My first spring break is near its end, and during, I booked an airplane ticket to China for the summer, talked with Gao for an internship, which, actually is an assistant-level job in a language teaching establishment in Shanghai, took multiple showers, brought my Battlefield 4 character to level 45 and broke my girlfriend's cup with my name on it. The name tag itself isn't broken though. I also told Alin to get the Twitter handle @billie for me but somehow he didn't manage it.
Before the spring break, me and my girlfriend planned a tour to Dusseldorf. But eventually we didn't go anywhere. She watched her Chinese reality shows and did Stats homework, while I, sat on a dull, black office chair that I took from my former roommate Thomas Fisher's room before Husain came here, typing, playing, listening to music and fiddling with codes that I still don't know anything about, in front of my equally dull, but fancy laptop. I don't usually sit here though, depending on the definition of usual. My first semester was spent primarily in my girlfriend's room - a period of up and downs and an oblivion from having settled everything. It was when I started to sit back on this chair that I thought of resuming my writing. I don't know about the exact reason, youthful dynamic or a failed attempt to appear that way, but in the end I'm glad I did so. On the chair, are musings occasionally imaginative that take me away to places mundane yet fantasized, but more often there are blandness, repetition and a forged sense of being intellectual.
I bought the airplane ticket from Lufthansa, a carrier that carried me here and is about to carry me back, with a secret apprehension of plane crash while taking flight home previously deemed unique to me but later proved to be a human universal. The ticket price was a little more than 600 euro, and I paid with the direct debit option which hasn't appeared in my transaction list and which I fear never will, because my PayPal account is limited. My departure is after dinner on June 2nd, and arrival one day later in the afternoon. I have promised Gao that I'm going out for dinner with him. He has two jobs, one at the teaching establishment I'm about to go and the other, a bar in Shanghai whose Swedish general manager is a drug addict, impaired cognitively and earning a wage much higher than his. I messaged Gao later in this afternoon and he is still working, for it's weekend and a lot of people, privileged or merely desperate, come to the watering hole to pour liquid into their mouthparts. That is how humanity plays out in the socialist city of Shanghai.
Two days ago, when I was copy-pasting something from the iCloud, a reminder that reads "Remind me to rethink my choices" came up. I cannot determine when it is set up. But I presume it is from a year ago, during one of those sleepless nights after my destiny had been determined, I lay on the bed swiping the screen of a then-new iPhone 5s, unconfident about everything to come, put down those words to remind myself in the future. I didn't know of what I'm reminding myself. I still don't know. I sent a reminder from a year ago. Now I have received the reminder. I'm reminded.
As I write, I turned to the left to pour myself another mug of orange juice I took from the servery with the black kettle - my girlfriend bought it before she met me. On the desk are a ragdoll she sent me as a gift, two spray bottles of human cosmetics and screen cosmetics, a leftover tray from lunch with remnant of Chicken Leg dipped in unused Tex-Mex sauce, and a glass filled with pickled cucumber, everything but stationary, nothing but life.
My girlfriend is watching reality show on her laptop. I cannot see the image from this angle. But I heard a baby girl crying in the background. For something that is neither touching nor dehumanizing, her cry in the screen is as sad as bodies on the battlefield, and as poignant as the fleeting of life.
