Apartment and bank account

So the other day was my first at Cornell and it was then that it all dawned upon me. Life that I had left behind for four years came back flashing in my mind bringing with it some fond memories and some scary! I was excited to again begin studying, immersing myself in books, going to practical classes, discussing challenging financial problems and coding complex algorithms, yeah… I still am J But, along with that, I’m also excited to live graduate life, to interact with people from different backgrounds and upbringing, to learn from great intellectuals at Cornell, to explore different fields and to play sports. One and a half years seem awfully small to do all that but I am optimistic. I think everyone is which is what makes it all the more exciting and competitive. Every person, especially those coming for a professional masters degree, are looking to network, to make long lasting and worthy contacts, to build relationships and in that complex process they try to present themselves in the best manner and profile others based on their demeanor.

But let me not get into the psychology of human relationships. That’s an altogether different field and I’m sure there would be a department in Cornell that pertains to that too! So I took a shower and set off from my dorm to do the one thing that’s crucial for peace of mind, looking for a place to live. I hook up on craigslist and create a list of places that fit my budget and are at a comfortable distance from my department and are furnished and include utilities. There are a few trivial items that one needs to be careful about while looking out for apartments in Ithaca, and maybe in other places in US too, which I wasn’t aware about initially, such as:

· Utilities – Includes heat, water, electricity and cooking gas. Heat is a tricky part coz sometimes it just means heating of the water while the apartment heat is electricity driven so if you’re paying for electricity then you better clarify the source of the heat.

· Trash – There’s a big enough responsibility of managing trash here and it doesn’t cost much but still useful to clarify with the owner

· Snow – Come November and its going to be freaking freezing! You’d want your patios and sidewalks free of snow so either you shovel it on your own or hire someone else or the landlord pays for it.

· Cable and Internet – Some places come equipped with such connections and you just need to pay for the plan while in others you need to get a new connection. In some its included in the rent!

· Furniture – Most of the times the “furnished” only means a bed, dresser, desk and chair in each room and a couch and table in the living. Kitchens almost always come equipped with a fridge, stove with oven and a microwave. If you need anything else, you need to check with the landlord.

I then embark on the quest for my apartment but I also had another important agenda which was to open a bank account. I started from the place where I was staying, Thurston avenue in North Campus, and headed north. The GPS in my phone was guiding me well and I could find my way to the place I wanted to reach. The apartment was nice, 3BR and well furnished for $1500 but I wanted to explore further. Generally you’d be able to find good apartments for $500 per person but in peak times this can go to $650-$700. I moved on and I found it a bit hard to feel that I was on top of a hill where Cornell is supposed to be. It wasn’t until I went further along Wyckoff towards the north that it started to slope down which is when I realized the biggest shortfall of google maps, its inability to inform about gradients. Although the GPS conveniently showed a curved path where I had to take a left on Kline Rd it failed to depict the slope of the path and it took some effort to continue along the slope till I finally reached at N. Tioga and E. Lincoln. It was a great relief. Although I managed to descend the road, the entire act was, in effect, the same as crouching and squatting a hundred times and it wasn’t until the next morning that I realized the toll it had taken on my muscles, but more on that later!

So I keep following N. Tioga street all the way to the end to reach a place called The Commons. Bank of America was my final destination for the simple reason that it was one of the biggest bank in the US and it would convenient to transfer money to different locations. Fortunately, along the way, I came across a few apartments and I kept jotting down their information and a majority of them were about $500-550 per person. I was looking mainly at 3BR.

Finally I reached the BoA and had to wait for quite some time before someone attended me. My primary concern was that the account shouldn’t have any monthly fee and should have no minimum balance criteria, much like a student’s account. Along with that I didn’t want the account to have any fee associated with incoming transfers and outgoing as well. Something that I came to know recently was that wire transfers are the ones initiated from a branch with the help of a teller and thus carry a one time charge while online transfers are actually called electronic transfer or bill pay. Having had this clarified I finally opened my account in M&T Bank since it was the only one offering the student accounts (HSBC hadn’t started with the scheme yet and was going to sometime in August). The first accomplishment!

