EPT1. It is being the infinity era from when I previous scribe so please excuse grammars with the greatest appreciate.
2. This entry is meant for mature audiences due to excessive racism and sexual content.
I often saw these one out of five star blog entries on teamliquid.net and wondered how such worthless nonsense could stir up so much emotion and debate. It finally hit me one night while browsing one of my routine porn sites. I had come across the All-Spark of blog posting, and this is what it had to say, "Child, there is no secret to writing a successful blog post. It's kind of like sex... there are multiple secrets. You must harness the power of foreplay so that you may tease the reader with endless suspense. Your prose must be rhythmetic and flawless, so that the reader becomes engrossed in what you have to offer. And finally, you must climax like a beast, so much that the reader can't help but to respond with a 'roflcopter 5/5 I love this!!' or 'I totally agree with your argument!!! <3<3.' But first, you must take your hands out of your pants." So there you have it ladies and gentlemen. My one goal in this entry is to elicit a worthless one-line response while secretly having blog-sex with you.
As a few of you may know, I will be attending graduate school at Cornell University next year. My dad had been bugging me all summer about housing, which might be why I didn't start looking until this week. When he finally gave up hope, I realized that I basically had three weeks to find an apartment in an isolated city 350 miles away. My dad was right... again; I was screwed. I hastily packed my stuff and was on my way to pick up my travel buddy and entertainer Aaron Liu, who thankfully kept me sane throughout the ride. About ten minutes away from his house, a bright orange warning light went off in my car, alerting me that my car desperately needed maintenance and an oil change. I decided to ignore it. So I finally arrive at Aaron's house with my trusty TomTom GPS, which by the way is a toy-manufacturing company, and keyed in the new destination to Ithaca. The GPS tells us to go about 20 minutes south to I-495, then back 20 minutes north to where we started, basically adding 40 minutes to what Mapquest predicted. Being the hip youngsters we were, we decided to disregard what the machine had to say and to just head north until it decided to re-adjust itself. We headed north 15 minutes. The machine never readjusted. We headed back south 15 minutes, then the addition 20 to I-495 and then the 20 back north to where we started. Keep in mind, at this time I still hadn't given a second thought to the orange warning light, which was another one of those problems that could have been solved through action. As opposed to problems that are solved through inaction... nevermind.
Anyways, a few miles into the journey, we start to become slightly concerned about the stubborn light. There was a button that could suppress the warning of 15% oillife, but that didn't really solve the problem. Being the hip youngsters we were, we decided to press the button and ignore the problem. Wait... what problem? No light, no problem. Six hours and a bathroom break later, we finally come across a sign that reads Ithaca 32. About 117 right turns, and 20 cow farms later we arrive at Ithaca, New York at 2:00 AM. I'm pretty sure we started off where we were after the first 116 turns. I'm going to have to talk to TomTom about this. So here we are in Collegetown, one of the city centers of Ithaca, looking for a place to eat. This nice looking pizzeria grabs our attention so we head over, hungry and excited. There was just one problem. A shirtless drunk with what appeared to be a terrible rash or some other sort of skin disease patrolled the entrance, possibly looking for tourists to infect. We really didn't want to get near him for fear of infection, but we also really wanted pizza. Luckily I had enough gaming experience to properly deal with this situation. The proper tactic is to have one person, Aaron in this case, lure the drunk away for a few minutes (i.e. run around town with the drunk chasing), allow the other person, me, to go in, order the pizza, wait for them to make and heat the food, come out before the drunk returns, ressurect Aaron's dead corpse, and enjoy the pizza out of aggro range. Sadly, I forgot to research Ressurection, so we ended up dining at an organic foods restaurant across the street. <_< >_>
Ithaca was going to be so exciting!! The next day, I got up at 8:00 AM with high hopes and dreams of grandeur. I was going to find the best mother-fucking apartment ever! Literally. So here I am in front of the mother-fucking renting company all excited and shit when I notice that they don't open until 10:00 AM... ON A WEEKDAY. I mean, come on what the fuck... I head over to the next place on my list - Open: 10:00 AM. These two places were supposed to direct me to other mother-fucking rental buildings. Arghh!! I was about to flip a shit curse out the locals until it suddenly dawned on me that the locals were pré-tee goooood if you know what I mean hehehe. I immediately calmed down, found a nice comfortable corner, and observed the natives for the next two hours. When the places finally opened, the only suitable housing was a ten bedroom apartment with 10' X 10' X 10' size rooms. This had been a depressing morning leaving me badly in need of a drink. It was time to head to campus.
Sadly, the party scene isn't all that great at 10:30 AM on a Friday morning. Whatever. Instead, the first place I head to is the engineering quad, which is where most of my classes will be held. My field of study is in the Operations Research and Industrial Engineering (ORIE) Department, but for some reason, nobody knows where that is, so I keep getting directions to the Industrial Relations and Labor Department. After being directed to the wrong building four times, I just decide to follow the nearest Asian I saw. This method proved to be much more effective. I knew I was honing in on the engineering quad as I progressively saw more and more skinny Asians boys with "Kiss the Mathlete" shirts and TI-83s hanging out of their pockets. Home sweet home! Goddammit all... if only my mathlete shirt weren't in the wash. While we're on the topic of race, I do have to say I was really excited to see so many nerdy looking Asians in one place. I was slightly distraught at first when I heard that the average Cornell guy was a B+ or something, but obviously whoever captured that statistic had a blind eye for minorities. And speaking of minorities, the only black people I saw were the UPS guy and a construction worker. No joke. This further reduces the level of competition. By the way, I thought it was hilarious that there was a locked room in the ORIE Department that read, "Ping pong table for faculty and Ph.D. students only." Looks like someone's been scouting for talent overseas.
