The Denouement of College Life

There is a light breeze blowing outside my door. The sun is shining and somewhere the sounds of a marching band, a fraternity parade and the clock tower are fading into the distance. As I sit inside, studying the good weather away, I have suddenly realized that this chapter is ending. This is the last weekend before the end of classes, forever. For months I have seen this moment as the light at the end of the tunnel. But there was comfort in this tunnel, at least I had a direction to walk towards and I knew that tomorrow I would be walking through it again.

All I have known for years has been the student life, the carefree nomadic existence. My possessions fit, albeit awkwardly, in a compact car and travel from residence to residence. I have no (good) furniture of my own.

All I have lived for years has been the student schedule. Although my schedule is dictated to me, I find every way to cater it to my liking - and I have become good at micromanaging my time. I know when to expect stress and have developed my favourite procrastinations.

My administration has been consolidated through the university. They remind me about insurance, rent, parking, taxes - every deadline, every event and every form. They figure it all out and bring it to me. If I still forget, someone in my class will remind me and I'll get it done.

I take for granted the social situations I am thrown into. It is no surprise that you make connections through your school. Just take a look at Facebook*. There are always mixers, sports, info sessions and parties - where you meet people of your age group. I also take for granted the calibre of people I meet, people who are also hardworkers, or damn good approximaters and have a certain bohemian class or cynical charm. They are people you can feel you can trust, because they have a certain connection to you through their social network through which you are a part.

So as the marching bands fade and the clock tower strikes another hour - I am painfully aware, that the hell that I wished would end, will end - but it was a way to live that I was good at. Beyond it there is an unknown with no boundaries, no strings and no more training wheels. The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter. But to quote Metallica, i just hope its not a freight train heading my way.

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*All you losers who are not signed up, should, and then add me.

Grrr! of the Day: I love how one month before I start work at Microsoft, with a nice stack of stock options, that one of the most stable stocks for the past 10 years, suddenly spirals out of control and falls 11% in one day.

O-b-s-c-u-r-i-t-y

In order to avoid the parking and "car" dependency issues that have arisen in the last little while (see previous posts) , I decided to walk today. After class it threatened to rain and threatend to snow. A UPS delivery truck drove by and delivered a Chinook wind to my specific sidewalk corner. I guess I should get used to walking about - as I don't plan to drive my "car" in NYC.

I've decided when I move to NYC that I will live off the island in Astoria or Long Island City, which oddly enough is not near Long Island. I guess it follows the long standing precedents set by Kansas City (not in Kansas but rather in Missouri, or as Shilpy calls it, Misery) and Washington, D.C. (not even remotely close to Washington State). Speaking of D.C. - someone has yet to explain to me this craziness of the District of Columbia. It is not a state, it is vaguely considered part of a few states, made up of a few cities and no one seems to deliver food anywhere in it ( I got put up there at a hotel after I missed my connection, lost my lugguage, was randomly selected for a full search, was misguided into believing my plane was delayed - all in the name of a beach vacation).

Grrr! of the Day:
In the naming of my blog, I attempted to poke fun at the obscure events that surely happen to me. Strangely, this has come back to bite me. Unfortuneately, I did not consider that people attempting to access the blog would find the name itself truely obscure and be unable to remember it or spell it for that matter. Of course, this is me having the hope that anyone actually reads this thing. The cobwebs for comments are rather disturbing.

The Annual Do-a-Thesis-In-A-Weekend Campaign

Every year, circumstances beyond my control (or perhaps my fervent need to procrastinate) put me in the position where all the research I have done all year has either failed, broken or been backlogged. What makes this one challenging is my unique situation for both my advisors think the other actually grades it. One doesn't know the context, the other doesn't know the subject. This has resulted in both thinking that I have been doing absolutely nothing. This, ofcourse, is absurd, since I have been attending more meetings, writing more reports and working m0re hours than most of my classmates. Anyone who knows me here at Cornell will hear the words "Car Team" and shudder - knowing full well that I will find a way to swallow all my time.

