Friday evening at eight o clock, I turn off the computer, leave the office. At half past eight, I arrive home. Turn on my computer. And now My weekend officially starts! And this is it. I will be alone around this 40 square room on my own until Monday morning.
I do hate weekends these days.
I prefer normal working days, not because that I love my job, just because I could feel people being around, working, passing by, talking even though in a language that I don’t understand too much, or doing whatever. But they are real people. Most of the time, I sit in front of my desk doing calculations and coding in my computer; receiving or writing emails; reading science papers if necessary, or surfing around and chatting with online friends occasionally. There have been no seminars in English ever since I started working here; But I go to a group meeting weekly on Friday mornings for one hour. There I talk in English because I will not be able to make myself clear about complicated science speaking Italian. Other group members speak Italians between them and would switch to English if talking to me is necessary. Every time I appreciate this when they try to make an effort.
During working hours, from time to time, I go with my colleagues to take a coffee, have a chat either in English that they don’t catch much or in Italian that I can’t speak a lot yet. Mostly, I just stand there thinking randomly or even switching off my brain while everybody is speaking and laughing in Italian. At the beginning I had a sense of guilty cause I really want to understand more and get involved in and so I tried very hard to catch words here and there. I translate to myself by heart : “Ok, Silvia likes palma ham” … ” Well, they had a pizza last night” … “Wait, somebody is in hospital. But who? “… “hmmm…What is the word ‘infelice’? It sounds familiar. ’felice’ is happy, so ‘infelice’ should be unhappy. Ok….Not bad…. But wait, what are they talking about now ? ” …. Like this. After a few minutes, with the topic changing and people speaking fast, I started having a headache and it was almost impossible to follow everything. On the other hand, I would only sound more stupid if I tried to say or ask anything. I don’t like myself speaking stupidly in general and so I basically give up getting into any conversations. I had the feelings that I wanted to bang my head against the wall or go under the shower and cry. After a while that I got used to this kind of situations, I just switch off my hearing and stand there as a statue, neither being annoyed nor sad.
Even so, I still like working hours. At least there are people around. During the evenings of weekdays, I go to the choir twice a week and I am happy that my evenings could be occupied like that. Occasionally I go out to have dinners with colleagues, of course experiencing the same communication situation as I had during the day. Otherwise, I stay in facing the computer most of the evenings feeling bored and waiting for the time to go to bed. I want to watch movies, but there are no free movies online and I don’t bother to download illegal ones. I want to watch TVs, but I try ten minutes on Italian TVs and I give up to switch to BBC … Then after half an hour, I found myself watching the same news reported as the second or the third time in a loop. Everyday, I try to play a little bit of piano, but never for hours.
Yes, indeed, cooking would take part. I cook sometimes complicated dinners so that I have more time occupied. I make either Italian or Chinese food. I don’t like deep-fried and oil-based north European food or full-of-spices Indian cuisine. But in general I like trying different receipts. However, the problem of cooking is that you spend half an hour shopping, a good hour cooking, and only 15 minutes to finish the food on your own, and then another 20 minutes washing up. Therefore, unless one is constantly in a great mood for delicious dishes, making a proper dinner is really something highly time-consuming with pretty low-output business to do on one’s own. So i guess most people living alone would choose fast made food.
Another thing is writing, like now what I am doing. I successfully killed one hour tonight. But I don’t want to do this every day. It easily gets too long and too boring. Nobody wants to read this. Actually nobody does. This is just another broken-pencil (pointless) business. By the way, the reason I switched from Chinese to English in my blog is just because (1) I want to keep my English level while not being able to live in English speaking world at the moment; (2) I could be more direct when writing in English. Certain things I can’t say in Chinese cause it may sound embarrassing; (3) my old friends don’t need to know my boring, depressing, and annoying complaints these days (4) I am definitely not a betrayer of my own culture: I love Chinese; I love Chinese writing; and I believe I do speak and write decent Chinese still.
Anyway, so, weekends are just the sum-up of all these boring evenings. Much longer, maybe ten times longer. I try to force myself to cheer up. But I fail most of time. I really want weekends to pass faster.
OK, yes, I can go back to the office to work during weekends. But my body just can’t take that. My eyes gets sparking, my shoulders hurt and my back becomes sour already from five days a week sitting in front of the computer. Also, only very sad scientist or nerds work in the office during weekends. I still consider myself as not-so-sad scientist and not-so-nerd workaholics. Am I wrong ? Maybe I don’t have a clear recognition of myself.
Ok, yes, I could use this time to learn Italian as I have always been telling myself to do. But sitting down with a book learning the language is the most boring and the least efficient thing in the world. Disagree ? How many of the Chinese students could speak proper English after 10 years of learning from textbooks ? On the other hand, my mother tongue is Chinese while I work all day in English environment: read, write, speak and think in English. The language of English is like a virtual machine installed on my Chinese system. Finally, after years and years of running and updating, it runs fast and smoothly most of the time. However, trying to install another system ‘Italian’ on my virtual machine is not as easy as I thought. I had to translate everything between English and Italian in order to speak and understand. The system is totally unstable and it crashes all the time. I suppose if I had a real English system, e.g. a parallel system rather than a virtual machine, things would turn out better. But I have heard that it is impossible to do so if one is older than 11 years. There is almost no way if one wants to speak & think a language as a native speaker after this age.
Ok, maybe I am just looking for excuses. The real fact is that I am not able to put myself together only because I am intrinsically weak-willed and thoroughly depressed to be alone all the time. I thought I was different couple of years ago. I enjoyed my own space and I felt time could be more-efficiently spent on my own. What is wrong with me nowadays? Am I getting old ? Or Am I getting mad ?
Please, please, stay strong, stay positive. Please. There is still a long way to go in front. Be brave and look ahead.