Man/ Machine interface

Sunday was the end of my grandfather’s birthday party and the town he’s from made quite a feast of it. He’s quite the celebrity there, you see. His music (he’s a composer) is actually performed in quite a few countries, it seems, especially out in the former East Bloc. My mother, my sister and I decided to go for a few hours (my studies didn’t permit me to go longer). Because we were so late in making that decision, there really weren’t any tickets left, not even for family. Still, we ended up sitting outside of a large tent where inside they were playing one of his earlier works, quite beautifully.

I fell asleep lying in the grass. I guess I really was completely exhausted. So I didn’t catch much of the concert at all. Still, the little bits I did hear were quite nice. I’m not sure if it was worth driving an hour there and an hour back, but hey – there were other reasons to go.

Like seeing my mother, who I really don’t get to see very much of. She came down last Wednesday and left yesterday. In total I only managed to spend about four hours with her. That’s about how long she needs to drive one way to get here. Of course I’m not the only reason she comes down. She’s got quite an active social life (more active then mine, at the moment) and I’m sure she wasn’t bored for a moment. It’s just another symptom of the underlying problem of too much to do and to few hours to do it in.

I still try to motivate myself to put in all the hours by saying ‘yeah, but I just spent eight months doing nothing in India’. Of course it wasn’t ‘just’. It was six months ago. I wonder how much longer I’ll be able to use that, before I’ll start telling myself ‘that no longer counts, that’s ancient history’.

Fortunately, yesterday there was suddenly some time left over and today class got cancelled, which gives me a short reprieve. In true me fashion, I directly started wasting time. Buy furniture for my room, read ahead for class, or get new sport shoes that actually fit in my bag? Why? Let’s instead download a really old game and spend the next hour and a half playing it.

What to do? What else is there to do but try and work harder and hope that I can survive these moments of wasted time. Truth be told, where formerly it used to be easy for me to waste days and even weeks doing what was entertaining but ultimately useless, now it has been restricted to a few hours at most. Maybe one day I’ll be able to avoid wasting time. Maybe that’s when I’ve finally rejected all of my humanity.

I wonder what I would look like in chrome steel.

No, I don’t really know what I’m talking about either.