Chu Vân Hương
(Van Huong)
Điều hành viên
In a boarding school…
Day 1:
I am sitting on my bed, having absolutely nothing to do and bored to death. J, my roommate, is trying on her hats. She has a huge love for hats and put them all inside her little closet in our room. I don’t have much comment about hats. Hers all look ridiculously funny to me. Their colors are odd and the designs are very special (you can hardly find a second version of them).
Once in a while, J would bring out her camera, tries to take as many pictures of herself as possible, then puts them on her website later. If I am asked to guess what J is doing without seeing her at the moment, I would say she is working on her web. She devotes all her time for that web page. You would think if she can spend half the time sitting in front of her computer to study, she would be a straight-A student by now.
“M, what are you doing,” J asks.
I can tell that she is getting bored. “Nothing, just writing some stuff down,” I reply.
“Oh…” a moment of silence. J doesn’t know what to do now. Talking to me is used to be a way to kill her time. But I am writing.
Poor J.
“Why don’t you make some noodle while I’m finish writing this?” I ask.
“O.k.” replies she, just as quickly as I expected.
J goes boil the water. She gets the bags of noodle out from her drawer. We don’t use our drawer to store books or notebooks or school supplies. We use them to store food. In the beginning of the year, our room was filled with food. You can see food everywhere, in every drawer and every corner. It was the happy golden time. But we ate them all. So now we are left with noodles. Not that we don’t like noodles, but we just like to have more option. It sounds much better to ask “what do you want to eat, M? Cookies, soup, congee, potato snacks or noodle?” rather than “what do you want to eat, M? Black noodle, yellow noodle or white noodle?”
The hall way outside our room is also very quiet now. Normally people would talk on the phone for a long time until they can stop themselves from talking. Everyone likes to talk, especially in an all-girl school. You are just so desperate to hear a guy’s voice. But I guess it’s quite late now. People would have gone to bed because we still have school tomorrow. I wish it was Friday today. Unfortunately, most of my wishes have never come true.
The housemother in the dorm usually checks our room at 11:00 p.m. to make sure we go to bed on time. Because we are not dorm leaders, we have to sleep in the sleeping porch, where ten to twelve girls share a bed room (luckily it’s not sharing a bed). But let not talk about the sleeping-porch story. I could go on forever on that topic. However, J and I don’t sleep in there. We sleep in our room. I have moved my mattress from the sleeping porch into my room in the beginning of the year. When the winter season started, J moved in with me and has remained here until now. So every night, we have to turn off the light before eleven, cover our face under the blanket and pretend we are sleeping. The housemother or whoever comes to check the room that night can’t be so mean as to wake us up. They will just have to give up and leave us alone.
I can smell the noodle is done. I look up and see J eating them. What the hell? “Where is mine?” I ask.
“What? I thought you said you didn’t want to eat,” J answers, looking surprising.
“Who said that?”
“You, remember? You said you didn’t feel like eating!” says J.
“Oh my god, I was just kidding!” I answer angrily.
Now I am seriously in need for some noodle. It’s just a natural thing that when you can’t have something, you want it more. Or just because I am smelling the noodles and they are calling my name. But I can’t eat them. Ahhh… this is bad. All I have in my draw are a chocolate-chip cookie, a crunchy candy bar and… that’s it! What am I going to do with my unsatisfied stomach? And how could J believe that I did not want any noodle? Hell yeah…I am always in the mood for some noodle, or just food in general.
“Oh my god, M, this movie is so sad!” says J without knowing that I am probably more sad than the movie.
She is watching one of my Korean movies right now. I have brought back more than thirty movies from my country (they are much cheaper there). Most of them are in my language except for some Korean ones still having the Korean audio.
“Awe…this is so cute… the little boy…” J says in amusement.
O.k. I am getting sleepy now and my stomach is feeling empty. To hell with it! I’m going to bed. There is no energy left to do anything now. I’ll talk more when I have something in my stomach. Adios for now!
