I should be doing this.

Learn to banish the word "should" from your vocabulary.
One the one hand, do you really have so many "responsibilities"? Where did they come from, anyway? And if you start dropping them because there're too many of them to handle, how is that better than just cleaning disclaiming some of them in the first place?
On the other, there are many, many things that can be great learning experiences. Until you try to do too many of them at once, and then you'll be too busy to learn anything from any of them.
Bottom line: do less. Live more.  

But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought

Well put, sir. Very. 

... and there goes the semester!

Come to think of it this kind of knocks George's "shortest lines in PCT history" right out the window.

You should keep up this streak of randomness. I want to see where you end up.

不知量力

Maybe I'm just really greedy.
Don't be. You aren't going to able to do everything, and you're only going to mess up everything you're trying to do by trying too hard.
Or maybe I just don't deal with uncertainty well and try too hard to hedge.
But then of course such half-hearted hedging is doomed to fail. Just set your sights clearly, keep your wits about you, take a breath and GO. And never look back once in a while you can look back, but you really shouldn't be trying to move forward with your gaze on the road behind you, the other roads by the side, anything but the road in front of you. 

Swans on Water

The very picture of effortless grace on the surface, but underneath they're paddling furiously just to stay afloat, let alone move forward. 

Taking any route, starting from anywhere, / At any time or at any season

It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are hear to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

En Saga

Or not really, but now I'm really curious about the Eddas. But anyway, to business.
Proposition A would endorse the Ankara plan over Warsaw, Krakow, or Copenhagen.
Proposition K would instate Kazan as the new Ottoman capital.
Debate.
Update. The answers were no and yes. Consider it made.

Echoes of Cat's Cradle

What if a more sustainable, fitter society is precisely one which sacrifices some degree of individual freedom for the good of the society, of humanity, of the planet? 

Still Profoundly Lost

I'm not sure where I am anymore
Or where I'm going.
Or where I should be.
Or who I really am.
Or should be.
I'm not sure what I should stand for
and whether it's worth it anymore.
Every morning I wake up with a to-do list screaming at me.
So I start diligently going down that list.
And before I know it, it's late in the night again.
And time to sleep again, till the next morning and the next intense burst of stress.
And meanwhile, I seem to be drifting further and further into incoherence.
A bustling incoherence full of exciting possibilities which are pulling you in all sorts of different directions.
Which will end up getting you nowhere, if you don't navigate the currents wisely.
But how should I choose my course?
If I had a choice, what do I really want?
How much of a choice do I even really have?
I don't know.
I don't know anything at all.
Only the daily scramble and grind, and the tiny little bits of sunshine that graces the intervals in between once in a while.
What now?

Finlandia

... here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine
My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

Verum est, quod legitur

fronte capillata,
sed plerumque sequitur
Occasio calvata.

And never you forget.

Muffin

... possibly from muffen Lower German for  "small cakes", or somehow connected with moufflet Old French for "soft". Who cares as long as it's tasty, right?
Guess that's also why food names generally don't translate well across long distances. Because there's just too much of a connection to the place and culture.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.

Metacynicism

The ancient Cynics regarded virtue (Arete) as the only necessity for happiness. They sought to free themselves from conventions, become self-sufficient, and live only in accordance with nature. They rejected any conventional notions of happiness involving money, power, or fame, in the pursuit of virtuous, and thus happy, lives. In rejecting conventional social values, they would criticise the types of behaviours, such as greed, which they viewed as causing suffering. Emphasis on this aspect of their teachings led, in the late 18th and early 19th century, to the modern understanding of cynicism as "an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others." This modern definition of cynicism is in marked contrast to the ancient philosophy, which emphasized "virtue and moral freedom in liberation from desire."

Vertigo

See now (the myth is that?) it all started that day on the glass ceiling ... and intensified later after you'd packed. And since then you've been griping and moping about being nowhere for very long. You've started to see distance as a hindrance---not quite insuperable, but almost. You've haven't yet quite failed to breathe the air that surrounds you or step on the ground that gladly supports you, but you don't seem to appreciate them nearly as much. Because you can only think, but this is not somewhere else. Or, in a few years' time this too will become only a part of my past.
Mais c'est la vie, n'est-ce pas? It doesn't mean you start mourning in advance for the things that you one day, in the distant or not-so-distant future, will have to let go. Only that you make the most of them, and smile while they last. And that you never give up in the face of obstacles, but only grit your teeth smile and try harder.
Du calme, monsieur. Du calme et du courage. And the hidden laughter / Of children in the foliage.

