The Bees had a great start to the year, welcoming the newbies (pun intended) to the Hive during their first week together with some hectic activity in old Aldrich 108. A few minutes before LEAD was over that Friday, Rafa Calderon, dressed in cleaners’ overalls, burst into the room with earphones on and started wiping the blackboard. Rafa danced away to the beat, his back to the class, as he erased the day’s articulation of thoughts on LEAD. Professor Tiziana Casciaro pretended to not know what was happening, and tried to get him to scoot. At which Rafa blinked, indicating that English and he were not intimately acquainted, and continued to wipe the boards. In desperation, a NewBee begged him in Spanish to leave the board alone, translating for the benefit of the class. By then the NBs knew they had been had. And realized what it meant to be part of the Hive!
Other welcoming festivities included a screening of the section video, and to the few who haven’t yet asked me–yes, I was the guy with the goatee in the cheerleader suit. We also had a “separated at birth” series with classcard shots of the NB students. This was followed by special OB skydecks, and beer in Hamilton lounge.
We are pleased to report the NB looks poised to overtake us in nefarious merriment plans. They have already had a massive cranberry fight following the TOM classic, thereby indicating that they are going to be worthy pupils of some of our more creative sectionmates. In fact a few of them have even come up with comments that would put a few of us to shame. Notable among them are “in my last job, I was a guru myself” to justify the person’s views during the GURU.com marketing case, and “I wasn’t putting my hand up, I was just feeling the board in the back.”
OB also hosted the Heaven and Hell party in Gallatin Hall along with Section E. Hell was in Carl Petty’s (OE) room (reasons withheld), while Heaven was Renata Dionello’s. There was also an intermediate zone for the confused people who couldn’t decide on their allegiance. Ajay Shroff, Marshall Butler, Brett Laschinger, and Chike Obianwu sported cool cloaks, and looked as evil as they possibly could. Marshall tried to get some creative stuff done with black make-up cream. Cameron Bunge’s attempt to get a black outline around Marshall’s eyes made him look like he had lost a nasty fight to some girl’s boyfriend. He then proceeded to experiment with a variety of goatee designs till he found one that suited him.
September closed with a section hike. Well organized by Alex, we assembled at SFP at 10 am. Car pools were created, as we set off for New Hampshire to do some mountain climbing. Ellis Chi kept Elly Hardwick, Jim Handlan, and yours truly quite entertained with her various business plans. Wanting to capitalize on Jim’s experience as a submarine officer, she wanted to know how much a tourist sub would cost. All the while, we were trying to locate a McDonald’s to take care of Elly’s hunger pangs. We pursued two road signs, only to find that the elusive McD was nowhere to be found. “So this is how they have such a huge chain. Put up signs all over, and don’t actually build the place,” stated Jim. Elly’s reaction was somewhat more emotional. We did find the place, and got some food into all of us.
The hike itself was not quite as simple as we thought. Blanca had baked some phenomenal cookies for all, in order to inject some energy into all of us as we trekked up. Several Bees discovered that this wasn’t quite the “walk in the woods” they had hoped for. We did manage to crawl up, and the breathtaking view suddenly made it so worthwhile. After a quick lunch at the peak, we trekked down. Renata, despite still recovering from the party the night before and still struggling with a terrible cold, displayed shocking energy levels-she was the first up and the first down the mountain!
The OBs welcome the NBs into the Hive. We look forward to having some great times in the Hive together.
