5/1

The night before May began, my grandmother gave me 5000 yuan to support my will-be studies abroad, although nominal, the money that comes from a lady with heart problems and a smoking history of more than 50 years still strikes me as respectable. I had, before the last day of April, gone to her place three times to help my brother install, reinstall, and activate the Windows and Office software. And while talking to her is not the main purpose, or not even a mutually intelligible one, I still enjoyed the clash between what she calls the new generation of rebellious mind, and what I call the outdated elder who plays mahjong on a daily basis.

She's got a heart disease after giving birth to her second child - the younger sister of my mom, in the 1960s, and in the course of these decades she passed out several times - thanks to the violent patting of my now dead grandfather, she came back alive. Now in her 80s, my grandmother always possesses a ring of optimism so bizarrely convincing to herself that the intimidation of death is just a part of the feast she seems to take on eternally. My brother took a picture of her when she was watching the ill-made television show in Wuxi dialect from the city channel, where numerous hosts and hostesses went out on the street to solve trivial disputes between people just that the audience can be sarcastic about them. She was smiling on that picture, exerting a sharp contrast with the wrinkles on her faces and the amorphous plaques stuck in the wall behind her. The chair, and the mahjong-table-converted dining table, likely constitute a reminder of the past from which I'm desperately trying to alter and escape, and surprisingly I'm at ease in it. When I sit in the chair unmoved from the very beginning of my childhood, eat with the chopsticks and watch the TV bought ten years ago, it all feels yesterday. Time collapsed there - I no longer feel guilt of having no career prospect, or condemn myself for the inability to improve, or anything I'm pursuing because it consider it prerequisite for my further pursuit - although I've never had an idea of what that would be any way. Looking around, my uncle just had a stroke and still can't move freely, and he wears the kind of smile uncle always should wear; my brother is close to his 30, and with the chronical glass as his emblem, and Japanese cartoon as his taste, he looks no different from who he was when in high school, singing semi-rock songs from Taiwanese pop singer Jay Chou - who I had admired under his influence; and my grandmother, not even changing the way she speaks and complains - all of these unchanging, static that even I myself, who had incurred vast overhaul of the entire life, believed for a moment that I'm still the same, non-growing child that sat in the middle of the bamboo chair, that my brother didn't at all go to high school, that my uncle still works 12 hours a day, that my grandmother still beats and defeats me. It is phantasmagoria, but it is always the phantasmagoria that is perceived beautiful, snapshot at the most memorable second, and dwelling in the corner of mind like the wine stored in pit, mostly forgotten, but when the occasion has come, attracts and intoxicates the man in search of home.

Sometimes I wonder, as a matter of fact, now I wonder, as I'm lying on the bed, appointing myself as a third rate writer, philosopher, and thinker, just what is it? The object to which the "it" refers is unknown to me, and even the thought of asking appears to be as alien. But I've started to have it - that I'm born and bound to die, that who I love and who love me perish irreversibly, that the same process replicates itself almost every moment but the world is fine and functioning? It should either be that I'm eternal or that the world should disintegrate. Yeah, such ideas are naive and they probably have been discussed extensively somewhere, sometime already, in the kind of language so profound and penetrating that I can in no way write close to it. But I still want to ask, just like I'm still reluctant to accept reality albeit that I live in it, just like the plants and insects and those of whom I know, devoted to a goal totally nihilist, graceless, and without challenge, that's how life is supposed to be lived. That is how I wanted to but have thus far failed. My body matures at 24, and my brain matures at 28. Maybe I'm too young to contemplate these things, too absurd to think of them in advance and brand it wise - live in the moment, let things happen - cheesy words, cheesy sentence, but with a touch of epiphany - all things come into existence for a reason, and often for a good reason. I will never be an observer, as I too, am thrown restlessly in the flow of nothing but the present.
-

Writing has never alleviated the intensity of my emotions, rather it enhances them.
-

Just after I finished dinner my mom made me with white gourd and bamboo roots, I discovered in the junk folder an email coming from the Jacobs University - it's finally time to apply for a German student visa. In the period of time before, I've been trying to postpone the process because I still wanted to hear from the Business Analytics of NUS I'm eager to attend. After some search on the internet, I know that the results typically come out at the middle or late May. It's rather uncertain where I'd eventually end up if by then I've put the 8000-ish euro into the Deutschland Bank.

Documents required for the visa included the graduation certificate for my elementary school, and the TOEFL transcript, which I had lost. Though I haven't figured out a convenient way to solve the problem, I have the conviction that the problem will be solved somehow while I maintain my usual procrastination. As I'm writing this, the drilling machine on the construction site has again started its rumbling. Curiously the sound isn't for building things, but rather for demolishing them. In the past few weeks the workers erected a structure whose purpose I'm unfamiliar with, and hopefully for the next few weeks they are devoted to remove it. Those irons and concrete cost money, the amount of which I can never afford, nor could the ones building it. But someone did it anyway while I stay in this usual, monochromatic room with my legs stretched out on the bed, fingers moving involuntarily on the phone screen and a dull secrecy of worrying about the place I'll go.

For tomorrow, the event of going to my grandmother's to ask my brother for the money back is scheduled. It is because yesterday he failed to appear at the snooker, where I met up with a former middle-and-high school classmates Hezhou Wang. And the two of us planned to play basketball at the Sports Center at the other side of the city - mysteriously the trip collapsed and none of us cared.

-

It astounds me how great my obsession with the length of an article is - though arbitrarily stipulated. I've always abided by the rule that I won't write a post shorter than a pageful of words, instead I'll use dash at the end of the last post. Now it's 3:14 in the morning of May, 6. In the days behind, I've written and deleted 4 paragraphs of writing, deprecated multiple times my laughable attempt to maintain a blog, which always seems to have a unique exclusivity in its name, and watched half of an episode of A Bite of China. After acknowledging the real possibility of ending up at a private university in Bremen, Germany, I searched desperately, on the CUUS for positive details about the school, and the community I'm about to be a part of. I understand, all of those who bother to post a review of their school on the internet are at least somewhat affectionate about it. It's just that after all the rejections, the grandeur epiphany of having been in chronicle delusion, while consciously accepted, has overwhelmed me in a much subtler way - the fictional world in which I had pictured myself might never exist, that all my self-recognition and dismissive attitude towards what I consider innately inferior were just a shallow rejection in the face of indubitable reality. I began to envy the life of my father, penniless but reeking a firm belief of having been successful, albeit by his  own term, that the so called success is just an external characterization of someone's personal fulfillment; its appeal comes not from what one feels or has done, but from how the world has seen it. Yet I'm too timid to live self-immersively. I don't even know what to pray from God, because I don't know what I want. Happiness? I've long gotten one and equally long chosen to disregard it. Dream? I had it, and like everyone else, have failed to materialize it. Death? I've thought of it, trying desperately to avoid it. Education? Love? It seems my very existence, the accomplishment of being alive while hordes of much greater people have deceased, is the only fortune I shall treasure.

