Chapter Twenty: In Case of Boredom (~jinghan)
Someone (a friend I think) came up with the phrase “study whore”, and it applied to me. Although I don’t get paid for it (studying, that is) I do indeed take to studying with a mercenarily vicious ambition, such that studying kinda takes over my life. I sat on my bedroom floor twiddling my thumbs. Now that the bulk of my study was over I was in great danger of getting very bored…
… or so I thought.
Before I even register that I was actually very not-bored, I had:
1. Gone to a trivia night, where I was perhaps the least helpful member of the team. I may have answered one question, but then again I may have got that wrong anyway. While a certain other member of the team (Christina) knew how many burgers homer had ordered at the oil rig when they were stranded at sea. People who live under rocks should not go to trivia nights. (I had fun anyway.)
2. Read a cheesy teen novel. The fact that each chapter had at most three pages says something about the standard of literature. (I could picture my literature teacher writhing in pain with every sentence.) But hey, a book titled “Confessions of a Serial Kisser” is begging for you to read it just to see how cheesy it really is, but then you get emotionally involved end up reading another chapter and another chapter (only for the cheesy goodness, I swear!) until suddenly you’re shamefully at the end of the book.
3. Picked up my rather neglected cross-stitch project. I do believe I bought this one when I was still in primary school, where after not working out how to do it I left it in a draw for six years, only to be found again last summer, only to be neglected again when uni started, only to be resumed how that I’m rolling around in time. As odd as it sounds there’s something oddly intellectually stimulating about doing cross stitching, and it gives old women endless joy to see me doing it on the train. (Shutup.)
4. Had family friends over for dinner. These were the friends that you played with when you were little at dinner parties while you’re parents got not-quite-sober and talked about all the gritty embarrassing details of your life. As we grew up the closeness of these acquaintances was no longer necessary, so I wasn’t sure about the potential of such a meet up. But I thought: what did I have to lose? I even resisted writing “my mum suggested…” when sending out the invitation. The fact we all go to the same uni now seemed to be enough to reclaim old friendships; we had an awesome night, talked about everything and nothing, played crazy uno, and unpredictable poker, and when we looked at the time it was 12:45am. (As if my parents would have let me stay up this late with any other friends.)
5. Stayed up to watch the soccer. The original plan was that we would tape it and watch it first thing in the morning before we knew the outcome. But since it was already 12.45am, we made the impulsive decision to let my friends stay the night. (Are these really my parents?) So we watch Germany walk over the Socceroos. I haven’t watched a whole soccer match since the world cup eight years ago, if it weren’t for the company this one would have been painful and boring – but it wasn’t!
6. Ate food. Full spread dinners, barbecues, crazy chinese salads, tacky kids party food, heck I was even inspired to cook tomato, mushroom, egg and sausage for breakfast this morning. (Okay, I admit, I microwaved the sausage.) I’m sure I ate during studying, but its hardly exciting when you know you have to go back to studying.
7. Spent “a lot” of money. I am a self-confessed stinge. Every purchase I make, is made with a sense of shaky-nervous-potential-regret. It doesn’t help when I barely have an income. So you can imagine my mental condition when I went to the print shop and found that photos at 4′ x 6′ were 50c each! (I had 120 photos, mind.) The stinge within was squirming was pain as I selected photos on the touch-screen and the price counter ticked up. $0.50… $7.00… $16.00… I hesitated at this point (shutup. I have no income.) … $17.50… $19.00… $19.50… heck I may as well make it a whole value… $20.00 and 40 photos. (Squirm squirm.) But as each glossy photo zapped out of the machine my heart palpitated a little faster with the joy of the memory or the beauty of the photo, I was gloriously high and happy by the time I paid over $20 and put my photos into an envelope. Printing some of my photography was something I’ve been wanting to do all year, except have been too stingy or splurging too much on something else.
And it’s only been one weekend (albeit a three day weekend). I still have a birthday party, late night soccer games, a formal dinner (what? I thought we were poor uni students.), Art student society party (I ended up with a ticket quite by chance/impulse) and lots and lots of friends to catch up with. Not to mention parts of melbourne that I want to explore and stories that I’ve been promising to get back to writing since the beginning of the year (uh… promises have no expiry date right?).
All in all, there is nothing quite as fun as being impulsive, and one can only do so once the routine of uni/school/etc. has been switched to holidays. And even then, back at school, there was still projects and left-over homework hanging over your head between terms and semesters. I could only spurge on impulse at the end of the year. A semester at Uni is different, this is a real holiday, like having the end of the year come twice!
Disclaimer: Jinghan still has one exam left, as is a very naughty girl for doing all this instead of studying. – Regards. Jinghan’s inner study-whore