Letter from Boston

Physics Department Picnic

By MASAKO YAMADA

After all of the classes were over and the exams were graded, the BU physics department had its annual departmental picnic at a local park. Liz Simmons, one of the professors on the faculty, coordinated the event. All the students, faculty members and their families were invited, and we were all asked to contribute to the event by bringing some snacks or side dishes that everybody could share.

The park is located in a neighboring town called Brookline. Although I had a simple map and I was given directions by three or four people, I ended up getting lost. One park official told me the wrong bus line, so I had to walk 30 minutes to the park after I got off the bus. Considering that it took 30 minutes to take the T and find the bus stop in the first place, I was quite annoyed. I had left my apartment a bit late (the cookies that I made for the event took a bit longer than I'd anticipated), so it ended up that I was 1ｫ hours late for the picnic.

Nobody seemed to mind my late arrival, in fact, nobody seemed to notice. The atmosphere was extremely casual. Some of the people were chatting by the picnic tables, others were playing soccer, others ran around with the professors' children. Considering the size of the department (the total number of students and faculty must be over 100), it was a small party. There were only about 30 people, including guests. I was a bit disappointed that none of my Chinese classmates were there ― they make up one-third of the department ― and that most of the participating students seemed to be first-year students. However, it was nice to see the same familiar party animals at this picnic as always.

The cookies that I'd made for the party were lemon cheesecake cookies. They were a hit, especially since everybody else brought store-bought snacks. Before the picnic, I'd walked into a local post office to ask for directions to the park, and one of the salespeople behind the counter told me they looked delicious and asked me what they were. I guess it's not every day that you see a young woman in a leather jacket walking around with homemade cookies.

The main dishes of the picnic were typical: hot dogs and hamburgers, baked beans and chili, a little bit of salad. These are things that can be bought off a supermarket shelf and heated on the grill, but the barbequing makes a big difference in taste. As much as I like real gourmet food, I also like grilled hamburgers a lot.

I've seen lots of overseas Japanese get excited over the prospect of backyard barbequing, but they often make grave mistakes. I've noticed that most people use too much lighter fluid and put on the food when the flame is too hot. A proper barbeque flame doesn't have any flames. After the lighter fluid burns away (very important, since the food otherwise tastes like kerosene) the coals are supposed to glow quietly. Another mistake that I've seen is putting aluminum foil on top of the grill before putting the food on it. Some people even put frying pans on top of the grill! This may seem cleaner, but it makes barbequing meaningless. The smoke doesn't get to the food at all, and the results are the same as if you had cooked inside.

It started getting chilly in the evening, and even though I tried standing right by the grill to warm myself, it didn't work very well. That seemed to be our signal that the picnic was supposed to wind down. Two of my friends had cars, so they offered rides to all of the people who'd gotten lost on the way there. After I got into one of the cars, I rested my head on the window of the back seat and gazed outside. I noticed some Brandeis stickers on the window, so I asked my friend whether he'd bought the car off of a Brandeis student. He told me, "Oh, my wife ― my ex-wife ― went to Brandeis. I guess I never bothered to take those stickers down." I thought he was joking but then I realized that he wasn't. This startled me, partly because I'd always thought he had been single and partly because I realized that his relationship to the car had lasted longer than his relationship to his wife.

Shukan ST: May 30, 1997

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