4/27

Since I was told that going out and talking to people will make life feel interesting, I went to my grandma's today - nobody there expects me to go except my father. It was an involuntary decision. I didn't plan to go either. I grabbed the bus card and waited at the stop for a few minutes and actually saw the girl I used to see when I was in middle school. I hedged, failing to find anywhere applicable for my taste, and turned back towards my grandma's. My niece, likely 14 years old - she might have even got her period, learned to shun eye contacts from males and laughed without pulchritude. Her mom, on the rail to 40, began to notice the everlasting stain on her face. Beneath the exorbitantly pasty skin of her hands, there's a flowing helplessness of having to age, and having to fight against it. My new nephew whose name I was told and have then forgotten, cries and seldom laughs. He's the newborn but it seems he's been chronically troubled with pain so superficially fierce. My grandma, who stays by him tickling, wears a smile on her face as if the waving of a tiny arm is the most intriguing feat. She's witnessed so many things, so many years, so much anguish that she smiles; he's witnessed nothing, and he cries. Human is a species for mutual admiration, albeit begrudging and often hypocritical, the sense of longing for the unpossessed persists in a corner of soul.

A prolonged period of time was spent discussing about money. It's curious that those who are reluctant to purchase have the willpower to accumulate things only useful in purchase. There was a silent, politeness-rife war between my aunt and uncle. My sister just bought an electric bike, which looks the same to other 2 electric bikes parked in front of the apartment building. Happiness, once betrayed unintentionally, cannot be fake. And their elatedness of owning a new electric bike is genuine. Labor is exchanged for money, while money is exchanged for labor; and I observe it. Aunt complained how diluted relationships can turn into once money is made and success is achieved, and exemplified with the peculiar entanglement of such and such acquaintance, such and such neighbor. She spent a life's worth to buy an automobile, by doing which she thinks people will cease discriminating her; and my uncle rode to faraway place for a jar of seasoning at 200 bucks discount. I confided that wife is only useful in case of medical emergency. And polite people aren't necessarily friendly.

I was lying on the bed writing, and discovered it was too ghastly an environment, and shifted to the rest room. But when I put my arse on the sheet-covered ring of toilet, a distaste for my continuation in the dearth of inspiration and material arises. I always use the rest room as a place for thinking, and 80% of my English is fluented here. I must admit I'm a plain, thoughtless man - anything above it is an act of self-applauding.

I'm tired, and today is squandered. Nonetheless I've written something that exists.

-

I'm accustomed to it - accusing, behind the back or with a sarcastic undertone self-supposedly undetectable. My gibberish thought is sometimes too perplexing for me to comprehend, like when Fernando Pessoa wrote of dream - he didn't have it at all, he just yearned, pictured, and merged. As I skip the photograph of a ugly girl and secretly regret having seen it, I realize I'm the same with everyone else; as I'm compelled by a movie or a line to write something on the wall or as signature, I realize my taste is trivial and momentary; and as I hear and enjoy my own lies wholeheartedly, without even the slightest trace of pretense, I realize the person I deem myself is artificial. But it continues, all continues, like or not, choose or not, accept or not, succeed or not, restrained by my perennial perspective. And the city beyond my vision, nation beyond my hearing, world beyond my imagination, cosmos beyond my comprehension, do not exist.

4/22

Middle school to me is the most memorable. I got in to Jiangnan via the connections of my aunt. I could've gone to a better place if I had picked up Olympiad training at the second grade of elementary school or chosen the one in Nanjing by my sister. It was a time when suddenly pubic hair turns into normality and those who yet possess it will be laughed at. I met Jiangnan You, a girl whose name was mistaken a multitude of times, during the first few weeks of class. Since everything is new, and nothing restraining had emerged, my courage to try out unprecedented, nontraditional things as well increased. I asked her number on the bus. By then I was using my first mobile phone - the first generation of smartphones on the market - costing more than 4000. I texted her with various things, topics. I did not ever discover that I can have so many things to share, things that I don't even share with my mom. A month later, she was mine. And a second later, I dumped her. Yeah, that was me; that's still me. My morbid obsession with challenges presumably originated there. The same phone was confiscated. A friend of mine and I listened LINKIN PARK on the campus, fascinated with the rebellion we seem to represent and the way English in the song differs that of teacher's speaking. Therefore I decided to go with American English, and I've perfected it now. Laterwards he was discovered of using an electronic device, and I panicked and pulled the earphones out of the slot. IPhone was not invented then, so the music didn't automatically stop. I moved home because the former one was demolished, and skipped summer homework because I had an excellent excuse - I've lost it in the moving. Both my teachers and my classmates disbelieved it, but I wasn't forced to do it eventually. The bicycles, the geologically incorrect joke, the girls and boys curious but tentative about each other - yes, it has passed. I'm now lying on the bed typing a post not even myself would read, and simultaneously worrying about the panic disorder and the side effects of the medications I'm taking.

Every time I'm sleepy, and it's rainy, all of my perceptions seem to dim. I see previously chided emotions and feel their poignancy; I contradict myself, and contradict again in the morning. The theramic heater has been malfunctioning for a while, but it's no longer winter so I won't need it. The mouse I touched just hours ago died hours ago. It has never made a sound, or stopped eating. It would shake, and look at me with its uncomprehending, anticipating eyes. And I would always go down or upstairs once I've touched it. It's a passer of my world. Would my mom and father do the same? Would I do the same? Yes, of course, although it's against our will. My brother invited me to fix his computer bought at 2008. I've never seen a laptop working for such an extended period. I plan to go with Windows 8.1 and activate it illegally. Not everyone is like my brother; not every computer is like his computer. Even though, someday it'll break, he'll perish. So will I.

