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From ivory towers to Manhattan and on to the wild west

This was going to be a three-city trip with an eclectic mix of attractions: two bastions of academia, the bright lights of the big city and cowboys. The cities: Boston, New York and Dallas.

After having lived in another big city, Beijing, for the past 10 years, the time seemed ripe to recharge my brain cells by seeing something a bit different. At the same time I was keen to make up for something I had failed to do four years ago, when I studied in Hawaii for about a year: see some of the mainland.