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  Maisha Elonai Elonai is finishing her last quarter as an English student at UCLA. Like a good columnist, she'll stick her nose in anybody's business. Feel free to return the favor at emaisha@hotmail.com. Click Here for more articles by Maisha Elonai

It’s the traffic lights, the 5 p.m. intersections and the absence of greenery. It’s the woman on a cell phone on the road and the way pedestrians never make eye contact with each other. It’s the news stations’ helicopters thumping overhead at 3 a.m. and construction that is sure to be pounding next door at eight in the morning.

It’s Abercrombie and Fitch.

And Banana Republic.

And the Gap.

And Tommy Hilfiger, spend your pennies here.

These are the parts of Los Angeles that I am not going to miss. The women splitting their salad in a pizzeria, and the men (where were the men, anyway?) preening over their latest three pounds of muscle mass.

I am not loathe to leave all these behind.

Walking to a Barenaked Ladies concert at the Universal Ampitheater last month, I was somewhat overwhelmed by the larger-than-life neon signs and the “entertain me” attitude of theme park-goers. Between screaming music and the pack of friends I might or might not see tomorrow, I found myself wishing for a quiet neighborhood block, one soulmate and the freedom of my own imagination.

Now that I’m graduating, that’s exactly what I’ll get.

I’m moving to the full-time job and the one-bedroom apartment two blocks from the beach. I seem to have found the quiet neighborhood and the forever-type friends who want me to watch “X-files” with them for years to come.

  Illustration by CLEMENT LAM/Daily Bruin Ah, security. No more switching apartments every summer. No more rapidly losing friends to graduation. No more staying up until the break of dawn to finish that last ungodly assignment. I’m going to live the life I’ve been escaping to in my fantasies.

And I’ll get everything that goes with it.

There aren’t too many different types of people in the town I’m leaving for.

The air, albeit cleaner than Los Angeles’ smog, is permeated with a stagnant suburban attitude.

I don’t expect people to keep me on my toes.

One thing I can say for a busy university life and apartments in Westwood: living here means getting exposure.

If socialists aren’t handing out their monthly newspaper on Bruin Walk or the neighbors aren’t playing merengue at midnight, Jews for Jesus will be distributing pamphlets near the inverted fountain while Federal Building protests block off Wilshire.

Those are the day-to-day activities that I’m going to miss. The diversity in Los Angeles is priceless. Living in Westwood, I could go to a restaurant with my family, and the hostess wouldn’t hesitate to seat my Norwegian mother with the rest of our noticeably African family. I could go to a party with my friend Carlos and nobody would attack us about interracial dating. I could cruise the Santa Monica strip and forget about gender roles for a short, sweet second.

There might be no other place in the world so full of different cultures and activities. Thank God (Allah, Yahweh, Brahma, oh, fate in general) for the experience of living here.

Where else can you consider the country’s economic disparity while serving latte to Seal?

Where else does Cat Stevens go to talk about becoming Yusef Islam?

Students attending UCLA have an incredible advantage living in such a heterogeneous environment. Academic seeds to the winds after graduation, we will find ourselves blown to different niches across the world with just a little insight into other people’s beliefs and practices.

While that might not seem like a big deal, it could mean knowing the difference between the politically correct and the culturally dead-in-the-water. Understanding different people’s attitudes could save a company, agency or individual career from making poor choices and falling into disrepute.

Experiences with UCLA student programs are particularly handy educators.

Students who encounter the Retention of American Indians Now! program or the American Indian Studies Center, for example, might learn a thing or two about one community’s delicate balance between the need for economic growth and the resolve to protect a culture.

Alumni in decision-making positions who have been exposed to such concepts could apply their knowledge to different situations – whether or not Starbucks should open a store in China’s Forbidden City, say – and save a business from stretching its resources too far by making a social faux-pas.

That’s just one example of how exposure to different people could improve a career, but there are a million others.

For me, participating in the urban diorama of different lifestyles just has made bonding with people easier.

My first two roommates were country music fanatics. I never thought I’d like country music. I swore that I wouldn’t enjoy it.

Now I can hang out in local bars with co-workers from Kentucky, and we will all understand why Elvis lives on, why it’s good to have friends in low places and why singing karaoke to “All My Exes Live in Texas” ain’t half bad.

The memories of people I adored at UCLA have fleshed out my current lifestyle, and I’m grateful for the excitement past and the times to come.

Listening to Viva 107.1 FM, a Spanish radio station in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, reminds me of dancing with my friend Raoul behind the salad bar at the Cooperage. We only earned $5.75 per hour, but we made the most of our jobs – we were happy when we could swing a step or two on our way to restock the vegetables.

Now I find myself loving the sound of rapid Spanish, and I’ve considered volunteering as a tutor with some local programs so I can stay in contact with the richness of Latin peoples and cultures. I have Raoul to thank for that.

I suppose that’s what university administrators mean when they advocate maintaining a diverse population on campus to expand students’ horizons.

Thrown together in the big mix of the city and living like sardines at UCLA, we do learn to love some of the most unexpected and delightful people – people we otherwise might never have encountered.

So maybe the crowd that is Greater Los Angeles is worth living in, after all. I might not miss the commercialism, but the people are a treasure.

Los Angeles, thanks. For a little while, we embraced each other, and it turned out to be a good thing.

Call me on my cell phone someday, we’ll do lunch.

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