My mom went to the hospital and purchased Oryzanol, Betalok, and Xanax for me. Hope the symptoms can alleviate tomorrow.

-

I'm installing Windows 8.1 with update in 53 minutes. With the current operating system, Windows 8, I acquired knowledge of what it takes to have education, and what it means to receive it. Ever since the very beginning, when I've just installed the operating system with a disk I purchased and later have to my then newly married sister - she's had a delightfully handsome child who name I don't know, I was met with difficulty in activating the operating system, in convincing my family that what I was doing is right and I don't see the worth of carrying on a mediocre life. But I didn't give up. Gradually, the computer, especially the SkyDrive folder with little blue cloud between the cover shapes, was filled with various glossary and test samples, some in .xls format, more in .pdf format. I used to wake up at 3 in the morning, drink tons of Maxwell coffee and listen to the melodic death rock by In Flames - we're the ghost of the concrete world, generic code of a dying breed. I still recall the lyrics, not because I've truly enjoyed it, but because it was so desperate, just like me. Also, there were assorted pornography carefully kept in different folders - D:\Downloads\Media for files download via QVOD, now a company under inspection, and C:\Users\billie chan\Downloads for those downloaded from the websites via Google Chrome. At first all of those files were hidden, then I found it troublesome when I was in need. Eventually I just let them expose and merge with The Book of Disquiet.epub and Evasi0n7-win-1.0.7-633a643e10531c58e7ce18018986b6d14774102.zip.

I spent weeks playing Total War: Rome II. It's the second copy of genuine games I've bought, the first was CS: GO. I had not been particularly attracted to games of this type, and I played along nevertheless because it was expensive. I didn't know how I got the money, but the game was just there, seemingly intelligent of everything I've done in front of it. When my brother declined switching to a new computer, I did secretly laughed at him - hey, look at this young/old man, enslaved by his own perspective. But only now have I learned that for people like us - I tended to set myself apart from those around me, and it was proven juvenile - an object, or two, can already constitute the majority of interesting things that ever happen. I find it pathetic, magical realistic, but not funny. I'm a funny person, I was elected as the classroom cutup, but I will never make fun of that. When people ask, what do you insist? What can you protect? My answer might be a wholly hat or something diminutive to the extent of hysterical, which I magnified only because I have nothing else to magnify.

I just decided against reinstalling the operating system. I need it up and running until the day I cross the borderline and never come back. In this sense I became my brother.

4/20

I thought of purchasing a bush hat, a trench coat, a carbon-fiber bicycle and an iPad today. And I could afford none of them. Therefore I went in and took 12 bags of instant noodles imported from Taiwan as consolation. After all they weigh more than few of those desired items combined. My brother got a shirt and a jacket from Mryup, evidently the 60% discount is how he convinced himself. My father insisted in repaying the money my sister would or would not give me. And my grandmother was angry because the fast food company failed to deliver her takeout yesterday. Whenever my uncle speaks, there's a pungent smell of cigarettes and alcohol and despondency. I updated the firmware of my aunt's new boyfriend's Samsung's i9300 phone, from 4.0.4 to 4.0.4, ate a bag of Master Kong instant noodles by the midnight - the only thing new, to me and not to anyone else, is that I dared to put 2 eggs when cooking them - which is touted on the internet to significantly boost the flavor of the noodles - I hardly noticed the difference. The bottle of wine I drank intermittently a month ago was moved to the side of the glass through which I sip coke on the desk near the computer. And I decide against drinking it. My mom suddenly noted the inconsistency on the dining table which had been consistent for the past decade and broke into my room to pour herself a cup of wine. And she as well didn't think of it in the past one month. Everything is like a bloated mouth ulcer. I bombard it with salt and bacterious finger and yellow light. And the construction site is unstoppable. And egg white definitely relates to pussy cream. I deleted 3 piano pieces by Shi Jin because of the human humming bourgeois soundtrack that spoils the entire mood of enjoying piano. However the author or the musician doesn't even have a thing to do with it - they're supposed to know music better than me yet they've tolerated this blasphemy. Maybe I'm like the guy calling hair washing sacrilegious in the Arabic world; or maybe I'm the one wearing suit on the Friday. Hey, who knows. I spent several hours trying to play the Arma III multiplayer, and find it utterly tedious - as a matter of fact that's the lame Planetside without all the WWII weapons. But those hours are gone - before the college decision notification is released. Hour is hateful, and after it, hour becomes valuable - although as I'm getting older I'm certainly taking life more seriously, sometimes I just don't. Progressively I dislike softwares that don't support name change. Is it that the words I write last longer than me? Or not, but the combination of words? Or not, because every combination is possible in a randomized, purposeless process. Or human beings are just facilitators of events with lower odds. I withhold inhaling oxygen or moving, so that the entropy of the universe can increase slower. I feel tired hence I sleep? No. I am tired hence I must sleep.
-

Approximately 10 days earlier, I found that posting via the iPhone make it feel more casual for me. But the perfectly plain text on the phone often turns out different on the website. According to my programming skill this problem is, and will remain unsolvable. I spent, literally, days, to trim the ensemble of the website until it's sufficiently minimalist to me. I googled all the HTML code although I have absolutely no idea what does it mean, and I expunge paragraphs of the codes that are not aesthetically appealing - it looks acceptable to me now - style-less, circle-less, and inaccessible. I've nailed two cans of Coca Cola. It's half-a-pill worth of caffeine, I might encounter some difficulty sleeping. But I don't know what to do, so I'll just roll on the bed and pretend I'm asleep when my mom sneaks in - and I'm sure she won't - I'm no longer 10 and she's no longer 40. My father? Oh, on his bed of dirt and secretion near my grandmother, asleep as always, and one day, asleep always. A sense of whatever, a huge presence of things and everything; the ebb and flow are pushed altogether, on the riverbed of the amorphous.

4/18

Half of the finger nails of my ring fingers was gone. They have been, in fact, gone for a while. There's a period when I like to hide them from those who know me, because it's an obvious disability, albeit a minor one. But later I started to tell my surroundings that the fingernails were severed in a fierce basketball match, and I lost them because of courage. The latter appeals to me much and is an adequate way to dispel my reeking incompetence. Every once in a while I need to clean the accrued scurf underneath, and I quietly enjoy the peculiar sense of joyfulness in rubbing some place of my body that is supposedly unreachable. In my youth fingers were part of the novelty, and the fingernails on them seem protrudingly some relic from unknown, prehistoric moments when I was just as unconscious as I'm insensible now. So I bit them, tried to rid of them, like an extraterrestrial being eager to remove the redundant structure of a new species. I had them removed verbatim and cumulatively, and forge lies about them without ever needing to worry about the consequence. A pragmatist as I am, it is unwise to be morally perfect when the society as a whole lags behind.

