With finals approaching, maybe this was a dying flash of the setting sun? This issue of New Island saw an astonishing number of people showing up, especially those rare and hard-to-see exotic beasts, including four old-timers I had summoned, as well as Senior Brother Botian, who parachuted in on his own!
Originally I had pulled those folks together for lunch; as it happened, there are usually no outsiders around before and after noon, which gave the old-timers plenty of room to let loose. Who would have thought that a certain group of people wouldn’t show up for lunch until around half past one or two o’clock = =|||
In the morning, classmate sjc came by to return and borrow books. Since he is also the quiet type, he mainly just read and we didn’t really talk about anything. Given that he didn’t even know the legendary ZW, I suggested that he stay and take a look before leaving. In the end, he only got to see it after one o’clock in the afternoon. After that, sjc tactfully departed. Actually, he could have thick-skinned it and stayed to watch for a bit, though there wasn’t much to the conversation afterward anyway.
Not long after the three rare beasts who arrived first had taken their seats, dr came too. Later, Senior Brother Botian made his grand entrance, and Ya Li didn’t arrive until after Xiaobao had left. It is said that when that group of people are in front of outsiders, they put on a respectable front and can’t really let loose, but that can hardly be blamed on them, can it? If they had come at noon, there would have been enough time to let loose… Still, judging from today, everyone didn’t seem to be in top form either.
But in any case, today’s salon was pretty good. Although there wasn’t much in the way of in-depth exchange, every visitor except me at least met someone they had not known before, which counts as a gain in experience points; if we have the chance to meet and talk again in the future, perhaps we’ll be able to chat more.
After that group withdrew, Senior Brother Botian explained some academic topics to me and the two junior sisters. The topics themselves were interesting, but more importantly, it was really not very common in this salon to have someone appear as the main speaker; aside from me, there truly haven’t been many. Senior Brother Botian showed us a different style and temperament.
In the evening, Senior Brother stayed behind to read and translate for quite some time, and no other classmates came by.
Seen hanging around here today: sjc/zw/wx/qyb/dr/xsl/zbt/qy
Possible theme for next time: requests welcome.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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