I think this space of one month deserves its own block of a good sum-up. And since it’s towards the wee hours of the night (actually 1:04 a.m. here), I think I will just do it bulletin-style.
- I ditched my offer of MA progamme @ the Chinese University of Hong Kong in early January. Although I told everybody, including myself, that the main (and most noble) reason for turning it down was that I felt like before I pursue any further education in any discipline I should go out into the world for a while, live the life of a non-student for a change, and find the real-world significance to whatever I intend to pursue academically, the actual major reason is that my family is too poor to afford the tuition and the living expense in Hong Kong at the moment. So after my BA graduation I am looking at a year of working, which could be exciting for the most part. An apparent upside is I get to spend more time in my home city Xi’an. I just hope life will show me its course after that.
- I got to meet a German guy from my current Uni through a girl friend from South Korea, and played tour guide when he came to Xi’an for two days during the winter holiday. And man that was really two fun days. We basically walked to every part of the city and saw everything the city has to offer in terms of history, architecture, culture, cuisine and might I say “Chineseness” in the eyes of foreign visitors. But what is the most fun was we got to talk a lot during the sight-seeing, comparing notes about the German and Chinese society and just chit chatting. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t been just a tiny bit enamored - I have actually been cracking up on my old Pimsleur German mp3s ever since he left for other cities in his grand tour. It is just nice to know that he’d still be on campus when the new semester begins in a month, something to look forward to.
- And sadly with that went all my previous infatuation with this other person. I surly do think back on this with just an appropriate amount of “Quel dommage”.
- Met up with an old high school friend today at a lovely local Starbucks - the only one in the city, or anywhere, that is decorated in a traditional Chinese style with all the wooden frames and a bar where you get to sit right in front of the working station full of cups and cans. She’s lost the tenseness of her high school days and carries now a quite cosmopolitan air and a far wider outlook, which is really good and reassuring to see, given that I have actually seen her faint in class due to stress. The only thing that bugs me about her is her constant questioning about why I haven’t got a girlfriend yet, or ever. But let’s be honest, this is really not her fault. I only find that prickling apparently because I have got a skeleton in the cupboard while she is free to splay her sexuality right out in the open. (In fact, she has gone so open about it as to exclaiming right in the middle of the street: “oh honey, you can’t just live by wanking all your life”).
- While I am looking down out of my window at the little street lined on both sides and in the middle with parked cars, and one or two people walking in between like little dots teasing through the lines. I feel strangely reassured and in peace.
