Owing to an uninvited, effortless privilege of making money, my sense of economy has been greatly diminished. Just today I spent 399.99 USD to buy a copy of the Microsoft Office 2016 Professional, which, alternatively costs only 5 EUR on Taobao. And then there's now, at 3:24 AM in the morning, with an impending 8:15 AM International Economics presentation, I forsake sleep for writing.
It is not, however, that I haven't tried to fall asleep. I was keenly aware that although the Economics presentation has nothing concrete to offer to what I am doing, I should still perform well because my sub-par presence may actually deprecate the endeavor of other group members. Take Ping for example, his dedication to this simple little assignment is truly astonishing - I, for one, am not able to comprehend him, let alone to mimic. The reason that I failed to sleep, therefore is still some other annoyance. The pajama bottom is too loose, yet the shirt is a bit rigid - and I didn't take shower before going to bed, all of these compounded, coupled perhaps with some undying subconscious infatuation, make sleeping exceedingly hard, that the more I struggle in bed, the farther-off the objective of sleep seems.
Oh crap, these are just plain excuses, which especially smart people are adept at using to cover up their otherwise eye-catching flaw - I am, at the moment, among the less smart in this group of people with whom I associate. And it is either because the excuses I use aren't good enough or my flaw is overly blatant that I get to see through it.
Quite surprisingly at this time of the day people are baking pizza in the kitchen. The language they speak presumably comes from Southeast Asia - the sound is loud, and the syllables uncluttered and rapid - I feel proud for them, like I feel proud for the whistle Tian makes every time after I go to bed - they have fun in what they do, and are usually unaware of how they appeal to others.. But what is the appeal when one is fighting to sleep? Even the bed itself is an enemy, and it is outright impossible for the limb to find its place. Therefore, I have nothing to complain about.
On the previous installation of my computer, I had an additional clock showing the time in Shanghai, where my parents are. With this new build of operating system, I hardly feel the need to adjust the setting. Merely one year into leaving home and kicking off by myself, the word family has already turned into an unfamiliar concept. After all, who are they but a pair of humans? And in particular if they are those humans who seldom bear significance outside their own surroundings? Of course, they are clean and honest - they are staunch in believing in their own life; they have never committed a crime nor prevented one. But who has not? And so, intelligible is my choice of saving the energy of adding a clock of my parents' time zone for some thirty seconds of Facebook browsing and YouTube watching.
OK, alright. Husain is snoring behind me, and tosses around fairly frequently - his poor sleeping quality has a soothing effect on me. I am getting sleepy as well. Less than four hours until the presentation, my laptop, the moonish spray bottles and a tissue roll are the only bright objects in this room. I take a sight of what I have written, a pageful! A pageful of words that are utterly unreasonable! To write has become a different form of emptiness - to induce sleep, to fill up these littery moments, and to pitprop life! And finally I am sleepy! Thank God!
