Wolfpack Weekend
howl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.....goes the university as Ncstate gathers the wolves to it pack.
The last weekend before college begins has sure had its ups and downs, i've experienced the relief after finally being signed up for a job, the irony being the fact that i got the offer a day after i made that frustratin post ( so all ye guys lookin for a way to get signed up, just make a post ventin ur frustration..lets see if it works....) , the exhaustion of waitin in the pavement to be first in line at the yard sale so that i get to pick quality furniture and oh boy!! was it a mad house out there, the excitement of attending the student orientation..at the prospect of meetin new ppl frm different cultures and nationalities( but u know wat there isnt much diversity in the international student community as there is in the resident student population) and finally a long sunday where we just lounged abt on the new furniture we got and left to our own thoughts.
The Offer
The most queer thing abt my employment was that i got signed up at a place i had never really been to....i mean i had literally frequented the library, residence halls and other places so much so that the ppl there got annoyed, but the Computer science department, never!!! partly the reason being i dint know where to go or whom to approach and then as luck would have it during my one and only meeting with a professor, discussin abt courses and projects we casually broached the employment scene inside the department and he toldme to contact the department dean abt it and what a gr8 guy the dean was..he forwarded my mail to a professor who had openings for course TA postitions and voila!! a week later i had an offer in hand with nothing left to do but go meet the professor and nail it. The moment the prof said "Okay Mr. Vk( has a nice ring to it..doesnt it..and also he found my name a li'l hard to pronounce...but who's complainin...i was always Vk to my frds)..u're all set, just go to campus employment and get yer name signed up" and i was like "christ!!! is this real...is the ordeal finally over" the "thanks" merely escaped my lips...the icing on the cake was that my roommate got signed up for the same job, talk about good company at work!!!..next came furnishin our good 'ol apartment
The Sale
There comes a time in your life when your apartment seems too bare to ur satisfaction, i mean even if the requirement is bare minimum u still need a mattress to sleep on, a small table to eat on and good couch to bounce on plus one also needs to stock lamps as some places in the apartment might not have a light at all ( in our case the living room...and in some other's the bedroom which is atleast justifiable to some extent), the only place cheap to get all this stuff was the campus yard sale organized by the university( we dint have any clue abt the rest)...and this was in no way a go and pick event...one has to literally fight for one's furniture..thanks to the experience that evry senior imparted to the new arrivals ppl started to flock the place frm the previous night itself and we dint wanna be left behind either so we reached the place arnd midnight and so the wait began, the place wasnt gonna open till 7:30 in the morning but the crowd showed no signs of recession..the queue just stretched on and on( and believe me evry one of them was a desi)..raleigh police patrolled the place throughout the night and they were justified in doing so too...finally the doors did open and it was a mad rush for the best couch, bed and other stuff. We tore off in 4 different directions with an objective to procure atleast one thing frm the list, after a minor brawl and some blind runs thru all the furniture we finally walked out wid 2 couches ( well a senior was gracious enuf to get one for us), a dining table, storage cabinets, a mattress( the big screw up,the guys thought it was 2 when actually it was just one single mattress and the wooden base), a centre table(which i was gracious enuf to forfeit cos a chinese lady was too smitten by it and couldnt think of the prospect of someone else buyin it..i got my money back for that and a free table as a reward), we missed out on the oven, the vacuum cleaner and other stuff but hell!!! we were in no mood to hang arnd and scavenge for one....the stuff was delivered home and we went about decoratin the place. The true joy of being a student and gettin a furniture for ur bare minimum apartment is when u pick stuff of value right off the dumpster..for a while i was worried if i'd ever miss out on this gr8 ritual of our predecessors who came to this land impoverished and wid a vision of studyin and makin it big in the land of oppurtunity, but god it seems had a plan....the next day much to my joy..we found a non-descrepit looking book shelf lyin right next to the dumpster and wasted no time in bringin it in and settin it in the just the place we wanted it to be...the house looks good now....got lots of places to lounge arnd or sleep in bliss...ah!!! just what the doctor ordered..hehehe...
