So a few days ago, I went drinking with a high school friend. I hadn't met him for quite a while, actually. In fact, the last time I went drinking with him was before Seattle, so I wanted to have a talk with him. It's funny because every time I go drinking with him (and just him, strangely enough), I get pretty emotional afterwards. I would throw a tantrum, get all nostalgic all of a sudden and in general say a bunch of things I usually wouldn't say. And then I'd forget about most of it. All I could remember from that night was that I goofed off for most of the night. We listened to that awful Anaconda song by Nicki Minaj with my high school friend, and discussed how she's poisoning music, etc. It was pretty stupid. Then on the way home, I thought about my time in America, and how idyllic my lifestyle was over there. It made me very nostalgic.

My days were very quiet when I was at Berkeley. A normal day would be split between lectures, gaming, a bit of socializing here and there, and food. I can still picture myself, even today, walking across that campus with a pair of sandals after a lecture, heading to the local Internet cafe to play some Dota (I must've spent like 500 dollars there in the space of 5 months...what a terrible waste). Then afterwards, when night settles, I'd head back to my apartment, remembering to pick up some takeaway (or a big slice of pizza), along the way. I'd work on my assignments, talking to my floor mates about how their day went, what interesting things happened on campus, and why the floor's toilet was blocked. Just things like that. And by 1 am, I'd be asleep, waiting for next day's lecture. At Berkeley, my days were quiet, but I had plenty of time to read and do what I want.

But at Berkeley, I didn't have any close friends. I was friendly with my floor mates, and I had a few acquaintances I talk to from time to time. But a lot of the time, I was alone, and that occasionally made me a bit homesick. I had a few online friends, though, and they made my time there just a bit more interesting, a bit less lonely. We would have conversations till early morning, even on that one night I was locked out of my own room and we streamed anime together to kill time. When I didn't go online for two days, I would see that my message box was filled with their words, asking how I was doing. And we talked just about everything and anything. They had a pretty big impact on me in those months away from home, actually. They helped me through some tough times, especially because of how my personality is, and that I don't talk about these things face to face, with anyone. Not even my parents. But when I listened in on their ridiculous Skype calls, I somehow felt a bit at ease. It was almost as if they were in front of me for the whole time.

About a week ago, I watched a really good movie, called Liberal Arts. The movie, in a lot of ways, resembles a little private fantasy of mine, that deep inside I've always had the impulse of studying at a small liberal arts college, reading literature, history and all that underneath a tree in the middle of autumn. Studying not for a degree, not for employment, not for the sake of anything except for the sake of learning new things, discovering new ways of experiencing life. To some extent, my life in Berkeley was exactly like that. I'd read a bunch of books unrelated to what I study, go to those antique local bookshops, and stroll the campus after an intense reading session. Everything felt like an extremely sweet, idyllic fantasy. Kind like alcohol, really. It leaves you intoxicated and when you wake up from that dream, you feel much worse than before.

I had been drinking for the past couple days. Two bottles per day, in fact, although in my defence the drinks were actually really, really nice, and if they hadn't been so expensive I definitely would've bought more. Every time I drink, I get into a minor stupor but fall way short of intoxication, so at times I'd just slump there and feel sentimental and nostalgic. I think I should stop this before it's too late. There's an old Chinese saying that goes: "Using wine to quench misery only invites more misery", and I feel that most of this misery is really just a product of my misdoings.

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On second thought, that really wasn't a very good translation. The original Chinese saying goes:

借酒消愁愁更愁

Interpreted literally, it means "Borrowing wine to pour onto your anxiety makes anxiety worse". Okay, so that sounded a lot like Google Translate, but you get what I mean. 愁 is particularly hard to translate because it doesn't exactly mean misery, or anxiety, or depression. It's a mix between melancholy, sadness, worry, and anxiety, although anxiety probably comes closest to its main connotation. The word is actually made up of two other words, with 秋 on top and 心 at the bottom - the former means autumn, the latter means heart. So perhaps we can put it this way: 愁 is the emotion your heart experiences during autumn. So poetic!