I don't live thea(r) anymore...

I’m finally done with Brandeis. Finished, verj, prtsa.

Leaving Waltham felt like a whirlwind. The few days prior to my departure were so busy that I hardly had time to sleep. Finishing up the finals, staying late at school to work on a project with my group on the last day, barely making it home to pack the rest of my stuff before heading to the airport Worrying that my luggage would exceed the weight limit, anticipating hold-ups at the checkpoint, flight cancellations and what not else... Sometimes I get antsy like that when big things happen and what was happening was big – I was finally leaving.

That last twenty minute walk from school to home felt like an eternity. I remembered what it was like to walk to school for the first time for orientation – hurried and excited. Amazed at how naïve I was then, how unknowing. I thought about how much I’d changed since then – how much these past few months changed me, for the better or worse. I tried to picture where I would be had I not come here. I thought about where I was going now - this time no longer afraid of uncertainties… After all, I was going to the only place I would rather be in the whole entire world. I was going home – to Richmond.

Mother Sugar took me to goodbye dinner to Cambridge. We strolled in Harvard Yard, talking about stuff – the past, the present, our future plans, her kids, my mother… promises to visit her from time to time, promises that she’d come to see me in Richmond. Meeting Mother Sugar and living in her house was perhaps the best thing that happened during these months of being here. As happy as I am to leave this one passage of my life behind, I know that even if I don’t miss much, I will truly miss this most understanding and loving and eccentric and passionate woman. And this is all I have to say before getting any sappier than I already am. And yet, I’m glad that there was something preventing me to simply wrap up my farewell with “So long, suckers, don’t bother to miss me” and that something was Mother Sugar.

Updating the Grant Countdown

In less than a week I will be leaving Boston. Till then I will have to finish a conservation project and write two final papers - one on human right standard of affordability when it comes to cost recovery of water and sanitation services, the other one on an evaluation report of inner-city youth sex education program. Someone please kick me so that I can sit down to work. In the past few days I have been very successful at distracting myself with anything that will keep me away from finishing school work. I packed most of my belongings. I made thousands of phone calls. I paid all my bills. I went for runs. I painted my toenails. Does anyone need their bathtub scrubbed? Procrastinators of the world, lets unite tomorrow.

I am still trying to make up my mind whether I want to buy any keepsake trinket or a clothing item associated with my alma step matter. Trust me; it’s a tough decision to make.

Yesterday was my last day of class. We went on a field trip (yay!!!) to The Food Project – a local organization that “engages young people in personal and social change through sustainable agriculture.” Youth groups of various social and economic backgrounds work together to grow organic produce that is then sold in low income neighborhoods of greater Boston area at the price of conventional produce. A couple of Heller SID students have worked as interns at the Project, studying the model to replicate it elsewhere in the developing world. Although I think that the Project is rather neat and perhaps will work well anywhere in the US, doing something along these lines in certain parts of the world might not after all be that great of an idea. It’s one thing to compete with big corporations selling you genetically modified food of unknown origin choke full of pesticides. Yet in countries and regions where the majority of the population depends on subsistence agriculture, doing a project like this might simply create competition that would end up hurting local farmers. I think you’d be better off creating farmer co-ops which can significantly reduce operating costs and make farms more efficient. But I digress (or stop pretending that I know what I’m talking about).

In other news – FINCA International just offered me a six month (unpaid) internship in D.C. once I’m done with my summer research fellowship. The reason that I find this amusing is that I never applied to or even asked for it to begin with. Either my resume has been circulating and impressing everyone around, or a word got out that Brandeis SID students are desperately in need of a second year practicum. And what better way to employ free slave labor than hiring interns! Most of the kids in the program haven’t found internships yet, and they are now operating in “freak-out” mode. In a way, I am glad that I chose a different route, even if it will take me much longer to graduate. For now, I need to come up with a way to politely reject the offer of FINCA International, while still “maintaining a good relationship” with them. For the future, just in case. Does this count as kissing ass?

