Recent Miscellaneous Notes on Life (November 22, 2007)

The blog has been rather desolate lately, which means life has been rather decadent too. Though one ought to read more English and write fewer blog posts, to be honest I haven’t been reading much English either during this period. I have still read several books, only I’ve been too lazy to record them on the blog.

Of course, decadent is decadent, but I’m not actually down in the dumps. Aside from the occasional matter or two, everything is very pleasant. This year’s birthday was also pretty good; compared with the past two years, this year was really full of hope and anticipation.

Of course, birthdays are inevitably sentimental, especially when you spend the birthday alone. How should I put it? Even without the story from two years ago, just the festival of the next day is enough to set off associations; add to that this rather “2” age…

There has always been a contradiction in my heart: on the one hand, I like solitude and like being alone; whenever I’m in a crowded place, I always feel ill at ease. But on the other hand, I’m afraid of it. Uneasy, feverish, cold.

One trip to Carrefour to buy a week’s worth of food, and I can tuck myself away at home without going out again. Add to that the fact that I’ve skipped class continuously for these past two weeks, and I can easily end up not leaving the house for three or four days in a row. During this time, I haven’t just not spoken a single word; I haven’t even seen another person. The whole world has been only me, with the network remaining the sole window to the outside world. Especially lately, after being “heavily entrusted” by Teacher Wu, I was assigned to be the administrator of the Keke Net BBS, so there has been a bit of interaction; but of course I still see no one and can’t say a single word to anyone.

I used to live a similar life when I rented a place at Yangrou Paoju, but back then I couldn’t cook for myself, so at least I still had to go out and mingle with people every day. Now that I can solve the food issue myself, I really can be “cut off from the world.”

When I sleep I have to draw the curtains, and in the daytime I’m too lazy to open them; after all, there’s no scenery worth looking at outside the window. The heating has started, and the room also has a central-air fresh-air vent, so there’s no need to open the window all day either… In short, everything is closed off everywhere, and I can’t see a single person.

I’ve said before that living alone doesn’t particularly make one “lonely” or anything; if you’re lonely, you may actually feel it more deeply in a crowd. But this life of shutting oneself off completely when alone is, after all, somewhat special. How should I say it? It’s not just loneliness, but also… lonesomeness? Some moods are really hard to describe.

Cooking is pleasurable; washing dishes and scrubbing pots is a bit annoying. Recently I’ve been cooking much more often, but my skill hasn’t yet improved significantly. First, I’m always too lazy to decide in advance what dish to make and then go buy the ingredients according to the recipe; instead, I first buy whatever ingredients I happen to get my hands on, and only then think about how to cook them. So many times I simply don’t look at the recipe at all and improvise wildly; second, this kind of technical work seems, after all, best taught hands-on. Otherwise, relying on myself alone to read recipes, I still can’t grasp them accurately—especially terms like “cook until five-tenths done,” “when the oil reaches seven-tenths heat,” “stir-fry for a moment,” “add an appropriate amount…” How am I supposed to know exactly how much five-tenths or seven-tenths is? Third, I basically only make each dish once. It’s not that I don’t want to practice repeatedly, but rather that my method of buying ingredients first and cooking afterward means I rarely get the chance to keep trying the same dish continuously. Of course, I believe cooking is one of those things where practice makes perfect; given enough time, I should eventually get the hang of it~

Eating is always a bit more uncomfortable than cooking. First of all, I often run into things so badly cooked that they’re nearly inedible… Things I had previously only seen in cartoons—dishes with such impressive “killing power” that after one bite the face turns green and cold sweat breaks out, and after forcefully eating them to spare the cook’s feelings, one ends up bedridden. I used to think that was certainly just cartoon exaggeration, but now I finally know it’s possible in reality too… Of course, this kind of situation mainly happened in the early stage when I was just learning; the things I make recently are basically no longer life-threatening. In addition, because when I don’t go to class (if I do go to class, I eat at school) I basically only eat two meals a day—I eat “breakfast” at noon, mainly frozen foods, and only eat one proper meal at night—leftovers have to be kept for at least 24 hours before they can be reused, which isn’t very good, so basically I just finish whatever I cook on the spot. But this often makes eating feel gloomy, because no matter how I do it, the dishes I make are at least always enough for two people; they always seem more fitting for two people to eat together. Of course, it’s possible to control the quantity of ingredients and make smaller portions, but then one has to adjust the recipe and the heat, which is always terribly troublesome. As for cooking rice, there’s no way I can ever get exactly one person’s portion right either (unless it’s burnt). After all the fuss, once it’s done, it always gives the impression that another person should be eating it too, and then it would be just right. At first I would make two dishes for every meal, one meat and one vegetable, but no matter how I ate them it still felt like too much, so for now I basically only make one dish per meal. Although I’m getting better and better at controlling the portions, I still often accidentally make too much. That’s really awkward: if I eat it, I get overly full; if I throw it away, it’s a pity; if I save it for the next day, that’s not good either…

Recently, my diet has actually been rather monotonous. As for meat, I mainly rotate chicken, beef, and mutton; I’ve never bought pork. Anyway, pork these days isn’t much cheaper than other meats, and I also quite like chicken, beef, and mutton. The vegetables are mainly potatoes, carrots, celery, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, chestnuts, leafy greens, bitter melon, bok choy, and so on (roughly listed from higher to lower frequency). Of course, eggs are also something I often eat. Since I can’t get up in the morning, all the ingredients are bought at the supermarket (Carrefour or Sifang). The vegetables there are really expensive. And because I dislike the trouble of standing in line to have things weighed, the vegetables I buy at Carrefour are often the pre-weighed and bagged kind, such as “quality system vegetables,” “pollution-free vegetables,” and even “organic vegetables,” and so on—in short, the more expensive kind. When all is said and done, cooking for myself really saves no money at all; on the contrary, it may actually make food costs higher. By the way, I now use olive oil for stir-frying—well, olive oil tastes pretty good, it’s just a bit expensive…

Such a luxurious life really gives me a certain sense of guilt. Of course, in terms of everyday spending, all I really do is spend a lot on books and use a bit more on meals. But I still feel it’s fairly acceptable. Compared with some people’s spending on cosmetics, clothing, and so on, it’s not really that high either. The most sinful thing is really this apartment… um… let me not say more for the moment.

Very few people have come to my private residence. Up to now, basically everyone who ought to have come has already come; perhaps I’ll invite a few more classmates over to have a look.

This piece was originally meant to be a casual writing about emotional activity, but it seems to have failed—I can’t write it clearly. So be it.

November 22, 2007

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Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.