I've also identify the causes for my quasi- on-again-off-again heart attacks - oxidative stress. I need magnesium and vitamin E and vitamin C and when I went to the Amazon for antioxidant supplementation, none of them supports overseas shipping to China. Vagus nerve turbulence, stress, anxiety disorder, all of them will pass soon. I'll get settled on things only a few more months away - although undeniably I've been thinking this way for the past one year and situation remains static. But hey, I won't die of a heart attack, or anything precarious as the media would report, then it's fine. Human beings tend to treasure the existence for the sake of itself only when something bad happens, and they habitually ignore that things like death and void and disillusion are the norm. I'm changing that for I completely acknowledge the value of getting to be existent. To the extent in which I consider myself superior to anyone dead. But I'm also not changing because I've applied business analytical and not philosophy or any branch from humanity. I might consider take it up as a hobby though. Under the premise of knowing hundreds of millions suffering and dying on the same plant I dwell and eat excessively to think about the future of the world, in a mathematically spreaded-out way. Hypocrisy, is it not? Irony, is it not?

-

Watched the first episode of A Bite Of China: Season II, way more efficacious than 3 tablets of selected serotonin reuptake inhibitors. I saw, via the diminutive screen of my iPhone, both the simplification and sublimation of myself. I regarded myself as cosmopolitan and even omnipotent. I take clusters of high rise building, the faint, yellowish street lamps, and the incessant noise coming from the construction site as world in its most common shape. Only now do I realize that although everything in the city looks cramped and streamlined, the people building it are not. They have stories, traditions, kids awaiting for parents back in their hometown. But machine crushed their way of living, currency took their way of getting. They did not taint the city; the city tainted them. And even my writing of them is a condescension.

4/12

In the window of my invariable prison, tissues tinted with remnants of processed food, empty can and the half empty glass which I use to exert an artificially bourgeois manner, were lined up in a haphazard, ridiculous way that reminds me of a stereo with twisted cables left open and playing tones of a brown and white noise. The bite at my right buttocks still hurt whenever I sit unattendingly. And I scratch it with fingers through the ever so tight American jeans.

Seeing to me is always complex. What I see, without exceptions, presents a protracted, static beauty which the action or even the will to take a photograph would demur. The chair and the ceramic heater beneath it pose an angle that's neither direct nor slated. The cord and the bowl and the lamp look not only external and chronical, but also posthumous. The semi basket attached to the wall with duck tapes contrast greatly with the round hole from a failed attempt embodied perfectly my willingness to finish, and the uselessness of my willing. I'll never and was never to be admitted into anything. Because entry means another set of intrusions, and the inevitable enjoyment of those intrusions means an eternal exit with narrowed hope to redo or to free oneself from the toxins of expectations. Life is the search for the impossible via the useless. A noble soul seeking to explore every possibility, an equally noble soul sneering in the nullification of his outcome. Good thing is always expensive, fast internet connection, clean atmosphere, better piece of cloth to cover the genitals, and the privilege to dream wholeheartedly. By doing what I renounce, I exile myself. By keeping being occupied with objective facts, I rip out my insides to be filled with replicable externals. I fear, I'm living in an undisclosed mistake, and have misgivings about the potential of having done otherwise. When I cherish at the unique sweetness of being singular, I'm haunted by an inability to live life realistically. When I marvel at the grandeur of the world, seen or unseen, I'm caught in a cold of being forever feeble. And I often exist between the two, neither aspiring nor indulgent, but as the middle ground of a pair of confused sights - vaguely discoverable when the eyeballs are misplaced.

I want to live endlessly, meaningless and incessant throughout the fragments. To impress no one as well as to disgust no one, but just to hear the patter of rain, and the ray of sun, to exist mechanically, saddled with emptiness in the immensity of reverberations. The on again off again distaste for the pillow and the necessity of recharging the phone and eating and climbing up-and-downstairs constitute the purposeless teleology of my ever tentative life. I have books to read, that's consolatory. I have life to carry on, that's reassuring. I want to have both with sincerity, and that's impossible. The joyful is always mutually irreducible. Therefore whatever pleasure I'm having is incomplete and parochial. The off-putting is always prevalent. Therefore whatever hatred I possess is pedestrian and repetitive. I savor my desire with refusal, and I loathe my enemy by being cordial.
-

Rarely do I feel according to my action, or act according to my feeling, just like Wuxi doesn't rain a lot. But when it rains, the drizzle is at its entirety. Now long after the midnight, I sit disgracefully with my legs crossed on a wooden chair from the dining room, and the white tissue I didn't care about hours ago still fails to be disposed. It lies just as disgracefully as I am, like the board lies in the garage of a Japanese punk song, feeling perfectly good while maintaining a sense of disorientation. Perhaps I need some endorphin inhibitor, or injection. I'm simultaneously interested and irked by the labyrinth of female structure. Companionship and the need to establish family serve me no convenience other than medical emergency, which can be safely substituted by a button and an automatic defibrillator.
-

Xu is coming back tomorrow from New Zealand. I promised him that once I started a company, I will invite him to work with me. And he said in the same way. I wanted to have a conversation with him online, but feel too timid to do that. As if being abroad can burnish a man with a particular flair of estrangement. The adaptation to another culture, the acceptance of another form, are perilous for they transformed people, in an unknown direction. But what do I say but complaints and narcissism; what do I heave but powerlessness and frustration. I write, talk, repeatedly and without grace. I begrudge myself, which in turn begrudges another.