After checking out the engineering quad, I went back to the hotel to wake Aaron from his deep slumber. We went to a few rental offices and found a nice mini-suite for $550 per month (EVERYTHING INCLUDED), which I thought was an awesome deal. And get this. When we went to check out the house, the lady showing us around was this hot skinny white chick. Hoooolyyyy shit. God damn, I asked her questions like a champ. "How much is internet? Un huh. And what kind of people live here? Are you available for dinner tonight?" Haha... yeah right. Although I did ask her if I could have a double bed instead of a single, indicating that I may or may not have individuals of the opposite sex residing in my abode. I mean, if I was going to live here, I'd probably see her again right? "Hey remember me, I'm the guy with the double bed. *awink awink*" Anyways, I just hope they don't cancel my contract.
I used to live in Ithaca when I was about four years old. My old house was on North Aurora Street. I keyed that in to my TomTom. Here I am following the GPS like it's my fucking job. It tells us to turn left into a park, so I was like oh cool I used to live in a park. We pass this really nice looking waterfall, so I'm like oh cool I used to live near a waterfall. We drive up to a gate, where a park authority sees my Virginia license plate and asks for $7.00. Okay. I don't remember having to go through a gate to get to my house. MORAL OF THE STORY: DON'T GET A FUCKING GPS MADE BY A TOY MANUFACTURING COMPANY. Three phone calls to my dad and an hour later we arrive at my old house. It was pretty disappointing. I used to think we were dirt poor and lived in the ghetto, but it turns out that we were just dirt poor. Unfortunately, this place was anything but ghetto. The line of buildings were bright red, the kind of red Clifford is. In front of select houses were cartoon-like windmills and colorful plants. Looking back, this neighborhood looked like something from Alice in Wonderland. Sigh.
I can't stress it enough -- Cornell is gorgeous. I have never seen a campus so beautiful, so green, and so lively. Aaron put it best when he said, "This is like a nice retirement home, but really really nice." I mean, nice retirement homes are already really nice, but really really nice?! That's really really really nice. The campus itself is enveloped by Lake Bebee on the north end and a creek down south. We hiked our way to the top of a small hill on the north side of campus to get a better look at the lake. Time had frozen when we conquered the steep slope and looked down the other side. It was as if somebody had taken a Van Gogh painting and hidden it behind this hill. The sky was lined with the most symmetric looking clouds, clouds that laugh at the idea of looking anything but. Slightly below the horizon were an army of mountain, dominating the background from horizon to base, yet still peeved the clouds challenged their air space. Occassionally a particularly fearsome mountain would stand victorious above the cloud, but more likely than not the cloud would devour the entire mountaintop. Down by the base of the mountain was Lake Bebee. The mouth of the lake was shut tight by Bebee Dam, constructed by highly developed beavers. We could see sprinkles of gems glistening in the water, like a veil of diamonds spread across the lakebed. Perhaps it was fish enjoying the feel of sunlight; perhaps it was diamonds left by the beavers. We will never know. The occassional sparkle of the lake was the only part of the scenery that changed the ten minutes we sat at the top of that hill.
Then we looked down the immediate slope of the hill and saw where all the movement was. THERE WAS A GUY WITH A FUCKING BOOMERANG FRISBEE. HE WOULD THROW THE THING AND IT WOULD COME BACK TO HIM. HOLY SHIT. First supernatural beavers, and now boomerangs... hoooolly shit. Then there was this hot Asian chick suntanning on a bright towel. I sat down next to her and pretended to take a nap. Aaron went off on his own for an hour. We reconvened around 4:00 PM, finished up with housing and started to head back.
Yeah... so now was a good time to worry about that light in my car. The round trip was about 700 miles. I'm told that oil needs changing every 3000 miles. Assuming that 0% oillife means 3000 miles after the oil was last changed, we were only supposed to have lasted 450 miles from when we started with 15% oillife. Now was the time to panic. Being the hip youngsters we were, we decided to drive until the car reached 5% oillife and then begin worrying. By the time we reached Reston, the meter was still at 15% oillife, so basically we had driven 700 miles and used 0% oil. Okay yeah, 3000 miles... whatever. MORE LIKE AN OIL CHANGE EVERY INFINITY MILES BWAHAHAHA.
I had a really great time on this trip. The only two regrets I have are not bringing a camera, and not washing my "Kiss the Mathlete" shirt sooner. Here are my ratings for Cornell.
Asian Guys: 1/10
Atmosphere: 9/10
Campus: 10/10
Classrooms: 7/10
Facilities: 9/10
Girls: 7/10
Housing: 6/10 (only because the closest off campus housing is in a busy/noisy area)
Night Life: 8/10
Transportation: 7/10
Technology: 12/10
Overall: 8/10
