Atlanta, I Love You!

Got to visit Atlanta last weekend. I'm not trying to be racist here (and I'm not!), but I heard lots of weird stuffs about Atlanta, such as it's a city filled with lots of African-Americans (and you've heard those discriminating stereotype of anything associated with a community filled with African-Americans.). But once I was there, it's certainly not like what you think. It's true though, there are a lot of African-Americans, for example, if there were 10 seats in the MARTA's subway (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, Atlanta's public transportation authority.), then 7 out of the 10 seats would be occupied by African-Americans. And there are very few Asians and Hispanics there, at least I thought so. Probably because it was weekend.

Day 1: Anyway, I visited Atlanta for a purpose of visiting and doing some interview at the Georgia State University (GSU). Once I got to the airport (12:00 PM eastern time), went to check-in to the hotel. It was the Westin Atlanta Airport. I love that hotel soooo much. I got a king suite room, with my own treadmill, even though I've never used it. Well, I think it worths the price, I mean I paid $420 for 2 nights stay including a round-trip ticket. Grabbed myself something for lunch (Rotisserie Chicken Pot Pie, and it was very expensive! $15 just for that thing! It was good though.) at the hotel's restaurant and immediately reserved a cab to downtown Atlanta (I got 1 1/2 hour left.). Took a short nap at my room (comfie =D) and then woke up and briefly skimmed through one of the professor's published research (so I get to show-off that I know and understand his works and I'm really interested to work with him =p). It took only 20 minutes by cab to the downtown. BTW, it was already spring there! It was 50 degree something, almost 60 degree. I could even take my coat off and wear only sweater. Leaves were starting to grow and I could see some trees with beautiful, colorful flowers. Arrived at GSU 10 minutes earlier than the scheduled time, and when I got to that professor's room, he was still busy on the phone, so I got to wait for another 15 minutes. He was very friendly and polite though, and I like him very much. Unfortunately, we only got 10 minutes left cause he gotta attend some meeting at 2:30 PM. He frankly told me that I have a very slim probability to be admitted there. He is a member of the MIS doctoral admission committee, and he is very concerned of my low verbal score on my GMAT's result. Last year there were almost 100 applicants to the I.S. doctoral program and the committee admitted 1 person only! This year, the applicants pool is kinda lower, but still, around 50 to 70 applicants and the committee plan to admit up to 3 to 5 persons for Fall 2006! But he said that I have other strong factors to be considered. I also proposed him to be my academic advisor, if I were to be admitted, and I promised him to send my research work that I did during my MBA program. The second professor is even friendlier =) I can see that he has a strong interest on my background (again, the fact that I work at the World Bank really helps!), and he doesn't really care about my GMAT score (but he's not a member of the doctoral admission committee.). He read my research work that I did at the World Bank right in front of me, and looked very interested. It turned out that one of his research area is Global IT. He even introduced me to a Ph.D. student (which I forgot to ask to meet with some. I usually asked the professors for the opportunity to meet with several Ph.D. students whenever I visit a school) and several other professors (including the director of the doctoral program). We even got to talk several personal matters (it turned out that he's a European and he's very pleased of the fact that I lived in France the first 5 years of my life and the fact that my Dad too, has a Ph.D. degree from Sorbonne, France.). The whole meeting took about 2 1/2 hours, and I went back to my hotel riding MARTA (which stopped at the airport and then waited for the hotel's shuttle that serves every 15 minutes.).

