Chapter #17
[Scrap #1] I didn't fix the wipers long after the trip. We drove the 80 up to Reno when it started to snow. It was dark and two lanes seemed to be blending into one. I couldn't see anything and all I could read from his eyes was a sense of panic. "Did you bring snow chains?". I never thought we would need them. All that had to be done was to keep driving and get to the destination. And that was what we did. Flynn got us a free room at Cal Neva. We went to see a magic show (also using his coupons) and then played blackjack. By then I had already learned the basic strategy so I knew that at least I could maintain myself at the table for a few hours and enjoy free glasses of wine from one of the waitresses that called my 'honey'. Later that night we took a trip to Tronics. The driver, a man with thick accent, blamed the west coast, was a fan of conspiracy theories and sweared at the dispatcher. The morning felt cold and desolate in Reno. On the way back we stopped by the last gas station in Nevada.
[Scrap #2] The panic set in when I received an email from the international office that informing me that due to a non payment of my fees the immigration authorities will need to be informed and my visa status would be revoked. That meant I would be going back to Poland and whatever I had been up to so far would have no meaning. At first I sent an email back waiting that I was just about receiving money from my parents and would sort the payment out. Then I went for a long aimless walk around the campus trying to figure out what to do. The entry to the campus was lined up with tables for the club run and I said hello to some people from Model UN. I was emailing but deep inside I was flooded with panic and confusion. This was the time I had to face the truth and once and for all sort out my financial problems. I wrote Tomek, my now sponsor, an urgent email asking for some more money. We talked and he agreed to lend me some more as I saw no way that my website business was ever going to take off.
[Scrap #3] I had already decided to pack four semesters into three. That was the big advantage of the system in Berkeley where you paid for the school a flat fee per semester rather than paying a fee per unit. The second thing was to call Byran and ask him to cosign my student loan. Two years earlier he mentioned that whatever he can do he would help me and this was one of those times. We had tried to get me a loan before the summer but because of some problems of his credit history the loan for declined. This time, for some reason I thought we would succeed. I filled out a form with Wells Fargo and they sent the cosigners forms back to him. Later that afternoon, while waiting for the Bart at El Cerrito Station, I saw his name appearing on my phone. I sensed trouble. "What's going to happen if you die?" I remembered an offer of life insurance my bank had send me a few months earlier. I bought a policy and put Byran's name on it. A few days later the loan got approved. My financial worries had finally been sorted. At least for now.
[Scrap #4] When I arrived back in the Bay Area there were two things waiting for me. [Kalea] did not pay for the second month of the rent and despite her strong promises over the phone I knew that I was not going to see the money ever again. Second thing was Tim and Barbara, my new roommates who Darren found as his replacement as the last ditch attempt. I can't pretend that I wasn't happy with that forced choice. In their forties, or maybe even fifties, they were not demographically near being students and they were a couple. But I did go off for two months to enjoy London and my abilities to interview anyone were remote plus it was still probably better than having to pay the whole rent for the whole place (which I would not be able to afford) or move out. So I accepted the situation as it was. I knew I was going to miss Darren. Maybe we had not established the quality of household that we aimed for at the beginning but we did have good time, he did on occasion give me a ride to the campus and did put on with my sublet.
[Scrap #5] Darren took an U-Haul down I-80 towards Chicago and I continued my Berkeley life. With a B+ on the transcript, my streak of perfection was over but I didn't care that much. By now I already knew that I was not going to pursue my life in academia. It wasn't unusual, like in the case of Vu, that students after getting their BAs would go straight into PhD program. I didn't see myself doing for that. For once, it was probably financially impossible. Also it seemed to me that everything that was there to be said about politics was done so in ancient Greece so what was I going to add to it? Because of my senior status I now had more freedom of choosing my schedule so I packed in two days with International Relations Ethics, Empirical Analysis, Eastern European Politics (that was supposed to be the easy one), European Integration and a class National Security. A brilliant and fun Prof [xyz], an amazing and energetic Professor [Staker], a former physists turned a political science professor, a proper ex Harvard lecturer with a gentle personality, and a new professor, an Italian man, who always wore [Fruit Looms] polo shirts.