The Fair
Well the Orientation was more like a fair..but there were some parts of it which got pretty serious like the one on academic conduct and plagiarism...seems NCstate condemns plagiarism, fabrication and falsification( well wait till they hear my BTP story..they might deport me straight to India)..then there was the free lunches and snacks, colas, coffees and stuff..and mind you after having lunch at the campus cafe i came straight home and cooked meself one of the spiciest of "kuzhambus"( south indian delicacy for those ignorant souls...my mom..er..no my grandmom..er...well both make the best of those) one cud ever have(umm....that tasted good..heaven man!!!!), just gives an idea of how tasteless the food can get arnd here. Also being an international student one gets to attend 3 such orientations and hear the same crap through and through again..but u get a free lunch man!!! and that means a lot to a student especially one without funding. The international student orientation is where one gets a real picture of the exodus...all u can see are endless faces of indians, chinese and other south east asians a lucky few from the middle east and europe so much so that the director of international student affairs made it a point at his presentation. The orientation was also an oppurtunity to see whose hot and whose not in your batch, who is behind whom and which cute li'l thing is already "corrected" a jargon i learnt much to my shock that was used to refer to committed folks. I had my ideas but dint need to voice them...seems like my opinion matches a lot wid public opinion( what a social animal!!!!)..so i left it at that and went arnd collecting flyers signing up for activities and collectin a lot of freebies....the graduate student orientation however is where one gets to meet the whole community..this is where u get to meet that esteemed and much sought after "american" friend who "owns a car"( very important requirement) who'll be giving u rides to stores and different places around campus...the really lucky ones get one reall quick( girls!! and the more extrovert of folks)..but folks hu do less talkin and tend to just stare at the mix of caucasian, hispanic, asian and black population with a sense of awe( well i did for some time b4 i got used to it) are definitely in for a tough time..cos the average american in the words one herself expects evry other person to own a car and for them u have been done a great wrong if u for some reason are unable to own a car and earn either pure disdain( just what some give a beggar) or gr8 pity( just wat some others give a beggar)....and then there is the department orientation which iam yet to attend and this is where i expect to meet the big wigs of the dept..and isolate ur quarries whom u approach and entice into funding your education and mind you!! a ot of research goes into this stuff...
and well the sunday...the whole spirit of the sunday was to laze arnd in the aftermath of a brawl called the "yard sale"...and upholding that spirit i wouldnt delve any more into it.
The last weekend before college begins has sure had its ups and downs, i've experienced the relief after finally being signed up for a job, the irony being the fact that i got the offer a day after i made that frustratin post ( so all ye guys lookin for a way to get signed up, just make a post ventin ur frustration..lets see if it works....) , the exhaustion of waitin in the pavement to be first in line at the yard sale so that i get to pick quality furniture and oh boy!! was it a mad house out there, the excitement of attending the student orientation..at the prospect of meetin new ppl frm different cultures and nationalities( but u know wat there isnt much diversity in the international student community as there is in the resident student population) and finally a long sunday where we just lounged abt on the new furniture we got and left to our own thoughts.
The Offer
The most queer thing abt my employment was that i got signed up at a place i had never really been to....i mean i had literally frequented the library, residence halls and other places so much so that the ppl there got annoyed, but the Computer science department, never!!! partly the reason being i dint know where to go or whom to approach and then as luck would have it during my one and only meeting with a professor, discussin abt courses and projects we casually broached the employment scene inside the department and he toldme to contact the department dean abt it and what a gr8 guy the dean was..he forwarded my mail to a professor who had openings for course TA postitions and voila!! a week later i had an offer in hand with nothing left to do but go meet the professor and nail it. The moment the prof said "Okay Mr. Vk( has a nice ring to it..doesnt it..and also he found my name a li'l hard to pronounce...but who's complainin...i was always Vk to my frds)..u're all set, just go to campus employment and get yer name signed up" and i was like "christ!!! is this real...is the ordeal finally over" the "thanks" merely escaped my lips...the icing on the cake was that my roommate got signed up for the same job, talk about good company at work!!!..next came furnishin our good 'ol apartment
The Sale
