Updatus...

Well, like I said before, I'm at UW, the U or whatever name you wanna know it as. The past few weeks have been spent in

1. Setting up my room - closet, bed, computer (which hasn't arrived yet), docking station yada yada.

2. Buggering about university - checking out the hotspots, libraries (which might also be hotspots), and walking up and down the university avenue - the Ave - with its collection of stores and restaurants and college folk...

3. Buggering about University - but this time for Advising and Orientation sessions - There's a pretty diverse international crowd here which mostly consists of South East Asians - students from Vietnam, Korea, China, Japan and the like. I've found about seven Indian undergrads so far, rooting from Ludhiana to being born and brought up in Dubai... Its been a lot of fun interacting with this crowd, finding out that we can be quite similar at times. I introduced an Egyptian, a Korean and a Japanese to Indian food - Masala Dosa, Chilly Chicken (their call), and Butter Chicken - along with rice and Naan. They loved it - though the food wasn't completely desi prepared.

Also,
We'd all gone for this activity that involved us being let into a pub (the activity took up the entire pub) and playing a game of trivia. A few questions into the round, we really got into the game and warmed up to each other - pulling legs, asking history, that kind of thing... The questions were clearly of an international nature, ranging from

"Who are the two candidates up for Vice Presidency in the US National elections this November?"

to

"How many World Cups has Brazil won?"

to

"Which weight lifter dedicated his Olympic Gold Medal to his recently expired wife, holding her photo on the podium?"

to

"What is the national tree of Washington State?"

All this was over three rounds. We (team iPod) ended up tying with 'Still Smoking', who looked to be made up entirely of Indian Graduate students sticking together. The tie breaker was

"What is the population of the proper city of Seattle?"

Our first guess was given by this girl called Sherry, from China - at a nice 3.4 million. I swallowed my misgivings for want of a better figure myself - and we entered it. The the quiz master looks at us and asks us whether we knew this was for Seattle proper. We take the cue and say that we had no idea (OMG, was it that?? Oh..!!...). And now being better informed by whispers that its around 500K, I jot in 540K as our guess. Turns out the actual population is 592,613. ... ... ... The other team guessed 580K. They won. :(. But we got more candy as a consolation prize than they did. Suckers.

4. Buggering about the University - for getting into courses that are already full. I've been successful once, and should probably get going for the next and not waste the library's computer access. Ta.