AWW YEAH

hows dat JP going
haha


its 23 pages


HOLY SHIT

The Overtakelessness of those

Who have accomplished Death,
Majestic to me beyond
The majesties of Earth.
The soul her “not at Home”
Inscribes upon the flesh,
And takes her fair aerial gait
Beyond the hope of touch.

--Emily Dickinson 

From Bonfire and Housewarming

Why all that cheering over a destructive act? Anlamıyorum. And I wonder what those firemen think ... or the town thinks. That bonfire on New Year's Eve in Reykjavik I understood. This one ... well I guess I understand, just slightly less so. Shrug. Maybe it does matter to some (not insignificant number of) people. Maybe that's all that matters.

Another thought ... no-one ever teaches children (or you) about these things called cultural references or frames of reference, things that people take for granted and base their interactions off of ... but what if your upbringing gave you a framework and a set of norms which were both here and there, and hence neither here nor there? Then what?

Then you become a perpetual outsider, embraced neither hither nor yon. There is nothing to be done---you can abandoned your identity to conform to something more familiar (to others); or you can learn to become comfortable with being an outsider. Most people aren't hostile (though some are); they're just not as warm or accepting. But with enough time and effort, you'll find enough warmth to survive on. And then stoic resignation will see you through the rest.

With severe audience

Mencken was brave enough ... to embrace a view of public affairs without uplift, without virtue, without purpose. He knew all efforts at betterment are ultimately shabby, inane, narcissistic, or brutal ...

Grader's Cakewalk

o·ti·ose

/ˈōSHēˌōs/ adjective

1. Serving no practical purpose or result. 
2. Indolent; idle.

All beauty and truth

You propose to surrender on everyone else's terms.
I propose to surrender on my own terms.
Maybe what I should really be thinking about is not surrendering.

Idiomatic Slippage

Now I wish I had been there.
Şimdi burada olduğumu istiyorum. "Now I want to have been there"

现在想想，真遗憾当时不在场。
Burada olmadığıma biraz üzülüyorum şimdi. "Now my not having been there saddens me a little."

It's funny how the most natural way of translating counterfactual wishes from English into Chinese seems to be to turn them into regrets. Or maybe that tinge of regret was always lying just beneath the surface of "I wish I had"? 

And then of course I have no idea about the idiomatic way of saying such things in Turkish. Both of those sentences might just sound downright strange to a native speaker ... 

Go, little book, and wish to all

Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall, 

A bin of wine, a spice of wit, 

A house with lawns enclosing it, 

A living river by the door, 

A nightingale in the sycamore!

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

Wichtige Begebenheit

Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est

It was a restful summer

I took a course---a "fun" one---went home and didn't have any deadlines for five weeks. I met people, read books, revised stuff I'd forgotten, bumped my head against the wall of connectivity once.
That might be the longest genuine break you'll have in a long, long looong while ... so much for remaining In Praise of Idleness.

Эй, ухнем!

"And I wish I could make you understand that there is no happiness for us, that there should not and cannot be. … We must only work and work, and happiness is only for our distant posterity. If not for me, then for the descendants of my descendants."

Vershinin, from Chekhov's Three Sisters (trans. Julius West)

Then again it's not all doom and gloom.

Che bella cosa è na jurnata ’e sole

n’aria serena doppo na tempesta! Pe’ ll’aria fresca para già na festa... Che bella cosa na jurnata ’e sole.

I hoard all these letters like treasure

One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship.
It will keep the vultures at bay

When in doubt ...

Deal with concrete specifics. Not categorical absolutes. Very useful thing to remember next time you have an existential crisis. 

47 Years on a Knife's Edge

Happy birthday. It's been a good while now.
Some say you're an anomaly, a freak and accident of history, an artificial and unnatural country. Well, yes, but only, above all, because countries are artificial things by nature, imagined creations of the human mind. It's easier to see that reflected in the case of a tiny, young city-state---but at heart you're not any fundamentally stranger than even the so-called great powers and ancient nations of this world.
That tiny size does unfortunately make you somewhat more vulnerable---though at least insofar as it also makes you acutely aware of the same, it is not, unmitigatedly, a bad thing. We all live on a knife's edge and but by the grace of circumstance---and the more aware of that we are the less complacent and better prepared we'll be. There is no room for complacency. There never will be.

Something you just avoid for the rest of your life

No. Those shouldn't exist. They only persist because you let them. Because you lack the courage and conviction to look things in the eye and resolve them. Of course it takes two to tango ... doesn't change what was said, only means the pronouns should be read as second plurals.
Besides, someone always needs to take the initiative; and in this particular case, considering how things started, it would be rather fitting if you did ...
Eventually. One day. No rush. But no, you don't "just avoid it for the rest of your life".  

