Two discoverers and a wise man

The Mac Weekly interviewed housemates David Suchy '12, Marshall Genn '12 and Dhritiman ‘Ditty' Murti '12 about haircuts, languages, and the wisdom they have accumulated over their time at Macalester.

TMW: How did you all meet?

[laughs] Marshall: David and I had Discovering World History together freshman year. I met Ditty on Turck 3 on one of those weekend nights when you're just roaming around the dorms.

Ditty: I mean, we are seniors now, we've run into each other plenty of times.

David: Turck 3 was that group of people that has hung together since freshman year, and Ditty was one of them, so Ditty's just part of the crew.

Marshall: Except I wasn't part of that group.

David: Marshall just kind of made his way in there.

You didn't live on Turck 3 either!

David: Yeah, I know. [all laugh]

Where are you all from originally?

David: I'm from Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

Marshall: Berkeley, California.

Ditty: Bangalore, India.

What's the weirdest thing you've noticed about America?

Ditty: Why do they always put ice in a water glass? When you ask for water, you never just get a glass of water, you always get ice in your water, and it always baffles me.

David: They put peanut butter in everything. I mean, we like peanut butter in the Netherlands, but here they have peanut butter candy, peanut butter ice cream, peanut butter yogurt, there's peanut butter everything. [to Marshall] What do you think is the weirdest thing about America?

Marshall: [laughs] I don't think I'm qualified to answer this question.

Ditty: Go for it!

David: A little self-reflection.

Marshall: Um, we have a high consumption rate? I'm just thinking political terms now. I don't have the gut reaction you guys have.

Have you visited each other at home?

Ditty: When I was flying into the States I visited him [David] once. It was a lot of fun...

What was the most memorable part?

David: That's the tricky part, it was also the least memorable... do professors read this?

Ditty: Due to David's carelessness, I got into a slight accident and got a little hurt. Without embarrassing David anymore, I think we'll leave it at that.

David: It's fine. Basically, I left Ditty on his own to discover the city of Eindhoven, and it was about 4 a.m. and we were pretty drunk and I was home and he didn't know where he was.

Ditty: I had two broken fingers, it was just a mess.

Marshall: According to David, everyone thought he was a Moroccan immigrant and people were running away from him.

Ditty: I would try and make someone stop and they thought that I was trying to mug them.

David: How did you finally get home?

Ditty: I chased one man down on a bike.

David: Until he stopped and was like, "Yeah, respect, you just chased me down for like two minutes."

Ditty: Good times.

How did you break the two fingers?

Ditty: I crashed into his bike from behind and he went flying one direction landing safely in the grass and I landed on the pavement not so safe.

Have you guys studied abroad at all?

David: I had an internship in London this summer - investment banking at CitiGroup.

Ditty: I studied abroad in Tokyo last semester.

What's your major?

Ditty: Economics. We probably shouldn't talk about how I got to study abroad, it was tricky.

Marshall: I studied abroad in Costa Rica last semester. I was taking classes at Universidad Nacional. I was taking a geography class, Forest Ecology and Migrations in Costa Rica, and Spanish.

What do you think about Marshall's Spanish skills?

David: I don't speak Spanish but...

Ditty: Sounds pretty top notch.

David: Solid. He practices a lot.

Marshall: We must have a lot of languages in this house. How many do you speak?

Ditty: Three. Hindi, Japanese and English.

Marshall: We all speak different languages.

Do you speak any of the same languages?

All: English [laugh]

David: I don't speak Hindi.

What was your most memorable experience in Costa Rica?

Marshall: I got to see the national soccer team play in their sparkling new stadium that the Chinese just built for them for free against Nigeria, which is pretty cool and random in some ways. I practiced with the soccer team at the university basically five days a week, which was pretty cool.

Describe senior year so far.

David: It's going by fast, but it's good. You get to senior year and you realize well, one year left, let's try to do as little school and as much fun as possible.

Marshall: That hasn't really worked out. We've all been working kind of hard.

Ditty: The end is close, I think that summarizes that best.

Let's talk about Marshall's hair - his new locks.

David: Ah, the long hair. I got used to it really, really quickly. He used to always have short hair, but I guess he pulls it off. I heard he had corn rows, but that was before I was here, so I can't comment on that. Did you see it? Was it popular?