Its been almost 4 weeks since I set foot in Fairfax, Virginia and over a month since I left my family back in the searing hot deserts of the Arab Emirates. My journey across the Altantic was tumultuous and fraught with grim luck – but it is an adventure which will be detailed in a different post – but I’m here and I’m still alive.
It all started out pretty much very busy. I arrived at Washington on the 24th of August at 10:30 PM. I was finally checked in and unpacked at my townhouse at around 1AM, much to the chagrin of my parents who hadn’t been aware of my flight’s problems and delays and had been worried sick enough to constantly harass the front desk. Lacking a way to properly contact them though, the best I could do was borrow one of my roommate’s phones to send off an SMS to them. I only managed to get 5 hours of sleep though, before awakening at 6:30 AM and starting off what would be a hellish week.
Before I continue, let me clarify a bit – I’m currently living in the GMU Townhouses, which is around half a kilometer away from the campus. The townhouses are mostly fairly neat and in a good area and quite spacious on the inside. Each unit has anywhere from 2 to 6 people in it, depending on the options chosen. The townhouse I was in houses 4 people; 2 per bedroom essentially. At the time when I arrived, it was only housing two – my roommate and another fellow student from the Mason-RAK campus that had come over as well.
My immediate roommate is a young Chinese man, here on a program of study that will grant him a double degree. For the most part he’s a decent and reasonable person – although my initial impressions were skewered by the large mess that had been left in the living room and dining areas, stinking it up along with his lack of common hygiene. Now I wont say I’m a neat freak – but my experience in the army basically drilled certain standards into me – none of which were met by the horrid condition of the room. For the sake of privacy though, I’m not going to go much further into it save that it basically made the living room immediately unusable – at least for the moment.
The fourth roommate would only be coming in around the 31st of August though, which was the regular move-in date for the residents here. It was also when most of the classes would be starting. Unfortunately this hardly meant that my first week would be anything but quiet. Most of it was spent running around getting the basics set down: a phone, bank account, cleaning supplies, household stuff, some food/snacks, things like that. In almost all matters I ran into issues, however. The bank account couldn’t be opened without a phone number. I wasn’t really familiar with how the phone systems worked, especially since none were available immediately on campus. Similarly, other issues cropped up in trying to figure out the local bus system and where it went.
Fortunately, most of these issues were solved with the assistance of the registrar that worked in the Mason-RAK Campus. She was incredibly kind by giving me a lift to the Target store, where I managed to finally get a phone, along with cleaning supplies and other essential goods. The roommate from Mason-RAK was also kind enough to let me borrow his phone number temporarily to help me setup the account. By Saturday I had just about set most things up – including cleaning the living area and talking to the roommate and finally contacting my parents via email the previous day. I still didn’t have much in the way of food – I was mostly living on McDonalds and the university’s food court’s salad bar until then. But that was mostly due to lack of anything stored up and limited access to groceries – a problem I intend to solve on the weekend.
This process mostly started out with a copy of the CUE bus map and planning to visit various areas that were marked as malls along with Microcenter, where I could find a laptop. However the first half of the plan was tossed out the window when my roommate across the hall (the Mason-RAK one) mentioned that he and others were going to try to reach Tyson’s corner. I decided to join them and take a look at the metro system – my first (and so far only) foray on it. We took the Cue bus up to the Vienna station, from there catching a train upto the next station. To get to Tyson’s corner we had two options: the first as the group had planned was to go to West Falls Church and catch a bus from there directly to Tyson’s corner.
However, upon studying the map I suggested a different route from Dunn-Long Merifield station, catching the 2C which went significantly closer to the mall than the other bus. It was decided that we would go that way – and as I would later find out, the bad luck from the week would still dog me through this, turning it into a horrible decision. We arrived at Dunn-Long and went to the bus depot. However, it was here that we discovered the bus service would take a long time to reach due to the service running less frequently over the weekend.