It's called ... wait, what?

yeah shouldn't be that bad
but its known to be late
since there are no other flights coming in
usually
...
yep
thats india for u
haha
i am actually serious
there are no flights usually when the international flights arrive
cause its like 2 am
and they still make all the flights circle around
for 30 mins
yep
...
we have different ways of operating in india buddy
its called
chaos

ALL HAIL THE ROMANIAN.

Yup. Wait, wrong Romanian. Bah

Completely Unnecessary Exercise is completely unnecessary

Or not entirely completely, I guess, but pretty darn close.
Move on, nothing to see here. I hope.
Patience. Goodwill.
And a generous dose of cool, measured irony.

Exercise in Futility

Don't stop to think. Just go. Keep going.
No. That will not do.
Not while you're being rent by increasingly energetic impulses even as the pillars are crumbling into the sea.

Career, Carrera

Inherently unseparable from the rat race. Bah humbug.

Grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

Science? It's really an art.

There may be falsifiability and the scientific method and all that jazz, but those are only tools. When you have to decide what are the important and interesting questions, how to frame them, how to go about answering them; when you deal with the sheer range of parameters that can vary and have to decide just which of them really need to be controlled; when you interpret the results and build theories upon imperfect, incomplete, noisy data---then there are no hard and fast rules telling you what to do. Only the broad framework of prior knowledge, rules of thumb, and, above anything else, experience, intuition and imagination.
So no, science isn't the same as what might usually be considered the "arts" or the "humanities"---but it is no less of a creative endeavour, and there is nothing mechanical about it.

Fun fact

25ml of the colorless, odorless solution I just made could kill. Hmm.

Chronic uncertainty meets the German.

Really I don't know what I'm doing. Really.

Limerence

"It has no roots whatsoever. It looks nice. It works well in French. Take it from me it has no etymology whatsoever."

Science

If you aren't completely baffled most of the time, you're doing it wrong.

A flâneur skims Boston.

Saturday was another sweltering day, though not as bad as Friday (temperatures in Newark apparently hit a record high that afternoon. Well, well.) It didn't hurt that we spent the hottest hours of the day indoors in the air-conditioned comfort of the Museum of Science, learning that grass and apple smell really similar, trying to locate Waldo but finding only illustrated puns, and marvelling at the sheer range of diets and caloric intake around the world.
Sometime in the afternoon there was lunch at the museum cafe, which had a great panoramic view over the Charles River. The Charles was a recurrent point of reference over the weekend as we crossed back and forth over it along Storrow Drive, first to listen to Elaine gushing over this year's IMO results over dinner, and then to visit the MIT Museum the next day. They hadn't changed any of their exhibits since winter, but they didn't seem any less cool or interesting to me. Technology: it's awesome.

The heatwave had subsided by Sunday, and it was excellent weather for a walk down Mass Ave, by Beacon Hill and through the Public Garden to Chinatown. Far better than the snowy and biting cold that we walked the Freedom Trail in earlier this year. Ambling through the Public Garden after a tasty and very filling bowl of phở bò, watching the crimson and violet sunset over the Boston skyline and people lounging on the lawns enjoying the weather, ZM's comment that this was "such a liveable city" seemed almost undisputable.
Though I couldn't help but wonder---would any of us ever actually live here; truly "belong" here, whatever that may mean? Or would we never be more than mere visitors? And if so, is that reason to be sad? Or is it just the way the world is, something of no import or practical consequence?

Anyway, back to New Jersey now. Cheers.

And all you hear is silence.

Or, the state of the known world.

1. The Ayasofya has become but a wandering symbol. There is no normative involved here, only objective fact.
2. A new symbol is rising to the north-east. Perchance. 
3. In the spirit of their bearers I dedicate these new symbols: Amsterdam, København, and Kraków / Warszawa.

Through a window, at sixty miles an hour.

New Jersey's highways, especially the Turnpike, seemed to have their own unique quality of ugly sprawl, something which rather disappeared once the "New York: Empire State" sign popped up. Or was I just imagining that, based on all the stereotypes of the Garden State / Land of the Mall that everyone, even---particularly---New Jerseyans, has been feeding me?
What Darvin was saying about how New Jersey was the very definition of suburbia also seemed to bear itself out (or perhaps once again, was coloring my view.) Compared to the sprawling prevalence of built-up areas in the Garden State, New York and even Connecticut seemed to have more clearly-delineated rural-urban boundaries, almost in the European mode. The striking towers of Waterbury's Union Station and St. Anne's Church were all the more striking for having appeared almost suddenly after a long passage through relative, lightly-forested emptiness.

