SUNYSB, or "Stony" (as we Stony Brook students call it) is really a place to be. With a selfless and helpful staff, to knowledgeable faculty (For the "cynics" only: There are always exceptions) and a beautiful campus to great technological and administrative facilities, its a university you'd want to study at.
I had my reservations about Stony before coming here. But they are sort of dissolving now. Although life can be hard here sometimes (particularly with all the paperwork and the bureaucratic issues, that also because its a state funded university hence all the fuss) but you'd always find a way through it.
My best experiences here were with the International Student Services and the university's local bank (Teachers Federal Credit Union). At both the places the staff was very efficient and helpful. Unlike the 'desi sarkari daftars' these non-profit government agencies understand your problems and issues and help you out of them.
I arrived NY on August 22nd (2006) at the John F. Kennedy airport. Our flight (AI 111) was delayed by 3 hours atleast (hail air india!), but still the university voluntary pick-up staff was waiting patiently for us to arrive. They handled our luggage for us, knowing that we were very tired from our 20 hour long flight and took us to the university campus. There, at 9 o'clock in the night, there was university staff waiting for us to assign us our apartments and help us make ourselves comfortable.
Orientations started from August 24th where we were overloaded with details, brochures and pamphlets of all sorts, but despite all the resulting chaos the international students services staff listened to each one of our questions and answering (or forwarding) them to the best of their capabilities.
After having completed the international students orientations, international student check-in, department graduate student check-in, tax forms completion and department orientations, I was finally left with the social security number request. After having applied for SSN at the Social Security District Office at Patchogue (which, btw, is a really beautiful town if you ever visit it). Classes started from September 6th, the first lecture being that of Computing with Logic (CSE505) taken by Prof. C. R. Ramakrishnan.
Another great thing about living in Suffolk county is the fact that you can order stuff from BQ Foods. They sell indian grocery items and fresh food items (parathas, etc) at reasonable prices. For more details check http://www.bqfoods.com
I will be posting photographs on this blog soon (as soon as I buy a digicam, which might take time since my tax forms have been delayed for a while because I didn't submit a copy of my I20 with them, therefore my paychecks would also be delayed), so keep coming back.
Keep reading and commenting.