America 1982

"Very popular with girls, huh? I saw three girls surrounding you just now asking questions, but in comparison, they are not as popular as your roommate in a Spanish restaurant. He said you work part-time here." Eric pressed his arm on On the countertop, he greeted Tommy who was typing on the keyboard inside.

Tommy finished processing the form, raised his head and responded with a smile: "Jason? Of course, that guy does know how to unleash his charm."

"It was obvious that the guy was surrounded by seven or eight boys who asked him why men and women could not be equal in terms of food portions. Paying the same price, the food on the plates of ugly women and men was not even half of that of beautiful women. Eric couldn't help but laugh as he thought of what he saw in the Spanish restaurant.

Tommy looked at Eric speechlessly: "Maybe I can have the dormitory to myself tonight, and he will go to the medical center to show off his charm?"

Eric stared at Tommy for a moment, and then cast his gaze towards the hall in the distance: "My brother doesn't trust me enough in my choice, and then I keep asking myself in my heart whether my previous decision to invite you to the meeting later is right. It was a little hasty, so in the end I showed up here, let’s go, can I buy you a cup of coffee? Let’s see if you increase my confidence in you, or if I retract that invitation?”

"I still have five minutes to finish work." Tommy first looked at the clock in the library, and then said to Eric.

Eric nodded: "Very good, then I will arrange the work for you for five minutes. Please find me a copy of Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover"."

"No problem, but let me remind you that among the twenty copies of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" collected by this library, almost all the pages with exciting plots have been torn out and lost. I don't know which ones even adult magazines are reluctant to buy. The bastard did this." Tommy said to Eric while operating the computer.

If he hadn't experienced it himself, Tommy Hawke would never have believed that someone had done such a thing before, but the facts were before his eyes. Needless to say, Lawrence's classic novels were Dante's "The Divine Comedy" and Homer's "The Divine Comedy". Some of the explicit poems in "The Epic of Horses" are compulsorily collected by students. Even though buying an adult magazine can solve the problem, they still have to tear out the pages, increasing his workload.

According to Eric's request, Tommy assigned him a book that seemed to have no missing pages on the surface. Eric just fiddled with the pages of the book like an old bird and raised his middle finger at Tommy.

After Tommy finished the last few minutes of his part-time job, he accompanied him to the cafe next to the library, ordered coffee and sat down.

"This year SSD is preparing to recruit a total of 11 freshmen. Guess why I appear in front of you?" Eric waited for the waiter to bring coffee and evacuated, then looked at Tommy Hawke and said.

Tommy Hawke lowered his head and looked at the cup of coffee in front of him. He was silent for a moment before speaking: "I guess the fact that you come to see me now means that you are ready to give me your A-level attention? But the rest of the brotherhood obviously Do you think it’s a bit wasteful?”

Obtaining A-level attention means that as long as the new student is not interested in the fraternity and actively refuses to join, it is basically equivalent to getting an invitation to join. After passing the weird assessment period, he can become a formal member of the fraternity.

All college freshmen are proud to receive A-level or above attention from the fraternity, which means that the fraternity appreciates you as a newcomer and is very interested in you.

"I feel that your party organization skills should be good. You can become an excellent social event manager of the fraternity, but this is not enough. Is there anything else I can know about you?" Eric took a sip of coffee and looked at Tommy asked in a relaxed tone: "You can talk to me, because after the A-level attention, there will be a closed-door meeting of the fraternity. We will meet internally to discuss and decide which newcomers will be invited to join. I need to add more convincing proof. From my perspective, you are the first first-generation country college student to gain my A-level attention."

"If you need to brag about your connections and background, okay, I know a Stanford University freshman with a net worth of 600 million? But that guy is 100% sure to join the Order of the Phoenix, because everyone in his family is a member of the Order of the Phoenix." Tommy held up his coffee and laughed. "I have a very good personal relationship with the prime minister and governor of a small country, and I also know a Nobel Prize winner in economics," he said.

"That's all I need. You know what the fraternity is all about, hillbilly. Keep bragging and don't stop." Eric heard Tommy's words and thought he was talking nonsense.

"That's pretty much it," Tommy said, smiling at Eric.

Eric slowly lost his smile: "Like telling jokes is not enough to make the fraternity pay attention to you. Why don't you tell me why you joined the fraternity? In fact, this was originally a question on recruitment night, but it doesn't matter. Let's talk now. , if you don’t have any other connections or background you want to talk about.”

"Friends, you should always have a few friends who can stay with you in college, then the connections in the fraternity, and finally the fraternity's alumni fund." Tommy said directly without pretending to say that he had long admired the ancient and mysterious fraternity. Explain the reason why you joined.

"Alumni Fund? You got a full scholarship, and you also made a fortune from the summer camp, so you shouldn't be short of money." Eric asked with some confusion after listening to Tommy's words.

The SSD Alumni Fund is a charitable foundation dedicated to providing financial support to current undergraduate and graduate members of the association. The original purpose of its establishment was actually to help those brothers in the fraternity who did not receive scholarships and were helpless with the high tuition fees, but they soon discovered that This is a wrong decision, because those who can join a fraternity and pay dues will basically not have to worry about tuition.

