accidents cause new people

More accurately, unintentional incidents often lead to one meeting new people. It takes two data points to establish a trend, and a third to confirm it (sorta), and it so happens that the events of today offer me three such data points.

1) So I was supposed to meet Johanna at the Performing Arts Center in Collegetown, where a shuttle from Bethel Grove Church was supposed to pick us up. Half an hour after the bus was due, the bus still hadn’t arrived, but there was this other Asian student waiting near us, and he had a Bible with him. So we approached him and asked if he was waiting for the Bethel Grove shuttle as well. It turns out the church shuttles are all (in his words) “rather iffy”, and more likely than not, the bus wasn’t gonna come, but he was waiting for the public bus to go to his church in Ithaca Commons, and would we like to come along? And so we ended up joining Michael (from Cornell) at the Vineyard Church of Ithaca, where we met two more Asian American students, Dave and Chelsea (also from Cornell), along with a hundred-strong (or maybe eighty) congregation of families, students and old folks. After the service (they have an opening song, then refreshments DURING service, followed by the sermon and the rest of the worship!), Dave chauffeured the three Cornellians plus one Ithaca College student back to our respective locations, and even dropped me right outside the hall I was supposed to be at. Nice people. I’ll definitely visit them again. Interestingly, their church is in such an obscure location of Ithaca Commons that if not for the meeting with Michael at the bus-stop, there’d be absolutely NO CHANCE of us ending up there.

2) Later in the day, I went to collect some registration documents from the Arts & Sciences office, but was told that they didn’t have my documents. It turns out that the deferment process was a little bit messy, and that although Cornell knew I was coming this Fall, the Arts & Sciences people were expecting me last Fall, and in light of my absence last year, weren’t expecting me anymore! But it’s not as serious as it sounds. It seems like the only repercussion of this technical (or administrative) fault is that I don’t have a printed copy of my courses (I have an online one, though), and I don’t have a faculty advisor! So I was sent to one of the Deans in A&S, and guess what? he assigned himself as my faculty advisor! So instead of having to wait for tomorrow to get a meeting with my faculty advisor like the rest of the students are doing, I got to meet my advisor today, and my Dean of Studies as well! And the funny thing is, none of the others who deferred matriculation because of NS had this problem, which turned out to be a privilege.

3) At the end of the long day, I headed back to Donlon with BoonJin (from Malaysia). We just came from two a capella performances (really good! but that’s another stories), so we were talking about music, and the conversation eventually led us to the grand piano on the first floor of Donlon. And when I’m with new people at a piano, I can’t resist teaching them the “knuckle duet” (more accurately, I play it first, and people invariably ask to be taught it). Halfway through, some other guy from Donlon came along and started watching. And from watching, it became learning (he’d never played on the piano before!), and while HE was learning, another guy came along, and I think the chain would have continued if not for the fact that it was time for another performace (poetry followed by acrobatics). So the four of us watched the performance together, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the last I’ll see of them.

So yeah. So much stuff’s been going on over the weekend that I haven’t blogged about, but there’ll be photos soon (I hope). Also, this’ll be the end of my first week here! And I’m pretty glad that I could end the eventful week with meeting all those people (meeting people during orientation doesn’t count, cos those meetings are sorta forced/planned/orchestrated). Looking forward to more of such in the future.