“Everything the light touches is our kingdom.”

This is another one of those stupid end-of-an-era moments that I really hate. My apartment is cleaned out and I’ve moved out of the hobbit-hole apartment in Berkeley, my fifth place in five years. I was feeling pretty depressed yesterday about moving out of my favorite city and, more importantly, moving back in with my mother for a month. Then came a series of unfortunate unbelievable events that somebody up there tied together into a nice little package for me. I don’t think I’ve ever been more in love with Berkeley than I was yesterday.

Let’s hop in the DeLorean and rewind 24 hours. Another one of my partners-in-crime-since-6th-grade, FurdBandFaker, had never seen the Berkeley campus before, so I decided to spend my last weekend housing and entertaining him. Taking him to all the big-time campus landmarks – Telegraph Ave., Sather Gate, South Hall, the top of the stairs next to The Campanile to see the Golden Gate Bridge, up the Campanile for the unbeatable Bay Area view, the skeletons in VLSB – was an unwelcome reminder as to why I love this school so much and why I’m going to miss this place to death. It’s all his stinkin’ fault.


Then the dominoes started. #1: While we were in Bear Basics/T-Shirt Orgy browsing at clothing, I got a phone call from one of my students’ parents. This student wasn’t really a regular of mine; I had only worked with her for two weeks prior to the final exam. She had a D in Honors Chem when we started, and her mother called me to inform me that she ended up with a B- for her semester grade. All negative feelings from having my GPS stolen from my car WHILE I WAS SLEEPING TWENTY FEET DIRECTLY ABOVE MY CAR started to dissipate.

#2: After we left Bear Basics, a skinny, well-dressed black man chimed out, “Ni huei jiang zhong wen ma?” (For those of you not in sync with one-fifth of the world’s population, that means, “Do you know how to speak Chinese?” in Mandarin Chinese.) I couldn’t believe it. I was not shocked that he was speaking Chinese to me. The truly shocking thing was that I had met this man five years ago on an AC Transit bus and that I would run into him again on, of all days, my very last day in Berkeley.

Punch it to 88 mph, Doc: He introduced himself to me as Patrice. Patrice had first heard me speaking in angry Mandarin Chinese to my mother on the phone, and after I got off the phone, he started asking me in near-perfect Chinese about where I was born, how long I had lived here, etc. Though our bus ride was short, I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, if only for the fact that it was such an entertaining, novel experience. Even better was his exquisite diction of English, especially when coupled with his British accent. An aspiring actor, he was a Spanish major from Middlebury College who picked up Chinese because he became a Buddhist. I mean, where else but Berkeley can you meet a character like this? You know I don’t believe in divine intervention, but an event like this couldn’t help but make me wonder just a little bit. (Then I was reminded that my GPS is still gone and all desire to drink my liver to Hell came rushing back.)

#3: I had finished packing up all my stuff from my room and was literally picking up my first box to move to my car when my phone chimed. (Side note: my default ringtone is currently Boyz II Men’s I’ll Make Love To You. DON’T HATE you know you love it. Hey Ne-Yo I’m real happy for you and I’mma let you finish but but Boyz II Men is still the most successful R&B male vocal group (by record sales) of all time OF ALL TIME.)

“Hey, we’re in North Berkeley and we’re wondering where your apartment is.”

“…Who is this?”

“Dude. My number isn’t in your phone? I’m mildly insulted.”

Turns out that PermaRA had been in The City visiting HotCalves and they just happened to wander into my neighborhood…all the way across The Bay…fighting bumper-to-bumper traffic. I had been whining to HotCalves for eternity and a half to find some time to hang out with me before I change coasts. Seriously, it was like pulling horse’s teeth. Apparently it took PermaRA to physically be there and force her at double-barrel gunpoint to get her to call me. But here they were, ready to take me to dinner to one of my favorite spots ever, The Cheeseboard. (If you live in/go to/went to Berkeley and have never been to Cheeseboard, you SUCK. Get on it.) They also brought along another friend, someone I’ve always known about but have never had the pleasure of meeting. Oddly enough, she and I have the same social circles, yet for some bizarre, inexplicable reason, we had never met up until this day. If you made a Venn diagram of our social circles, there would only be ONE circle. Yet another form of closure. The Big Man Upstairs just threw, like, fourteen signs at me, which I'm sure I'll slowly interpret through dreams over the course of the next month.

So there I sat, illegally on the median on Shattuck, enjoying slices of delicious pesto-corn-garlic-onion-cilantro pizza, staring at the UCLA-blue sky and drinking in the sun, thinking about how much closure had been brought upon me all in one day. I’m glad I had all that closure so that I don’t have any hanging chads keeping me wondering about whether or not I truly made the most of my time in one of the most amazing small cities in the world. I have no more regrets.

The saddest part of the day was when I was taking FurdBandFaker onto campus and Cal Band started playing at Dwinelle for CalSO. Considering Cal Band was and always will be my second family, I had to fight to remind myself that those four years were fun, but time moves on and so must I. (The drinking habits I’ll keep, thank you very much.)

So that’s it. On to The District and Hoyas and RIDONK weather (90F and THUNDERSTORMS) and the endless struggle to become a doctor. Excuse me while I drown myself with a CamelBak full of Tanq and tonic while crying myself to sleep.

Go Bears, OUR AXE.