It is Heating Up!

The summer is here and research work is heating up.

I decided to move out of 1221 Forrest, as I was not of much help to Mr. Kahn and will need to spend more time in the evenings and nights at the Tech Institute.

I found 2000 Sherman at Sherman and Foster had a "room" available for $80 a month. This was an oversized closet, 8 ft. by 6 ft., carved out of the attic of the house. If you click on the hyperlink, and ask for the aerial photo of the intesection and zoom in, you can see the building.
There is a bed, a small desk and a chair. A common bath-room in the second floor (ground floor is first floor) and a common refrigerator is available for the roomers. There are perhaps 5 or 6 persons renting rooms here.

There is even enough room for me to do my daily "Surya Namskar (a 12-posture yogic exercise)" in my room!

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Foster and Sherman is a few blocks away from Tech Instt, but a lot closer than Mr. Kahn's house. There is a Pakistani youngster in the second floor. He was happy to have the corner room from where he can see Foster on one side and Sherman on the other!

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The rooms and buildings here are provided with locks, which are more like automobile doors: you can never be locked in by some body, as you do not need the key to open from inside. But, you can easily lock yourself out, by forgetting to take the key when you go out!

This is exactly what I did.....

Was going down to take my shower, with towel wrapped around me, and realized I did not take the key!

I go down to the Pakistani friend and called the landlord over the phone. The landlord/manager lives in the first floor. "Why don't you come around and get the key". There is usually a "master key" for such emergencies, which would open all the doors of a building! "Well. I am just having a towel around me!" Though he was in the ground floor, the access to his portion was from Foster, and one has to come out of the building on to Sherman and go round to Foster.

He was kind enough to come and let me in my room, and also made an arrangememt with one of the long-time tenants to keep the master key for helping others in a similar situation.

I set the path here too!

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Sunday afternoon. I am at work as usual.

I locked myself out of my office!

I seek the help of the Building Security (always available at the building) to let me in. Jim, the senior student, arrives and reveals to me that my Professors are not at all happy with the progress of my research work! He helps me program the card punching and explains how I can speed up data entry.

I am upset.

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All my dreams!

I had won a grant from UGC, India for developing a model to optimize the location of industries, based on linear programming application. I assumed I will be doing research of that nature when I go to Northwestern. Little did I realize that they are paying for THEIR work to be done, which involves xeroxing, mailing, card puching, and so on!

An Assistant Professor of 8 years being reprimanded for not punching cards fast enough?

I AM upset. Dispppointed. Why do you have to go through this Muthu?

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(Later - pretty soon - I realized how helpful they were; I need to get oriented and trained to use the facilities in order to contribute to the research. As it turned out, soon I was given more interesting work, and I could produce my Master's thesis based on this study of Dr. Peterson; they even hired me as a full time researcher and wanted me to continue at NU for my Ph.D)

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I have not received mails from home for a month. My wife and children went to Madurai to stay with my father-in-law, after the school closed for summer. My father-in-law was also regularly sending me letters.

I learn the Univ. Health Center provides Pshyatric Counselling. I set up appointment. On my first visit the Counsellor jut lets me speak and keeps listening.

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I mention my getting counselling to my friend Gokman. He says "after a while you will start advising the counsellor!"

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I have gone for three or four sessions - once a week - of counselling. This last visit, the counsellor seemed perturbed. The session ended quickly and rather abruptly.

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The news is some student shot at one of the psychiatric counsellrs! I now see why he was perturbed.

I stopped going to the counselling sessions.

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I meet Kamal of Hyerabad. He is the son of a Judge in India, came here for higher studies. He is helping in the cafeteria of a students' hostel in exchange for one meal a day/five meals a week. He suggests that I try the same. I am not sure of what I can eat in the cafeteria, as I am a vegetarian and my stomach is quite sensitive.

I thought I will give it a try.

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The food in the cafeteria is quite good. It is completely open and free-choice buffet. I get a galss or two of milk, glass or two of fruit juice, fruit salad with cottage cheese and honey, bread slices and somedays they even make macaroni and cheese (vegetarian), and plain rice and yoghurt!

Between the weekday evening dinner at the cafeteria and Sunday feast at the Hare Krishna temple, my daily nutrition requirement is now taken care of

The help involves sorting the dishes. As they come in the conveyor belt, some of us stand beside and sort them out to separate the silverware, the glasses, and the plates. Easy job for an hour or so.

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During Spring, I had developed a nagging stomach pain. I went to the University Health Center and was adviced to take Whole wheat bread and peanut butter with banana to help. I continue that for my afternoons. Peanut butter sandwich and banana!

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I store my milk in the common refrigerator.

One of the roomers came to me to say that some people steal others' food from the refrigerator. He just wanted to warn me and thought they have found who it was.

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The Pakistani tells me that the person who warned me was the one who is stealing others' food!

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I am on my way to the cafeteria on my bicycle.
My bicycle goes out of contorl and I am knocked off by a youngster. He comes back to me - he is perhaps in his 8th or 9th standard - and says sorry and asks if I am doing OK!
I realize somebody has cut off my dynamo and the light and in the process have cut off my break cable also - the reason for my bicycle going out of control!

As it does not get dark until 8 or 9 in the night, and also as the police do not seem to be keen on catching bicycle without light, I did not bother too much about it.

(I sold the bicycle back shortly afterwards!)

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The pants I bought were OK with thelayers of winter garments tucked in. But soon were so loose that I had to use safety pins on either side to reduce the waist size of my pants. Now with my cafeteria regimen, I had regained my lost middle and the pants are just tight!

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With the summer weather and my bicycle, my mobility is vastly improved.

I found many more "additional income opportunities."

Got a house cleaning job. Get to got to their house at Asbury and Grant every other week to vacuum clean both floors, mop the kitchen and toilet floors, clean the toilets, make bed, and remove trash - three hours of work at $6 per hour! Do the same at their neighbor's house on alternate weeks.

The house owners have so much trust in me that they sometimes leave the key in a prespecified secret place for me to take and enter the house to clean it, when they have to be out!

I also find occasionall help needed for window cleaning and lawn work for pay at $6 an hour.

My bank savings are now building up!
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I have no coursework during Summer. I am assigned a Special Project, but Dr. Peterson did not expect much and there was practically no work to get credit! By now I have become very proficiient in using the Statisitcal Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS ). I was doing regression analysis and factor analysis on the Research Demand Survey Data.

It is a pleasure to go and work in the computer center.

There are consultants to help debug the code and help me learn and move on.

The undergraduate student consultants are sometimes unkind - Gokman calls them "insultants". But the Statistical Package Consultants - Phil Burns and Mina Hohlen - are experts and very freindly.