In the distance my nephew just cried and perturbed a silent modernity in the room with smell of a brand new computer and the hair dried after using an overly aromatized shampoo. The fingers of my brother were beneath the pillow, the dull pressure exerted by the weight of his tiresome head delights them. My sister lied just beside him, fixing her eyes on the television just meters in the front. Their sexual organs are in such proximity and availability to each other that neither notices them. The baby turns right and left ceaselessly to find a spot in the silent universe to brace his maturing, uncomprehending soul. Oh, she got up, finding a pair of Hello Kitty slippers, and with the decisive cracking of the floor, she went to the bathroom for the 134323 times of her life and felt the exact elatedness she feels every time in the place to contemplate and become ignorant. My brother inadvertently notices the bed sheet which is used to cover the television screen when it is not used is tangled, and after a subliminally sarcastic change in the face, he keeps watching the TV. What is broadcast there he doesn't know, he doesn't care. There's something shown there, some images with all the movements and sounds. The world is normal to him, even unchanging. Until my sister retreated from the bathroom. And my grandmother, my former teachers, all those Schrodinger people in the boxed windows of a building, there are images and movements and sounds in front of each of them, they enjoy what they won't consider enjoyment when seen objectively, they weep what they won't admit tragedy should there be a message alert to disrupt them. The IBM people, extraterrestrial people, mouse, characters in a non-fiction, molecules in the middle of a dust heap, the crushed singularity that is black hole, quantum beings lurking mathematically, all move along the time, bizarrely convinced that they're fine.

I still put the lamp above my speakers, and bookshelf above a cluster of wood whose use I don't know. I sleep in only two directions and I'm a creature of tradition. I can tell the difference between a five yuan note and a ten yuan note within a micro second, and I'm sure as hell that anything that differ my DNA by 0.1% will not be able to do that. So what? It's such a vast quantity in this 0.1% that people still must be graded, selected, wed out. This is humanity.
-

The more someone acquaints with me, the more my willingness to appear humorous dilutes. I prefer to be perceived as perfectly normal, motionless and without imagination, forgetful and rightly parsimonious. Beyond doubt, I have the intention to conceal my cynicism and the naïveté of taking fictional, idealized rules as creeds of life.

4/11

I've had this impulse of spending several paragraphs to discuss the weather and the morphology of the street, with a sense of melancholy entitlement reeking from between the lines, and have failed. When I ask myself of who I am, I'm always unable to provide an answer in an intimate term. Sometimes it's because pretense is a habit in me, or I simply don't have an answer myself. Heteronym, more precisely. I'm not the worker operating machinery in the nearby construction site, I'm the laborer trying to imagine his life. After downloading tons of books which I decided to read, it appears to me that the enjoyment of literature, and the wildness of thought are just momentary. They pass as they're ephemeral. So I sit in obeisance and wait for the iBooks to load so that I can slide to the last page to tell myself that I've finished reading. I respected, in the deepest corner of mind, the existence of humanity, and for the rest of my more conscious being, I've rejected the notion of writing, be it composing or documenting. Yet again, I'm writing, to my reluctance, to my pleasure.

I received an interview invitation from the Industrial Design Department of the NUS. And I turned it off out of financial hardships, possible rejection letter of other people, or laziness whatever. I'm curious about the future, and I try my best to plan it, to stereotype it according to my sarcastic preconception. The noise, the car backing warning, and the sour taste of coke I adored so miserably in the past, and avert so continuously right now. I once told my brother, people will change, and we changed. I once told my sister, I'm getting mature and confident, and I'm not. The desperate girl texted me three times despite the dearth of reply from me. She wanted that guy to fall in love with her, she believes he secretly loves her - belief is never prediction - she's now sobbing, suiciding, eating bread and Prozac, everything but succeed in her wish. People invent words, invent sentence, and invent state of the arts in order to describe their helplessness more distinctly, and soul more crushingly. They howl for a sec and then moan the next. They've died as soon as they're born. He's dead; he's born; he's dead; he's born. But the one who's dead is happy, and the one who's born is ignorant, therefore, equally happy. Gao and his girlfriend tried the sexual exploration again today. She's penetrated with his finger. And they are happy. Then wait for a year and a half, situation's changed, they are separating with a form of supreme composure and an oblivious bittersweet flashback into the necropolis of their past. Hey, doggie style they said, G-spot they said, and all of a sudden they grew tired. I had enough, you? Damn, I so loathe you would you please get off the bed but go not too far away so I still see you next time when I need you physically and psychologically - and I loathe you.

The light is glaring. I told the Apple customer service to remove my account balance, so I can update QQ Music in Chinese App Store. The sound of the name, the language of it is inconsistent, obsessively wrong. But I've got Icon Renamer by Ryan Petriach installed. I could do a little modification. Where the hell is iOS 7.1 jailbreak then, pod2g?

On my phone also Wechat app is deleted to be replaced with Youdao Dict. Offline British and American pronunciations are downloaded. And they've cost me electricity, and healthiness of my brain cell. Mysteriously, mystery.

My uncle failed his business after losing 60k of initial investment, which comes from me and my father and my grandmother. And he's not accused of anything. No one dares to accuse an alcoholic or even feels sorry or sympathetic. Because disappointment is natural and expectation is affiliatory. I'm not an alcoholic, I rarely disappoint anyone. I squeeze in them iron and blood and bullet. Godlike and remorselessly I pursue the sun.
-

Chinese Apple users have a high demand for games and apps that are not available in the local App Store. ITunes Gift Card is a perfect solution. The dearth of the online stores selling those cards presents an opportunity. In the United States, cards with up to 25% discount is frequent, when sold with 10% interest, the selling price is still significantly lower than that of the most competitors. But yeah, I don't have spare money to purchase any discounted gift cards. So I'll just pass it.

4/9

What do they want? Judging by the decisions they've made, people who eat gigantic amount of instant noodles, have exorbitant sex life, and dare to write about them in their resume. I fancy that's what the society truly needs - the ability to prevent oneself from starving to death by eating cheap, highly processed food, and those who are stricken and addicted by the magnitude of their libido. Browsing through the internet, fabricated news and scientific discoveries appear on the same page, and a British old lady just killed herself because she can't accept all these. My fondness for the unreal is also superimposed with the staggering absurdity of reality. Mom said to me, hey, you'll only be happy when I'm dead. And she smokes cigarettes and I grab a knife to kill her. The computer is malfunctioning, network connection is once again reset by remote server, right! I'd smash them with my fist and only to pick them up at a later time. I chat, endlessly attentive to the elegance of my speech, and the concealment of my ego, with sincerity and politeness and all. Of course, but what's genuine, what's plastic I don't know. I'm a protagonist, the stage is not the platform I used to deify myself. It is myself, I am deity!

