Rutgers (Part III)

It's been a while, but here it goes. Junior year…

Same thing everyday
I took Chinese 102 with my friend Victor during my junior year at Rutgers. The class met in the late morning Monday-Thursday, so we had it more or less everyday since neither of us had Friday classes. Every morning one of us would end up waking the other so we could head to class. We usually jumped on an F bus and then walked past a barren plot of soil where we literally watched the grass grow a little more each day. During class our teacher would always ask me the hardest questions which I never knew how to answer. I'd spend the next 5 minutes rifling through my textbook piecing Chinese words together to make a subpar response. It was always a relief to get out of that class, but she was a good teacher and I think she pushed me so I'd learn more.

After class, we would head to the take out line at the dining hall. We always got there ten minutes before they opened so we'd just wait at the front of the line till the clock struck 11:30am. We both got the same thing everyday: one cheeseburger, one chicken patty burger, fries or onion rings, two drinks and sometimes a dessert thing if it wasn't something too gross. Then we would head back to our house in New Brunswick, each fry an egg, put it in our cheeseburger then eat in the living room while watching The Price is Right with Drew Carey. This happened….every…day…for three months. I'm craving a cheeseburger with an egg right now.

Watching Videogames
I didn't play as many games junior year as I did watch people play them. I watched my roommates and friends play Bioshock, the Metal Gear Solid series, Tiger Woods golf and probably a bunch of games I don't remember. I don't know how many hours I spend sitting on the couch just watching people play various games as if it was being broadcasted on HBO. I sat and watched Victor play 18 holes of golf against Tiger Woods. He was up the entire game until he got spanked during the last two holes. Talk about wasting an hour watching my friend lose to a computer in virtual golf. Another time a bunch of us watched a friend play all the way through Portal in one sitting. It's a short game, but still requires 2-3 hours of straight game play to beat.

Portal has references to cake a lot, so we eventually had a craving for cake at around 1-2am. When I say "we" I mean the several people that were watching the completion of Portal in its entirety. So the most natural progression for us to take would be to wander the streets of New Brunswick until we found cake to eat. Turns out there aren't a lot of cake places around or open at 2 in the morning, so we settled for brownie mix. Yes, we made brownies instead and also in a pound cake pan instead of a baking pan. It took forever for the middle to cook and we didn't get to enjoy it till around 4am.

Since we're on the topic of wandering NB late at night due to cravings, my apartment mate randomly asked the question "does anyone want a sugary drink?" at around 2am once. Surprisingly, several other people and myself were just thinking the same thought. So again, we wandered the street of NB late at night due to cravings. This time was more successful however. As you can imagine, sugary drinks are far more common in the late night scene than cake.

You instill fear in the people
My roommate, Mike, and I went out one afternoon to eat or buy videogames. I forget what exactly we were doing but both were common occurrences, so it's probably one or the other. On our way back we were looking for parking on the street as we drove past our house. We saw Victor in the front so instinctively Mike rolled down the window announcing "THIS IS A DRIVE BY!!!" and we proceeded to shoot him with our pretend guns and verbal sounds effects as he played along by running down our driveway to the backdoor.

As we parked in front of the house our neighbor walked up to the window of our car. She began with, "That was really stupid you know!" I was confused at first but realized she must have witnessed our fake drive by episode and was quite upset by our actions. She went on for a couple minutes about how the streets are dangerous because of people like us and a lot of things I didn't really understand. The last thing she said was, "you instill fear in the people!" and she walked off down the street. The worst part was that she only really yelled at. Yeah, I guess she wasn't all wrong, but no one really got hurt except that I was a little traumatized after being chewed out by a total stranger for something my friend started.

Dude, what happened to your car?
Who would text me at 7am on a Sunday? Answer: my apartment mate Tim on his way to get a Wii. The text read "Dude, what happened to your car?" This obviously can't be a good thing so I went outside to check it out. I parked my car right in front of the house the night before but when I opened the door it was no where to be seen. Did someone steal my car? Did I forget to put the parking brake on and it rolled away on its own? Well I found it two dozen or so yards down the street with the front end completely demolished. The first thought in my mind was a mixture of "That's not right…I didn't park there and it didn't look like that last night…" and straight up "WTF!?!?!?"

I called the cops and they determined that a drunk driver probably drifted onto the wrong side of the road and smashed my car head on. The impact was so bad it slid back and hit Victor's car, which previously was parked far enough to fit two cars between us. There was a trail of leaking antifreeze from the drunk driver's car which the cops followed, but never found the culprits. I also found a Nissan emblem resting under the hood and on top of the engine. My car was a Toyota. My parents came to check it out soon after and then took me to Ihop for a nice breakfast. Later that night Victor and I were pretty sad, my car was totaled and Victor's took some decent damage as well, so a couple of us went to Target to do make some impulsive purchases. Overall, it was a pretty crappy experience, but it's one of those things you find entertaining well afterwards.