On my way...

The start of this blog has been delayed so I'll take you back in time to where my journey took off from. It was this Sunday that I finally began my journey to Cornell. Till now the feeling of leaving my job and going back to school had not sunk in. Frankly, it didn't then either. But I was happy to let go of the comfortable corporate life to take up what really interested me. I was excited to embark on the next phase of my career that would really be a defining moment. I was going to begin life as a Graduate student in the Engineering department at Cornell where I would major in Financial Engineering.

It has been a long ride preparing for this time and I'm sure that when it begins time is just going to fly off. The day before I had to pack my luggage and arrange it in a manner so that I can sustain with opening just one bag, I had three. During the evening I had gone for a nice walk at Baltimore harbor. It was such a lively atmosphere with throngs of people swarming the entire place having food, singing, dancing, playing music or cheering for the street performers. Although I had thought of staying back at home to plan the coming week, it was a rejuvenating experience to take a stroll in the middle of so much action besides the sea!

Finally the day came and I stuffed all my bags in the car to leave for the bus stop. I was excited and apprehensive. Excited for the day long journey and apprehensive if it'd go as smoothly as planned and unfortunately I saw the first set back, jammed freeways. It was hard to believe so much traffic could exist on a Sunday but thankfully we had some time on my side and with some bypasses and short cuts, we managed to reach DC but the problem didn't end. Half the intersections were blocked due to God knows why and we were trying our best to recall the infinite crossings in the area and then applying different combinations to arrive at the shortest available path to our destination. With a turn every other second the GPS was also finding hard to coordinate and provide directions but finally we managed to reach our stop with a few minutes to spare. It was another task to carry the entire luggage till the boarding point and then stuff it inside the bus with enough room to spare for other's.

And so there was another momentary feeling of victory, when the bus started, to know that nothing could possibly go wrong now, at least nothing that could put me out of schedule to reach Cornell today. As we pulled out of the city and headed towards Baltimore I made a complete use of the time and spoke with my family back home, with my mom, dad, sister, aunts, uncles and friends. Time swept quite fast and it wasn't until a couple of hours into the ride that I realized we have reached almost midway in time but not so in space, there was quite a bit of traffic. I was also looking forward to meet a colleague of mine who had had a 4 month long stint in the Capital One US office and so I had left office before meeting him for the 'last' time. So around 4 pm when I was actually supposed to reach within the next 20 minutes, I did a quick recheck and google maps showed that I was not to be in NJ until the next hour and so I passed the information to him. Finally, after about 45 minutes, as predicted, I reached the greyhound bus terminal at Newark Penn Station in NJ. I was expecting my luggage to have been pushed behind and so I didn't scurry to get off the bus. Fortunately my colleague had found his way to the bus stop and was right behind me when I turned and there I had a big helping hand. I chatted with him for about an hour or so before my college friend came over and hurriedly put my luggage in the car and we zipped off after a quick round of goodbyes. This was to be the final leg of the journey.

I was a bit let down by the fact that I didn't have a camera and so couldn't take pictures but it wouldn't have mattered as I would have come to know in the next few hours, yes, it became quite dark. But, nevertheless the first pictures of approaching Cornell, however bright they were, would be pinned down in my memory. Just as we were on the cusp of reaching Ithaca I could feel the fresh air of the mountains, the energy in the wind and the serenity in the lake! Although I was a bit taken aback when my phone couldn't catch the T Mobil signal but it regained life when we reached Ithaca. My friend drove around Collegetown, the happening place right next to Campus, and the noise and giggles, even at that hour, were high enough to bring back memories of the internship days! All of us were quite tired, especially him since he had been traveling for the past 3 days up and around NYC so we then hit his home. I put all my stuff in the house and we headed for a round of the place where he showed me the malls, my department and the campus in general before we hit the bed.

So this was my first day, actually night, at Cornell.