The Apartment
"yeah but that house is too close to the highway "
"but that one too far from campus........ "
If one house had a bad stove the other had a bad heater, if one had a bad ceiling the other had a leaky sink. It was as if someone intentionally screwed up one thing at a time with each of them, and after a lot of speculation, a frustrated Om let out a huge sigh when the worst of them all was booked… a shack which was run down completely by the previous occupants.... a huge compromise for those other apartments with minor shortcomings.
"Ok then its settled we will go with this one"
"Sorry this has been taken by the Gals......" [With a sadistic smile taking pleasure in Om’s misery]
Om: excuse me.....[you got to be kidding me]
Here was a person who had descended into the lowest stratum of a moralistic society; his given name did not do any justice to his “OUTSTANDING” reputation. This guy resembled a certain personality on a late night Discovery Channel special on the rituals of the Kalahari tribe. In his efforts to attract the feminine gender he was closing deals on apartments that we had reserved by sweet talking the landlords…..the result was more like a toll free helpline number for gals hence the resulting nickname 1-800-XXXX-XXX.
After a long day searching for apartments, the trio returned home to be greeted by the seniors with a delicious meal, or was it? Well as the saying goes even an average meal tastes delicious after a long day. Any given night Om could not help but wonder, about he was to realize the American Dream he had longed for back home…... He could not help but think "DID I DO THE RIGHT THING COMING HERE". Frustration had set in…..and he sure was in for more…..
GA
Over the weekend Om managed to grab a print out of the campus layout and plan out the strategies for the Graduate Assistantship (GA) hunt. Well the idea for the GA hunt was a pretty simple 2 step plan at the heart of it,
1.Print 140 resumes
2. Go to every building, ever floor, every department, and give them one of your resumes. and wait.
But the reactions from the people who took them though varied from a warm and reassuring “Thank you” to the unsettling what is a GA? But at the end of the day Om and Ogo sat together and discussed their experiences for the day.
On one occasion Family Man swore that one of the personnel at the GA had got irritated with him, to an extent that she threatened to call 911. Initially he thought she was joking since he thought the number for police was supposed to be 100, but soon realized the contrary and left ASAP.
Meanwhile Ogo had his doubts about one particular department’s board that read Department of Gay Lesbian and Transgender Studies and began to wonder what they would do to him in case his resume got selected.
Om quietly pondered about how he got lost in the architectural maze that is the Behavioral Sciences Building (BSB) and ended up discovering some underground tunnel which led to another building across the campus, from where he walked for 20 minutes before he realized that the street names were along the road for which they stand for rather than perpendicular to like in India.
As the days passed by the team finally located an apartment, and the moving date was coincidentally finalized as Aug 15th sarcastically symbolizing their independence from the seniors. As they moved into the new house they took their rooms.... Ogo settled down the living room which was spacious but at the cost of privacy.....Family Man took the middle room all for himself but to this date Om wondered what in the “Closet Sized” room attracted Family Man to settle for that......Om took a rather sizeable room which ensured total privacy but finally ended up sharing with the fourth roomie Jinga…..With one major issue of accommodation over….the trio of Om, Ogo and Jinga did not know what life had in store for them.
