Blog - /Personal

I officially moved in to my Purdue apartment yesterday. It was a two-person efficiency that supposedly would house three people. I really was hoping to not have an efficiency since they do not have a separate bedroom, but it is still a whole lot better than Oakwood or Manges. It does not quite compare to Ramseyer, though. Sniff, I miss my second semester roommates already!

My roommate arrived around 17:00 today. That's 24-hour time, for all you Americans who use the goofy 12-hour format. Apparently I only have one roommate, who goes by the name of Jimmy. He told me that the other guy probably will not be on campus this semester. He is Chinese, and comes from there. He speaks English pretty well for only being here four years, and is an upbeat guy. Jimmy is much more experienced that I in the way of getting around campus and knowing what the needs for the room are. I like him, and it looks like it should be a good semester.

I am currently trying my connection every hour or so. I have done so ever since I paid for it around noon. The Transfer Student Fall Welcome this afternoon was quite nice. The only forced socialization was in our tour group, and was limited to name, where you came from, and major. I approve. It was nothing as invasive as the Freshman Orientation at Bethel, which I only want to experience once, fun though it was.

I very nearly had an accident because of the ambiguity of having two different roads to turn left onto. This was while I was helping my roommate retrieve some of his stuff from the apartment of some old friends of his. Thank God I didn't crash, even though I did get honked at. Listening to Grammatrain is helping me cope. I really do not want to go off campus in the evening after this!

Interestingly enough, my roommate asked me if I was a Christian, and showed me his Chinese Bible. That is very cool. He noticed my Website: Haibane Renmei wallpaper, especially the Japanese glyphs on it. He was able to decipher them, which impressed me since the Chinese and Japanese glyphs are surely different. It leads to an interesting thought: what does `gray' look like in a black and white glyph?

I am looking through some of the pictures of my friends in different events. It makes me a tad homesick. About this time, if I was still attending Bethel, I would be going to some sort of pizza party and visiting all of my friends. I would probably be in Brenneman with a slightly larger room, visiting all of my cronies until the curfew. For all of its faults, Bethel does have great students. When my roommate visits his friends and waves to people I've never seen, it makes me feel an acutely my uprooting and transplanting.

I am not at all fond of some of the contracts that I have had to sign. The internet usage contract forces me not to share, which violates my personal code of ethics. The housing contract does not allow any alcohol. Total bunk (if you're not a minor, you'll be able to insert a more appropriate noun here). I'm 21. I should be allowed to drink. They should instead stipulate the age 21 requirement and a responsibility / no driving clause. That would be much more fair. I might as well be at Bethel; that sort of stupid rule is right up their alley. So I sip my lime-flavored water and wish it was a bit groovier.

It will be interesting to be in a coed dorm. A room of girls is right across the hall, having a party at the moment. Of course, I am not the partying type, so I'm here, wrestling with the newest CVS build of Emacs which does not seem to recognize xpm format images anymore. All I need is the internet. Once that is up, the whole world is at my fingertips. Eat your heart out, Greek clubs (sororities and fraternities, that is). The eighth (or was that the ninth?) attempt to register online has failed. I'm going to bed, in a nice foul mood.

This mood is such that makes it worth my while to listen to some Metallica. Ah, much better. Some bands were made for nasty moods. On the topic of `secular' (ooh, Christian buzzword, beware minors) music, I find that I enjoy Metallica and Nirvana. Especially Metallica's Master Of Puppets and Nirvana's Teen Spirit. Maybe I'll get a CD of each. <sarcasm>Then I can have something to throw away to `cleanse my spirit' when the next Prairie Camp comes along</sarcasm>.