There comes a time in your life when your apartment seems too bare to ur satisfaction, i mean even if the requirement is bare minimum u still need a mattress to sleep on, a small table to eat on and good couch to bounce on plus one also needs to stock lamps as some places in the apartment might not have a light at all ( in our case the living room...and in some other's the bedroom which is atleast justifiable to some extent), the only place cheap to get all this stuff was the campus yard sale organized by the university( we dint have any clue abt the rest)...and this was in no way a go and pick event...one has to literally fight for one's furniture..thanks to the experience that evry senior imparted to the new arrivals ppl started to flock the place frm the previous night itself and we dint wanna be left behind either so we reached the place arnd midnight and so the wait began, the place wasnt gonna open till 7:30 in the morning but the crowd showed no signs of recession..the queue just stretched on and on( and believe me evry one of them was a desi)..raleigh police patrolled the place throughout the night and they were justified in doing so too...finally the doors did open and it was a mad rush for the best couch, bed and other stuff. We tore off in 4 different directions with an objective to procure atleast one thing frm the list, after a minor brawl and some blind runs thru all the furniture we finally walked out wid 2 couches ( well a senior was gracious enuf to get one for us), a dining table, storage cabinets, a mattress( the big screw up,the guys thought it was 2 when actually it was just one single mattress and the wooden base), a centre table(which i was gracious enuf to forfeit cos a chinese lady was too smitten by it and couldnt think of the prospect of someone else buyin it..i got my money back for that and a free table as a reward), we missed out on the oven, the vacuum cleaner and other stuff but hell!!! we were in no mood to hang arnd and scavenge for one....the stuff was delivered home and we went about decoratin the place. The true joy of being a student and gettin a furniture for ur bare minimum apartment is when u pick stuff of value right off the dumpster..for a while i was worried if i'd ever miss out on this gr8 ritual of our predecessors who came to this land impoverished and wid a vision of studyin and makin it big in the land of oppurtunity, but god it seems had a plan....the next day much to my joy..we found a non-descrepit looking book shelf lyin right next to the dumpster and wasted no time in bringin it in and settin it in the just the place we wanted it to be...the house looks good now....got lots of places to lounge arnd or sleep in bliss...ah!!! just what the doctor ordered..hehehe...
The Fair
Well the Orientation was more like a fair..but there were some parts of it which got pretty serious like the one on academic conduct and plagiarism...seems NCstate condemns plagiarism, fabrication and falsification( well wait till they hear my BTP story..they might deport me straight to India)..then there was the free lunches and snacks, colas, coffees and stuff..and mind you after having lunch at the campus cafe i came straight home and cooked meself one of the spiciest of "kuzhambus"( south indian delicacy for those ignorant souls...my mom..er..no my grandmom..er...well both make the best of those) one cud ever have(umm....that tasted good..heaven man!!!!), just gives an idea of how tasteless the food can get arnd here. Also being an international student one gets to attend 3 such orientations and hear the same crap through and through again..but u get a free lunch man!!! and that means a lot to a student especially one without funding. The international student orientation is where one gets a real picture of the exodus...all u can see are endless faces of indians, chinese and other south east asians a lucky few from the middle east and europe so much so that the director of international student affairs made it a point at his presentation. The orientation was also an oppurtunity to see whose hot and whose not in your batch, who is behind whom and which cute li'l thing is already "corrected" a jargon i learnt much to my shock that was used to refer to committed folks. I had my ideas but dint need to voice them...seems like my opinion matches a lot wid public opinion( what a social animal!!!!)..so i left it at that and went arnd collecting flyers signing up for activities and collectin a lot of freebies....the graduate student orientation however is where one gets to meet the whole community..this is where u get to meet that esteemed and much sought after "american" friend who "owns a car"( very important requirement) who'll be giving u rides to stores and different places around campus...the really lucky ones get one reall quick( girls!! and the more extrovert of folks)..but folks hu do less talkin and tend to just stare at the mix of caucasian, hispanic, asian and black population with a sense of awe( well i did for some time b4 i got used to it) are definitely in for a tough time..cos the average american in the words one herself expects evry other person to own a car and for them u have been done a great wrong if u for some reason are unable to own a car and earn either pure disdain( just what some give a beggar) or gr8 pity( just wat some others give a beggar)....and then there is the department orientation which iam yet to attend and this is where i expect to meet the big wigs of the dept..and isolate ur quarries whom u approach and entice into funding your education and mind you!! a ot of research goes into this stuff...
and well the sunday...the whole spirit of the sunday was to laze arnd in the aftermath of a brawl called the "yard sale"...and upholding that spirit i wouldnt delve any more into it.
posted by sriram at 10:14 PM
1 Comments:
Yaay! First to comment!! :)
Oh, congratulations on your offer!! Reminds me of Paulo Coelho's Alchemist :)
BTW, you have described the international community very well: just a lot of desis and chinese-looking folks, with a few lone europeans thrown in here and there! :D
All the best for your job... keep blogging!
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