I'd like to actually visit these places one day, instead of just flying through on a coach. But then again, would it actually be worth the time and expense to travel through a generally unremarkable stretch of the semi-urban Northeast? The same dilemma is happening in my life, on a slightly larger scale: there are all these paths which all seem interesting, which all seem like they could lead somewhere. But they're all going to take time and energy and expense to pursue, and as much as I would like to, I'm not going to be able to follow up on all of them. So what now?

But anyway, it's approaching eight, and the sun is setting over central Massachussetts. The Mass Pike just flew over a small lake: it was lovely to see the waning light of the sun dance serenely off the watery mirror.
Soon we will arrive in Boston, and then the bustle of life will start anew.

"Is there something you're trying to escape from?"

Yes. The frustration of drudgery. It's something we are all trying to escape from---why else would the concept of entertainment exist? But what if your escapade could shape the course of human experience---if not now or in the near future, then decades, even centuries into the future ... wouldn't that be something?
Not that that alone would have landed you anything, in all likelihood, but a lesson worth remembering: believe in what you say, and don't be afraid to give it straight.

AUGH

Cramming in too much information feels just like stuffing in too much food.
Both leave a slightly nauseous aftertaste.

A still pond.

Let the waters of the world cleanse us, and let us walk lightly in a world that is already wonderful without our fantasies.

Apparently Good Advice

Vouched for by a random person on the street, two in the lab, and counting.

Missing Scale

On the one hand, your mind loves large ideas. Very large ideas. So large they're kind of bland and not very useful. On the other hand it's also excellent at engaging with the tiniest, most minute, most concrete details. That makes you either an excellent waffler, or an excellent technician--except you're not even good with your hands, but never mind that. Both rather useless strengths given your aspirations.

Cathedral

The site of the cathedra, the seat of knowledge and wisdom and learning.

Reflets dans l'Eau: Freshman Year

In some ways, Princeton was just as I expected it to be: intellectually rigorous and challenging, diverse, broad and open-minded and dynamic and forward-looking. No great surprises here---although I do think my roommates were a great blessing. They were friendly, easy-going people whom I very quickly became comfortable with.

Some other things were more unexpected.

I never did expect to take a journalism class. Before I somehow ran into JRN 449 on the course listings I didn't even know those things existed, but hey, there we have it. Richard Bernstein's class was a great experience. Even if he didn't have much experience as a teacher, he was definitely an accomplished journalist, and we learnt a lot about journalism just by listening to him speak about his work and comment on the writing we did. And we didn't just get to listen to him, but also his colleagues at the New York Times whom we met during a class field-trip to the Times headquarters, and his friends and contacts whom he invited to the seminar as guest speakers. I learnt, above all, that journalism was about telling compelling stories, stories that matter, stories that people care about and are interested by. Many of the journalists whom we spoke to did not have the most engaging voices or manners of speaking--often they were just ordinary in that regard--but the things they had to say, they held my rapt attention even if they weren't being pitched in a dramatic, strongly-marketed way.

All those conversations in the dining hall too: one thing I took away from them was that your life was really as interesting as you made it out to be. In other words, it's about how the story is told. Looking back I am struck by how strongly, how fondly many people here recount the childhood memories they hold--think of Salvador or Ashu telling stories from their childhood, say. What happened to your memories? Did you really just repress them?

I also never expected to be anywhere near South Dakota. But Breakout Princeton seemed like a great program, so I applied. And I was accepted on the Rosebud trip, so I went. That really was a helluva experience. Never had anything like it; don't know if I'll ever have anything like it again. The whole issue the trip was centered around--youth suicide on Rosebud reservation--was a depressing one, but seeing all that was being done to try and change that, all that goodwill and hope and energy being directed towards the problem: that was honestly the most genuinely inspiring thing I've felt for a while. It was really inspiring to hear Veronica, while discussing the problems on the reservation during the final group reflection session in Omaha, declare "Melissa and I [our trip leaders] have promised to dedicate our lives to changing these things." On one level that just seems like naïve optimism; but considering they had spent an entire week listening to and seeing the magnitude of the issues, and after having seen that week what was being done, that seemed like more than just naïve optimism: it was a clear, convinced, determined commitment to try and change the world for the better. Now that stuff is supposed to be everywhere, especially in America---but I haven't quite seen it before so nearly clearly or tangibly.