The goddess of victory says, just do it.

So you're all at sea. The winds are fickle, the waves are rising, and there's not a bit of land in sight. Once in a while there seems to be another ship in the distance, but then on further inspection it usually appears to be a mirage of some sort.
What are you going to do now? Sulk? Whine? Scrunch into a ball and cry?
Well you're captain of this ship. Take command and steer.

Every other afternoon

Greetings from Bucharest

In summary, life is somewhat random. Always has been. Always will be. Şerefe.

They said, we said

This afternoon Mom related an incident that happened in Hotan, Xinjiang (新疆和田) a few days ago. The way she described it, a few Uyghurs, claiming disability, had boarded a commercial flight carrying heavy metal implements—purportedly crutches. Right after take-off, they disassembled these into metal sticks and start making their way to the cockpit, apparently making threatening voices in Uyghur along the way to the effect that they intended to hijack the flight, and, allegedly, that they had a bomb. As they made their way through business class, however, they were held up by the business class passengers (“一些干部和大学教授”) and then by a number of police travelling on a training tour. After a serious, extended brawl (“二十多分钟”) the hijackers were restrained, and the plane landed safely. The fighting must have been quite heavy, because two of the hijackers later died.
The Western press had a slightly different version of it. Or, they had the abbreviated official version, followed by the "German-based World Uyghur Congress" version, which states that "the plane turned back after Uyghurs and Hans began fighting after a disagreement over seat assignments", and an account of Han-Uyghur tensions in the region. The way it was put certainly seemed to give more credence to the second version of events. It didn't help that "the phone listed for Hotan police rang unanswered Friday."
Then again, you may say that the way I put it seems to be giving, or at least trying to give, more credence to the first version. That's really the whole point, isn't it: how do you know who's telling the truth? I don't really trust Chinese officialdom to tell the whole truth, especially in such a sensitive region, but I wouldn't trust a Uyghur exile group based in Europe to tell the whole truth either. Both sides would probably try to portray events in the light most favorable to them or supportive of their cause, ignoring or retouching any inconvenient details along the way. Everyone does this to some extent, maybe. But clearly, when the two accounts differ so radically, someone is just plain wrong here. 
Maybe the official version is right and the World Uyghur Congress is simply parroting their stage line, which they can plausibly claim not to have any firm evidence against yet. Or maybe it was just an extraordinarily bad linguistic misunderstanding and the "hijackers" were really just shouting things to the effect that they wanted their actual seats back.
But maybe it doesn't matter, because the [masses of] people whose opinions do matter will decide based on their prejudices, on which of the two sides they distrust or mistrust more, rather than on anything remotely resembling a cool, objective assessment. (Or in Staff Sergeant Dignam's words, "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself.")
Which is very unfortunate, especially when things end up the way they did. There was probably police mistreatment involved. But I do think it was indeed a hijack attempt, and that injuries sustained during the brawl on the plane contributed substantially to the subsequent deaths. But then again, could be completely wrong. And I concede that. I don't claim to actually know what happened, before seeing more convincing evidence either way.
Sometimes I really wish I could look every one of those people in the eye, and confront them with both versions of the story, and of how they could come about. And remind them that words can tell such lies, that only those who were on the plane could have known what actually happened, that nobody should take drastic action based on hearsay alone, that the truth is usually somewhere in between ...

Nets

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce has Stephen Dedalus famously say, about growing up in Ireland in the late 19th century, "When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets."
...
And most of all, don't play it safe. Resist the seductions of the cowardly values our society has come to prize so highly: comfort, convenience, security, predictability, control. These, too, are nets. Above all, resist the fear of failure. Yes, you will make mistakes. But they will be your mistakes, not someone else's. And you will survive them, and you will know yourself better for having made them, and you will be a fuller and a stronger person.

A Murder of Crows

Just in case "a group of crows" didn't sound ominous enough. Crows are probably just really maligned though. Such a bad rap just for being black and cawing ...

w00t?

Wandern

Okay I think I'm done wandering.

 

Maybe.

And unseen things that do not die

Kan ma kan / fi qadeem azzaman

We are creatures of air,
Our roots in dreams
And clouds, reborn
In flight.

After Democritus

By convention there is sweetness, by convention bitterness, by convention color, in reality only atoms and the void.
Foolish intellect! Do you seek to overthrow us, while it is from us that you take your evidence? Your victory is your defeat.

Kelle fiyatına hürriyet

Eserlik bedava / Bedava yaşıyoruz, bedava

Listen, Listen, Listen

If you have the patience, anyway.

