ThePanda

So I haven’t received the package yet, and we are creeping into mid-June territory, so it is obvious early-June does not necessarily equate to early-June for me, more likely early-mid-June (something like the 14^th or the 15^th), and a lot of the blame lies squarely with the postal service. They delivered mails postmarked on the 3^rd on the 11^th and they don’t sort American mail on Saturday’s and Sunday’s so 14^th’s going to be a catch all for mails postmarked 4^th and 5^th (Friday, Brown’s fave day for sending out mail) which is sad, really sad. Besides they’d be sending out mails in mid-July, to which they expect responses by 1st August, and I am absolutely dumbfounded as to how I am supposed to send out responses that early, but then again responses to the July-mailer are not really processed, they are simply set aside until discussions with the faculty advisor during orientation week, so that’s somewhat of a relief. But well I STILL WANT MY PACKET, SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON, AND I HATE THE CHIMPS WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS DELAY. Well either ways Brown has finally included all of the class of 2008 in it’s online directory though that’s hardly a relief without the student number which is necessary for everything starting from activating e-mail accounts, to landing in the US, and that’s probably going to be included in the July mailer, damn postal service.

Having read three French novels (OK english translations, but French in origin nevertheless) there are quite a few surprising things similarities I have run up against. For one the French seem to love chimneys, all their characters smoke as if there’s no end to smoking, like 5 cigarettes between meals is a smoke starved day for most characters. Almost every one of the books seem to concentrate on the brutality of the post-revolution French prison system, especially the number of people guillotined or sent off to the penal colonies, but then that could be a result of reading a particular genre. The characters, almost without exception rely on monosyllabic or near monosyllabic dialogues, even when they are emerging from or entering solitary confinement (I thought they’d talk their head off at those times), and the prisoners in prison almost always come up with a means of going off into some sort of a dreamscape. Well Russians describe a different prisons situation as compared to the French, and though both are extremely bleak, the differences are startling to say the least, but then I guess that’s because Russia wasn’t a democracy during the gulag era, while France pretty much was a Republic even before the proclamation of the penal colonies (not the guillotines though).

Ze Panda