Chapter Six: Book Clubs and Night Markets (~jinghan)

Previously in Jinghan’s life:

After an exciting, nerve-racking, tiring orientation week. I sat down to count how many clubs and societies I had joined. I’ll tell you the number is 15, but chances are I forgot about some of them, so the total may be more. My advice: don’t. Anything less than 10 is a good sample of the social network of the uni, anything less than five is how many you can make a real commitment to.

Was I going to attend the weekly events for 15 different clubs?

No.

Actually I was quite intimidated after just going to one event held in the evening. No, no, nothing of the wild-drunkness sort (though I have also been daunted by stories of such events). It was a fairly tame Engineering Music Society orchestral rehearsal, but everyone seemed to know each other and everyone was heading off to the pub to hang out and have dinner afterwards. Anyway, I escaped home before the end of the rehearsal and promised myself that I would avoid all further events.

Chapter Six: Book Clubs and Night Markets

“It was a pleasure to burn.” The first line of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was enough to capture my attention. But the more I read the more I became engrossed by the novel. I was sitting in a corner of Crossways a small cheep indian restaurant that served decent food when I reached the end of the book. I looked at my watch, still 20 minutes to burn before I needed to head off to my class. I flicked back to read some of the earlier chapters again. Five dollar lunch at Crossways on wednesdays before my first lecture, had, by week four, become a ritual private indulgence. And a chance to sit and read and let the world walk past down on the busy sidewalk of Swanston Street below.

This was the sort of chill casual life-style I had projected in my imagination when I had fantasised about uni-life during the summer holiday. The fantasy would live on in this one isolated hour of each week. It was enough to sustain me for the time being.

I had read Fahrenheit 451 before, back in year nine when we were forced to read “classical” novels (as opposed to those tacky teen-narratives we preferred.)  In year nine I would have never imagined myself studying literature later on, I was going to do all the sciences and make do with the minimum requirement of main-stream English. Three years on I find myself doing only physics and both english and literature for my final exams. And now I find myself completely engrossed by a novel not just for it’s narrative, but the language and the knowledge that Bradbury typed up the whole novel in nine days on a 10 cents per hour type writer in the basement of a public library. Before I studied literature I could never have appreciated the language of a book. Now that I’m studying Science, I think I’m going to miss Literature that had been a strange mixture of learning about feminism and learning about language. (Though I have yet to miss writing essays.)

Why was the reading Fahrenheit 451 again?

For book club!

Yet another social event held fairly late in the evening. But, this time I was determined not to be frightened off like a little girl who’s cheerful confidence set with the sun. It helped that my friend was coming with me. Despite what they say about “Join clubs! You’ll make friends!”  my advice is: “Join clubs with a friend.” The only other meeting I had gone to was one for the “Australian Youth Climate Coalition” – although not a direct passion of mine, the fact that I had joined this club with a (newly formed) friend during orientation week meant that I didn’t have to brave a strange meeting alone.

So, at 6pm on a thursday evening I headed off to book club with my friend. It turned out to be a fairly quiet gathering of six people – five girls and a post-grad studying literature to facilitate us. (Apparently 12 people were invited to come to this particular meeting, and there were limited places… so what happened to the others? That was a bit disappointing.) There was cheese, crackers, mineral water and grapes just for that touch of classiness (though balanced with a good serving of lollies and chocolate) and what ensued was much like literature class.

I must admit, the more new and exciting experience of the evening was actually wandering the MUOSS night market after book club ended. By this time it was close to 8pm; my friend and I wedged our way through crowds of people to have strange servings of foreign noodles and drinks with soy and grass jelly. Going to school at night is usually pretty creepy, but the uni at night is throbbing with life! Didn’t these people have homes to go to?

After eating, we did head home. A not-quite-sober guy talked to me on the train, but he was a friendly guy so I let him talk. My father still insisted on meeting me at the train station to walk me home. But hey, for the latest night that I’ve spent out since uni started, things went pretty smoothly.

I have yet to experience book markets or night clubs… but I am going to the Fotoholics camp next week end. Camps are harder to escape from if things aren’t as you expected. But! My wonderful friend is coming on the camp with me, so I’m not suffering from any fear.