Thursday, June 19, 2008

The Cave Dweller

Myself, of course.

For the last two months there are basically only two places where I've been spending my life. One is the library, the only place I can get my hands on the Economics coursebook (which for some reason I decided to not buy throughout the semester). However, the library has to close at 10 pm. And on weekends, it's only open between 11 am and 5 pm. That's it. The second place, in which I've spent probably 99.9% of my time is...

My room.

More specifically, at the desk next to heater, in front of my beloved laptop.

Now, the room is a mess. Can't be bothered to check whether I've said this before, but for the majority of this semester I went into this bad funk. Part of the funk is being indifferent to the condition of my living quarters. Add to this the exam period, so the books and papers are all over the floor and the desk. There's also this rather strange smell emanating from the room which I can't quite put a finger on. Mold? Fungal growth? The mixture of smells from my flatmates' cooking (given that I'm got the room at the farthest end of a corridor, where these scents seem to circulate and seep into my room)? Laundry? The only I can find out is if I actually clean my bloody room. I can't even remember the last time I changed my sheets. Good gravy. Actually, that's probably because it's winter and I love my flannel sheets to bits in situations such as these, but still. I probably should've invested in a second pair of flannel sheets. Some air freshener would probably be good as well. That's probably the only option short of fumigating the place. But cleaning should be the priority. My carpet feels grittier than ever (soon to match the texture of the ground cover on the other side of the windowsill), which is not a good thing when I'm trying to fold my kendogi. Not acceptable (but acceptable enough for the time being).

My habit of lurking more in the internets to the wee hours of the morning and almost never popping out of the room have gained me the status of cavemen among my flatmates, who are never quite sure whether I'm in the house or not. This does lead to many fun times, especially because I have this uncanny ability to sneak up on all of them in the kitchen quite easily.

The height of isolation occured with the dying of my handphone. The poor thing crashed and died. Or more like went into this undead mode where it turns on and off at its own bidding. Some kind of freak sentience, I suppose. It was then that I realised just how alone I could be around here (minus the company from MSN, though). My folks didn't have any other way to find out about my situation, as I'm pretty shoddy with email correspondence. End of the story is that I got it fixed...and it came back with the entire harddrive content wiped. Gone. All the numbers, photos, messages...just blank. I picked it up today and had a hard time keeping myself from laughing with the irony of it all. The reason I wanted to fix it was to backup the data in order to transfer it to a new handphone. So much for that.

Well, it's late. More...soon.

[End Transmission]

1 comment:

*yasmin said...

Omar.
I had dinner with Nanda and some other people last night.

Trus, Nanda and I were lamenting your abscence.

what the hell mar? Why do you seem so far away?

:(