Novel, money, music, coca cola, humanity, Razer Blade laptop, if, for a moment of time they exist, they're eternal. But what's everything opposed to what I see and smell and perceive, who I am but a manifestation of law? Questions, I've always had questions. At the first year of middle school, I encountered a girl called Jiangnan. She uses a peculiar type of medication to regulate her period. I fell in love with her. Lying in the bed of my now demolished home, I wondered what she's thinking. Is it about me? Does she love me? Oh acnes I must tackle. Will she let me take picture of her with my long lost Symbian Sony Ericsson smartphone? But as soon as she confide to me that she too has a crush on me, why the hell did I so ruthlessly deleted everything about her? She told me what I won't be loving her after graduation. She's right, the pursuit itself is everything I've ever desired. I'm accused of being an introvert, a desperate weirdo, the most handsome person in class no.4. But that all has passed. Like my sister, like her daughter, like her granddaughter who may or may not exist; like Symbian and her; like the books I read and the words I write; like me.

Although I notice drastic difference between how do I look now and how did I look like in the photograph, I did not, ever witness how it actually changes. I replicate and savor, and sadly notice the remote distinction of life. The floor cracks when my mom walks on it; the floor cracks when I walk on it. Yet it doesn't know a thing, nor does a pair of slippers - a slightly curved surface when they're bought, and the wide circle they're now. Nothing in life is more or less real by having been well portrayed. They're equally real, and unreal.

People don't like bankruptcy. When I first hear that one of my will-be colleges is in danger of going bankrupt, I wavered. But the wonton shop between the back door of my primary school and my grandma's house was closed 2 or 3 years ago. The owner moved to a new place in Hangzhou to continue her business. To me, it means the wonton shop is bankrupt. She used to say that my mom started to eat there before I was born and even during when I was in a uterus. The tie between her and my family seems strong. A mutual friendliness, no, something more than just friendliness occur whenever I grab a coin and a grandma to patronize. But she's gone. And I'm sure as hell for the rest of my life I won't be seeing her at all. She's great. She's got dedicated extracurriculars, she should go to Harvard. And the flair at another wonton shop, has even begun to intimidate me. My 80-year-old grandma brought me there, at the corner of an old street, to eat her favorite dish. She's 80 and got daughters making tons of money. And all she can think of during a day is a bowl of wonton, cost 2 yuan 5 years ago, and 12 now. She appears totally socialist in an increasingly capitalist city. She didn't resist, she acknowledged that she'll be outdated eventually. She doesn't need sympathy. She likes congee and wonton and chitchat, and I give her sympathy. I'm the misfit, not her.

4/7

I picked up a novel called Tailoring the Early Tang Dynasty - I've always been amazed by the degree to which translated Chinese can seem stupid in English - I spent 3 days or 4 reading it. But upon finishing slightly more than 50% of the book, I was thoroughly irritated by the blatant chauvinism that seems so natural among the pages. And after that, I discovered myself in the usual stalemate of having nothing to read. I must confess, however, it is with difficulty that I obtained an EPUB copy of Taipei by Tao Lin - its ultra-high resolution self-consciousness just doesn't fit me.

And the new domain, which I had spent $29.99/yr. to purchase, is rife with various name server errors that are plainly impossible to tackle. Luckily I managed to set it up running. To a minimalist like me, the dot co suffix is much more amicable than is the dot com. I find it quite enjoyable to write something down. Not necessarily in the language of literature, not necessarily eloquent or even logic, the act is a pleasure unto itself. I, out of sympathy, recommended blogging to a girl suffering from anxiety and break-up. I suggested that she sum up things at the end of each day to discover what's truly important. She declined with a bizarre persistence to be the girlfriend of some guy who already has one. It's not easy for me not to brand her insane. It just adds up to my conviction that female, or more specifically females without an education in feminism, is intrinsically prone to unreasonable deeds. I once wrote on a piece of draft paper at high school that the unresponsiveness to a message is the utmost form of impertinence in the Information Age. And I haven't replied to her last message. Am I self-aware? Am I guilty? Am I willing to change? Of course yeah, but eventually I told myself that the world is inexorable and sometimes not to wish is not to be disillusioned.

The Tomb Sweeping Day is postponed at my grandma's. Me, papa, niece who's already 14, aunt, uncle, uncle's girlfriend, sister went to a platform half way to the top of Hui Hill and held a memorial ceremony for my long dead grandfather. My father kept advertising how good granny was to me, and I nodded and wondered if I truly remembered anything. I told my grandfather, hey, buddy, take care on your road to heaven. Should the after-world exists, he will have definitely finished the journey by the time I uttered those equivocal and comical words. No one seems to have noticed that there was a sarcasm in my speech. If when burnt papers function as money, if when holding the ceremony our sentiments are sincere, why I've never been to the tombs of my great grandma? Not to mention the ancestors.

And yet again I doubted that I might be having heart problems. I went to the 2nd People's Hospital only to be informed that their ultra-sonic equipment operator was having a 3 day vacation. And at the People Hospital, I was told of the same thing. My mother doesn't appear to have the vaguest knowledge of how serious heart problems can be and become. They complaint relentlessly that I'm using too much money for the ultimately moot health inspection. In actuality her ideology is correct. What's the purpose of medication examination if our life is so feeble? And finding a beautiful girl and let her pass into her obscurity is no different from making her my wife, and witnessing her pass into my obscurity.

I found on the internet that Prozac might be on long-term potency in addressing my problem. I decided to pick it up tomorrow. I wanted to end the piece by "May God bless my dream" and in light of the obvious failure of my last prayer, I'm stopping it. And, hey God, I don't want to die and I'd like to exchange everything got the fulfillment of that wish.

4/3

Before I am admitted into a college, going to a high school is the first priority; and before that, middle school; elementary school; kindergarten; mama; and milk. After I'm admitted into a college, going to a graduate school is the first priority; and after that, doctorate; job; marriage; kids with divorce (maybe); retirement plan; retirement; death. In every frame of reference there seems to be something in the past left undone, or in the future to be done. Lucky people achieve each of their goals; unlucky ones don't and usually weep at it. The extent to which I understand these is shocking, yet the forgetfulness to which I neglect them is just as so. When Gao asked me via the iMessage - he is a high school student with much more hope than I had college entrance exam - about whether he should retake the test after June - should it went bad. I saw an exact replica of myself one year ago. By then I could in no way predict the outcome; by now he can in no way predict the same. However, the science fiction writer Liu Cixin, whose book Three Body I was reading ten minutes ago, went studying chemistry in his college. He aspired to be a chemist yet ended up a fiction writer. It must sound like a dismay to him when he was filling out the college application. But everything worked out for him eventually. In a shadowy corner of some lesser known country, a pseudo-existent kid aspired to be the CEO of Morgan Stanley and died in a slum, or in a war with NATO, or in a terrorist attack he planned against the more conservative faction of a street gang. I reserve the right to say, hey, you see that's not a good ending for him. But it's never up to me, or anyone to judge. Maybe in a micro second before his death he suddenly understood the meaning of life and therefore the little penalty is worth it. It's up to the collective mishmash of human chaos, the inexorable opinion of society - the most delicate organization of matter so far in the known universe to do that.

