Where there is a will - 10. It is Heating Up!

  Where there is a will - 10.  It is Heating Up!

The summer is here and research work is heating up. I decided to move out of 1221 Forest, 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 in the top floor of the building is an oversized closet, 8 ft. by 6 ft., carved out of the attic of the house. There is a bed, a small desk and a chair. A common bath-room on the second floor (ground floor is first floor) and a common refrigerator is available for the tenants’ use. There are perhaps 5 or 6 people renting rooms here. There is even enough room for me to do my daily "Surya Namskar (a 12-posture yogic exercise)" in my room!
2000 Sherman Ave.  -My third residence while at Northwestern University/Evanston; the little projection of the attic at the top is my “portion” at $80/month.

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 on 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!

************

The rooms and buildings here are provided with locks, which are more like automobile doors: you can never be locked in by somebody, 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 one day..... Was going down to take my shower, with a towel wrapped around me, and realised I did not take the key! I go down to the Pakistani friend and called the landlord over the phone. The landlord/manager lives on 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 on 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 into my room, and also made an arrangement 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!

************

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! “Muthu.  You are a research assistant.  Why don’t you act like one?”, he says.  He helps me program the card punching and explains how I can speed up data entry.

I am upset.

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 punching, and so on! An Assistant Professor of 8 years being reprimanded for not punching cards fast enough?

I AM upset.

Disappointed.

Why do you have to go through this Muthu? (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)

*****************