Fee, the Library, and Other Short Stories

Stuffs that happened today:

I wore one of my favourite t-shirts, the Passenger shirt to class for the first time. I am not sure whether band t-shirts or t-shirts with a giant cartoon of an artiste is allowed in my college. But it was raining this morning, so I was like, hah, easy, I can just zip up my hoodie and no one will notice.

Class was short so I went to the DBKU City Library after buying six karipaps and drinking a can of Nescafe Latte. This is officially my favourite drink of the year because it makes me happy in a weird way. It is also rather obvious that I am madly obsessed with this library at the moment. Don't ask why. Wait, please ask why, and I'm going to explain anyway lol. Being in this library feels like I met an old friend, or visited my childhood home, or idk it's like the second best place to be in (after my own bedroom) and what's best is that I'm alone and free and wild happy for no real reason.

My visit to the library was planned since yesterday. I didn't want to go back home right away because I don't know what happened to many of the morning buses I always managed to hop on. There used to be like three buses in an hour a few weeks ago but yesterday I wanted for half an hour but no buses appeared. So I trusted my instincts and set a target to catch a bus at maybe 2-3pm.

And I'm planning to do this a bit more frequently in the future because I find it therapeutic in a way that I feel a sense of accomplishment when I can feel that I am capable of going to my favourite places alone. Don't get me wrong, I love home, but I also love having a little bit of time exercising my confidence in front of strangers without my family members around. I talk like I have a social disorder, but it does feel like that sometimes. I notice that I shake a bit when I'm talking to people who I'm not used to talking with. It's kinda annoying when you have no control over these kind of things. I'm working on it. 

I'm also in a mad race against time because I am 3 books behind my Goodreads Reading Challenge. I knowwww it's crazy that I'm doing this, but I want to feel that sense of accomplishment of reading 52 books this year. That's one book per week, heh, but some books took me one month to finish. Sitting in the library with no distractions enabled me to finish one book in 4 hours. Imagine if I stayed in the library for 24 hours..hahah. There's a crazy mindset that I have, that I should not connect my phone to the wifi or check all of my social media accounts, because I'm in a library so I should be reading (or studying, which I also did for like 20 minutes). Studying is boring. Blergh.

I entered the library at 9.30am sharp, and the best part is that this library opens at 9am, so I'm like one of the few people who came early, and I guess everyone's happy because it's like the start of the day, and one librarian said good morning to me, and the security guard also said good morning with a sincere smile, and my heart felt so warm and idk man isn't this world such a beautiful place? People who love their jobs (or attempt to love their jobs) make the world a better place. This is also one of the reasons why I love this library. It makes me question myself why the heck I didn't think of working in a library as one of my ambitions when I was younger.

I sat in silence while attempting to read John Grisham's Ford County. It is a collection of short stories so it wasn't that fun from page 1 until the end but some stories in it were so good (and some made me smile/laugh alone like a lonely, crazy person). Throughout the time I needed to finish this book it took me about 4 visits to the washroom because it was so cold (I know, TMI, but it's just peeing. Nothing to be ashamed of about peeing when you've been drinking latte and half a bottle of mineral water before sitting in a cold place). So I was like sitting down, getting up, walking out, and I gotta admit it was kinda embarrassing, but I believe that no one cares.

I also kinda took some break to check out some books on the shelves because while searching through the OPAC system I managed to find out that this library actually has dozens of Agatha Christie titles, and they have Tolkien's works as well, but so far I haven't seen any because hah, obvious reason, so many people are borrowing it and I guess it takes luck to find those books available one day. I wanted to ask weather I could make reservations, but I've bothered the same librarian I met the other day for like three times today and I don't want her to think that I'm an annoying kid so I guess that'll have to wait.

I found one book by Vonnegut and another by Neil Gaiman so yeah, that was kinda lucky of me today, so I felt that that was enough luck and I shouldn't be so greedy. Off I marched (to the same librarian, so now you know why I didn't want to bother her anymore, I don't know if anyone else thinks this way but if I was the one behind that counter I'd be "Oh, it's you again" which I guess pretty much explains why I kinda have a mad respect towards people who are still cool even after dealing with the same person for like, yknow, gazillion times in an hour.

After coming back from the trip to the washroom, it was around lunch hour and the security guard (the same woman who said good morning hours before) asked me whether I had taken my lunch ("Dah makan, dik?") and I guess I gotta polish my communication skills a bit because I knew I could've done better in answering. I could've followed John Cho's advice in that TV Show Selfie when Henry taught Eliza some important tips in these kind of situations. What happened today was I answered "Sik makan, hehe" (Not having lunch, hehe), smiled, and walked away. I could've said "Dah, akak dah?" (Yep, how about you?) which is like the ideal response but I'm so awkward and nothing I ever think of flows out so freely in my speech and actions. Heck, I finished that Dale Carnegie book only last week but it seems that I've forgotten the important stuffs I've learnt.

