Hello Diary,

Today I haven't done much more than existed. Throughout the morning and afternoon we had lectures on psychiatry, hidden away in a series of minuscule, cramped rooms deep within the bowels of Trivandrum Medical College. We switched rooms, and lecturers, a number of times during the course of the day, but in retrospect, it's all a blur. I mean, I've had lectures in odd places before, but those rooms were bad. They all lacked ventilation and hardly seemed large enough to house enough oxygen for all of us to begin with. They were also, of course, very hot and humid, and held no chairs save one, reserved for the lecturer. We shared the various tables and desks as best we could. A professor would enter, sit down, and go on for hours in a low, monotonous, and fairly heavy-accented English about psychiatric treatment, medication and various cases.
I'm telling you Diary, this was a for me hitherto unexperienced state of inattention. If someone had walked up to me directly afterwards and asked me to recapitulate in 20 words the core of what was said, I'd be hard-pressed to do so. Hell, if someone were to randomly shout phone numbers at me while I engaged the final stages of Metal Gear Solid 2, I'd be more likely to remember them, than the contents of today's lectures.

So. For the rest of my life now, I feel I'll be able to visit seminars and lectures all over the world, about any topic, for any period of time, and sit there day after day with a smile on my face while someone goes on and on about things of which I know nothing. People will come up to me and ask 'How do you do it? How can you stand it?', and I'll say 'Because I've been to the psyche rooms of Trivandrum Medical College. I can take anything.' And they'll nod at each other in agreement: 'Oh, yeah, that place. We've heard of it.'