Joshua

Well as much I as didn’t want it, the weekend was over. I had my Six Flags Great Adventure trip on Saturday and I loved it very much. It was just me and 4 other friends (the others didn’t show up in time) and every single roller coaster in the park. All 4 of them have never been to Six Flags Great Adventure so I lead them around the entire day. One of my friends, who’s from Oregon, has never been on a roller coaster and guess what we made him ride as his first one ever? Kingda Ka the world’s tallest and fastest roller coaster!! Other than that, the park had some improvements from last year and I can’t wait until I go back to Jersey for the summer and visit the park several more times. The wooden coaster El Toro was popular among us and unpopular for my roommate, who lost his cell phone on it. Hopefully the Six Flags employees find it and return it. Still, it was a great day though, a great adventure at Six Flags Great Adventure.

On to the weekdays, a calculus exam to started off my Monday, it wasn’t what I wanted to look forward to, but hopefully I did somewhat well on it when I get it back later this week. Tuesday was crowded as usual with my multiple classes and now I can tell you never to have 5 classes on the same day. Especially, the ‘hard’ classes like chemistry, biology and English. When all 3 classes share an important date, it gives me problems trying to meet the work expectations. I thought of stuffing everything on Tuesday because back in high school I was used to having all my classes in a row in a day and I have almost no classes Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but since its college, that idea FAILS.

Spring weekend is getting closer and closer. I have signed up to volunteer for both the concert and the carnival. I can’t wait until Friday and Saturday when all our efforts reward us. A really cool thing for the carnival, we’re going to have many rides, free games, a mechanical bull, a mechanical surfboard and an elephant! Yep a live elephant all the way from Jersey for people to ride. I can’t wait! There will be so many people and it will be very fun!

The year is ending as well, the weather is getting warmer and I may make a West Haven beach run very soon and maybe a NYC trip with my friends after spring weekend. I can’t wait!!!!!!!!

There was nothing much going on this week except many exams and much talk on the end of school. My labs were fun as Chem. Lab got me doing Acid Titration and Bio Lab got me doing pig digestive system dissecting. My Calc class was teaching me how to graph functions without a calculator and my other classes continued on with their syllabus-following-lectures. Clubs like FSCC and Paintball Club voted in new E-Boards and gave members a preview of what to expect in the year to come.

I also got to experience riding a segway this week. In order to promote the movie ‘Mall Cop’, one of the clubs on campus had a promotion-thing where you could learn to ride a segway and you get to ride it around the Maxcy quad. It was hard at first because it just didn’t look like it would balance me, but after riding on one. I really want one and I would get it if it wasn’t as expensive as a car…

Additionally, SCOPE started selling Spring Concert tickets from Tuesday to Thursday and it was extremely crowded almost every night. The cool thing about Spring Weekend is that everything is free for UNH students. The tickets to the concert were completely free to all undergraduates, $10 to Undergrad guests and every one else. Then when the Spring Carnival comes the day after the Spring Concert, students get to play all the games and go on the rides for free.  The day after that, we’re supposed to get a really good comedian and that is free as well. I can’t wait for my first Spring Weekend ever!

For the rest of this entry though, I am going to share with you readers an entertaining story about how I managed to get on possibly the most popular SCOPE trip this year as first 6 people out of about 160 people for a 47 spot bus.

Signups for the Six Flags Great Adventure trip were this week and all I had to say was that it was a ‘great adventure’ in itself, trying to get on to the trip. From previous trips the school had, I’ve learned that an hour early is actually too late. The first Boston trip the school had to see a Pink Floyd Laser Show in Boston, I narrowly made it on with 2 friends when I went there 20 minutes before signups. We were like the last 3 people to get on the 48 person bus there. The next Boston trip the school had was to the Boston Aquarium. I went there an hour early and by then, the 47 spots on that bus have been taken and the wait list was enough to fill another bus. Too bad they never got that second bus though.

For this trip, I actually waited 4 hours before signups with a group of friends. This one of the, if not, the most popular trip SCOPE has had all year (Would you say no to a free ticket and food voucher for a good amusement park?). For our ‘camp out’, we just grabbed some books, computers and dinner and just chilled in the couches near the entrance of Bartels. Cool thing about that, during dinner time, you see so many people walk in, from people you know, to people you don’t know but that you know are on campus or in classes to even faculty members. I probably had random conversation with close to 20 people I knew in a 2 hour period, asking me and my friends what we were doing randomly sitting in Bartels.

Then the times approached, and like an hour and a half before when sign ups are for the Six Flags trip, a miscommunication occurred when a SCOPE member showed up for the Spring Concert tickets and people assumed they were doing both Concert Tickets and Six Flags signups (excitement is a crazy thing). There was a 20 person line for the concert (it was a slow day) and about 70 people for the Six Flags trip (For a 47 spot trip!). There were arguments all over the place over what line was for what and a lot of people were trying to jip other people out of a spot. It got confusing which prompted me to go upstairs to find the SCOPE person correctly responsible for the trip.