I finished reading Ford County and quickly returned it because I didn't want to bring it home again. Hardcover books are heavy. And expensive. A lot of risk carrying an RM80+ book around. I know, I'm kinda paranoid when I need to keep expensive stuffs that don't belong to me. Again, I went to the same librarian at the same counter. I know. I'm the champion in social akwardness. What made it worst is that she was actually working on something while discussing with another librarian and I didn't wait to hand in the book (because I needed to pee, again) so I was like, uh, should I linger, or should I walk away after saying thanks? So I lingered and waited until she scanned the barcode because again, I am a bit paranoid that what if I return the book but it doesn't get recorded in the system, and then I quickly left after it seems like the job is done. (No, I didn't repeat the same "OH, IT IS DONE?" question because I realised how weird that question is.) The problem is, I left right away after saying thanks and I almost reached the escalator (one feet was hanging, already about to step on the escalator) when they called me back, saying that I have four more books to be returned. Talking about the word "return", it can sound like "written" when I say it lazily in a very Malaysian way. Which is why I shouldn't speak lazily in a very Malaysian way. (Imagine shoving a John Grisham book in front of the counter and saying "written" it's like saying "hey look at this book I wrote this" ok I know my thoughts can be rather absurd). Back to the original story, see, this is why I always feel the need to make sure things are done before I leave any counters. Whenever I linger, I am actually supposed to leave already. Whenever I leave, I am actually supposed to wait. Why didn't they teach us these kind of skills in school. Don't tell me it's common sense. It's so hard to not feel so awkward.

I also sneakily placed a motivational bunny inside the pages of Ford County and this will be the first motivational bunny to be released into the wild. I'm hoping that it finds its way into the hands of a person who needs it. Good news is that I found the copy of KL Noir that I borrowed some weeks ago and the encouraging note that I left there was no longer to be seen when I crazily flipped through the pages this morning. It can mean two things--either the librarians checked the book and found the paper and threw it away, or yknow, someone who borrowed it after me thought that the quote encouraged him/her so s/he kept it. I hope it's the latter. I feel like that there's a fire burning in my soul. Sounds phony, I know. But it warms my heard knowing that someone at least read it. It was a quote I found on reddit, I guess I gotta share it here too: “Listen, I wish I could tell you it gets better, but it doesn't get better. You get better,” Apparently Joan Rivers said this. Pardon my ignorance but I don't know who Joan Rivers was until I googled this quote a few seconds ago.

So the remaining time I spent in the library was kinda boring after that because I decided to make some short notes for my quiz on Monday. I covered six topics because idk man, latte? Nescafe latte is like my happiness and productivity drug.

I left the library at around 1.45pm and I gotta love my instinct today because right after I arrived at the station, it was almost 2pm and I didn't wait too long for a bus to arrive. I was just guessing that there would be a bus at 2pm. I guess I have some good guessing skills.

I sat at the wrong side of the bus. I've made poor choices in my life and this is one of them. Lesson number 1 about riding buses from town is that in the morning you gotta sit at the right side of the bus and in the afternoon you gotta sit on the left side of the bus. Simple formula will result in sitting at the shady side so you don't have to squint and cringe at the sunlight that shines directly at your face. 

I sat next to a nurse and she asked where I was heading to, and I can guess why. I think she felt sorry because I had to sit at the sunnier side of the seat next to the window while she sat at the shadier side next to the aisle. Greedy people will usually refuse to let anyone sit next to them and sit at the shadier side, so it's like they have the whole seat for themselves because the seat next to the window isn't seatable. Please pardon the usage of a non-existent word there. Back to the story of the nurse, well, she actually wanted to switch sides with me because maybe she felt sorry that I had to sit on that sunny side after sacrificing my seat to her. But she was getting off in a few more stops so I didn't see the need to switch places and stand up so frequently so I said it's OK. Then I thought eh I could've attempted to strike up a conversation with her but then I didn't, because idk, I still can't bring myself to shake off the fear to chat with strangers. I always have this feeling that I might appear creepy than friendly. 

So yeah fast forward and I am now chilling while I have about 4 assignments to be completed HAHAHAHUUU.

I 'm having some future plans about the motivational bunny thingy but I'm afraid I gotta take baby steps first. I am thinking of making proper bookmarks with encouraging notes and leaving them in the library books but I'm not sure if that's even a legal thing to do on a large scale. And I have this crazy thought of making a small box full of bookmarks and leaving them at the library counter but again I don't even know if this is allowed. Like who knows what if the library boss thinks I'm a creep if I do so but this thought has been playing in my mind a few times already. I am thinking of how to do this without a trace and without the need to ask for anyone's permission (or without being needed to answer questions) so the only way that works so far is to leave these kind of stuffs in the books that I borrow, I guess. Any steps larger than that will probably expose myself to uncomfortable situations, and let's just hope the librarians don't actually check each page after people return books to them..because gosh, that would mean that all my motivational bunnies won't reach real people but librarians instead and what if they think it's some sort of vandalism, and what if you're actually not allowed to leave foreign things in library books and ohmai this is what I hate about myself. Every time I think of doing something harmless my mind screams to me that it can be harmful. I have a pretty strong survival mechanism, I guess. Anyway, right now I don't want to overthink it and just do whatever that I think is not wrong because #YOLO. 

If you read this from sentence 1 until the end, congratulations, even Fee doesn't think that she'll be rereading all this all over again. Coffee can do wonders