Mid-Autumn Festival

It’s Mid-Autumn Festival, yet it feels completely flavorless. The sun outside is scorching. I had planned to go out, but the conversation just fizzled and that was that. In our lives there’s nothing we absolutely must do, and nothing we absolutely mustn’t do—at least during university years we can say that.

As a modern-day Indoorsy Person shouldering the great task of building the motherland, when it’s time to relax I naturally turn to one or two anime or dramas to pass the loneliness. I’ve got The Big Bang Theory in my collection. Whenever I’m bored or in a bad mood, that show is genuinely good medicine. Sheldon’s antics have literally made the corners of my mouth sore from smiling. Someone with that kind of genius-level IQ and zero emotional intelligence is genuinely hard to talk to. I’ve also been unconsciously imitating classic lines from the show. In Season 3 Episode 16, when Sheldon uses a slideshow to explain to Penny that he has to go to Switzerland in her place to visit the Large Hadron Collider, he says those two strange lines to her: “AKA me” and “AKA you.” Couldn’t find them on Baidu or Google. The Chinese subtitles translated them as “就是我” and “就是你.” Later I found out on Wenwen that “AKA” is short for “Also Known As.” Checked it—yep, exactly. A few hours of entertainment suddenly felt meaningful just because I learned an abbreviation.

Tieba says people like me who spend the whole Mid-Autumn Festival online must be under a lot of pressure. I agree. When I went to the cafeteria for lunch today, it should’ve been packed at that hour, but it was completely empty. The atmosphere seemed to be hinting that I should go out for a proper meal. So yeah, tonight our dorm is going out to eat. Last semester our whole class had a Mid-Autumn meal together. I was hoping for the same this semester, but there’s been zero movement. Probably the direct result of rising CPI. Can’t really blame the decline of social morals.

Whenever any holiday rolls around, it’s also the day China Mobile’s heart aches. People like us who have hundreds of texts a month but almost never use them suddenly become active. You send one, I send one back, but it always circles back to “Happy Holidays.” There’s a certain melancholy in that.