omar eduardo’s blog

This past few weeks have been more eventful than my entire life, and I’m not talking about the Olympics anymore. I’ll start with some good highlights. 

- I moved to a friend’s place temporarily until I finally move to my new apartment.  
- I found someone to take care of my cat for this period of time.
- I got my taekwondo promotion to black stripe, which is the assistant instructor rank in our club.
- I’ve been sleeping on a futon mattress on amazing tatami mats. That is simply amazing. 
- I got some of my furniture for my new apartment. Look at the pretty things I got [all at Ikea]:

The last two things (bed frame and bedside table) are things I’m planning on getting next time, actually. Have not yet been purchased. 

 

Of course, there are some not so great things that have happened this summer:

- I have to go to Ikea to change one of the things I got, cause the box I picked up was for the wrong color of the product I wanted. 
- My cat’s food got infested with ants at my friend’s place, which is just sad. I got some ant bait and raid which is solving the problem.
- And the thing that really really infuriates me, AT&T is charging me $704.20 for a month in which I was supposed to be charged $93.03 including activation fee. They are retarded to some extent and can’t simply understand that my account was transferred from Massachusetts to Puerto Rico, and they were supposed to cancel the first account immediately and prorate the charges on both accounts. They’re also doing the most stupid thing I’ve ever seen, they are charging me for an unlimited data plan, the one I asked for, but are still charging me for data use as PAY-PER-USE. They are doing the same thing for the text messages…

But nonetheless, I’ve been in contact with the AT&T people and they are ‘working’ on solving the problem. Apparently it takes forever to do so. 

Just to ease my soul I decided to meditate and write a report I have to turn in this Friday with respect to my summer progress in lab. Hopefully after taking a nap soon I’ll get an e-mail from AT&T’s customer service saying:

“Dear Mr. Fernández,
We realize we were just being stupid, so here, your account has been credited $611.17 and an extra $100M we give you for the stress we caused you. This stress probably took a few years out of your lifespan. We really appreciate your business here at AT&T and hope you have an excellent day!
Sincerely,
Person working for the retarded company” 

We’ll see how that goes,

-Omar

[title inspired by bobby's post]

As of yesterday night, I finalized the details of my housing situation for the fall. I’ll be moving off-campus, to an apartment that is a 15 minutes walk from the MIT campus, and a 5 minutes walk from the mall. One good thing is that in snowy days I can take the mall shuttle to school which goes straight to Kendall Sq. Hopefully I wont be tempted to spend more time in the mall than in school. 

The main reason why I chose to move off-campus vs. the convenience of living two steps away from class, was not living two steps away from class. I feel like having my own place, outside of campus, will really mark a distinction between being at home vs. being at school. This doesn’t mean that I won’t do work when I’m home, I’ll have to, but it will give me a physical separation from the ugly MIT campus. This is a separation that I need to keep myself mentally sane. 

Living in a dorm means that you have no control of what happens outside of your door. If someone decides to have a party the night you have a migraine, you’re screwed. If someone decides that cleaning up their own vomit is too much work, you’ll face it and smell it in the morning, and probably for a few mornings after that. Also, I like being able to sit on a clean toilet. 

Something that I’m really excited about is decorating my place. Sharing an apartment with only one other person means that I’ll have much more freedom and flexibility in choosing the layout of the common areas. Although I’m mostly interested in my room. I’ve been thinking of different ways to decorate my room. I was thinking, maybe I could just have my futon mattress on the floor, and have not so tall furniture. I was even thinking I could have something similar to what my friend Suzanne has in her living room. 

Her living room is really nice. It has a tatami mat area which is extremely useful, comfortable and fun. That’s where we have had dinners in the afternoons and I’ve loved eating and then just laying there until the food coma is over. I’ve also witnessed the space being used for other activities such as working out, dancing, and sleeping. I’m a huge fan of that last one. Around the tatami mats there are storage areas, a table, and open space to walk in/out of the mats. 

Here are a few pictures from things/ideas I’ve liked, 5 out of 6 are Ikea’s! I’ll put more up later.