One more amusing factoid for those who really care to know – I calculated that out of less than nine months since I have been here, three months (or thirteen weeks) were spent in Richmond. No wonder that I now am the lucky owner of a free JetBlue roundtrip ticket anywhere in continental US. How about that!

For now I need to get my act together and finish the semester with whatever dignity I have left. And since there is not much of it left at this point, any help on the above referenced topics will be greatly appreciated. Fat bastard, I am looking at you.

My grand countdown has almost come to an end – only one more week left.

I guess we were never meant to be…

I am sorry, Bean Town. This is not how I expected things to turn out. I tried, I tried my best and I tried really hard to come to like you, but every time I turned to your cold embrace, I was greeted with indifference, bitterness and downright rudeness.

I could deal with indifference, I could even try to put up with bitterness, but rudeness is just a bit too much of a stretch. I think I deserve better than that. Hell, I have been treated much better than that. I think it’s time for me to come to terms with the fact that our relationship is ruined beyond repair. It’s time for me to move on…

See, I actually liked you in the beginning. I thought you were beautiful, I thought you were magnificent. I still think that you are… but you’re so tough to grow into, so tough to like. If you were a little bit friendlier, if you gave me something to work with, just a little, as much as a single smile…

“Dude, my anus is friendlier than Boston,” one of my friends from the Midwest once told me.

I’m not sure how true this is, since I never really had the desire to find out how friendly the said part of her body was, but I also know that to be more unfriendly than you are would require tremendous effort that no single human being is capable of. So I have to take her word in this regard.

Your attitude is unbearable, your customer service is horrible, your drivers are maniacs, your cabbies never miss a chance to rip me off, your pedestrians with their frozen, expressionless faces elbow their way through, hitting me left and right and heaven forbid if I happen to get lost in the maze of your streets, heaven forbid that I as much as dare to stop someone in an attempt to ask for directions and distract them from their already overly busy and important life…

“Excuse me, do you know how to get to X?”
"Yep.”
“Will you tell me then, please?”
“Nope.”

End of conversation.

Where are your manners, Bean Town? Is this how your mother raised you? I bet she’s real proud of how you turned out. You may consider yourself the center of the universe, but seriously, is it all that counts?

I tried really hard to like you. I even sympathize with the bitterness of your working class… But what gets to me more than anything is the hoards of over privileged “pretentious intellectual hipsters” of yours lurking around with bloated sense of importance and entitlement. You see, I never got that. You see, I never cared whether they went to Harvard (or MIT, or BU or Tufts for that matter). So I guess I never had a chance…

Maybe I never really had a chance to begin with…I refused to wear any signs that showed any affiliation with either you or any of your schools. I never had any appreciation for beer, let alone your infamous local brew. I never cared for baseball which, I was told, is an act of blasphemy worse than being a fan of the Yankees. And I never rejoiced or took part in any of the festivities after the Sox won the series. Maybe I never gave you a chance to begin with – after all, it’s hard to top my overflowing, overwhelmingly obsessive love for that other place that I kept going back to every time I had a free day or two…

I still think that you’re a beautiful town. I still think you have so much to offer. And I’m still hopelessly in love with your boys Matt Damon, Ryan Montebleau and Josh Ritter. But even that is not enough to overcome the great sense of disappointment and anguish that you inflicted upon me since I’ve come to know you.

Maybe I never had a chance with you. Maybe I never gave you a chance in the first place. But I’m more and more starting to realize that we simply weren’t meant to be… and I could not have been happier to leave.

P.S. And you know what, I’m actually glad that your unbeatable Patriots lost the Super bowl. And that they lost to no one else but the Giants. So take that, Bean Town. After all, there is only so much ego that one town can bear…

P.P.S. And for the record, I will never get your suit clad professionals walking around in tennis shoes (!!!), your women in coats and flip flops (my God!) and your crowds proudly carrying their scarlet “B”s on their caps and chests and backs like it is some kind of a divine badge.