Grad School stories...

Note:I was supposed to publish it during grad school,but I had more important things to do...and now that I do have some time I thought I should post. This post is quite repulsive, so all you weak hearted folks who don't like to hear the bitter truth,kindly egress or brace yourselves if you wish to...

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It's been about 15 months and counting since I embarked on my pursuit of an MS from USC. There have been a lot of different experiences that I've had. Some good, some bad, some ugly,but all of them were learning experiences.

My day usually starts off with a trip to the loo...and sometimes I wonder what happened during the course of the night,especially after I took so much time and effort to clean the loo last night... I'm greeted by a yellow hoopla like streak that encompasses the entire toilet seat. And as I tip toe through the pervasive fuzziness that can sometimes be mistaken to be gunpowder, I wonder, yes, finally this will ignite a sense of cleanliness in everyone. I sometimes feel like the cobbler in the grimm brothers tale, the only difference being that the helpful lil elves are replaced by slimy crotchety leprechauns .

What's it with most guys and cleanliness? Why are we so unkempt? I don't consider myself a particularly filthy person, but i've met some people who would just walk around a chewing gum stuck on a carpet instead of picking it up...creating their own lil puggdandi . Is it something to do with the male brain? I've read somewhere that the ridge in the male brain is thinner than that in females, thereby separating logic from emotions to a far greater degree. I guess in the dirty males their emotions are not affected by the logically dirty situation that encumbers cleaner people (like me :)) .

Are females as dirty as guys?I wouldn't know, I guess i'd have to live with one to find out...hopefully it won't be my girlfriend or my wife...Why's there this tacit understanding that guys are generally dirty and girls are absolute angels and would make perfect room mates?

I guess amongst desi guys, there's always this chalta hai attitude that makes us believe that the other guy will do something about the shabby situation, that hidden motive that everyone has.. "oh dude...i couldn't clean the bathroom today because I had an exam OR I had a submission OR it was too dirty".

We're cheap too...Russell Peters was right when he said Indians are cheap...hell yeah we're cheap...we're the first to demand people for treats and the last to give one...Our cheapness is pretty much unleashed in grad school...I remember this one story about a guy who went from settling groceries by coughing up one cent since he had ONE slice of bread from the entire loaf to treating people at taco bell. I guess he used the remaining 99 cents to buy a bean burrito for himself and made the others flick some ketchup sachets to put on their bread on their way back home.This guy should've been in finance and not engineering!( Again, these are just hear say USC fundes.)

USC's engineering school is filled with all its desi cliques...from the tams to the gults to kandus to the "i'm not from the gulf " mallus to the gujjus to the gujjus from bbay to the gujjus from the united states of gujurat...to the punjabi mundyas who can't spell the C in code to the harpreet "the hirsute" singhs to the mumbaikars "amchi mumbai is the greatest" types to the puneites "oh I hate mumbai" types to the "osh kosh bigosh" babumoshais to the rest..the list is literally endless.. but in a way its fun because you meet all these folks and learn how to deal with various cultures across India...and more importantly live with them...its a real challenge...and the worse your experience is , the tougher you get ...