// rohitsrealm.com / archive / 2003 / 04
Sunday. It's laundry day. The last two have resulted in me discovering the bottom rung of society as well as realizing that the laundromat is the worst place ever. Today was no exception to this general trend of horrible laundromat experiences, but I think it was the most significant because it was very upsetting to me. Let me describe it from the beginning.
Last week I finished up what was remaining of the big stressful assignments of the semester. My last pchem midterm was Monday, my big English paper was due Tuesday. In order to celebrate, I watched two movies on Friday night, alone, by myself, and polished off an entire pizza from Domino's.
Everyone mildly complains about people who talk a lot, will never shut up, and love the sound of their own voice. But no one really rips these bastards. I'm going to take the liberty of doing so.
This was initially going to be a huge rant about the time I spent at the laundromat yesterday, but I was preoccupied by pchem, ee, and english yesterday and didn't have an opportunity to write about what I saw yesterday. Now that I think about it, I'm not as pissed as I was yesterday -- there were no encounters with bums. Only encounters with obnoxious college students, but I think I have a better avenue through which to vent about that, so I'm going to save that rant for another day. Instead, I wanted to discuss something which caught my eye today on the front page of the NY Times.
The last couple days were a bit of stress, a bit of fun -- a lot of exhaustion. So on Saturday, I hung out with CalSO folks and we went bowling and then got some dinner. It was a ton of fun. I hadn't been bowling in so long -- and it really showed. Couldn't break a hundred on either game. Wow! That sucked. We ate at Pasta Pomodero again, which I guess has become some kind of thing now. Second time around was better than the first. There was talk about wearing black robes and (guys) bleaching our hair for the summer. CalSO is not a cult.
Warning: The following post will most likely make you lose all respect for me as a person. I ask that if you do have a shred of respect for me at this time, to refrain from reading this post. However, for the majority of you who don't respect me to begin with, by all means, read ahead and relish in the fact that you are in fact way cooler than me.
For the last few months, the notion of my apparent future has depressed me to no end. I looked upon my life at the age of 19 and knew what was there. Nothing. A college degree. A professional degree. A job. A marriage. Kids. Bills. Mortgage. House. Suburbia. Materialism. Meaningless life ending in uneventful death. That must sound morbid. But when I looked upon my future a few months or a few days ago, that's what I saw. For as long as I can remember, my goal has always been monetary success. Amassing as much wealth and power as I could possibly amass. But in the clarity of post-adolescence, I see what this accomplishment can bring me. My best-case scenario is nothing but mediocrity at the height of success. So what if I get rich? So what if I get a fancy car, a fancy house, a fancy wife, some fancy kids? What does that all mean? What is it all for? And how does that distinguish me from all the other rich pricks out there with everything I have? More than this knowledge is the depression arising from the acute awareness of all the closed doors in my past, that I myself have slammed shut in the interest of "success."
All right. Here we go. As my trend has been for the last few posts, I've been alternating between "touchy-feely" bullshit about growing up and ranting about many things wrong with this world and especially Berkeley. As the poor souls with nothing better to do with there lives (aka "regular readers of rohit's rants") know, my last post was about growing up. Thus, it's time for a rant.
My grandfather passed away yesterday. He was 84 years old. I got a phone call last night around 10 p.m. My dad broke the news to me immediately. I couldn't say anything for a moment. I didn't really know how to respond. I was definitely not expecting anything like that. I didn't even know he was sick. I guess being out here in Berkeley really cuts me out of the loop on a lot of stuff. My dad was speaking very calmly—too calmly. I didn't know how to respond to that either. The conversation was filled with long bouts of silence.
No, I did not go to a disco
or anything like that. Oh no. My day proved I was an even bigger loser. I spent nearly all of it at the library, learning about molecules and stuff. But that is nothing new. Read on, however, and learn what is.
