Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder...

Outside of UoS ((Meshy alhal)).. Inside of UoS "hal" doesn't "meshy" at all. On the contrary it is quite constipated. Indeed I wonder if ole chancellor Sam still possesses the reins of UoS or is it that good ole UoS has poor Sam by the reins. Pause.

So after a few semesters, one can actually get used to making pilgrimage to the once "forbidden wing" of the sprawling UoS campus. So, hal is meshying all is well and good in the world then *bam* 4 month summer holis and UoS flings its doors open once again to welcome back returning zombies and new-blood-soon-to-be-zombies. Quite the welcome indeed. While we were all off chilling in various corners (and some out the country corners) UoS was having a free fall all dig party. Internal uni roads suddenly looked like Sharjah in its digging hey-day; complete with detour cones, red and white detour ropes and of course huge no HUGE sand mountains.

Parking was bad before, enter new fall semester with the usual staggering numbers of new bloods - and it seems each one of them was given a set of wheels (no matter how beat down those wheels may have been... I did see someone come in a Ferarri today) to bring along to uni. Get there anytime after 8 -heck probably from 7:30, and you'll find yourself contemplating parking in AUS, since parking in any place other than a designated white lined parking spot at UoS will get your car tire-locked by the ever dutiful security chaps.

There was this huge empty area behind the new library UoS has erected. They had torn up all the grass and looked like they were measuring it out for something. They didn't dig down to put in foundations and building stuff so I thought it was safe to rejoice. They were actually going to skip the stupid process they have of turning big area into huge unnecessary lavish landscaping - don't get me wrong, I love an awesome landscape but at some point acres and acres of it gets to be a bit much and hey why put up 5 date trees while suffering parking shortage when one could just put up 2 trees and more parking spaces...

My rejoicing was short lived. Their measuring ended and they started planting fresh gorgeous looking date trees. 1, 2, 3, 4,...9.. 15 O_o WTF. UoS, 3n Jad?! We need parking spots not a flipping date tree forest! Over the next few days I noticed they were carefully measuring spaces between the trees and that the trees didn't actually in fact cover the whole area. "Great!" I thought. There's hope for this place yet... or so I thought. I imagined I saw the part were cars would drive in cuz like there was a break in the trees surrounding the perimeter, but I also noticed they hadn't removed the curb from the side walk so like cars could drive there. Everyday I passed thinking they'll get to it. A shipment of huge decorative ground tiles came in. I figured maybe they'll use those for the edges or something. Ha, after a few days they started putting those down. :: Palm to face :: .. It dawned on me that they were doing some sort of memorial-ish looking area. I got a BB msg mentioning a rumor that they were constructing valet parking. I laughed, and laughed, paused and laughed again. I figured it was an insanely ludicrous rumor and nothing more.

A month later, much wiser. Should have known better. UoS committee of campus beautification (ultra ultra top secret committee that few know exist ::checks over shoulder for sniper:: ) voted against making uni student life one less hassle free- by building a multi-story car park and instead gave the ok to valet parking.. pause. pause. pause. pause.pause. UoS is a university by the way. As a matter of fact, UoS stands for University of Sharjah.

I'm not quite sure but mall, hotel and other places of rest & relaxation/entertainment are all short words. Can one really mistake a huge long word like u-n-i-v-e-r-s-i-t-y for something like m-a-l-l? I didn't really think so.. Last I checked universities didn't have "valet parking". I'm starting to wonder if maybe we'll get a cinema with gold class and maybe an indoor ski ramp or a water park next semester. Lord knows they'll need a 'project' to work on once the library and memorial /valet parking area are complete..

It's kind of weird but I've suddenly realized, while looking at UoS's facebook page, that I do indeed still love UoS. Despite its many quirks (and jerks - Allah ygharbl ibleesk ya wld alshgra Doc J). No harm no foul right? Guess we'll all graduate stronger people ;)

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