A Bag Of Bananas

I went to Chinatown with Marie yesterday, because groceries were cheaper there than our local supermarket, and also because we wanted to go to a bakery. I don't know why I did not get my egg tart fill in Flushing, where the bubble tea was $3 for two compared to the bakery's $3.50 for one, but I bought some anyway and Marie bought a large green tea cake and I came back to the office with three bags of groceries.

Now I have bananas for breakfast for the next few days, so I won't starve in the mornings because I never wake up in time to both chat with Khajiit before one of us leaves and go somewhere to buy breakfast. The smart alternative would be to cook, but since I don't know who is using my only pot (the last time I checked it was full of this weird mushroom-like thing that I am pretty sure was not mine) and the fridge is full, this alternative is not very practical.

Some other things that happened in the past few days include:

• Marie, Violet, Henderson and I played Team Fortress 2, which means I have played one more game on the list of games our computer club's recent LAN game tournament hosted (now there is only SCII and DotA to go).
• In order to friend Marie on Steam, I got Khajiit to buy me a cheap $1 game, and of course he chose to buy this game called Puzzler World that had over 500 brainteaser puzzles resembling those of gbrainy which Khajiit and I played a lot on bus rides to several states (apparently there is a Windows version of gbrainy, so I no longer have to only play it on Linux, although why I would want to I have no idea).
• Violet and I picked up several green bean, squash, and pea plants from some guy who was giving them away. One of the green beans is dying though, so Violet took it home to give it some sunlight, and hopefully it will live happily ever after.
• The guy who lives next to me, #26 (as Khajiit calls him), decided his room was too hot and moved all his furniture aside from his loft bed to the kitchen and dragged his mattress onto the ground. Now whenever I walk by his room I can see his feet poking out from behind the door, and whenever I go into the kitchen there is a bookshelf.

I should sleep now, before it gets too late and I won't be able to wake up tomorrow again, and my bananas all rot like the frozen black bananas I found once in the freezer (partially why I don't ever cook anymore).

On The Other Side Of Oblivion

"I have this aunt," Violet said, in her I-have-this-crazy-story voice. "She had chickens as pets. She bought these pedigree chicken eggs—yes, pedigree chicken—and she wanted to hatch them into chicken and have those chicken lay eggs to sell. Except they're pedigree chicken, so they get sick really easily, so she had to buy expensive medicine to keep them alive. She would stab the chickens with needles one by one and force-feed them pills."

We were in the computer lab, eating our large boxes of poutine with extravagant toppings. Violet's boyfriend, Henderson, stole a particularly large piece of smoked meat, and Rosemary turned her attentions towards him again.

Just yesterday, Violet and I were talking about our futures, what little we knew of it. She and Henderson both wanted to be in academia, like her father. Their dream was to get tenure together in the same university. I told her my future was to see if Khajiit would graduate in the next ten years. We both laughed.

. . .

When I first went to Fish Wings, I won't deny this: I thought it was beneath me. I had gotten in without trying, and a scholarship to boot that had seemed to have fallen into my lap. There were smart people here, of course, but I was just as smart as them, if not more.

This past year has been a lot, and I have met so many people who have changed my mind about that. There is Flynn, who could rival Bryant on anything math and physics related (and who infuriatingly calls everything from triple integrals to advanced algebra "easy shit"). Aishan, who programs with three monitors and will be going off to Microsoft this summer (hopefully with no chair-throwing incidents). Sandra, who works multiple jobs and learned French from a retail job so she can support her way through university. Jessica, who is involved in everything from residence council to engineering teams to student society representative.

What had I to be so scornful about?

. . .

In his spare time, Khajiit works on his beloved programs and websites. He works on them when there is work due soon and he does not want to do it. When there is an assignment due in two days he would fix the scrollbars on the a small portion of the computer club's website, or make a Java program more Windows native, or something, anything, that is not his assignment. He says that his procrastination is never time wasted. He is always productive, especially when he procrastinates.

It used to frustrate me a lot. It still frustrates me sometimes. The new meds will probably help, but we both know he has to work hard too. Some days I want to tell him I believe in him, and I know he will pull through, one way or another. Other days I wish he could do it right now, because with every setback I can feel him slipping away.

Khajiit is not someone my parents would approve of. They asked where he was from, what he was studying, all the usual questions. For once they did not ask if he was a good student. Afterwards, when Khajiit told me to take deep breaths so I wouldn't fall into a state of panic, I wondered if it was merely an oversight.

. . .

Khajiit's dad recently asked me, "Do you like it here? No regrets?"

Maybe it is because his own daughter has chosen a college, and he is curious to make a comparison. Or maybe he knows. He has always known things about me before I do myself.

. . .

They smile when I fix the paper jams. They thank me when help them with their computer issues. The other day, I heard a girl explain to her friend the way the printing system worked, and I grinned. I could not have done it better.

There is something refreshing about swinging the keys attached to the network cards, going off to fix a ghost paper jam and hearing people talk about why they need to print so urgently. Sometimes it's an assignment due in ten minutes. Sometimes it's a document they need to file their taxes. Once it was a girl who needed her transcript to apply to grad school.

Maybe that's why when someone knocks on the door I tend to get up to open it. I hold the record for most printing money sold last semester, and although there is no prize or recognition for it, it's surprisingly satisfying. All those hours I've put in this computer lab make me happy.

I had first joined because I saw Flynn at the front desk, and I knew him because he was friends with Sam and Denise. I had stayed because it was fun, dizzying fun, all the late night laughing and crazy antics and large group outings. We are all good friends, I want to say, or maybe we are family. We are a family complete with wise, mature ones and scream-in-your-face immature ones, and the one or two people no one likes and the one or two people everyone likes. Lots of outside drama. Lots of inside tension.