So the purpose was changed again, from initially providing educational financial support to providing educational financial support and entrepreneurial financial support.

If a member of the fraternity needs financial support to start a business, after discussion by the fraternity branch, he can apply to the general meeting and if approved by the general meeting, he will be able to obtain certain financial support.

"According to the plan I made for myself, I will start a business during college." Tommy looked at Eric: "The fraternity's alumni fund can provide initial support."

Eric didn't find Tommy's words strange. In fact, this situation is very common at Stanford University. It is possible that students who were focused on class yesterday suddenly decided to drop out of school and start a business today. He asked Tommy:

"which field?"

"The software industry," Tommy answered.

"Give up, the Alumni Fund will not support you in developing erotic word games or software that you think is cool but is actually stupid. If you write in your application that you need money to go to a striptease, you have a higher chance of being approved than if you write about developing software to start a business. "Hearing Tommy say that he wanted to develop software, Eric's tone affirmatively shattered Tommy's fantasy of applying for entrepreneurial support, but gave another suggestion:

"If your software is really promising, you don't need to waste time and effort applying for alumni funds. This is Silicon Valley. There is no shortage of funds for software development. What is lacking is software that is truly worth investing in. I have seen my brothers try several times. I develop software to start a business and apply for investment, but the investor treats me as rubbish and dismisses me. I think you can make more money by opening a bar with all kinds of tricks near the university than developing software. At least if you open a bar, I am willing to invest. .”

These are Eric’s experiences. At Stanford University, he has seen countless men with glasses who fantasize about developing a software that they think is unique and conquering the world. It turns out that most of them are just self-indulgence of those guys. After hearing their thoughts, Eric's first reaction was to wash his brain to prevent the spread of mental retardation.

For example, Eric once saw a mentally retarded member of his fraternity trying to develop a bed-calling software. However, because the workload was huge and involved work such as sound synthesis, he wanted to find friendship investment and support within the fraternity. Buy some development equipment.

When seeking everyone's support within the fraternity, the guy explained his concept and believed that this software must be as popular as "Playboy" and "Penthouse" because the main function of this software is to allow users to read adult magazines. Open it and cooperate with the seductive female voice provided by the software, allowing readers to have a more vivid enjoyment when reading magazines.

Until Eric asked that idiot a question at the meeting: If I want to make myself more pleasurable and vivid when moving my five fingers, why should I buy this software instead of buying a video tape of an adult movie?

There is also a weird piece of sleep aid software developed to count sheep for insomniacs. The entire software works by flashing a pixel goat and ever-increasing numbers on the screen every second. The developers believe that it can help insomniacs fall asleep. It turns out that during a small-scale friendly test within the fraternity, no one in the fraternity fell asleep because the software helped count sheep. Instead, one brother stared at the screen and watched more than 30,000 sheep, causing the computer to malfunction.

So Eric persuaded Tommy to give up software development, be a normal human being, and use his strengths, such as opening a bar, and not blindly join the software industry after seeing some of his alumni become rich overnight by developing software.

"Don't worry, I'm still using other software and found the shortcomings of those software." Tommy smiled at Eric's teasing, and when he was about to get up, he saw Stephen Penn and a man in a suit with a gold medal on his chest. The members of the Phoenix Badge came in from outside and walked directly towards the two of them.

"Do they know you?" Eric looked at the two people getting closer and asked Tommy.

"Remember the guy I said with a net worth of 600 million? That's him." Tommy raised a middle finger towards Stephen: "Rich man, long time no see."

Eric was stunned. He always thought that what Tommy said was a joke!

But there was no time for him to continue asking questions at this time. He could only stand up and take a deep look at Tommy, pick up the book and walk out of the cafe: "I look forward to seeing you on Friday."

Stephen sat down on the seat vacated by Eric, looked at Tommy Hawke, and raised two middle fingers: "You actually came to California, and what's even more exaggerated is, if I hadn't heard some I didn't even know you were coming when the freshman scolded a poor freshman named Tommy Hawke who made money by selling them a half-true fraternity rookie handbook."

"CSLS Committee Chairman, Tommy Hawke, is a poor guy who doesn't want to make money all the time, but he is the boss of me or a group of us." After Stephen scolded Tommy, he introduced to the members of the Order of the Phoenix next to him, and then to Tommy said: "Jim Murtaugh, VSA's housing manager, when you and I pass the VSA newcomer review, I will ask him to reserve a bedroom for you next door to me."

"But I haven't applied yet?" Tommy shook hands with the boy named Jim and said to Stephen, "Has the process been so simplified?"

"The person in front of you is the family sponsor of the Stanford Endowment Foundation and the most stable donor of the VSA fraternity. I only know that before I came to Stanford to report, VSA already had my position. Now that you are here, there is also Your place." Stephen pulled up his sleeve, revealing a delicate small tattoo on his left wrist:

"Or you can teach me what application means?"

The current situation is that I have recovered, my daughter has passed the high fever stage, my wife is still in the high fever stage, and I am taking care of my son who has not yet given birth. This chapter was coded with my son in my arms. This kind of irregular update may still be It will last for a while. Please bear with me. I will try my best to keep updating. This is the first update today. I promise that I will update the second update, but it may not be until midnight.