We were ready for a long wait – until we saw 2C pull up. Immediately, we boarded it and were somewhat happy to have caught the bus which had luckily come late. It was only around a half hour later when we passed East Falls church station though, that we realized our grave error. Oblivious to the signboards at the bus station, we had boarded 2C Eastbound – which was headed in the complete opposite direction and was now headed to the wrong direction of town. A quick word with the bus driver simply confirmed this; fortunately he was kind enough to drop us off immediately near the station. After a quick figuring out of where we were and a walk back to the station and checking the bus depots there it was decided that going to Tyson’s corner was a bust – and I knew that it was my fault.
Fortunately, there was a backup plan. There was a bus leaving from the station that headed straight to Fair Oaks Mall so most of the others decided to head there. I opted to get off at the Vienna station along the way, catching the Cue bus to Microcenter and look for laptops. I parted from the group at Vienna, giving them my apologies on the mistake. Fortunately there were no hard feelings (I hope). Several minutes later I caught the Green 1 bus heading down Nutley Lane and stopped at Microcenter to search for a laptop.
I have to say this much about the store: it was pretty darn big, and all for electronics too. There was a lot of stuff there as well, from mobile phones to music to games and even television sets. My main intent was to get laptops, though, which is where I went. They had quite a huge variety of them – but all over 400 dollars, which was my absolute maximum budget. There were a few below that line, but most of them were either EEPcs or incredibly horrible low-end laptops. There was one piece that did catch my eye though: an asus piece that costed 399 after rebates which had the right range of specs I was looking for. However, to get that price one needed to mail in a rebate form. Getting it right now meant spending 500 dollars – something I desperately wanted to avoid right now. Still, there were few other options available.
I have to say that I was absolutely fraught with indecision over it. It was agonizing – part of me wanted that laptop desperately; but the other half knew that I had limited resources and simply couldn’t afford it. By now it had approached 2PM and I finally decided to put off the decision and think about it a bit more over lunch. I went back to the road and caught the bus heading down to Pickett Road to search for the Best Buy there in hopes for a better deal. Sadly, it was closed and wouldn’t open till the next week. Sad and defeated I went back upto Micro Center. The horrendous CUE bus schedule meant that by the time I reached there it was fast approaching six. However, a brief examination of other PCs still didn’t yield a result.
With such an unproductive day, things didn’t seem like like it could get worse. Unfortunately it did. After waiting a half hour beyond the time written in the bus schedule, I realized I had made a horrible mistake in my calculations. The bus I’d taken to Microcenter was the last bus to come around, meaning I was now stranded there with no way to get back to the townhouses. With the sun rapidly setting and a deluge of mosquitoes rising out of the forest behind me, I didn’t have much choice save to try calling for a cab – at least that is, until I saw a metro bus come steaming down the road.
Flagging it, I asked the driver if he was going to the Fairfax city circle. Unfortunately I didn’t realize at the time that he had thought I said Fairfax Hospital - to which he promptly replied yes. Grabbing a seat, it was only after around 10 minutes of driving and arriving at an unfamiliar part of town did I ask him again and realize the error. He apologized for the mistake and dropped me at Fairfax Hospital, giving me directions on how to get back via the other buses. Thanking him anyway, I decided to go into the hospital for a drink of water. Due to the time at night, it was mostly empty.
However, I have to say the place is a maze. And I mean this quite literally. There is corridor after corridor after corridor that interconnects and seems to go off to infinity at times. After 15 minutes and asking no less than three people on how to find a fountain, I finally found one – ironically, right near where I started, but in the opposite direction! Tired, fed up and exhausted I decided to catch a cab back to the townhouses before something worse happened. Thankfully I made it back that night in one piece.
The next day ran through remarkably better. I went back to micro center and found an alternative laptop that was cheaper and just as good -a Compaq system that had a wide screen just large enough to accomodate a numpad on the keyboard – blessed by thy numpads! Suffice it to say, despite being refurbished its served me well so far.
