The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. The sound of people performing calisthenics (at 1 a.m.) had plagued me for weeks. They also possessed a penchant for what might be described as elevator music — that is, if the elevator broke loose and killed all its passengers. Not surprisingly, when some of these people left for the Holy week my spirits began to soar.

"The things I'll do!" I cried gleefully. "Sleep for hours at a stretch! Clean my room! Read!" But I had spoken too soon. Some devious people were still around, switching on reggaeton as a pithy reminder that evil is always and everywhere an insoluble phenomenon. Scarred for life, the sound of “driving drum-machine track which was derived from a popular Jamaican dancehall rhythm” now sets off a Pavlovian response involving a mental manifestation of a Kerouac-esque journey on the road, perhaps to Sin Ci… I mean, Cahuita… that is, if I can navigate the labyrinths of the 700 metres from the non-existent-mango-tree or 500 metres from that place maze.

Indeed, there is a certain cosmic order to things that men struggle against in vain. It permeates our lives. One such example is the cardinal sins which transpire on and off campus - and I’m not talking about pollution. Yes, lets all escape from the meaningless, endless recurrence of work and drudgery through intoxication and fornication. Drink responsibly? Why? Didn’t Elton John exclaim It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics; To set you on your feet again?

The act of vomiting is metonymically symbolic of an entire night of drinking and debauchery. In a place like UWCCR, where people mull their supposed lack of proper social options and too much work, where students have become slave-gladiators in a fight to the finish, everything takes on a primordial significance. As a ritualistic purging of a week's worth of work, nobody wants to drink responsibly. We have embarked on the road to Damascus in coming here - we are slaves to work, since what we are is defined by what we do. We know our time is not our own. That's why we want to purge, to get it all out of our system, to rebel against the totality of this nothingness. We want to sweat and excrete, to ejaculate and vomit.

Many a times we try to distance ourselves from such acts. “I’ll try to spend less time drinking. I’ll try to create world peace. I’ll try to find you tonight… But don’t be disappointed should I fail.” Yes, we all try to fulfil these, or claim to. Nevertheless, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Peer pressure, disguised as a UWC tradition or culture, is powerful. Most people don't last longer than a week. Like nasty streptococcus bacteria trading plasmids, many of us begin acquiring antibiotic resistance to good taste and originality almost immediately, turning into deadly carbon copies of each other. Such are the UWC traditions - propagated and maintained by certain groups as though they have holy commandments inscribed on their foreheads.

It's easy to hide behind myths that refer to a time before we were born, but it's literally brainless. Others say not to judge a book by its cover, that beneath the Louis Vuitton clothes and Channel eyeliners are "diverse individuals." OK, but when I see bullshit, I like to call it bullshit. Besides, everyone is a bundle of visual signifiers: dichotomizing the difference between what people look like and their personalities is an old-fashioned Cartesian mind-body duality.

It is a wonderful pretence that makes things seem more important than they are, bringing the semblance of order to chaos. Alas, all roads lead to Rome, and many may claim this is but an ephemeral process towards us taking our places in the proper echelon of society. Yes, we will be manning the tolls on this road to serfdom in the end (insert evil laugh). So don’t mind us now, for we subscribe to the Ortega y Gasset school of Razón Histórica – we have no nature but history.

The results, like a head lice epidemic, are devastatingly destructive. It isn't just a matter of discomfort. The urge to be cool, to fit in, is the impetus behind the marginalization of minorities and cultural stagnation. Degenerates who don't smoke shisha or drink beer, who don't get, let's just say, emesis tendencies in the study room, are immediately relegated to the social gas chambers of Cabo Blanco or El Coco. They are undesirable elements of a more outopeía society, and should be banished to the road to Perdition!

We must have all the programs and invent all the rules we can, creating committees and hierarchies to fulfil and maintain this society; but human nature automatically circumvents them, turning them into a spectacle. Beneath my excavation of human nature lies cultivated apathy towards all such simulacra. I do not believe in them because I refuse to play the role of good citizen in this postmodern Rome. Two roads diverged in this hood, and I — I have refused to take any path at all, and that has made all the difference.

They say home is where the heart is. Lenard Yangli Lim realized that he is homeless.