The end of an era

*msn: Funny how it seems like nothing at all.

So this is it, then. Today I went for my last ever lecture as a Melbourne University undergraduate student. (For the sake of posterity, it was Investments by Qi Zeng re: floating bonds and swaps, and will stop now before you stop reading.)

I wanted to write down straight away just how it feels and not wait till later because how I remember feeling is probably never quite the same as how I really felt. (The mind is a frighteningly efficient filter.)

I don’t feel much, though. Maybe it’s because I haven’t sat for the exams yet. Maybe it hasn’t yet sunk in. Maybe it's the fact that most of my Commerce friends (and thus the people I see most often) graduated last year, and so there’s less to miss for me.

But today, and for the past few weeks, I’ve felt like two different people walking around campus; me, and the me who saw it all for the first time 3 ½ years ago.

The buildings I couldn’t find, though they were right in front of me.

The path I used to take from Ormond (where I would, every single day, continually attempt to walk the straightest of lines to avoid wasting energy. I was lazy.) past the athletics track *ogle ogle*.

The swimming pool which was dry when I first saw it and remained dry until the beginning of last year.

The road to the Engineering building – the only place in uni I could recognize during the entire Orientation week.

Student admin, where I, after an 8-hour flight (during which I threw up continually and was unable to sleep), at a Malaysian 6 a.m., took the hideously puffy-eyed photo for my student card which was to haunt me throughout my student life.

The bench outside Wilson Hall where I used to wait for Boyfriend. (In extreme cold, might I add.)

My first lecture ever – Mathematics A, 620-141, with a lecturer whose accent we imitate to this day.

O-week at Ormond; weird activities, and insane, drunk, people.

My room in Ormond, in Picken C, populated by insane, drunk, people.

The shared toilets with *euww* no locks on the shower doors. (I moved out after 6 months.)

Discovering Union House and only ever eating from the Chinese food stall for the first 2 months.

The first meal my friends and I cooked together. (This was nightmarish…8 of us, crowded into a tiny apartment, arguing over how best to cook oyster-black-sauce chicken…

“Cut the drumsticks!”

“No, no, just slice the flesh!”

“Eh, how do you know if there’s enough soya sauce in the marinade??”

“Taste it lah, ha ha ha”

………

“EUWWW DID YOU JUST TASTE THE SAUCE FROM THE RAW CHICKEN???”

“YOU SAID WAN WAT!!!”

“JOKING lah!!!”

“Ai yah, never mind, we’re Malaysian. Everything also can eat.”)

Using the public phone in the lobby of the Royal Children’s Hospital, because none of us had working phone lines for the first few days.

Getting chased out of the Royal Children’s Hospital for using their public phone.

My very first handphone!! (Nokia 3310 - don’t laugh, it was free.)

Even our arrival at the airport, with the small trolleys, adorable sniffer dogs, and unbelievably (like eye-popping unbelievable) long line of Asian students, each bearing carton after carton of instant noodles, seasonings, pots (I kid you not)…we love our food.

Are my memories regressing? Well *pbht* they’re my memories, and they can come in whatever order they like.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because I want to go backwards too, and do it all over again.

Okay, now I’m sad.

Memories…fill the corners of my mind…

Too many to remember,

Too easy to forget.

Thank God for the friends who will remind us when we do;

They would not be half as precious had they not been made with you.

You see how corny I am? Now you know how sad I really feel.

And now I know too.