I remember someone said on the CUUS forum, the most valuable thing one can acquaint in this process is those fellows who accompanied you. Yeah, indeed I met Liu Chang and Dream and Mark and Rabbit and Lullaby and Gao and Night and Yuzi and Babyface. But I'm also sure the occasion in which I write or remember all those names is the last one in my life. I don't know how Fernando Pessoa was writing during his freshman year, or James Joyce, or any author I have adored. The richness of a particular skill or the lack thereof can both be viewed as a positive characteristic - Churchill with his V sign backward or the rest of human race? The question is dumb - but it possesses the potency to put the most fundamental rule of modern society into suspicion - Churchill invented the gesture; the rest of us are simply trying to replicate it. So whenever one puts up a V sign in front of a camera, Churchill becomes a superior being. Everyone is created equal they said - no, never, someone has died in their mom's uterus; some has died during delivery; some was born caesarean style; some natural child birth. And many listened to Bach and many listened to gunshots. Fuck it, equality, fuck it.

Steve Jobs is a legendary entrepreneur and his products cost money! Ha-ha, for some reason it always amuses me.

Lately I was trying to learn German via Duolingo: it's my conviction that if I want to stay in Germany, I have to learn German. I've learned Das Brot; Ich bin gut; Du bist ein Mann. And they constitute my knowledge of the language. Yet I feel exactly the same when I'm using das Brot and necropolis and anthropomorphism. Exactly the same! That's the wonderful part, I acquire something, and forget it. The process doesn't have anything to do with the quality of my acquisition, but with the act of gaining something itself - be it a piece of shit or a bag of gold - only preconception at work, no objective judgement. So yeah, everyone, at every moment, is actually feeling an equal amount of goodness, or badness, depending on how you look at it.

-

A woman on the internet is asking, how not to feel pain when giving childbirth. She just can't reach the conclusion that child itself is entirely optional. That's how, peer pressure, paternal and maternal instinct, tradition restrain us.

4/2

Inadvertently I discovered that my chance of eventually ending up in National University of Singapore remains. This is a rather cheering news to me at this bewildered time. Although, as regular, on the College Confidential site a giant batch of Indians and Singaporeans are distributing derogatory comment about this school - I always want to say that to have a university to go to is a dream unto itself. Evidently this rule doesn't apply to everyone - but it applies to me. I've heard criticisms about the way the nation operates. It seems that as far as the humane part of the country is concerned, Prozac is a prerequisite for ordinary living. But I saw it differently when I traveled to Singapore for the 2 SAT tests. It is my first time to ever truly confirm a foreign country exists, where language other than Chinese is not only taken as a symbol of some distant and undefined culture, but also as concrete means of expression. The experience, is generally positive - beside the weather - oh thy hellish weather I just couldn't survive without air conditioner. Problems westerners usually have with this country must have something to do with its depressingly tropical climate.

Because I was instilled with a new kind of hope, I allowed myself to gauge 2 bags of Taiwan-imported Uni-president ramen noodles. It's always fun to cook things. I'd like to have them refrigerated, so the sauce, the powder, the beef packet can be easily expelled. Multi vitamins pills, aspirin, noodles constitute nearly everything of my hideous life.

I was admitted into Jacobs University with a pretty decent financial aid, though the frequency with which the loans appears might be unsettling, overall I just need to pay less than 20,000 euro per year. It's still not a number I can afford, but with the begrudging help from my adorable-occurring cousins, and the die-hard money making burst from my father, I'm at least able to brace myself. Although the ability and the legitimacy of purchasing the new Razer Blade laptop will come to question. But now, things are a bit different. While past experience tells me nothing is a safety with financial needs, the policy that stipulates graduates must work for the Singaporean government for 6 years should they received support for their college education is reassuring. I don't have to learn German to stay there anymore. My bottom line is unchanged throughout the struggle for going out - I must avoid China. And Singapore is an awesome replacement.

I downloaded a list of books into iBooks. But I just can't settle for any of those. To me, to dip myself into words or literature is to dip myself into escapism. And every time the reality becomes appealing, my interest in reading decreases sharply. That might explain why the rich and the poor coexist in harmony - the rich has pursuit in reality, and the poor has pursuit in fiction. But it is beyond doubt that both of them have pursuit in alibis.

April Fools' Day was feeble - every year on that day false alert becomes prevalent on website without the need to be concerned about legal disputes. And me and Gao and various other shady people always expect their own false alert - no such thing has ever showed up. When it comes to career or future or prospect or capitalist market, everything is serious, including on April Fools' Day. Now even that has past. I don't know if I should be happy of the fleeting nature of time or be the otherwise. I won't hear decision from NUS until the middle of May. But I will one day feel exactly the same as I'm feeling right now. People call it greed; I call it nature.

When I was out sending the supporting documents to Jacobs, I got to read the posters near the construction site. It seems a large mall will soon show up for a while until it's demolished.

