When I stepped off from the plane, I was fairly surprised how different the real Southern accent is from what I believed. I understood everyone in California perfectly but here I really need to focus. Let's just hope that I'll get over it in a couple of days.
So I sought out the shuttle I arranged for myself previously and as soon as I stepped out of the air conditioned space at the airport, I started sweating like hell. I saw some high temperatures in California, sometimes over 100 F (around 40 C) but this kind of hot was different kind of hot (and unfortunately not the kind of “hot” I often found in Davis at night, if you know what I mean). It's really humid and at first it's harder to breathe. The air conditioning is overkill, they seem to like the temperatures in refrigerators. They must be penguins who couldn't find a better spot.
Anyway, I arrived at the campus where I had some arrangements to secure temporary housing. I won't be able to move in to my permanent place until August 15, so I could either book a room at the campus hotel (amounting to $1,600 for 10 days) or accept a temporary room in “Moody Towers”. These guys must have known something. If you've seen any part of the series “Californication” you know who Hank Moody is. He's the 40 something trashy (and probably smelly) playboy type of “writer” whose life is completely messed up from top to bottom and lives in a sh*thole apartment. Now this apartment represents perfectly what “Moody Towers” looks like. I expected something like that but I had no clue that because of some water pipe renovation the whole building would be torn into pieces. But that's what it looks like. “Under construction” to be a bit euphemistic. Needless to say that nobody at the front desk seemed to know that I was coming so (luckily my Russian classmate arrived earlier) joint efforts had to be made to convince security that we supposedly have rooms booked for us.
When I finally got to floor 17 where my room is I thought it would be nice to grab some food. Since the whole campus looked like a ghost town, I was a bit scared that nothing will be open and I'll die in the middle of a metropolis due to the lack of nutrition. Luckily, the doorman or security guy or whatever showed me that there's a Pizza Hut just around the corner. So I decided to go over, sit down and feel as if I was in a civilized place. Fat chance. First, the pizza place “just around the corner” was a 15 minute walk. Actually it really was on the next corner but the corner itself was really far away. And there were no other corners until that one. I got to realize that there is just NO WAY to live in this city without a car. Even if I wanted to go down to work out I'd need to have a car to go to the other side of the street. Literally. And that's just campus. The highway I-45, which seemed like a nice little 2x2 lane highway on Google Earth has actually 6 lanes both ways. Crossing it is a hike in itself.
Also, I promised a Swiss classmate that I'll join them for some soccer tomorrow. (Me and soccer. Imagine. I pause here for a moment for you to laugh out loud.) I wanted to call the guy from my cellphone and instead of a ringtone a mechanical lady reminded me that I have only 5 dollars on my account. So what? By 10 cents a minute it should buy me 50 minutes. They didn't let me make an outgoing call until I refilled. (SMS worked fine.) Weird.
I also don't have Internet access. Not just in my room, practically there's no terminal I could get to. Each one would require me to use my student ID card, which I won't get until Monday. I'm locked in. Not just in the analogue world but also in the analogue campus due to the lack of adequate transportation.
Clearly there's lots to iron out. I expected that I won't be bored for this year but apparently every day brings a new and harder challenge.
Correction. I just managed to crack my way into the digital world. :)
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