The Same Old Story

Looking in this morning filled me with melancholic nostalgia and reminded me of an incident many years ago when my father paid a surprise visit while I was a second year student.

I was breaking every single rule of the hostel with a KFC take-away, a bottle of cheap wine and a girl in my room. Luckily my roommate - who promised to occupy himself elsewhere for a while - saw my father arriving and came to warn me. I shoved the wine and the food into the flustered girl’s arms and told her to disappear out through the back where I brought her in. I rushed down the stairs to intercept my father to give her a chance to get away.

“I did not expect you,” I said and he said that he wanted to surprise me. Well, he certainly did that but for some reason it felt more than a disturbance.

“The same old staircase,” my father said, reminding me for the umpteenth time that he studied at the same institution and lived in the same hostel when he was my age. “The same old rooms,” he said as we entered my room. By that time he had tears in his eyes. “The same old wardrobes,” he continued as he opened the wardrobe. To my consternation it revealed an embarrassed girl standing there with disheveled hair; a bottle of wine and a KFC box in her hands.

“She… She just came to fetch a book,” I managed to say.

My father looked at me with something immeasurable in his eyes and with a long sigh said: “And the same old excuse.”

So now I come here ascending the familiar old stairs and walking the haunted passages of CS; heading straight for the blogs. I observe a lot of new faces, a lot of missing faces and even more of the old faces.

And I say to myself, what a wonderful… Shit no! Still the same old… what! I don’t know but somehow it is still the same old … uh… whatever.

But it is great seeing you guys again.

Have a wonderful day