豁然开朗

Most days, most of the time, you're going to be annoyed, frustrated, lost, lonely, and stressed half out of your mind. But then once in a while, when you least expect it, when you've just about hit bottom and then some, the skies will clear and you'll feel light. Happy. Possibly even experience the thrill of soaring in free but secure flight. And believe me, it's worth living for those moments alone. 

So Shiddy

At least, as it turns out, I guessed right. Okay back to work now.

Some Things that Make Me Unhappy.

Not giving enough time to the things that interest me, or the people whom I care about.
Brushing things or people off (but do I have to do this in order not to be forced into the first?)
Living life blind and unreflected.
Hypocrisy and hubris.

Some Things that Make Me Happy.

Food,

Friends,

Friends and food;

Visiting,

Travel,

The Sun. 

Serenity and laughter.

Music!

Being silly;

That cosy corner of the room; 

Being appreciated.

Puffins and complex analysis ...

Important Lessons in Life

The mean-value theorem doesn't apply to complex-valued functions.
You can't just discard summation signs, even when doing asymptotics.
If your blunt estimate didn't work, use more information!
You really didn't need to re-write that solution 8 times.
People take breaks for a reason, damnit.
Also, you should figure out what you're doing about Monday. Probably.

Wake up

Go to class
Take midterm
Go to class
Eat
Struggle with pset
Go to sleep
Repeat cycle
Pffft. Did someone say the words, "empty shell"?

You're special ... so what?

Somehow 特殊 or 特别 just doesn't carry the same set of positive connotations that "special" can in English. (Particularly American English and its descendants, I suppose.) The Chinese doesn't carry any particularly negative connotations, it's just ... not so special. Something is an exceptional case. Okay. No big deal.

Considering how all of those are [seem to be] born from similar etymologies, I guess it's probably a product of cultural and social attitudes more than a linguistic thing.

Listen.

What's really bugging you.

[in particular, at this point in time.]

1. Failure of Proposition K and wider ramifications.
2. Diversion of Senate resources during crunch period.
3. Morphine withdrawal.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow.

Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see; and to see, we have only to look. Contessina, I beseech you to look 

.... 

Life is so full of meaning and of purpose, so full of beauty--beneath its covering--that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage, then, to claim it: that is all! But courage you have; and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending, through unknown country, home.

Boston

The Athens of America was unhospitably cold when we visited: so cold the local weather forecasts passed on "clear" in favour of "frigid". It didn't help that we picked the coldest day of all to walk the Freedom Trail--the whole length of it starting from the Boston Commons, winding through Downtown and up the North Bay, and finally across the Charles River, ending at the Bunker Hill Monument.

History is often wrong,

but in our cowardliness we mortals give learned explanations of why its decrees were just, why what happened was inevitable, and why our noble dreams deserved to die.

(Amin Maalouf, Origins, 108)

A Sense of Space

New Jersey seemed so empty the first time round, especially coming from Singapore. Sure it might have the highest population density in the States, but it simply can't compare with East Asia.
Campus felt empty and spacious---as though there were room plenty enough for at least half as many again people---even when the semester is in full swing. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, but it did feel strange.
Now it feels normal, and Singapore feels crowded. How are there always so many people, everywhere, all the time? It's not an unpleasant or uncomfortable feeling though; it just feels odd.
Of course nothing compares to the vast emptiness (empty vastness?) of that volcanic smouldering surrounded by the North Atlantic, where you can look out and see nothing but the mountains and the sky and the one road you're travelling on for dozens of miles at a stretch. Perfect for claustrophobics and introverts ... (maybe there is a link between the two after all.)

The Post-Apocalypse

The hills around Reykjavik were apparently once full of birch woods. But the woods disappeared less than a century after the Settlement began, having been turned into wood and charcoal for the growing number of Icelanders. Now the area, as is much of coastal Iceland, is largely a denuded, barren wasteland.
The southwest apparently used to be a centre of intensive agriculture--intensive by the standards of then anyway, before motorised farm vehicles and chemical fertilisers and all that jazz. Then Katla and Hekla covered the plains in lava and ash, and now there's only the odd farm here and there.
Is this what the world would look like after an environmental apocalypse [of the sort alarmists like to trumpet about]? A world of ice and of vast emptiness and of harsh, unpredictable weather. At least it's not without its beauty, and by no means unsurvivable. So, y'know, maybe everything will be alright after all, in the end. In its own way.

Completely. Unmotivated.

Moral of the story: listen to yourself and commit yourself to doing the one or two things that you really do want to do. Also there's probably a "crash after the sugar rush" element involved here. Go take a break and start afresh.

Think of a noun. Any noun.

Sen: Kedi
Nur: Köpek
Ani: Köpek
Huh. Well.

Before the dive