it's about 1 in the morning and i'm lounging at the spacious desk in the corner of the cockroached basement i'm living in. the desk is lit by a 40-watt lamp and a melon-scented candle, forming a dim glow that barely collides with the glow of the other 40-watt lamp in the opposite corner of the room. my bed is a mattress on a 6 inch high frame, and sometimes when i'm not careful, i bang my head against the low beam running across the center of the basement, which causes my roommates Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 to run for cover. my laptop is propped up on Umberto Eco and John Irving to avoid overheating and shutting itself down while i'm in the middle of something important, like googling the names of my classmates.

to get to campus, i ride my friend's old 21 speed bike, which has decided to simplify and become a 6 speed bike. it's a hilly 2-mile ride and it seems to be getting harder every day, which shouldn't be happening. yesterday on my way to campus i was overtaken, not once but twice, by a midget on a bike. no midget sightings in a month of hawaii, and yesterday, two of them glided separately past me.

i read for class several hours a day, and though sometimes it gets a little dry, i enjoy it for the most part, which allows me to put off the chore of developing academic self-discipline for at least awhile. i haven't missed any classes so far and i do my best to ask non-retarded questions in all of them. it is infinitely easier to come up with a vague pseudo-intellectual bullcrappy question in a humanities class than it is in an engineering class.

waikiki beach is just down the street from my basement. i try to make it there at least once a week, though my reading rate goes down to about 6 pages of textbook per hour, and i haven't managed once to avoid scraping my knees on the rocks hidden a few yards out from shore.

tonight for dinner i had three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, half a tomato, a box of nerds, some chewy spree, a can of passion-guava-orange juice, and a handful of crackers.

this is pretty much what i imagined the life of a grad student (in hawaii) would be like. as for the other aspects of life, they vary. i would like some close friends to hang out and relax with, someone to call up and bike down to the beach with in the middle of the night, but i don't feel like paying the emotional energy cost of getting to understand someone and having them understand me.

ok, i dunno what i'm saying. i had some friends here already, people who taught with me in china, but it feels strange jumping into their previously assembled lives. i've met a lot of new people, but how am i supposed to know which ones i'll end up being good friends with? i guess that sounds cold, not wanting to spend time getting to know people who i might not end up connecting with, but that's kind of how i feel. i should be more open-minded.

i miss china, all parts of it, society, geography, ethnicity. i want to be involved in it, to be useful, from the rural to the urban, from the traditional to the popular, from the ridiculous to the sublime.

ok, i've been reading way too much prettified fancy writing. sorry for the stuffy style.