Hello, Scotland

I've decided to keep a blog about my adventures in Scotland. Hopefully I'll update it every once in a while, but if I don't, please be sure to bug me to do so!

For those of you who don't know, I'm in Scotland with 15 other Columbia kids for EDGE, an 8-week entrepreneurship and consulting program. The program is run under Scottish Enterprises, and we team up with University students in China, Canada, and Glasgow, as well as a bunch of local high schoolers. There are three cohorts, and we're in the University of Glasgow cohort, so we basically don't interact with the other international students.

My journey to Scotland was a bit painful; the whole trip took about 25 hours, from the time I left my house to the time I got to my dorm in Glasgow. Friends, it should only take that long to go to India, not the United Kingdom. Anyways, after sitting next to a man who took up a third of my seat as well as the entirety of his, I reached London with just 70 minutes before my next flight. By the time I got through immigration procedures, my flight had already took off.

Woops.

Luckily they put me on the next flight without much hassle, but the caveat was that I was stuck in the London Gatwick airport for an additional 8 hours. I borrowed some dude's cellphone to tell the Scotland people I was coming late, but then I realized that I should probably inform my parents as well. First, I checked out the telephone booth, which charged 4 pounds per minute.

BRIEF MATH LESSON:

4 pounds/minute X 2.1 USD/pound X 3 minutes (GOOD LUCK explaining to your Indian parents why you're stuck in a foreign airport in less than 120 seconds.) = $25.20

$25.20!? I could buy 6 happy meals with that kind of money. Who in their right mind would pay $25.20 to make their parents nervous and panicked? Anyways, I found an e-mail station and just e-mailed my parents. Problem solved, all for just 1 pound.

Speaking of 1 pound, there's this wonderful little supermarket (if you can even call it that) which sells gourmet frozen foods (spicy fried chicken anyone?) for only pound per box. What a steal! Ironically enough, the place is called Iceland...though it does sell fancy foods that aren't frozen, such as cheap wine, teacakes, and stale meat.

The gym here sucks. But the rooms are nice; we even have individual bathrooms, and showers which flood the bathroom (it's desi style baby! about half a foot between the shower and toilet, and no distinct areas for each) while the curtain sticks to you -- ever wonder how many other people it has clung on to? hahah

Today our EDGE training started. It was pretty routine, although my one complaint was that the icebreakers didn't really help us to get to know each other, it only pointed out the vastness of EDGE participants. For you Lions -- you know how Columbia keeps tooting its diversity horn? Diversity initiatives. Diverse campus. Diverse student body. When the Columbia kids walked into the seminar with the other participants in our cohort, we did a double take: what's this? They're all white! Okay, give or take two or three kids, we added the only form of diversity there was to that room.

Moral of the story: appreciate diversity while it lasts. Because reality is nothing like what's inside Columbia's gates.