[Scrap #6] With just two full days of school I now had much more time on other activities although most of it I still spent on studying and the three clients I had. Dennis was a photographer living in San Francisco. Unlike the technoman, or others I met on my journey, he was successful and had money which he didn't mind on spending on Dreamweaver training. Every Wednesday I would get up to a cooling air of the Bay Area, turn on to the bits of [the morning radio] and drive across the Bay Area to SOMA. I would park at the private garage of his house and walk upstairs to share my knowledge. The task wasn't too hard. If anything it required some patience as Dennis liked to forget what we discussed last time so we spent the first half going over the material and the other on learning things like creating tables so he could post there his pictures. That was also when he would usually get a bit bored and pour himself a glass of wine which more or less was a guarantee that he was going to forget again what we were talking about. I enjoyed those days.
[Scrap #7] I missed Los Angeles and long weekends now meant that I could jump in my car and drive down to Southern California. I would usually choose Freeway 5 to save up some time. It was a usual tour - visit Santa Monica, Palm Springs and stay over at Kamil's in Riverside. I would still visit Barry, just to remind him of my presence. Once or twice I stopped by Michael's, a young inspiring musician who lived in Beverly Hills and who wanted to have his website look exactly like the one of [James Grobyn]. This allowed me to make some money so the trip would pay for itself. Later I figured I could just place an ad on Craigslist and have offer a ride share so someone else could pay for the gas. I became a driver of a guy who swore to never get a health insurance, a lady surprising her mother who once got caught up speeding over 100 miles per hour while being high and a young hippie couple who I picked up in Long Beach and dropped off somewhere near San Jose. Coming back I wondered what this place must have looked like in the sixties.
[Scrap #8] I slept on the half of bed that was not covered with books. Studying and reading had never been my natural inclination but I was always thrilled with inhaling new knowledge. What Berkeley added to it was looking at the same things from a different perspective. At ethics' class we watched a movie about Rwanda and that changed my view on Bill Clinton. At Weber's class we talked about world war two and it was almost as if my seat had been changed from the victim to the observer. There was always pressure, more readings, more assignment but it was something I quantify in terms of time blocks and the number of hours I needed to catch up. Where I saw I lost interest or couldn't keep up, I learned I could just convert my grade to pass no-pass and that there was no shame in it. But where it was possible I would push for the A especially now when I saw it was not something I could take for granted. In a way it took away the pressure, the curse of being a straight A student. That warm blissful feeling of flow on the flight back from Chicago.
[Scrap #9] It wasn't just size of some classes that made it difficult to make friends, the GSI sessions were still in the size of 20-30 people, but it was also the fact that each class was attended by different kind of people. Luckily, the end of 2004 brought thefacebook.com, a website which allow you to list of your classes and connect with your other classmates. Sure, Friendster had been around for a while but this one was more intimate as allowed for search of people that sat just near you. It was also restricted to college students which had its own appeal. It was also a perfect tool for stalking thanks to its search tool. That's how I met Trevor. We met first at the Sproul plaza in front of the admission building. We had bobba tea and sort of talked about anything. It was already late in the evening and the cool air was still filled with the smell of rain. We would meet regularly and as he was a psychology major, Tolman library became our usual hanging out place. We would study for hours, exchange gossips on a piece of paper and then drive across the bridge to Castro.
[Scrap #10] Trevor called me Tato and as a Christmas gift he gave me a stripy pale blue scarf from Gap. This was when I went to visit him in Militipas and briefly met his Mom. His down was close to where one of web clients lived and where I once met Kai, the guy that took me out for a diner and fixed his tire at a parking lot when it got a puncture. Just down the freeway 880. My last exam, the analytics, was on the same day as I was supposed to fly home. The gap was long enough to give me time to finish baking ginger cookies. With [maleases]. Granda would comment on them they were just as good as his Grandmother would make them. San Francisco International Airport seemed like a magical place in that time of the day. Vast, bright and feeling very empty and quiet with some art being displayed on the wall. The flight was what it became now the usual ten hour journey to Munich before another two to Poznan. The layover would be additional two hours where I would be trying to imagine what it would be like to finally be home.