I suddenly feel as if I’m hauled into this tornado, spinning around continuously, wandering aimlessly without any idea of where. Causing destruction everywhere? Probably not…but tornado, yes.
2 weeks to summer. 4 weeks to Germany. Life’s going on. Danke. Tschuss und einen schonen Tag! :-)
In the midst of being in this tornado, I got transported to a very interesting place, a la Dorothy style. I received the DAAD RISE scholarship to intern as an undergraduate researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Germany for the summer of 2011. I’m sure Germany will be just as promising and exciting as the Land of Oz. I plan to write of my travels and travails here and maintain it for the benefit of capturing every special and exotic moment that I come by. I know this is going to be THE Eurotrip of my life and I don’t want to leave any stone unturned to make it happen!!
It was soo eventful when I learnt that I got it. March 1st, one of my friends from school plastered it all over her facebook that she got the scholarship and she was going. Since then, I checked the DAAD RISE page every day and my email multiple times a day for updates. They said they would also email rejection letters so after March 10th, my anticipation shifted from acceptance letters to the opposite. And then, by March 15th, I forgot everything. My spring break was already ruined when someone replaced me on an epic road trip to Florida. All I did was sleep and catch up on all of the Bollywood movies that I’ve been wanting to watch since the beginning of the semester. March 17th, 2011, my brother’s birthday. The night before, I remember telling my brother how awesome it would be if I get my acceptance letter the next day on his birthday and what he replied literally translated to Insh’Allah. I again slept into oblivion. The morning I wake up with no DAAD on my head to bother me. I pull out my phone to check my email while still in bed. I read congratulations in the subject line. I fear cruel deception and hence go on and read the whole email and although I couldn’t comprehend a single word at first, the second reading confirmed the fact that I was accepted. I jumped out of bed like a ninja who had been alerted of his enemy or like a firefighter whose alarm had just gone off. A shout of joy and many jumps and crazy dances were halted by the piercing pain of an ankle twist. I smiled and took up my phone again, checked the time in India and called my family back home. They were going out for dinner. Suddenly, I didn’t want to go to Germany. Suddenly, all I wanted was to go back home just so I could accompany my family to dinner. This summer was supposed to be spent at home taking online summer classes. One email changed it all. One email tossed my "plan" into the bin. Yes, I'm happy I'm going. But I'm equally sad that I won't be going home for a long time now...My project is a bioinformatics one. One of the leading research fields in the scientific world; and saying no to a fully funded scholarship opportunity to research in Germany would be something my parents would definitely revolt against. So yeah, summer in Germany it is.
One day, I was getting bored in class and was going through some high school pictures. I spotted our present principal in one of the pictures and all the memories of my arch-enemy, History came back. The Parliament, the Partition, the revolt of 1857, the World Wars…and then Germany again. Realization hit me that I should probably brush up on what exactly happened in Germany during the World Wars and what should I not say or do with regards to that, whilst there. Trust me, reading up on the Versailles Treaty on Wikipedia after so many years is no fun. This placed #1 in the award for undesirable things to-do for Germany.
The second position was taken by an hour long “hold” waiting for a British Airways customer care representative to respond to my complaint. Due to some bizarre reason, while booking my flight online, BA had a problem in their server and obviously wanted me to call them to fix things. Apparently, my funds from Citibank were deducted but they never reached BA. I was forced to believe for an entire day that one grand USD were stuck in limbo, possibly somewhere in Web 2.0 where no one will be able to extract them from. That would’ve definitely made it to the NY Times Bestseller’s list for Science Fiction. Hmm..I should’ve told the customer care representative that. Haha, the Citibank rep was speaking to me from a call center in Mumbai and we happened to share an awkward moment where both of us were satisfied at the fact that we are somehow related to each other through Mumbai. Outsourcing Zindabad?
#3 goes to me getting a “fake” legit ISIC card for my trip to Europe. Apparently, the possession of an International Student Identity Card (ISIC) gives you access to many discounts and sales all throughout Europe. With the pure Indian Guju blood in me, I of course took the first trip between classes to go downtown and get it made. I was astounded to see the lady cut the ISIC paper and stick it on a thick credit card material board. She then wrote my name on it and stuck a hologram sticker on top of my name and an empty space where my picture would otherwise be placed. She handed that over to me and I look around for a photo booth. Upon asking, I find out that I am given the liberty to stick any of my favorite pictures of mine below the hologram sticker and just paste the new sticker on it. The audacity of it all, when I am freaking charged $22 for it was beyond me. I just stared at her for a whole minute when she finally agreed saying, “Yeah, I know it almost feels like I made you a fake id, but it’s the real thing. Don’t worry.” Gah?! I’m almost sure that someone in Europe will look at the ID and accuse it of being fake. I should probably paste my receipt on the back of the ID so I have proof of its authenticity everywhere I go. lol.
0 comments:
Post a Comment