-

What is Wuxi No.3 Senior High School? A second rate school in a second rate city. What if someone in that school pops up and applies for Harvard? That must be with misrepresentation and total bookishness. Like the way I substitute cherries for potatoes, people might as well substitute crane operator for investment banker. When I sit on the perennial chair and browse through the lecture delivered by President Xi Jinping, and Alipay being strangled by the big 4 national banks of China, a slight sense of alienation coupled with a remote but distinct disgust flooded past me. I was, in every perspective, an unprofessional. I change my decisions as often as it suits me, and adapt to dismay so expeditiously that I myself am left behind. I take every trauma, every dire situation objectively, behaving like a flesh machinery seeking whatever prestigious as meaning. I'm not even allowed to deplore the external way of appearance I maintained, because "Hey, your father is smart and bad at people skills. Your father takes money as breeze doesn't mean you should too. And if you did, guess what, we are not going to donate 5000 RMB a month to an idiot!" Therefore, with my secrets betrayed to the admissions people, dignity to the relative people, what's left in me are residues, accumulated at the bottom of a cup, lurking to cause some harm when some new guy dares to drink with it. I fear, no, I recognize I'm not longer the one to discuss the relationship between academic rigor and quality with total strangers on the internet, to post anti- and pro-nationalist comments below YouTube videos. I'm just the one sleeping and eating and reading pretentiously, shaking occasionally when tragic or shockingly good imagination emerges in my head. Because, I've got a hold of English, I began to switch to Japanese songs like I did English ones when I was in the first year of junior middle school. Singing along every song every piece of melody I deem potent in attracting females, without knowing lyrics or even how to pronounce them.

When I wake up in the morning to find myself alive, a part of me secretly becomes eager to discover my mom dead on the floor. Or I jump out of a window, just in order to add a little something to the kind of life I am having. I take a Xanax pill and recover in a millisecond, then I spit it out because Xanax is addictive. As a result I'm running low on ammo now. And this morning in particular, a not so beautiful-19-year-old girl asked me to be her sister. Her crush on me and my disdain for everything except for supernaturally hot girls made me unresponsive. I understand the impact unresponsiveness can incur to someone in love. But I can't help doing it. After all, I'm the same type of creature. Your love is not my business, my love, however, is yours. Innate egotism is worth being branded a noble trait.

It might be necessary to let people experience the life of their sympathy. Just a thought.

There's a total amount of 2,928.00 RMB in my now 68-year-old father's rural commercial bank account, and he all gave it to me. Judged by what he's doing, it's rather impertinent of me to go after bullocks dream like that. I'm ambitious, talented, and courageous. But who's not? Yeah, indeed, who's not?

4/1

My mom just brought in a plate of sliced oranges, probably the only ones left from the bulk which my father brought months ago. I was lying on the bed reading pirated EPUB version of Taipei by Tao Lin. Although I did wrote on the Common Application that I am an activist for the respect of copyright. Secretly I never felt guilty of using them. When the iPhone failed to connect the first time I plugged in the USB port, I even complaint that it is indeed time for me to switch to a new computer. Razer Blade with NVidia GTX 870m with 3GB VRAM and a 2699.99 dollar price tag. People are prone to seek excuses for their however unreasonable decisions.

After my mom went out in her unique, post mid-age walk of begrudging, she brought in a bottle of coconut juice, which she has purchased during her trip in Yunnan. I always doubt the necessity of buying at the tourist spot when everything is readily available on the internet. But for a generation of people like my mom, it's one of the only unchanged traditions. Beginning from the 1980s they have been wearing sunglasses and bringing camera whose value is disproportionate to their income level. I discovered that there were bubbles on the surface of the coconut juice. And when they randomly explode, a concave, dimly white shape is left on the spot. This must involve some physical phenomena unknown to me, and to the peripheral of my view, some microorganisms might have died. They die because I need to drink the coconut juice, and I might die because of the same reason. To some greatest extent, like the picturesque one portrayed in Three Body, the entire earth might perish because a more advanced being liked to drink some coconut juice. I also have large bottles of chili powder and ground pepper powder on the desk. The white and the grey look of them makes it exorbitantly hard for me to relate to the time when they're still in the farm. Someone must have touched it to produce. A bee or a female farmer. Both of them might be attractive to males, both of them might not. Yet although who knows, neither of them were thinking that the entire life and the biggest defining characters were a mere difference of which sperm had run faster.

I always lack the courage to abuse anything no matter how fond of it I am. Out of all the food, instant noodles from Master Kong might be my favorite. Not only because among those I normally eat, the instant noodle is the most delicious, but that it represents my lifestyle that has originated from the era of my long past grandfather. Who cooked instant noodles for me, and educated that these noodles are without nutritious value, and quickly picked up a small piece of vegetable from the soup, telling me it's delicious. It was the backyard of my grandmother's. I still go there occasionally, and the place hasn't changed much at all. The cement of the yard even had an undertone of yellow in it. Because it's been toasted and shined and looked at for so many years. I would step on the spot where my grandfather and I were sitting and pretend as if I am still the same person. By then I would never imagine that I will be applying for a university abroad, and get rejected and accepted by schools. Because the utmost grandeur of the architecture for me was the newly innovated building of the community primary school.

My father no longer works at Nanjing, and my mom has had and has had not a boyfriend who is diabetic and obsessed with milk tea and toasted chicken wings. And ever since my first piece of electronic device - the GBA SP, I've had one Sony Ericsson, one Nintendo NDS, one PSP, one Sony Xperia S, one PSV, one iPod touch 4, one Sony Xperia Z1, and an iPhone 5s. If all of these has happened as fast as it happened in my mind, I may wow at it. But it's not. Time has defrayed the extreme happiness I thought would never end over and over again. And I fancy when I realize I'm getting old and feeling it's impossible and possible and incoming and denying it, I will at one day acknowledge, with or without cryonics. However I'm not always sentimental, most of the time I just sit there grinning that the time has passed and groaning that it hasn't. Because I have German student visa, Deutsch Bank account, air plane ticket to do. And that's all excitement; and that's all nothing when it's done.

I read, on the internet, a lot more than one articles whose main idea is to declare literature and art waste of time, supreme, useless, failing. And I consent to those ideas every time I was reading a respective article. The sharpness of opinions is always glaring, and always dull and tedious and pretentious when I look at it 3 days later. Like the overwhelming surprise that the bed sheet was changed and the overwhelming disappointed that the same bed sheet wasn't.

I imagine, intermittently, intuitively what if I'd been wealthy, or even poorer, or ugly or handsome, shielded from the regret stemming from every different character, every different state of mind, every different present, neither the past nor the future, but present. The moment I dropped my clothes to the floor is as valuable as the moment I made the decision to study abroad and get rejected by 20 universities. But it just can't. Astoundingly hypocritical my denial might seem, one doesn't notice or notices it but nothing is changed, until a war broke out or extraterrestrials attacked the earth.

"I'm fucking hungry." "Shit, I shall never eat again." "I'm fucking hungry." "Shit, I shall never eat again." "I'm fucking hungry." "Shit, I shall never eat again." "Shit…"