today was my first day of carpooling to work. there is a program here and they had one at ucsc. i didn't participate at ucsc because i always felt like i needed my car to run off to lunch or do errands after work. i lived close enough that if i really wanted to use alternate transportation instead of my private vehicle, i would have used my free bus pass. besides, i couldn't get up early enough anyway and would probably miss the carpool! but now i live far from campus and traffic is shitty during LA rush hour. it costs so much to live on the west side that i'm actually saving money by staying put and carpooling. i don't have to wake up much earlier than if i drove alone but it still sucks to have to go to bed so early.

the really weird thing about the carpool situation though is that everyone has assigned seats like it's elementary school! on the drive to work no one said anything. in fact no one told me exactly where in the parking lot was the rendezvous point so i was waiting at the logical place and had to flag down the vehicle to pick me up because that's not where they meet! (more on the illogical part of ucla to come.) then on the way back from work, i sat in a different seat and one of the others was staring me down like why was i sitting there. she wasn't getting in the vehicle. i asked if she wanted me to move so she could sit behind me and she said yeah in a how dare you even ask such a ridiculous question, continued with the stare down of death. then the driver gave me a brief "everyone sits in the same seat" notice. the driver whom is apparently practicing to become a bus driver in new zealand judging by their 'mad traffic skillz', as the kids say. in the driver's defense, the vehicles they operate aren't exactly smooth for the road. i thought i might get some reading done or something but there's too much motion that i'd be very sick. it's like being in a wooden roller coaster. on top of that, it's dark when we leave and dark when we return so there's no light. not much choice but either converse with the driver (some people are really annoying in this respect) or fall asleep (my preference), or at least pretend to fall asleep.

now, about my adjustment. at every point i crawl along becoming a fully-fledged worker at ucla, and i do mean crawl, i am seeing more what it is i dislike about large campuses from an administrative side: bureaucracy. i can't fucking stand bureaucracies. in order to do my job i need access to certain systems and getting access is a hurdle. there's no clear direction. or the very basic little things that you know how to do are completely out of whack here, again with no clear direction. it's more like i have to figure things out myself. or the people i deal with to get access are being dicks like it's such an imposition on them to do things on time. true ucsc were the slugs but these people seem even slower. i may be judging prematurely but that's how i feel right now. i can't tell if all the campus is like this. if the campus is that busy. or we've got some waste going on. i'll find out in the upcoming months.