Unfortuneately, most of that time hasn't been on an actual publishable thesis project. Thus I have learnt the valuable lesson that you can follow a very structured systems engineering and project management approach to your project with everything progressing beautifully until you realize you have nothing tangible that you can hand in. My new plan is to revert to something I learnt in the ol' Eng Sci days - stay-up all weekend debugging the microcontroller until it works well enough to produce a result, not paying attention to how it looks. I seem to recall even the most elegant nail-hammering robots still failing in 2nd year, gift wrap and all (apologies Winnie et al).

Grrr! of the Day:
Before I came here, I set up this elaborate system to transfer money from my Canadian account to my American one - the short of it is I write myself a cheque and get funds. Thinking that I would have crazy problems depositing this cheque in an ATM, I've been going to the teller every month and she says she manages to put it through with a super-annoying 7 day hold instead of the usual 10 day hold. 7 days is inconvenient but I dealt with it. Yesterday I put the cheque in the ATM accidentally, and swore - thinking I would have an even bigger hold - turns out the funds cleared right away and the money was available today. Stupid teller kept telling me she was doing me a favour all this time!

Damn Cayuga Lake

Lake Cayuga is a vortex. It is a special kind of vortex though. It seems to only target my sunglasses. Every time I go to the lake, I somehow find a way to lose my sunglasses. It's as if the lake somehow deteriorates the shreds of short-term memory that I have left. At the beginning of the year I lost them and Kirsten was very sweet enough to go back and look for them*. The second time I lost them at night and we couldn't find them. Despite my housemate David's brilliant idea of taking digicam photos of the ground to try to locate them - they were lost forever. This time I took them off to play a little soccer and they again have vanished.

* This was during our wooing period and she got major points for that one.

Grrr! of the Day: My doctor keeps calling me at home. I keep thinking he has an urgent medical problem to tell me about. It turns out he does - HE's sick and keeps having to reschedule MY appointments. My wavering faith in G.P.s is dropping steadily. I ask to get another doctor but apparently only he can do follow-ups. Turns out they assigned me the only doctor that is only in once a month.

The System vs. Me, the ongoing saga

I've recently learnt (via the suprisingly accurate Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator) that I am an ENTP. In sum, I cut corners in the name of efficiency and I pay no attention to rules that I do not understand or agree with. I wonder if Carl Jung did any research on whether people tend to use their type as an excuse once they discover it - I definitely will. I am always looking to beat the System. Of course in the case of me, the System usually actively fights back, usually with the allied help of Lady Luck and the conspiring Fates.

Today I believe I have beat the Cornell parking nusiance. Apparently if you park (extremely illegally) in the 10 mins only drop off spots that are in plain view of the parking booth for hours on end, you won't get a ticket. It seems they think the parking booth officer will ticket you, but she is usually too busy issuing permits. So far I've parked there 12 times without getting a ticket - mainly because all 17 metered spots available for the over 30,000 people were inevitably taken. Of course every action has an equal and opposite reaction (see Grrr of the Day to see how the System retaliated).

Another comment I seem to get is that I am extremely dependent on my car*. This may also be the root of the parking problem. I have looming separation anxiety when I move to NYC this summer and I don't have a car*.

* Car here is being used loosely. More accurate descriptions of my '87 Camry include Shivji-Mobile (credit: MAC ISA), Student-Discount-Mobile (credit: C. Young), PlayDo and Holstein (for the black and white paint patches - credit: Anisa Shivji)

Grrr! of the Day: Full Coverage Student Health Insurance still means you get charged for every visit and every drug. The only way to get these fees covered by full coverage STUDENT health insurance is to be a non-registered student. My doctor fees amount to slightly more than what I would have had to pay as parking. System 1, Aly 0.

It begins...

So I have been willed into virtual existence by insurmountable peer pressure. Actually, no one actively pressured me - peer pressure nowadays is passive aggression, no one links to your non-existent blog and thus you feel somewhat of an outcast. The real reason for the beginning of this blog may have been that the fear of an inadequately flashy blog (as I used to teach web design) was overcome by the overwhelming desire to procrastinate*.

So gather all ye around the virtual fire and listen to countless stories with strange scenarios carefully crafted and hand-picked by Lady Luck to subject upon me...

*Today's Procrastination: Project Management Quiz

Grrrr! of the Day: The laundry machines reject Canadian quarters...I buy a coke at the American vending machine to get quarters, it returns two as change...both, naturally, Canadian.