Day 2: Okay, it may sound stupid to some of you, but I paid another $82 for a one-day city tour (hey, I don't wanna spend the whole Saturday in my hotel room, plus I'm not familiar with the area.). It was scheduled from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM. Luckily, I am now used to wake up very early in the morning (thanks to my job), and was ready at 8:15 AM (grabbed some breakfast at the hotel restaurant again, and paid another $12 for some stupid American breakfast combo of scrambled egg, turkey sausages, toasts, hot tea, and a glass of orange juice. I had no choice!). Because I didn't know that the tour's starting point was very close to GSU's school of business, I took a cab to get there and there goes another $36 =( (I should have taken MARTA instead.). Now, I can see the real Atlanta! The city is very clean, with several unique buildings (several buildings with unique architecture, and several others with tunneled bridge connecting each building to another.). The parks are uniquely designed, especially the Centennial Olympic Park (look at the picture on the left-hand side). I instantly fell in love with Atlanta (despite of its reputation as the nation's second city with the worst traffic.). The first tour was to visit Coca-Cola Museum. I wasn't very excited though, as I lost interest to any kind of soda or soft drinks (my stomach can't take any of those stuffs no more.). However, I did taste some sodas, the Vanilla Coke and Power Drink =) (and then my stomach started to growl. I was scared that I might get diarrhea again.) Gotta read and watch some clips on several history lessons of Coca-Cola. Next stop, The Carter Center (Jimmy Carter Library and Museum). To me, this one was very boring since I have no such interest in that former President of U.S., although I did admire the building's architecture and the artistic gardens around the center. We spent 1 hour there! Next trip, The Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site (National Park Service). It's actually a Church (Ebenezer Baptist Church) enlarged with a small museum behind it, but what interest me were the graves of the Reverend himself and his wife (Coretta Scott King, who just passed away earlier this February 2006). We got to see the house where the Reverend was born on 1929. We then had 1 1/2 hour lunch break, and then went for another visit, Margaret Mitchell House and Museum. FYI, Margaret Mitchell is the author of the famous Gone With The Wind (although I've never read the novel.). It's the only small house in the middle of tall, skyrise buildings, so it's easy to spot. It was supposed to be demolished before it was proposed to be a museum. It was quite interesting though, we got to visit the rooms where she got to sleep, eat, and write that novel (we saw the antique typewriter that she used to write Gone With The Wind.). The next tour, my most favorite one, is the tour to the nation's third most beautiful residential area. It's actually a forest on a hill, but filled with mansions and manors =) Each mansions and manors are located farther away to each other, hidden behind forested trees, but you can spot beautiful gardens and fountains right before each mansion. They look like European palaces. It is said that former Coca-Cola CEO, Robert Woodruff, artist Elton John, several Atlanta's sport atheletes, and the Japanese Consulate General live there. I held my breath with excitement each time I see each mansion. There was this mansion, extremely huge you can call it a palace, located faraway from the road, surrounded by beautiful gardens and fountains, and you can see swans around the fountains! Locals call it the swan mansion. The trip lasted for 1 hour 15 mintes, I took pictures using my cell-phone, everytime we stopped at extravaganza mansions. The last trip was a tour at Georgia Aquarium. This too was so-so. I had visited several national aquariums before, and I think this one is just the same as the others. But what annoyed was we got to spend 2 hours in the d*mn aquarium! As a result, I spent 45 minutes sitting on the bench. The tour finished exactly on time, and I grabbed a Prime Rib sub for dinner at Quizno's Subs and went back to my hotel using MARTA. But I surely enjoyed the city itself, how clean it is, how unique the architecture of each building is.

Day 3: I begged the hotel management to allow me to check-out at 3:00 PM. I was too lazy to go back to the downtown and to spend several hours before checking in for a flight back to Washington, D.C. (and certainly never wanted to spend several hours waiting in the hotel's lobby) They said they could only extend it to 1:00 PM. So I finally decided to go back to downtown Atlanta using MARTA. It was 11:15 AM. It took about 15 minutes to get to Five Points station. This is the station nearby GSU's school of business and the starting point of the city tour, the day before. I grabbed my lunch at McDonald's (another junk food =p) and walked around the plaza at the Coca-Cola museum and the Underground Atlanta. BTW, Underground Atlanta is an underground street mall, but not those malls with famous branded stores, famous boutiques, nor famous outlets. The outlets are more like gift shops. There is a food court although I didn't have my lunch there. My flight was scheduled at 5:30 PM, so I went back to the hotel (to pick up my bag that I left at the hotel's deposit counter) at 2:30 PM. It was Sunday, so it took 20 minutes to wait for the next train to arrive! Once I got there, I waisted no time to pick up my bag and took the hotel shuttle to the airport. Arrived at D.C. around 9:00 PM, got to my house around 10:00 PM, extremely exhausted. The next day at my office, I browsed the net for the costs of renting apartments in Atlanta, and surprise-surprise, you can live in a safe, well-maintained one-bedroom apartment with beautiful landscape for "just" $700 to $900 (with this price, you can only live in a mid-level one bedroom apartment in Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. It costs more than $1000 to live in that kind of apartment in D.C.). This price is just like the price of apartments in St. Louis, Missouri. But hey, if you take a doctoral program in U.S., you (usually) don't have to pay for tuition-fee and you'll get paid as a teaching or research assistant (usually around $1000 to $2000 per -month). Since now I'm really in love with Atlanta and I always wanted to study at GSU (BTW, the I.S. department at GSU's school of business is ranked on the top 5 by USNews and is internationally ranked number 1 in terms of I.S. research productivity, even higher than the ranks of the I.S. departments at MIT's Sloan School and at Stanford's School of Business. This is obvious since there are several "big name" professors at GSU's I.S. department and the I.S. research area are diverse.), I really hope that I can live in Atlanta this August for the next 5 to 6 years of my life and to study at one of the most respected I.S. departments in the world.