Registration Rant and Recipe
Title: Registration Rant and Other Stuff
Enh, not much of a post, but I took some more pictures of the dorms and figured I’d upload them, so here they are.
This is Bâtiment B, where the entrance is:
This is the entrance lobby, with security desk and all that jazz:
This is the view of the Périphérique from the Super Secret Magic Passage:
This is the whole big building/complex/thing, seen from the street:
I still can’t believe the bureaucracy is so disorganized here. For the FLE (English as a Foreign Language) classes, you have to register at the department; for the other classes, you just show up. The registration itself is at least computerized, but students don’t access the system directly. There’s not even a course schedule online. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I mean I don’t think students need to be coddled, but it seems providing this sort of basic information a semester or two in advance would make things run so much more smoothly. I’m irritated that Hunter hasn’t posted the schedule for the fall semester yet.
On the plus side, French classes tend to meet only once a week, so that does make scheduling easier. It’s a pain at Hunter trying to juggle the Mon-Thurs, Tues-Fri, Mon-Wed, Tues-Wed-Fri, once-a-weeks, and other variations. Classes here also last an even number of hours—none of this 10:10-12:25, 1:45-3:00 stuff.
So the schedule itself is easier to arrange. You just have to do it at the last minute. And I’m just not a last-minute kind of person. I don’t mind complicated, so long as I have time to work it out. What happens if a class gets over-booked here? Are you just screwed over if you don’t get the sign-up sheet first? How do you make sure you’re going to get all the classes you need for your major? I suppose the requirements probably aren’t as Byzantine as CUNY’s GERs, but still.
On another note, I’ve been quite happy with the kitchenette here. It’s so much more convenient to not have to trek down the hall to see if the sink and/or stove are available. I wouldn’t say I cook per se, but I do engage in paraculinary activities. The latest innovation is couscous stir-fry. The recipe is as follows:
1) Take smallish pot and fill it (but you know, just kinda-fill-it, not literally to-the-top) with water. Add 1 or 2 beef bouillon cubes. Add couscous.
2) Bring to a boil.
3) Eventually decide things look right and remove pot from heat.
4) Add 1 small can of peas.
5) Stir stuff up.
6) Eat some. Realize you’ve made way too much, because you were thinking couscous would turn out about how precooked rice turns out. Put pot with uneaten 7/8 of the batch of couscous into Wonderful Minifridge.
7) Open up fridge the next day. Discover that couscous has entirely absorbed water and is now a roughly solid pea-speckled, beef-flavored mass.
8) Take a chunk of couscous, break it up, fry it.
9) Decide the above lacks a certain something.
10) Purchase a 5-piece Chicken Tenders meal from local KFC. Have some problems ordering when the pain au chocolat/Sprite conundrum hits, and you accidentally pronounce tenders with a [z] instead of an [s].
11) Eat fries and drink soda.
12) Repeat step 8, adding one chicken tender cut up into small pieces.
13) Repeat step 12 until couscous supply runs out.
See? Pretty picture!
I also discovered the following on YouTube—two wonderful renditions of the “Who’s on First?” sketch:
