June 24th

At 5am, I got up after my brief 2 or 3 hour nap and ate as much of the remaining food I wasn’t able to pack, consume, or store before the driver for my airport shuttle called to inform me that she had arrived almost half an hour early. So, I rushed out the door with my bags and my checkout form/keys and left. It was good that she came early because we actually ended up leaving right about on time around 6am. It only took about 40 minutes to get to the San Jose Airport, during which time I made sure to take my Dramamine to compensate for my sleeplessness and unusual breakfast (and the probable air-sickness I have experienced for the last decade or so).

At the airport, I found out that my $15 baggage weighing device was off by exactly four pounds – for each check bag. So, after a routine that I have to assume outwardly resembled a cross between Mr. Bean taking off pants through his swimsuit and Dan Aykroyd’s character from Trading Places eating a smoked salmon through a fake beard, I ended up lightening my bags sufficiently by spending the remainder of the trip wearing four jackets with every pocket stuffed full of socks, computer components, and various other odd items. The photo to the right shows me at the gate, with a white sock peeking out of my pocket. Sadly, I still had to throw away a few pairs of socks.

The flight itself was short, but interesting. I ended up chatting with an elderly Irishman who designed semiconductors, and who had recently returned from a trip to Vietnam where his wife had gone just because a dentist she liked lived there (and because dental work costs about half the price there). He said that about 90 percent of the population seemed to ride mopeds, and that there were some lovely French restaurants near the government-owned hotel at which they stayed. We mostly talked about movies and politics/economics. I was enjoying the chat so much that I was actually somewhat disappointed when the jet landed. All flights should be so interesting.

Finally, I checked in to my two-person studio apartment at/near UCLA. To my surprise, my roommate is also a Banana Slug. That is to say, she is a theater major at UCSC who is also taking summer classes at UCLA. That’s her stuff in the photo, blurred to protect the names of the products from being advertised by the picture. Just kidding.

It’s a pretty big apartment, so I’m kind of wondering why there’s a bunk bed instead of just two beds. There are some neat things about the place though. When you plug into the modem using an ethernet cable, it just works. You don’t have to download/install spyware or keep logging in. Very cool. Also, we have elevators and handy trash chutes on every floor, although I’m shocked that there doesn’t seem to be any recycling program here.

It’s in the middle of an actual college town called Westwood Village. There actually seems to be a whole little mini-city built around the school with stores and cafes and banks. Within a ten-fifteen minute walk, you can get to a Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Ralphs, CVS, a bunch of clothing shops, etc. My class at Melnitz Hall is about an 18-22 minute walk away, as is most of the main campus. Humorously enough, they have the same exact jokes about getting “legs of steel” and the “reverse freshman fifteen” as we do at UCSC. I’ll talk more about the school and my first day of class in my next post…