Bella Voce

to share, to hear, to listen, to discover, to learn . . . continuously

My Photo
Name:
Location: California, United States

Yes, "bellevoce" does not match the title of my blog. This near-Italian username stems from a play on words of my childhood nickname of Elle in combination with the Italian translation of "beautiful voice (bella voce)." My mother coined this name for my first email address and I have come to love it for its root in my Italian heritage and remembrance of my childhood.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Marked: Fragile

I might say that the past three months have been quite destructive. Anyone at my university would likely concur as well. Thus, since my time has been diverted to finishing the school year alive (perhaps a little bit of an exaggeration :), my blog was placed on the back burner for awhile.

So begins my story. In the course of one week in May (not April), I evacuated the 40 residents of my hall at 3:30 am three times due to fire. The first fire burned an entire hall down and many residents lost all of the belongings in their rooms. The cause was deemed an equipment malfunction, which the speed of the spread of the fire corroborates. The second fire, four days later, I responded to with my fire extinguisher; it was a cardboard box filled with paper – felony arson. Don’t think I’m the hero in this, for it was a random resident who put it out seconds before I arrived. The third fire was about 19 hours later. Thankfully, a fellow resident put it out before there was extensive damage done.

Thus, staff members volunteered to keep posts at the major entrances of the building and documented every resident’s entrance time through each entire night following the last fire. Needles to say, when an outside security company was hired for the job, we were happy beyond measure. (insert shout out to my fellow staff members for all their hard work)

Bereft of flammable fun, whoever decided to torment our students turned to malicious vehicular “humor” by flattening tires in the parking lot. A friend of mine had five flat tires in the course of two weeks. I escaped only because my car had broken down on the freeway and was in the shop for two weeks . . . lucky . . . me . . .

And so, the end of the year finally rolled around with staff members eager to shed the responsibility of residents for the summer. The second to last day of move-out started off wonderfully; I had no finals and slept in. But upon my entering the office before lunch, I received the news from my supervisor that we were to begin strongly urging out residents to move out as soon as possible. UCR had received a bomb threat, police had already found two incendiary devices on campus, and as we all remembered, our building had a habit of catching on fire this year. The next two days progressed, nothing burnt down, and all residents were out of the building by 5 pm the next day; my summer began.


I must admit though, these events were not the most destructive force in my life over the past six months . . .



---
Leave a comment...