Chapter Two: Re-orientation (~jinghan)

I wake up. My fuzzy thoughts, bleary eyes and heavy limbs suggest it’s 7am. It’s actually 9:30am. It’s my first Monday of the year. (Every other day so far has been a Saturday and a Sunday and occasionally when the end-less weekend gets too tiring for me it becomes Friday.)

I head out the door. And walk past the newspaper sitting on the back veranda. But then I remind myself that it’s a Monday and that if I don’t start getting myself into a routine now the rest of the week is going to be a soggy mess, and a dampness will probably linger around in the first week of uni and before I’ve managed to wring my socks out I’ll be smacked in the face with week 6 and a mid-semester test.

So I go back and pick up the news paper and even go so far as to unwrap it and put the plastic cling-wrap in the bin. (I also discard the business section and sport section.) The news paper is soggy at one end, I notice.

I come out of the cinema* with a new loyalty card tucked away in my wallet – no doubt the first of a pile of miscellaneous loyalty and membership cards that I will accrue during this orientation week.

Before I even realised where I was going, my stomach has led me to the curry-shop in the union-house food court and I am buying a medium rice and dahl for $5. As I sit and take in the comforting familiar fragrance of this simple meal, I decide that even if I get swindled into studying at uni for five years or more I will never get sick of rice and dahl for lunch.

I run by the uni-shop and pick up my Age subscription card. (Card #2. What did I tell you?)

I don’t really have anything I need to do at uni other than this, but having not been here for three months I thought it would be a good idea to re-orientate myself before I start showing first-years how to get lost when I host my orientation group tomorrow. There’s always some construction going on around the uni so you never know what has changed. I decided that I would walk out my tour rout just to check that everything measures up to what they are in my memory.

First stop is the Rowden White Library. It’s 2pm when I get there. And 3pm before I head out again. Something about forgetting how tiring Mondays are. Or something about those comfy chairs. Or something about those seductive books propped up on the ledge. Or something about the calming restful atmosphere… Or all of the above.

Anyway, since I’m at uni I decide I will go to the Baillieu**  Library to staple the thick stack of printed pages that is the entire printed contents from my first-year blog. (Being a bit of a journal-addict I decided I would print it, and then I decided I would read it to remind me of what it was like as a first year so that I can picture the inner-dialogue of my host-group, and then I decided it would be a good idea to find an industrial-library-grade stapler to stop it falling apart in my hands.) I take a wrong turn into the book shop because my mind is still working on this fan-dangled Monday thing. And then I almost walk into the construction barriers around what I thought was the entrance to the ground floor of the Library.

I take a step back. “Access to the Baillieu Library from the third floor of the Economics and Commerce Building ➙➙ ” is written in charming University of Melbourne blue.

After many many more a➙➙ows, several flights of stairs, mysterious elevators journeys, a few wrong turns, climbing every mountain, fording every stream… &c. &c. I finally find my way to the text-book section that I wanted to show my first-years, with the feeling that the Baillieu Library is perhaps a lot bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and exists in at least four dimensions.

“Hi, do you have a stapler that can staple something like 26 pages?” I ask the librarian on the first floor.

“Uh… no… but they will have one up on the third floor where the main borrowing desk is now located.”

“Huff… puff… hi… do you have a stapler that can staple something like 26 pages?” I ask the librarian on the third floor.

“Yes… But… Oh dear… it seems to be jammed, let me try and fix it but if I can’t the print shop in the basement will have one that works.”

“Oh… okay… that’s… uh… a long way away… huff… puff…”

But fear not dear reader, Jinghan made it out of the Baillieu… eventually. I’m glad I did all that today because it was bad enough with one Jinghan wandering like a lost soul in a library with only one exit in the far-end of the third floor. I’d hate to imagine what would happen if I let a group of new and clueless first-years lose in there.

“So when will the construction on the ground floor be done?” I ask the print assistant in the basement.

“Probably towards the end of first semester.”

Oh boy, it’s going to be an interesting semester. I’m looking forward to the expressions on the faces of the new first-years when I take them on a hike around the uni and into the deep dark hidden depths of the library. I can just imagine it:

“Watch out, don’t walk there.”

“Why?”

“Drop bears.”

— —

*Tangled is a absolutely brilliant film. Go see it.

**I also admit here, that every time I’ve had to mention said library in my blogs this year and last I’ve had to look it up on Google to find the right spelling.