I never expected I would be spending less than three weeks a year in Singapore---and even more than that I never expected to be (even grudgingly) fine with it. Delocalization: it is your new reality.

I usually think of the maths classes I took as "just what was expected", but looking back I see that was not entirely the case. Both analysis and linear algebra moved faster than expected, and covered their respective grounds in thorough, comprehensive, entirely non-trivial and non-superficial ways. Graph theory similarly hopped around quickly and covered more ground than I thought possible for a first course. You may think yourself unprepared to really "do mathematics" at this stage; but the truth is you've only had two basic courses and one departmental, and for that limited amount of coursework you've covered a lot of ground. So it's really up to you to be prepared, to go out there and find out more about what interests you and learn more about it. The most important thing college should teach you is not the material; it's the approach to learning, and the approach to the discipline.

And finally, just being in land of wide-eyed wonder and pervasive confidence has made me less of a jaded cynic. Being in a vigorous, curious intellectual community, and actually having lots of stuff to do, as opposed to loafing around for almost a year, certainly did not hurt there either. In any case, it's a wonderful feeling. The next three years ... I wonder what'll happen then?

Wait, what?

When did I become so cynical? "There's nothing I find completely surprising"---is that really true? Is it just something a cynical, jaded ego insists on blindly as an axiom of experience?

Bohemian

Because the first gypsies in France were taken for followers of Jan Hus, the heretic from Bohemia, various painters and poets were still labeled bohemian to this day. An amalgamation of prejudices based on a misunderstanding, it did not come better than that, and the fact that poets had been identified with vagrants, gypsies, and heathens was pretty good, too. 

(Cees Nooteboom, from Musings in Munich, in Nomad's Hotel)

Tumble / Run

Escherichia coli execute a random walk by alternating between two modes of swimming, running and tumbling. They swim by means of rotating helical flagella. When the flagella rotate counterclockwise, the bacterium swims in a smooth, directed manner. When the flagella rotate clockwise, the bacterium tumbles. Tumbles serve to reorient the bacterium so it will swim in a different (randomly-chosen) direction. When the bacterium swims up gradients of chemical attractants, tumbles are less frequent and the runs thus become longer. When swimming down steep gradients, the bacterium tumbles more frequently and runs are shorter.

In other words: E. coli moves around more or less at random, letting the mechanics of the environment and the whims of its flagella take it where they will. In environments it likes it tries to move less randomly; in environments it dislikes it moves more randomly. In any case a lot about how it decides its path through life is just fundamentally random, although the net result is very much determined by the environment.

Bracing.

Cold. And thin.
But remember: that was your choice. This is your choice.
You can pick another path. You can pick another perspective.
And if you pause and take a breather, you may find warmth in the most inadvertent of places. Hopefully.

Dramatic Overstatement of the Day

Nosebleed in the shower Bathed in my own blood.

But the dreams their children dreamed

Fleeting, unsubstantial, vain,
Shadowy as the shadows seemed,
Airy nothing, as they deemed,
These remain.

Elections in a Nutshell

Write what you see

But do our eyes not deceive us? Is not reality a complex, multi-layered thing, thick with subtleties and intricacies which so easily elude our eyes and minds' eyes alike? Is it not something far too large for any one of us--we who are but small, frail, limited observers--to comprehend?
Perhaps that was precisely the point though. When we try to describe what we do not see, we are presuming to know more than we can. We presume, however implicitly, that we can master reality. Since we know we cannot, why pretend? Write what you see--others will write what they see--and hopefully the combined efforts of many small, limited observers will produce a better approximation to the truth than any individual effort can, however strenuous it may be.

GON OUT

BACKSON.
BISY
BACKSON.
Sigh ...

Entrenchment

Why does this sound so much like that other thing that happened 22 years ago? Let us hope, for the sake of everyone involved, that things will turn out much more peacefully this time ...

I am impressed.

Or actually, on second thought, not that surprising.