I cant really comment on the days that came after wards. There was little to note save that my TB immunization ended up getting infected, swelling up my arm to a painful state. Fortunately it was treatable with antiobiotics and became better. I got a lot of other things setup – at least, wherever possible. One of the sticky points was the textbooks, however. The bookstore was incredibly slow and inefficient at getting the textbooks; neither giving a time nor a possibility on when they might arrive, making it difficult to decide whether to get from them or just go to Ebay.
In some cases they had better prices, in others I went with ebay/amazon. Either way they really dropped the ball with supply – my English class’ poetry book, for instance, basically only arrived today, a week after I no longer need it. Its funny and amusing just as it is frustrating; but at the end of the day part and parcel of life. Most of the time since then has been spent in classes, slacking or doing assignments and, albeit rarely, sitting down to actually write stuff like this blogpost.
But all of these are really just events that have happened – writing about one feels about this place is an entirely different matter altogether.
America is…strange. Its strange, surreal and frightening in a way all at the same time – a fact that is in its own way, strange. All my life I’ve always existed aloof from the rest of the peers around me; swimming in the Ocean that is the western context. From watching Cpt. Kirk on Star Plus as a kid to reading the works of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov to even just living on the internet for so long – most of my context exists in the west.
And yet…and yet this place is so strange. There are so many people in the campus; so many people milling about doing their own things. Hundreds. Thousands. Its…overwhelming. The largest school I’ve been had a population of 2 thousand at most. Its well over 20,000 here. All of them strangers and strange people, obsessed with their own strange little things – even though I probably share some of them. The only bit of the familiar is now over 9,000 kilometers away; a few strings of text in skype; the occasional long distance phone call.
But at the same time, that familiarity is far away – with all the chains that bound my possible actions. The context to which I had to adhere is 9,000 kilometers away. The only relatives that I know are hundreds of miles away while in many ways I am a stranger here on this campus. In many ways I now have the keys in my hands to unlock doors that a lack of privacy and the wrong context had kept closed for me before.
In a way, for the first time in my life – even if it is for an oh-so-brief period – I am…free. There are so many doors to open…so many paths to take. For once in my life, I am free to take on my own context; to make my own decisions and maybe even forge my own paths. I am free.
And it terrifies me.
It simply does.
But then I remind myself. Am I truly free? Even if I am it begs the question: how far is one willing to go with freedom? I don’t want to hurt my parents – their already struggling and don’t deserve any distress; so in a way I’m still chained by that limitation. I can’t go against my extended family’s beliefs – they are what is making it possible for me to be here. What kind of a human being would I be to rebuff them after that?
Another counter-argument comes about, however: it doesn’t matter. A lot of doors were opened and closed for me to come along this path. I suffered through my childhood – what little of it was there – and my teenage years. I’ve never approached the doors that were closed before, simply because I had no need or want to open them, nor did I have the keys. But the universe seems to have either blessed or cursed me now by giving me the keys to them and making me reconsider that decision of not going through.
Stepping back, I realize that I have a brief window here – that exact isolation works both ways. Things done here need not resonate back across the Atlantic. Purpose has brought me here to learn. Purpose has brought me here, where tools exist with which I can right that which is wrong in myself.
Most importantly, purpose has brought me here for enlightenment. This just proved itself today, when I made use of the library resources and got a copy of The Philosophy of the Bhudda. Reading it page by page was a fascinating affair and each paragraph was, in many ways, a life altering new perception.
I say life-altering as opposed to changing, mostly because I’ve held much of the same perspectives for a good portion of my life – but was never able to have it framed so solidly. Even though it makes my head hurt, I have realized one important concept from it thus far at least: to not desire that which I will not attain; but at the same time to not desire less than what can be attained. To accept the middle way between the extremes is to accept things as they are and as they will be. Life…goes on. You can either go with it happily, or you can go with it miserable. Either way its really up to oneself.
I look back at my keys. I look up at the doors. Can the desires they hold be attained?
…
….
……I think so. I hope so.
Its time to try unlocking some doors.
Tags: Bhudda, Computers, Fairfax, Getting Lost, Microcenter, Moving in, PCs, Travelogue, Virginia
