Dear Diary,

Yesterday was a blast. Started off slowly, getting off from the hangover of the dinner. Kalle had come first, and as usual the Indians were the last. sigh. He was super happy about the bday card. We had a great dinner. The wine put me to sleep faster than I thought it would.

In the morning, I got up to finish the last of the info 233 interviews with merry. Honestly my head was all over the place. I couldn’t ask the proper q’s. I learnt coming into the living room, that Emilie had made plans with Filippa and Aditi about making dumplings at her friend’s place. I was kinda hurt she didn’t invite me, but that was mostly because the discussion happened while I was in my room. I went about the rest of the day, I had a call with Vaishnav, who’s a classmate from undergrad now studying in UK. We weren’t;t that close in college, but good friends. I feel like, now that we’re both living and studying away from home, we have a lot more things that we identify in common, and we talked for more than 2 hours. It was soo good, just talking to someone from back home, who came from similar cultural experiences now living, loving and adjusting to the shock of foreign experiences. I’m glad for him. I realise my life is a lot different from many of my counterparts who go move out to study. He works 2 jobs when he’s not studying. I haven’t,..well let’s not go there.

In the evening, I got boba with Raphael. I hadn’t seen him much this semester, and I wondered when I’d get to catch up with him before he left. So I did that. He seemed much healthier in his mental space. the house change helped a lot I guess.

After that I went to the gospel concert with Emilie. Oh my my my. I had never seen anything like this. So much soul. So much energy. The conductor was about to retire, so he finished the set with a thank you song. I cried a bit in that part. To witness human beings being so absorbed in a craft they love is divine. We walked out and were heading home, when we heard another piece of music from not far away. We looked around and there was an orchestra playing in the adjacent building. So we ran in and snuck into the room. It was a traditional Chinese music night. Again, oh wow wow wow. I recognised the sounds from Chinese movies, but never could map them tot he instruments that produced those sounds. It was such an eye opening experience. So many obscure instruments, played so beautifully.

I left the building with a content heart. Coming back out there was a lot of noise around the campus. And weed, well I’m used to it now. In the pond adjacent to the memorial glade, there was a lot of commotion. As we approached we noticed it was a bunch of naked girls and guys singing and trying to swim. Lol. Certainly high as fuck. We couldn’t help not passing by, so we walked by the pond, and waved hi to them. On the outskirts there was a Kpop group filming their routine. And lots of honking and noise on the road. Looked like people were just coming out of a concert at the stadium. What an eventful day.

Woke up with a reminder of all the things I had to do. Went to the SSN office to get my American ID card. I couldn’t believe it, back home, I had someone do this stuff for me. For the first time in my life, I walked into an office to actually get my shit done. I guess I’m literally building my life one step at a time here.

Worked with the haas bros for our llp slide deck in the evening. Handed out the celebration cupcakes to my housemates when I got home. They seemed grateful. Emilie also mentioned a girl at the dumpling party had tested positive for covid today. Suddenly I’m happy that I didn’t make it to the event. I would be disappointed if I couldn’t make it to SF during the weekend.

More on that later….

Love,

M

Gian's Dear Diary