A Question of Economics

Yes, everything is larger here. Not just the cars and the highways and the stores, but also the breadth of spirit. People take the time to greet and ask after one another--even if it may only be a superficial gesture--; shopkeepers and passing strangers on the street are more willing to take you at your word; and--New York City excepted--a sense of space pervades over the sense of agitated rush and scramble that is the rule in densely-populated, (over)crowded East Asia.
How ironic, then, that the whole concept is so much more concisely expressed in Chinese: 大气. I guess it was never a want of magnanimity, but rather a lack of resources to express magnanimity. If there weren't all these people around bearing down on one, if there were resources enough so that the competition wasn't so intense---it would be so much easier to be gracious and generous.
Maybe that is simply not to be. With globalization, the field of competition has opened to all 6.8 billion (and counting) for West and East alike. As questions of ecological sustainability come into increasingly sharper focus, it may very well turn out to be the case that nobody on Earth really has such a wealth of resources after all. America's generosity might well have been possible only on borrowed time.
Yet it would be a pity if these habits disappeared altogether, and humanity were reduced (once again?) to a mere state of perpetual fierce, petty competition.
We should step up the conversation. So that you might re-learn the habits of prudence, and we the habits of generosity, and that new and unexpected solutions might emerge in the discourse. So that we might both then become better, yet also fitter, people.

Merriest Returns of the Day

'Tis the gift to be simple,

'tis the gift to be free, 'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be

Oy vey

Clearly you still have some way to go. But I'm sure you'll find your way there somehow, someday.
What then? Will you thrive in a strange land, surrounded by loud individuals who do not speak your native tongue? Or will you shut yourself up and go through four intensely cold years of isolation? I have faith in your strong personalities, that everything will turn out fine in the end. But I am also convinced that the current system is not at all preparing you well for what it says it is preparing you for. The shock of independence in a strange land---independence in such a large dose, in so many ways at once---something fundamentally challenging and inevitable, but also something which I didn't hear discussed once during my three months with you. Maybe it's the best that can be done with the limited resources at your disposal. Maybe the management needs to buck up and do a better job. Either way, I wish you all the best on the arduous journey ahead.

Life as Quartettsatz

Bursting with the most passionate emotion, and yet still fundamentally incomplete.

Prompt

If you have trouble stepping out of your comfort zone, try leaping right out of it blindfolded. It works, eventually.

Flashback (II)

A stroll down South Clinton Ave

Last week was the most relaxing week I've had since Orientation (even counting Fall Break, because the upcoming workload this time is so much lighter.) On Friday--Thursday night, rather--the snow showers started. After lunch on Friday we had a snowball fight in the Holder courtyard, and then Xinyang and Salvador started rolling giant snowballs to make snowmen. By late evening there was a scene out of Calvin and Hobbes near Blair Arch.
I would have joined in, had I not gone to visit the Social Security Administration in Trenton instead that afternoon ...

Orhan Pamuk Effendi

... who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures

It's, strangely, so poetic and yet mechanical---"symbols"?---all at once ...

Moderamente scherzando, un poco umoristico

Happy New Year!
(Yea, that works too. Great.)

Wichtige Begebenheit

Guess a hundred score Waterfords and sixteen times as many diodes is rather hard to outdo. But the next time, when it's your turn to decide---what will you do then?

Cathedral

A sanctuary, serene and cloistered, for the mind and soul. But also a wide open forum, a soaring invitation clothed in elegance and majesty for all to see, apparent but never loud. Conferre Castle

Good Morning San Francisco

I never did imagine I would be seeing you again so soon. What a pleasant surprise.

Zzz

Why do my problem sets always take three times as long as I think they will. Damnit.

Warning: Explicit Language

Perhaps ...

I just need to learn to get used to falling.

Pure Sound

Remember ...

You got the fat envelope because you shot for the moon. So keep shooting.

183 days × 400,000 visitors / day

Did the Expo 2010 really impart such a good impression of Shanghai to (foreign) visitors? Did it (and the whole city, to some extent, during the event) not just seem like an overcrowded, overhyped fairground to many of them? Though I would have to admit, organising such an enormous event in such a bustling, dense, crowded city is a logistical challenge par excellence, and the organising committee did not too bad at all a job. Also possibly foreigners were generally treated more kindly, since there were so few of them, and they were guests after all.

Whether or not such positive impressions were unrepresentative and misleading, though, they can't be a bad thing, and there's some truth to them anyway. Shanghai is now indeed a much cleaner and neater place with a lot more useful infrastructure than it was, or would have been by now without the Expo. And if what the visitors saw was only the city and country putting its best foot forward---well so much the better for us, no? Just another reason why the six-month long, agonisingly disruptive spectacle wasn't just another shiny toy in town, but was actually useful. 

It's like "nothing ventured, nothing gained" writ Large.

In other news, my second language mother tongue other first language is rapidly fading into nada. Pfft.

