My life over the past 3 weeks or so...

Yeah I haven't updated this for a while. The first 1.5-2 weeks after getting here were pretty rough, and believe it or not, I still have half a box of books that I haven't unpacked yet. Of the negative highlights of my time here, couple of things deserve special mention. First, the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) decided over the summer to suspend my car's registration 'cos they thought I didn't have insurance. I do of course have insurance, and the information was supposed to be electronically conveyed to the DMV by the insurance company.

I realized that I had the mail on the night of Sat, 16 Sep. I called the DMV on Mon 18 Sep to try to sort things out - they asked me to fax over info. So I called the insurance company to fax over the info and also to relay it electronically. I must say Geico Insurance was really great at providing good service all the way - I discovered their customer hotline is 24 hours, and their phone people are really friendly. On the other hand, the DMV was extremely unfriendly whenever I called. Over the course of the next two weeks, I called the DMV repeatedly to check if it had been processed but all they could tell me was if I faxed it, it should be in the midst of processing, and it takes 3 working days to process, and until it's processed they can't check if it's there. Kind of ridiculous. I even lost my patience with the DMV people a couple of times - one time the lady tried to hang up on me by saying something and ending with "have a good day sir" which of course is total crap - I almost never get as pissed off with a random person i don't know on the phone as I did with her. Only last Friday (5 Oct) did I finally get the official letter from the DMV clearing my car for use. No apology for the mistake, no explanation, just a black and white official letter. Can't really hope for much more from them it seems.

There were other things too. The first full week after I got back was the beginning of a cappella recruiting and auditioning season. It's an insane period filled with tabling for audition sign-ups and performing at dorms. Over that and the following week (which was the first week of school) I must've gotten really tired although I tried not to. During audition week, we lasted till about 7:30am on Thursday morning after ending auditions on Wed night, having a meeting between the a cappella groups and getting callback folders out to the guys we wanted to call back. Callback auditions were on Friday, ended around 12:20am, then we discussed who we wanted, and then went to a meeting at 4am with the a cappella groups to discuss who each group wants (so that the same person doesn't end up in two different groups), and then roll people out (bang loudly on their doors and wake them up with a song) until about 7-8am. It was Sat by then... Sat afternoon we met the new guys and stole them away to Santa Cruz which is by the sea, where we had a Mendicants weekend retreat. The retreat went really well, we have a great bunch of new guys who're also amazing singers and the weather was perfect both days.

Kinda fell sick over that weekend though, became more obvious on Monday when I was sniffing all day and experiencing lotsa phlegm. I still have quite a bit of phlegm actually - that's more than a full week since it started. The other bummer thing was that I signed up for 2 Econ classes totalling 10 units, both of which I have to do if I'm considering Econ as a major at all 'cos without them I can't do any of the other classes. Problem was, those two classes occupied prime class time on Mon-Thu mornings so I must've cycled through the process of finding another class I like and then discovering that it clashed with those 10 units at least 4-5 times, which was kinda discouraging. Finally though I found one (thank God!) so here're the classes I'm doing now:

Econ 50 Microeconomics (5 units) - It's like Econ 1A and JC Econs again, but with more math. Not much more though - I feel like I can kinda afford to skip classes and keep up. Hehe. I skipped lecture yesterday (which by the way is an insane 1h 50 mins long) to sleep in cos I was really tired. Think it was a pretty good decision. Hehe.

Econ 102A (Stats, 5 units)) - A lot of Econ at Stanford is pretty mathematical and uses a fair bit of stats, so this class is kind of a prerequisite for a lot of Econ courses. I don't like stats though - It's one of those subject areas that I feel I just have to memorize how to do 'cos the formulas and stuff in general don't really make sense to me. Kinda like how I feel about Bio. I much prefer understanding concept to just plain memorizing facts. I've actually done stats before in JC but I can barely remember anyhing about it.

Introduction to Judaism (4 units) - I'm so glad for this class. Not only does it fit into my schedule, but we get to talk about the Bible in class. And it's only 2 lectures of 1h 15 mins a week which are more like discussion sections 'cos there're only about 12-15 people in the class in total. This should be fun. :)


And now, I can't find my camera cable. Wanted to upload some pictures but since I don't have the cable I can't do that so I'll post this first and pray I find it soon...