A part time job does not mean that you save some money. It only means that that you spend more without feeling guilty.

In my Greek Architecture class, prof showed a sample whose size was 10 metres. When asked how many feet, he was confused (He is Greek). When no one could figure how much is that after about 30 seconds I said “33 Feet”. Professor was impressed

In my Stochastic Calculus class, when I asked why dont we take the third order derivatives of Brownian Motion, the professor gave me the “What - a - dork - he - doesnt- even - know - that” look

In my Time Series class, the prof showed us 3 graphs, whose x axis and y axis were not labelled. He said , ” to anyone who can identify even one graph, a drink is due”. I guessed two ( including one which was the brightness magnitude of a double star system over 300 years). And yet I did not get a drink.

My first midterm was OKish. I made some silly mistakes. Forgetting the calculator at home was not a mistake, it was a catastrophe.
My part time job involves taking notes and forwarding phone calls to concerned people. I sort of miss ICICI

The punishment for plagiarizing is suspension. If you are caught cheating for the second time, you are sent back to your country. Needless to say one can never come back.

US is amazingly rich. Even after staying here for 3 months, I still think that’s true. Yes, you can find beggars here. Yes you can find homeless people here. But for every one of them, you also see 10 coffee makers thrown in the garbage because it is discolored or 20 chairs on the street because their handle is loose. Or a wooden chest in the garbage because one drawer is squeaky. Very few people repair stuff, its all just thrown away.

The mercury has been dropping on a daily basis here and it seems that pretty soon I’ll be exposed to the infamous NY cold. It is 9′C today and over the weekend the low may reach 7′C. Funnily I am getting used to “F and dont feel intimidated by something that reads 62/44 ( 17/07)

Another thing that I realised this week was that everyone keeps bumping into me. It happened thrice on Sunday and finally I understood (although pretty late) that I’m the one who’s walking on the wrong side. I’m used to walking on the left of a stairway/road and like driving, that’s opposite in US. It’s a conscious effort to correct myself these days.

Last Friday on a whim, me and my friend decided to walk from our house to Times Square, and back. It was a 16 KM (10 miles) walk that took us 4 hours. We crossed 170 streets and three avenues. Columbia has this wonderful program of giving discounted movie tickets at $6.50 instead of the regular $13. These tickets have no expiry date and are valid throughout the US. Making use of this opportunity, we saw “Social Network” a movie about facebook. This movie hall (AMC) is located near the 42nd street Subway station, and the subway lines pass under the movie hall. As a result, every 5 minutes or so there was a 10 second vibration period. Amusing at first but irritating later on.

As a classic case of stumbling upon happiness, I was offered three part time jobs at the same time this week. I’m not very keen on working too much as I’d rather focus my energy on other things, but having sid that working for 10 hours per week isnt that bad an idea. I was offered a job at Engg Library, at the International Affair library and at the Dean Student Affairs’ office. Library was offering me $ 9 an hour. At the Dean’s office the lady who interviewed me said, ” We normally pay $10 - 12 per hour, but since you’re a CFA, we’ll give you $14 an hour.” This was the first time CFA was of some monetary use to me :). She pressed me to work 15 hours a week but I accepted 10, which turns out to about $ 550 a month.

My courses are getting more and more difficult with every passing class. Midterms are due next week and I dont see myself free for at least a week now.

That’s pretty much it.