Well, almost the last day in the old apartment. Roommates have moved out and it's just me. I can't help but feel oppressed by the big empty space. I have moved quite a few times in my life, to places far or near, of changes big or small, and everytime this funny feeling accompanied me. Something about being in a limbo between two locations spooks me.

A particularly miserable day. So bad it is worth the trouble of blogging it.

I studied very very hard for today's midterm. Material is pretty easy and I was well prepared. My plan was to waltz in there, give the exam a through beating and exit. After the test, I was reasonably confident. But then I got a mediocore score. As far as academics goes, this feeling is the worst, to overprepare for something, to confidently expect something, and then have the rug pulled under you. The first midterms are always easiest, like that first tentative throw of frisby when you are not sure about the dog's catching abilities. It will only get much harder from now on, the disc will be thrown farther and farther away, with us always running after it, panting, tongue flapping in the wind to please our sadistic masters.

Even as I try to recover from the midterm debacle, in the afternoon I was supposed to go to an appointment at a distant place, I am a new driver in LA, so naturally I consulted mapquest.com, Thomas Guide, a AAA map until I planned out the route with a military precision that would have done the planners of Baghdad assault proud. So at 1400, I hopped into car clutching a slew of printouts and maps. Then I merge into the freeway and discovered the meaning of the word: traffic jam. Looking from the sky, I suppose, the entire city of LA would look like having a massive coronary. Homeric verses could be sung to the epic scale of this massive struggle of human beings, here is the bold Achilles, ramming his way here and there in his SUV, there is wily Odesseysius trying to sneak into the lane, and finally a noble Hector gallantly waved me to go ahead and merge ahead of him. After inching along for a hour or so under the baking sun in my un-air-conditioned car finally the jam started to ease and cars started to move faster and a light breeze is drifting in, and . . . wait, where am I? So I took another half hour or so to un-lose myself and I missed the appointment by a wide margin. So I made the bleak hour-drive home,and behind me, the Trojans laughing their heads off on the unchallenged ramparts of Troy.

Humor make everything seems all right, but today definitely was a terrible day for me. So on the scale of human misery this wouldn't amount much, but it's my life, and I am not interested in an objective analysis. All I know is that subjectively, today was very bad, and nothing could persuade me otherwise. I never liked those "It's a Wonderful Life" lessons that Uncle Ezra hands out like free mini-packs of tissue paper. Next time he suggest someone to "go walk in the park and breath the air etc etc" I want to suggest to him to go take a walk himself, instead of writing those bland pap that's the verbal equilvalent of Paxil.

Well anyway, now I've vented some spleen, now room for optimism can be found. The future is always tomorrow. I guess I will see what it will bring.

ps: I discovered a mole on my face that wasn't there before. Guess the LA sunshine is wrecking havoc in my skin cell DNA. Must keep an eye on it. So the possibility of cancer is added to today's list of unpleasant discoveries.

Sometimes, I feel like I am living in India. At this moment, the strong smell of curry is emanating from the kitchen, someone is blaring Indian pop-songs from out of the window, and I can dimly hear muffled conversations in Indian-accented english from next door.