I found him and he actually decided to move the signups to the Alumni Lounge, instead of the crowded downstairs area. Because I got the inside information and because I knew him enough to hear it from him (One good reason to be in clubs, you get first dibs), I called my friends and we were the first 6 in line. However, to be fair to the people downstairs, the SCOPE people wanted to give out counters (in the form of raffle tickets) to everyone downstairs on the ‘fake’ line to determine their place in line and to ensure no cutters before the 8pm signups. They proceeded to leave the lounge to look for the tickets.

In order to secure our place as the first 6 people, the line downstairs had to be broken up, as messed up as that sounds. But for that to happen though, would cause massive chaos. But luckily for me, one of my friends with me told the first group of people downstairs in line downstairs about the signups moved to upstairs and they spread the news to the next group, and then it spread some more. Eventually, everyone downstairs shifted upstairs, it was like an hour before signups and we had like 80 people waiting for it already. (The numbers went up as time passed)

The SCOPE people came back out with the tickets, but because the line downstairs was nonexistent and the fact that by now around 90 people gathered at the entrance to the alumni lounge, they had no choice but to go to us first, the first 6 people. We then went inside, got our tickets and we waited for 40 minutes before the official signups time. By then, the amount of people waiting to get on the trip had jumped to about 140. As I left, after the signups, I estimated around 160 people. Wow, popular trip…

The last few days have been quite crazy on campus, especially for us freshmen, and it will continue to get crazy until the last days of the semester. All the clubs and organizations on campus are selecting their new E-Boards and setting up a direction for next year. For some clubs such as AFC, PIRO and ISA, entire e-boards will be replaced because of graduating seniors and an entirely new approach will be made for next year. Because of my unnaturally large involvement on campus, I will be seeing a lot of changes.

Along with all the extracurricular activities, my stay at the University changes as well. Last Thursday at midnight (or Friday whatever…) I registered for my classes and chose my housing for next year. My classes were okay, no 8am’s, no cluster of like 5 classes in one day and no massive lag from every freshman going on the website at the same time. But my housing is something to work on. I have wanted to live in the apartments on campus, but because of the unexpectedness of more 4-person room combinations than any other this year, all my top choices were taken by other people and I ended up in an off campus apartment. The Regency Apartments, 2 miles from campus, shuttles and/or car on campus required.

Now that isn’t an entirely bad thing because I heard the Regency apartments are luxurious, but the problem I find is that living off campus may negatively impact my involvement on campus. Meeting times and events scattered all about, shuttle back and forth and of course the end of service at midnight, it is crazy. However, I have always wanted to live the ‘typical college life’ where you have your own kitchen and stuff and you have to take a shuttle to class, so I will improvise and I will let you guys know of my experiences when that time comes.

Other than the craziness of planning for next year these few days, there was also a lot of fun. The ISA held its International Festival on Saturday the 18th and it was a success. I don’t know the numbers, but there were probably like 200-300 people in attendance. There were 14 countries being represented from Iran to Nigeria to China to the USA along with a lot of food and culture. Many International students were dressed in their traditional clothing and were walking around, talking to their fellow countrymen and us non International students. It was really cool.

The best parts of the International Festival, I believe, were the entertainment and Malaysia. I was quite surprised when I found out that my family’s country of origin Malaysia was to be represented at the International Festival. I found it overall to be a great presentation with all the food and flyers and I was glad Malaysia won ‘Best Cultural Display’. The entertainment was great as well. From the traditional Lion Dance, this was sweet, to dances from Russia, India to Saudi Arabia. Overall, I liked it a lot and next year, I think I will emcee it, it sounded fun.

In addition to the International Festival, PIRO had its annual ghost investigation. Now I loved it so much as it was so interesting. I got to use the cool equipment from the Infrared Thermometer to the K2 Meter and some of us got some really interesting evidence of the paranormal, from dog growling in a basement to unknown footsteps to some recordings with a little girl’s voice. I want to do more!

And then there was Sunday. A nice lesson to some of you mall-goers, remember that the mall here closes at 6pm on Sundays and remember the UNH shuttle schedules. I took the bus to the mall with my roommate after dinner to look for a good flashlight and voice recorder (all for future PIRO stuff) and we found out all the stores were closed. But when we went outside to wait for a bus, we realized that the bus we took there was actually the last one. Not wanting to gamble to find out if the UNH shuttle was around or not, we decided to pull the unthinkable; we decided to walk from the mall back to UNH. 6 miles, 2 hours, lots of fun. Well, that’s the last time I go to the mall on a Sunday.

As for the days ahead, I can’t wait. Spring Weekend is approaching really quickly with the bands and the carnival. The Six Flags Great Adventure trip is coming up and classes are going to end soon.

The Summer awaits…