A Day in the Life

February 25, 2009 The complete story, in chronological order

00:00 Still awake playing Final Fantasy: Dissidia

01:45 Finish Destiny Odyssey VIII Decide it's time to sleep, but not before I check twitter and facebook, even though I know that nothing has occurred on either of them.

01:56 Trying to sleep, listening to the sounds of two different clocks (one ticks, one sort of grinds away the hours)

02:00-07:30 Mostly asleep, I only mention 07:30 because that's when my alarms were supposed to go off if I had remembered to set them

08:30 The housekeeper knocks on the door and informs me that the time is eight-thirty. I groan and roll over, deciding I need another hour of sleep. I grab the grindy clock and set the alarm for 09:30 and head back to dreamland.

09:20 I open my eyes and wonder why the alarm hasn't gone off yet. Oh..

09:30 The alarm goes off and I quickly disable it. I hear my cellphone vibrating in my bag and wonder what it could mean. I pull it out and realize that it was set to silent and hence did not play the annoying yet wakefulness inspiring tune that I programmed it with. I decide that I should move myself out of the bed and stand up and yawn. I think about what Stephanie Holmes told me about keeping good thoughts rolling through my head. It cheers me up a bit. I find my uniform strewn about the room and put it on while counting out the $8583 I need to pay the school for the upcoming trip and also my books (I hope that the Rotary Club will reimburse me for the books). I collect some useful items into my school bag and go to the sink to wash my face (which could potentially solve the world's enegy crisis with the amount of oil it's been producing lately). I use a plastic yellow shoehorn to put on my well-worn Sketchers (which don't really hold up aganist the rainy days) and I head out the door of the fifth floor apartment locking it behind me.

09:50 I walk down the five flights of stairs because I've decided that if I can't bring myself to run every morning then I can at least walk up and down all the stairs I can. I head out the bottom door and press the call button on the intercom so the Adeng (the housekeeper) can let me in. She explains that she was about to come up and call me again. I take off my shoes, the backs of them are weakened and worn down, and I go to the dining room to pick up the bag of breakfast that Adeng has prepared for me. It's quiet in the house because my host parents are off in Nepal for a Rotary function probably having to do with all the clothing our district donated. They won't be back until Saturday.

10:00 I head out the door and realize that my Easycard (for paying public transportation fares) is running low so I'll have to take the MRT so I can recharge it (I don't think one can do that on the bus). So, I head to ZhongXiaoDunHua Station and go to the Add Money Machine putting another $200 on my card. From there, I head to Taipei City Hall Station and disembark, heading out Exit 2. Past the 7-Eleven, cross the street, make a right and walk one and a half blocks to my highschool.

10:25 Sign in with Mr. Lee. "Your late again," he reminds me. I try to explain that I like sleeping and he chuckles. "When did you go to sleep?" he asks, and I say 01:30. "Oh, you were up late watching TV or on Skype or surfing the web?" Yeah, that and playing video games. He says he thinks I'm too old for video games. At some point, I looked at the sign-in sheet and found that my average "in" time has been close to 09:30. Monday, I arrived at 08:30. I mention that it would be awesome if I could be here that early all the time, and Mr. Lee agrees. Before I head off to Class 218, I ask Mr. Lee if there is any sort of Japanese class here at the school. There is and they meet on Thursdays from 4:00PM to 5:50PM. See you. Byebye.

10:30 Walk into the middle of math class and the teacher barely glances my way. I take out my datebook and cross off the last three days. "Three more months," crosses my mind and I turn to today and look at what I've planned for myself. Write a poem, work on Creepy ManDog, read One Hundred Years of Solitude. I start reading a little while eating a peanutbutter sandwich and then I decide to lose myself in Creepy ManDog for the next two hours, from math through english, until something the english teacher says inspires me to draw a cowboy saying, "Avenue ever heard of Sherrif Willis?" to a horse saying, "Nosiree," and give it to Leo who sits behind me right now.

12:00 It's lunch time. I eat the banana in my breakfast bag and Leo and I head to the school's food sales division. I buy a bottle of Lemon Red Tea and a BaoZi and pay the $28. Leo trades me a $10 coin for 10 $1 coins as we walk back to the classroom. I tell Leo about Final Fantasy and the Japanese class which would maybe help me understand a little more of what they're saying in Final Fantasy (because it's all in Japanese). I give my bag of little sweet tomatoes to the girl next to Leo because I don't really like them. I try to eat some of the BaoZi, but my insides are a little disagreeable, so I take a few bites and swig some tea and save the rest for later.

12:30 Nap time. I try to sleep on my hat. I drool a little. The bell rings.

13:00 Biology class. I debate whether to pull out the Biology book I paid for this morning. I pull out One Hundred Years of Solitude instead and read the whole period.

14:00 I decide to slip out to the library, but stop at the bathroom first. In the library, I check my e-mail. 21 new messages. I delete half of them. Those remaining include: two from Dad, one about an evening Chinese class, a few about picture comments on Facebook, a few from the Fastwebs scholarship search, and a few from an online literary magizine tht I've forgotten my password for. I look at the picture comments and then the one about the evening chinese class, which I decided against taking. I open up the first one from Dad about SLOBs, but the page it links to won't load correctly, so I'll figure it out later. The second one from Dad brings me a fresh perspective on what I've been up to lately and it brings me down a little bit while at the same time giving me a little encouragement. I make a picture called "Lazer Stone" which a classmate says is cute, but a can't figure out how to save it.

14:30 I start writing this blog.

15:54 I write this sentence.

16:00 I leave the library gather my things and walk home to clean my room and start getting ready to change families on Sunday. Probably will make another self-portrait using the traditional chinese office supplies.

23:00 Please be asleep.