Old School

The biggest problem with being done with exams is having nothing to do. This has been made much worse by the bank holiday this weekend. Everything is closed till Tuesday, so I'm stuck try to pack my things up a bit. Packing means leaving, and before very long packing starts to bring me down a bit, so I stop.

My solution was to bang my head against a bug in the Mac operating system that makes the vintage game Starcraft (humans and aliens at war, it never gets old) unable to play. Gradually the game becomes less stable, stops being able to save, and then just starts wreaking all kinds of havoc. Once I got the game working I played until about an hour ago. I'd beaten most of the first campaign and had gotten to the really really hard bits. I'm starting to get just a little too hard to tackle the game at that level. Its the kind of scenario where you're totally surrounded etc. etc. Everything is going wrong all at once and such.

The real end to my playing was a knock on my window, which I'd left open to get some fresh air and night breeze in to my room. I took my headphones off and looked up from the screen, wondering if I was going to get the pleasant surprise of a friend passing by, instead I was greeted by a stranger who seemed to be on one substance or another based on his affect. I went over slowly and asked him "who are you looking for man, I don't recognize you." He said he'd just seen my light on and wanted to say hi. Well, fair enough. We shook hands through the crack, and wished each other goodnight. He went unsteadily on his way a few seconds later. I decided I'd close my window and lower the shade though.

I've been mentally inserting "the last time I'll... in Cardiff" in front of things. All good things do come to an end, but I have plenty of wonderful things to look forward to. Though the people may be an ocean away, though the instance and the immediate emotion may fade and memories become hazy, I try to remind myself that experiences never really end. This will be with me for the rest of my life, constantly being rethought and reevaluated, new things will come from it, and in bursts of happy deja vu I'll remember clearly again. When I remind myself of these things, I smile even at my leaving.