My residence advisor said that living in residence was supposed to give us a feel of home, to make long-lasting friends and to feel like you belong in a group. I never got that from my residence (going home at 2am all the time probably did not help), but it's nice that I found it elsewhere.

. . .

Today is Mother's Day. I should call my parents. I have been putting it off, and the more I do so the more I want to, the harder it is to pick up the phone.

. . .

The title was sentimental me thinking I had sentimental things to write about. It is too late for me to think much, although I have had a four-hour nap today, and should not need to sleep too much, even if sleeping patterns for me are too elusive.

Tentative Steps

On CNN, Kirsten Haglund, the winner of the title Miss America in 2008, says, "I remember the first day I decided to throw away my lunch, and I drank a Coke instead. I felt really good. I remember that day and the choice I made. And it was a choice made out of fear, not logic."

Maybe that is why I took out that bottle of diet coke Khajiit got for free from the vending machine. We are chronic Nestea drinkers, and when we are not drinking it we're drinking Lipton tea, or another latte from Tim Hortons. When I took a sip from the bottle, the fizzy drink caught in my throat and burned. But I kept on going. It is addicting, this heady mix of aspartame and carbonated water.

We have our reasons for choosing the drinks we do. Years ago, Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar wrote, "My wife and I have both been addicted to soda for many years. On an average day, I would drink six cans of soda and my wife would drink four cans, meaning we would go through ten cans a day at our house." General Duck prefers his soda sparingly, but the bottle in his hand has still become a part of his persona.

For me, picking a drink has much to do with the mood I want to convey in my life. Coffee in those ambivalent preteen years when public transit gave us a freedom I haven't tasted until recently (not surprisingly, I have adopted a new caffeine habit lately as well). Bubble tea to soothe a nostalgia that seeps through the edges of my vision so that there is always something there, something in the corner of my eye.

Hot chocolate? Well, because I wanted to roll up the rim. Not that I won anything.

. . .

Islandtown's metro line is asking people to name their new train. One of the names was related to the Greek god of time, Chronos. I told Khajiit that one of my characters was called Chronos. He said, "Everyone has a character called Chronos."

I have tried to read more lately. I checked out Middlemarch from the library, and Khajiit and I read the first chapter (and a very wordy prelude). There is something special about the way a book can make you laugh, but I had never quite experienced it until now. So I think George Eliot is something special, critics of her other life be damned.

On the radio we hear Adele over and over again. They are tragic songs, completely not fit for a coffeehouse with bright red and yellow banners promoting its new jalapeño and asiago cheese bagels. On her YouTube videos people says things like, "She's pretty inside and out," or, "She's not fat, too many celebrities today are too skinny." They remind me of the "compare her to Marilyn Monroe" posters, of the idea that arguing men like women who are not bone-skinny is still objectifying women, because the standard-holders are still men.

When Adele said she wasn't "some blonde, skinny, fake boob, white teeth" girl, there is something sad in that statement. Something that sits uncomfortably in my stomach, even though I am not sure what it is.

A few nights ago, Veronica and Khajiit were working on our web design company (which reminds me, I need to get going on that), when they came across a photo of a group of students posing for what looked like a case competition. Veronica said, "Those girls look more natural, because girls take more photos of themselves."

Little things like that hurt. They hurt on a personal level, so to me they grate on my heart.

. . .

I stood in front of a class of one hundred on Friday. Made a public announcement about the film my environmental club was screening. I have not done something like this for a long while, especially not when I could see every single face and recognize people in the crowd.

The film itself was a success, if not a haunting one. We saw lovely paintings made of aluminum cans stacked on top of each other and baby albatrosses dead, bellies splayed open to reveal all the plastic inside.

Why must it be so sentimental?

I sleep at night panicked, tossing around, half-starting when I am about to fall asleep. There is something about the night, how still it is, that makes me uneasy. My body is failing me, or I am failing it, whichever one explains the aches and pains and dull anxiety.

Yesterday, in a fit of curiosity-laden panic, I looked up whether our house was likely to flood in 2100. The site says that if it does, it will be because of some harbor in the city near our house, or the beach, or the river. On SMBC, Zach Weiner describes a superior race that falls because of its impeccable ethics. I jaywalked across the street bordering my university today, against my usual rules of strictly following the roads.

. . .

In the depths of my blankets and shaking, I am lonely. I don't fully understand it, because I am not alone—I am far from alone—but I am still lonely.

. . .

When I wake up these days, it is usually to realize I have missed another class, or that it is now late afternoon and I have been sleeping all day. Khajiit, woken by my frantic prodding, would say, "We knew this was going to happen," to our promising ourselves the night before that we would wake up early. Then I would roll over and he would wrap his arm around me, and that would be my favorite part of the day.

These days it has been getting warmer in Islandtown. I pulled out my pair of red tights, paired them with the ridiculously high heels I bought from China, and got out a red shirt I had almost forgotten I owned. The lady at the food court eyed my outfit as I stood up next to her to throw away my cup.

Cosmic Gate is playing on my Pandora station. The other day Khajiit showed me how to set up a proxy so I could access Pandora from his server-in-a-closet. I took a jab at it yesterday and wondered if I had done something wrong when a firewall message popped up. Today, after a few changes to the procedure, I bypassed the firewall prompt. I don't know what triggered it though.

I was reading this very, very sad site that made me almost cry.

Somewhat unrelated, I had always thought that being an activist in one group made you much more likely to sympathize with activists in another group. My university, my city, and my province has proven me otherwise.

. . .

Maybe I have just been cooped up inside for too long.