I need to do more exercises, to laugh more, and to be not so fearful of death - I have told myself of it one year ago, and what I am supposed to do now isn't that - I should be looking at the Stats homework that is so far solely done by Bela to prepare myself for the assessed lab two days later. I planned to sit in for an entire Sunday for the assessed lab but I did not do anything, just like right now I am doing nothing. For sure, by nothing I do not mean the vacancy of thoughts and movements, even the direst and the emptiest moments of my life are filled with the firings of neurons, the beating of heart and the shivering of leg. I just stared onto the wall where my girlfriend's to-do schedule, long expired from weeks ago, written on memo pieces topped by colorful snippet to imitate the reminder app of a smartphone, is stuck, emptied the snot I picked from my nostril to the ground I vacuumed several days ago, logged into my TP-LINK router management page, tried to resolve the network outage issue and failed. I also can hear from my girlfriend's laptop the voice of Chibi Maruko Chan I have acquainted purely thanks to the frequency of it being played - although it's a dubbed Taiwanese Mandarin version that is slightly altered from what the Japanese anime maker had intended, she doesn't like the original one because it sounds alien to her, and such that it becomes emotionless and unrelatable. Also I drank all two tubes of multivitamin effervescent tablets I bought together with the first batch of female hygiene product in Marktkauf in last semester. Both she and I had thought that it is impossible for me to finish them up, because those tablets have a taste not flattering to me who's used to drinking orange juice in bulk. But I finished, miraculously, and it really showcases how much I value my own health, apart from the usual slumber of staying indoor, sleeping extremely late and more than ten hours a day. I still have other multivitamin sources, of course, as blue pills contained in the white plastic medicine bottle, from Apotheke, a small German pharmacy from which I bought vitamin pills for myself and cold medicine for my girlfriend.
I read, just now on the internet, one of my favorite author and proudly unknown, wrote in his diary that he disapproves of fantasy novels - his cousin came into his room filled with trunks of books and inquired if he has any fantasy novel. He said no. And I must confess that I read tons of fantasy novels, usually not in English since western authors, while approachable and modern, still possess a trait that seems too often to remind me of a certain revered literariness, that the act of reading is a noble business regardless of what is being read. Chinese authors, internet authors, on the other hand with their wretched taste and insipid style, attract me with a very sense of being intellectually base and emotionally simplistic. And yes, I read pirated versions of Chinese internet fantasy novels. Moreover I am a frequent patron of the pirate game site 3DMGAME, with countless dubious pictures and borderline jokes for my niddering amusement, and porn sites from which I accidentally reused a hyperlink in my clipboard for group-writing the academic essay of the course Environmental and Resource Economics. None of people in that group believes it's an inadvertent act. I'm known as a serious person who entertains others via pretense. And I'm not too eager to debunk their belief.
There is one unread in each of my three inboxes, the first one is from LinkedIn that shows Paul Ladwig has accepted my invitation; the second one is sent from Microsoft Insider Program, Gabe Aul whose email address has the word "email" hyphenated; and the last one from Turnitin that reads "You have successfully submitted the file "HW9 - Bela, Lijiao, Kaiyu" to the assignment "Homework 9" in the class "Statistical Concepts and Data Analysis 2015" on 20-Apr-2015 09:20PM. Your submission id is 531158043. Your full digital receipt can be downloaded from the download button in your class assignment list in Turnitin or from the print/download button in the document viewer." I carefully checked through all three emails, have Outlook mark them as read, and minimize the window to resume my writing. At this point I am compelled to admit, the reason of such persistence, wondered by myself every time I would think about it, is that I not only consider myself entirely normal, but also have realized it - I'm on par with the male cashier at the Apetito servery (he's one of the many cashiers politely disregarded by the lordly university students, and I'm amongst the only ones to say hi to him whenever I pass by), and the porter (clumsy, tall, and nice), the fool living in a garage near the apartment set where my grandmother used to live (the last time I went by his domicile, I was befuddled that he is still out there and alive), the wanton shop lady, and the imaginary Sichuan Restaurant Owner who I know very well under a fictional apartment building I lived in Wuxi. The only difference that sets me apart from them is the fact that I write.
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Before I went to the shower, I had already set an expectation of not having a fresh pair of spare underpants to wear tomorrow. It turned out that in the brown carton box what had been thought of as a pair of my girlfriend's textile pants are my underpants. I was exhilarated. This is the most delightful moment of the day!
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Today I have waken up solely for the Resource Economics class, and I have attended both of the sessions - a tremendous feat for me. I did not know why I had gone there, I did not know even after I went there - the first session was filled with jargons whose technicality is not completely necessary; the second session were the usual student presentations in which Bela and the missish German (Turkish - updated on April 26) girl talked about confusions, exactly what kind of confusion has eluded me (perhaps that is the reason they talked about it), and for which I have complied a tediously lengthy synopsis on the polycentric approach for sustainability policy making. I did not get the opportunity to actually present because the professor ended up talking about an interesting topic that involves the applicability of property rights in space. He was nice enough to turn back and question if we have understood, while pausing briefly to add, everything - I nodded and laughed viciously, looking straight into his eyes to see a theatrical amusement similar to that of mine.
After dinner I borrowed the campus card from Husain to do the laundry amassed from the past week, and went to the presentation meeting for the Public Policy and Management course on Friday morning. When I showed up in the C3 Quiet Study Area (QSA), everyone seemed suspiciously familiar to me. The group was an unfortunate blend of German and American girls whose English is so perfect that they are able to convey every single idea with a verbosity unparalleled by that of my own - though the idea itself is utterly dubious. I had to sit there for roughly an hour only to have myself dismissed from the meeting.
I then sat at the bench in front of Krupp for some period. Because most of the shutters in Krupp are closed, I was somehow struck by a usual urge to put down something onto the pages - I complained that, I came here with a mind of perfect clarity, and that clarity has been lost in me gradually for a reason yet evasive to my understanding, until I conclude that university is not a place for writing. And then I headed back to College Nordmetall, retrieved the laundry from the drier, and then took the elevator up to my room to sleep - no expounding of my nighttime stroll and without a dirge for my lost youth, only sleep. (4/21)
