ahhh, a greatly improved day. the weather was great. i love the sound of rain. then it all cleared up in time for me to go do work. the only downside is that i might be getting sick. to fight it i’ll eat a box of clementines. then i’ll urinate like a dog, wasting large portions of unabsorbed vitamin c.
it was the most productive day i’ve had in ages. first i mailed my damn ben folds tickets. due to my previous laziness it cost thirteen dollars and sixty-five cents. all to earn back twenty-five dollars and fifty cents. woohoo. then i spent hours in the lab. i helped out with the class of 2005 study break along with anthony. went back to the lab. got rid of the timecards so that i can get paid before i leave. i took a nap. then, i went to star, returned, and cooked with juny. that was quite enjoyable. we suck at cooking less than you might think. of course it was “just” pasta. but we did a good job. there’s ridiculous amounts of food in my fridge now. i have issel’s ham along with tonight’s leftovers. then we made cookies. juny dropped a third of the dough or so in the trash. i’m sorry this entry is so . . . mundane-sounding. it’s just that i took joy in everything i did today, in the silence, in the words of encouragement i tried to give our lab tech, in my cooking, in my walking, in my talking, my sandwich slicing, reminding lisa about her sweet potatoes, whatever. i feel content. joy is the hardest thing to describe, i think. just like everything else.
the only thing was that i should have gone to caspar today.
rob asked how you tell sincerity from fakeness. you can’t, in a nutshell. because you can’t read minds. you can only guess. then you choose a course of action based on what you see. sincerity is sometimes construed as fakeness and vice versa, after all.
jian-ming sent a nice e-mail today wishing us a safe holiday and good performance on finals. he’s right about another thing too . . . time does fly. three terms already. seems like just yesterday i was setting foot here for the first time. i never visited this place until i came here in august last year. god i have all these thoughts running through my head now. like how i saw ed song again right off the bat at the first fup thing, and our promise? to go to new york next time we met by accident. because that’s the only way we seem to meet. then again, don’t we all meet by accident? i’m trying to remember how i met everyone i know.
i can’t remember how i met robert kwok, or sam kwei, or eddie kay, or jina sinkey, or susan tang, or paul wanda, or . . .
i sort of remember how i met matt burns, and tina hsieh, and lots of people in fup. i sort of remember how i met jian-ming, and emily yan, and . . .
i do remember how i met jonathan choi (ossm), and arick shao (ossm), and issel lim (practically the moment i stepped off the airport shuttle i ran into jonathan and got introduced), and juny kim (student center, introduced by none other than issel), and anthony tagliaferro (jonathan’s old roommate, because it was so recent), and nagle, of course . . .
i sit there and think to myself. if that shuttle had arrived a minute later . . . if i hadn’t impulsively changed my mind about ossm at the last minute . . . if i didn’t go to dinner when jonathan invited you that night of the pre-orientation (man, was i tired, too) . . . where would you be now? would you be a lonely fool? friendship seems so fateful. and you wonder, how the hell did i ever become friends with people who i can’t even remember meeting? where has my mind gone? i should remember that type of thing. maybe i should write it down.
i write less down now actually but i still write a lot. i’m trying to train my head to remember what the hell i was thinking. like this afternoon (or evening, would you rather?) when i just couldn’t stop thinking about people living their whole lives upside down, literally. their wrinkles would go down, which would be up on a normal person’s face. it’d be like getting a free facelift. i swear. and earlier i almost didn’t want to go to the study break. well, i’m glad i did. because i got to help a friend out, and i ran into anthony and got to talk to him. he’s leaving on monday also. my dad’s right. i come back to boston on the fourth of january. it would be scary but interesting to remember every little thing you thought.
i’m so lucky. even if i should fail all my exams next week. even if i get hammered to death next term because i’m stupid and take too many classes. in a way i’m glad i took 3.051 this term even if it resulted in worse grades and a drop, because i still learned something. it’s too bad things like grades matter. i think they do mainly because of a bunch of lazy fools. it’s sad how the people i know who work the hardest don’t always get the best grades. i don’t deserve good grades all the time. i wish i had gotten bad grades last term almost because that’s what i deserved. maybe i’ll finally get it this term. so i’ll try to make it so that i don’t deserve bad grades this weekend. (probably not it’s a lie i can only hope hope hope? dreeeeeeeeeeam.)
i should wake up in four hours.