mexico, and Mexico tried very hard to populate Texas with Americans by offering them great land deals in the early 1800s. Eventually of course, the Americans outnumbered the Spanish speakers 10-1 and got their own Tyexas. Still, Texas = lots of Mexican arts and crafts and food.

2] Airbnb is cool if the original residents of the place are art majors. Some very poetic advice and beautiful artwork made my stay so awesome. Need to read stuff from this person called Ellen Gilchrist. 

3] Texas people are big. You can't see them biggies on downtown streets, but as soon as you hit the burbs, they come flooding in. Especially if you end up at a steak house. The steak unfortunately wasn't what it was billed up to be.

The people are big but they are also extremely nice and polite. I illustrate my point using a picture of Starbucks coffee at the airport. The two milk options for your coffee here are...

4] Texan truck-drivers love the rodeo. We honestly felt pretty out of place there amongst a sea of very big and very red-colored people, but like I said before, the people are really nice and chatty so it was fine. I finally got to hear the beautiful Texan accent which I was yearning to hear but could not in the city (sadly).

Also, I absolutely love the fact that these people love their animals so much. Yes, sometimes the competitions seemed a tad cruel, but overall, the people were pretty respectful to the animals and were generally just trying to have a good time. Not only did I see rodeos on bulls (which was absolutely frightening to watch because it seemed like someone getting badly hurt was a forgone eventuality), I also saw tiny 5 year old kids rodeoing on sheep by grabbing their ears! And these kids are absolutely insane. At one point, they let these tiny kids (about 30) out into the pen with 10 cows (young uns, but still twice bigger than the kids) and these kids ran around trying to grab the cows with absolutely no fear even when the cows were heading straight for them. Fucking loved the insanity. 

5] The trip back to Boston was just long enough (about 6 hours total) for me to complete my first cryptic crossword!!! My English has now reached a new high! :O Well, I also did need a few more minutes at home and Saloni's help to complete it... She filled up the remaining 5-10 entries pretty quick which makes me question my awesomeness a little bit, but damn was it fun. I will blame the tiredness :)))