Written by Phương My
Day 1:
I am sitting on my bed, having absolutely nothing to do and bored to death. J, my roommate, is trying on her hats. She has a huge love for hats and put them all inside her little closet in our room. I don’t have much comment about hats. Hers all look ridiculously funny to me. Their colors are odd and the designs are very special (you can hardly find a second version of them).
Once in a while, J would bring out her camera, tries to take as many pictures of herself as possible, then puts them on her website later. If I am asked to guess what J is doing without seeing her at the moment, I would say she is working on her web. She devotes all her time for that web page. You would think if she can spend half the time sitting in front of her computer to study, she would be a straight-A student by now.
“M, what are you doing,” J asks.
I can tell that she is getting bored. “Nothing, just writing some stuff down,” I reply.
“Oh…” a moment of silence. J doesn’t know what to do now. Talking to me is used to be a way to kill her time. But I am writing.
Poor J.
“Why don’t you make some noodle while I’m finish writing this?” I ask.
“O.k.” replies she, just as quickly as I expected.
J goes boil the water. She gets the bags of noodle out from her drawer. We don’t use our drawer to store books or notebooks or school supplies. We use them to store food. In the beginning of the year, our room was filled with food. You can see food everywhere, in every drawer and every corner. It was the happy golden time. But we ate them all. So now we are left with noodles. Not that we don’t like noodles, but we just like to have more option. It sounds much better to ask “what do you want to eat, M? Cookies, soup, congee, potato snacks or noodle?” rather than “what do you want to eat, M? Black noodle, yellow noodle or white noodle?”
The hall way outside our room is also very quiet now. Normally people would talk on the phone for a long time until they can stop themselves from talking. Everyone likes to talk, especially in an all-girl school. You are just so desperate to hear a guy’s voice. But I guess it’s quite late now. People would have gone to bed because we still have school tomorrow. I wish it was Friday today. Unfortunately, most of my wishes have never come true.
The housemother in the dorm usually checks our room at 11:00 p.m. to make sure we go to bed on time. Because we are not dorm leaders, we have to sleep in the sleeping porch, where ten to twelve girls share a bed room (luckily it’s not sharing a bed). But let not talk about the sleeping-porch story. I could go on forever on that topic. However, J and I don’t sleep in there. We sleep in our room. I have moved my mattress from the sleeping porch into my room in the beginning of the year. When the winter season started, J moved in with me and has remained here until now. So every night, we have to turn off the light before eleven, cover our face under the blanket and pretend we are sleeping. The housemother or whoever comes to check the room that night can’t be so mean as to wake us up. They will just have to give up and leave us alone.
I can smell the noodle is done. I look up and see J eating them. What the hell? “Where is mine?” I ask.
“What? I thought you said you didn’t want to eat,” J answers, looking surprising.
“Who said that?”
“You, remember? You said you didn’t feel like eating!” says J.
“Oh my god, I was just kidding!” I answer angrily.
Now I am seriously in need for some noodle. It’s just a natural thing that when you can’t have something, you want it more. Or just because I am smelling the noodles and they are calling my name. But I can’t eat them. Ahhh… this is bad. All I have in my draw are a chocolate-chip cookie, a crunchy candy bar and… that’s it! What am I going to do with my unsatisfied stomach? And how could J believe that I did not want any noodle? Hell yeah…I am always in the mood for some noodle, or just food in general.
“Oh my god, M, this movie is so sad!” says J without knowing that I am probably more sad than the movie.
She is watching one of my Korean movies right now. I have brought back more than thirty movies from my country (they are much cheaper there). Most of them are in my language except for some Korean ones still having the Korean audio.
“Awe…this is so cute… the little boy…” J says in amusement.
O.k. I am getting sleepy now and my stomach is feeling empty. To hell with it! I’m going to bed. There is no energy left to do anything now. I’ll talk more when I have something in my stomach. Adios for now!
Written by Phương My