I have been absent from the blogosphere since the onset of my graduate school experience largely because of, well, being inundated with reading and research. That said, my graduate experience is surpassing my expectations. I will leave the details of research out for the time being, but I will soon have some thoughts on a few eccentric topics you may find interesting. For now, my Sandy experience...
As I watch the local news two weeks after Sandy initially hit, I realize how many communities were devastated by the Frankenstorm. The tiny towns that line the ocean front are tattered. People lost their homes, and are devastated that they have nowhere to go. Imagine yourself with no home to go back to and nothing you can do about it. I, on the other hand, am one of the lucky ones. It was late Friday when I heard about Sandy. I started watching the news that evening and took the news correspondents seriously. It seemed hard not to when 15 of the 17 models showed this massive storm heading right for my home. I had a tough time believing that it could miss, and, alas, I was right. I spent Saturday buying canned foods, bread, and cooking. I used up all of my perishable food in the fridge and only took a break to leave for Sears on Sunday where there was only one small light left on the shelf when I arrived at 11:00 in the morning. I frantically worked all day Sunday and Monday to complete what I could on the computer. My assumption was that the power was going out, but when? It was 7:19 PM on Monday evening...
The storm was a bit of an experience. The primal song of nature whispered, then chanted, then screamed... By the time everything went black in my apartment, the wind streamed wildly through the trees outside and the rain pounded against the sidewalk and windows. Kids were playing tag outside, obviously displaying their fearless Jersey (sound it out in the accent) nature. I spent Monday evening with my roommates Atul and Jing as well as my neighbor Yuling playing ukulele and guitar with the nifty little LED flashlight showing us our way to each fumbling chord. Since I had prepared beforehand, I retreated to my room at 10:00 to read by candlelight. The book was Eviatar Zerubavel's The Elephant in the Room, which is a sociological look at silence. It seemed even more fitting days later, when I realized I was seemingly one of the few that took the storm seriously, choosing not to treat the impending disaster as a matter of collective denial.
The next thing I knew it 4:30 AM and the loud pounding of resident assistant riled me. We were informed that we were being evacuated. We were swiftly lined up and retreated to a gymnasium nearby. Think thousands of kids in a gym and three other racquetball courts without food, blankets, or pillows. Yes, it was fun. The main issue was that not many realized they were going out of their places for more than a few hours. To me, this is pure naivety. One could expect that being evacuated may entail a couple of days of hurricane homelessness. As a result, the immediate class divide was the most interesting thing to see. Several Chinese exchange students huddled playing cards until nearly 7:00 AM. Others sat glaring at them, supposing that the going cross-eyed might somehow translate to Mandarin. It didn't. With my little light and cozy blanket, I could watch them, chuckling. In total, we spent the next three days displaced from our apartments. I might add, though, that this was a rather exciting three days. My foresight, or "projectivity" as we call it in Cultural Sociology, was the key factor for loving the disorder that ensued.
The next day, we were moved to a campus center that had power on the other side of campus. We got relatively comfortable cots and free food from Tuesday-Sunday. The coolest part of all this was that we got to hang out together. Atul rarely leaves his room (actually, only to run and make this rice-yogurt-sugar combo and run), but was elated for several days to experience this overwhelming feeling of community. Yeh, we were evacuated, but we were all evacuated together. Besides the stigma of being the "evacuees", it wasn't too bad at all. Of course, I did banter at the onlooking undergraduates gawking at me. They are my new favorite group to lash out at needlessly. Good times, great oldies.
On Thursday of that week, we got to go back home. After cleaning out the fridge, we were all happy campers mooching off the free lunch tickets and stuffing ourselves... while we still could. However, that was hardly the end of the Frankenstorm. I was appalled to see the news. The top stories were about the New York marathon being cancelled. Several said this was an atrocity, and that the people of New York should band together to offer a symbolic gesture of strength. Are you kidding me? People were still found drowned in their basements in Staten Island after that. Outlandish, but not surprising. I can't believe people watch that stuff and believe it.
Anyways, all and all the storm hardly affected me. I did make some solid observations during the displacement process. People are blind to the relative lives they lead. Countless people told me afterward how bad they had it, and how awful the entire hurricane experience was. Yet, they lived. They have homes. They have their families, etc. Many people are still without power, and are clearly not happy about it. Still, I have my qualms with these people griping. Sure, this is 2012 and this is America. But guess what? People live like this everyday: cold, starving, and hungry. We hardly do them any favors by voting for pro-monopolistic law makers and the like. I hope that we, as a nation, can come to terms with our privilege and the inequality that we push on to millions in our own country. Whether it by the pompous Barbie doll or the Occupy protester, we have to be a bit more conscious of our situation.