Survival Guide for Next 14 Days

All the dining halls, plus Frist, serve decent coffee.
The USG office has free coffee between 4:30pm and 9:30 pm on weekdays
The human sleep cycle is supposedly 3 hours. When really pressed, 3 hours of sleep is more optimal than 4 or 2.
Don't go running until you've caught up on your sleep.
You cannot afford to take on any more commitments for the next 2 weeks. Period.
If you're really exhausted, just rest, even if it means missing a few deadlines. Falling ill only means the snowball continues to grow. Also, it's okay to do less because you can't juggle so much. Relax.
Also, I've been up for 21 hours straight. I should go sleep.

Deconstructing the Castle

Forest: A rich labyrinth, containing broad, wide paths, and intricate networks of connections, but also tiny little nooks and crannies which offer shelter from the passing storms. Not, one would hope, nearly as isolating or rigid as a castle.
Who still lives in castles these days, anyway? They're only really good as museums, or wine cellars, or novelty vacation homes.

Diaspora

It's a state of mind, the state of mind that comes with not being at home, with all the discomfort, unease and anxiety that entails. So even if the Promised Land is a political reality now, does it really mean the end of Diaspora? When it continues to be attacked and threatened on a daily basis, when the geopolitical basis for its existence is not at all stable? Could anyone really be at home in such a situation?

Don Giovanni,

a cenar teco
M'invitasti e son venuto!

In Memoriam.

Where you need to go.

"Not more intelligent in relation to science or logical argument---more intelligent on the deeper level of concrete experiences and personal relationships." (Aldous Huxley, Island)

Belaying

The feeling of being caught so securely in free-fall is viscerally reassuring.

Line Up

The Intensely Local

Some time back I saw a photo essay on the Yawning Bread site introducing the sights between Lavendar and Kallang MRT stations. It had 44 photos, and advised tourists covering the area to '[give] yourself an entire afternoon to do so. The area is that rich.' What, really? An entire afternoon for that tiny stretch? But actually, after reading the photo essay, I realise that's entirely possible, especially for travellers from far away who may not have seen anything like HDB void decks, mosques, shophouses and the like. An entire afternoon would allow one to take in and savour all the tiny little details: the subtle decor touches on the HDB blocks, the more unusual shops, the history of the local mosque and its attached cemetery, the diversity of the people on the street ... things that could very well, and do, pass unnoticed for most people going about on their daily business.

So, in a way, how much diversity a place appears to hold also depends on how deeply you are prepared to look and how receptive you are. Even a tiny red spot on the map can hold a rich wealth of different views---you just need to open your eyes and see them.

For Random "Frequent Flyer" Dent

What is this place?

Is it safe? Is it fun?

Oh, but it is!

What, are we leaving again already?

Irrelevant question of topical interest? Debate.

' ... but she added in a faint voice, "Now let me ask what follows from this."' (II: 23 [251])
Because the declaration of ideals too is only a beginning, not an end in itself. Whether Kamal failed to grasp this and stumbled, or quite simply lacked the courage to articulate the logical next step, his failure to respond satisfactorily doomed his ardent pursuit to lead to disillusionment and heartbreak.

Or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music / While the music lasts

?FTW

On Monday at approximately 12:00 p.m., JetBlue Flight 1052 barreled its way into JFK when one unruly passenger ... stood up before the designated time and began to retrieve his overhead luggage. Doing what all good flight attendants are required to do, Steven Slater made his way down the aisle, approached the passenger and told him it wasn’t time to retrieve his luggage.

Instead of following Steven Slater’s instructions, the passenger continued to retrieve his baggage which promptly hit Steven Slater in the head [and allegedly] told Slater to ‘F*** off.’

... Steven Slater then went to the public announcement system with a few choice words of his own. Speaking into the intercom and so that all could hear, Slater announced, “To the f-----g a--hole who told me to f--k off, it's been a good 28 years. I've had it. That's it.”

...

According to reports, Steven Slater grabbed two beers from the beverage cart, popped one open, grabbed his carry-on bags, then activated the emergency chute. Steven Slater, beer, bags and all, then proceeded to slide down the chute and make his final exit from JetBlue Flight 1052 (and most likely his 20+ year career in the airline industry). Witnesses say he then hopped onto an AirTrain but not before slamming his company tie to the ground.

And I thought this kind of thing only happened in Mr. Bean movies.

Just another myth

There's no such thing as a completely clean slate. Only degrees of denial as to how much baggage you're really holding onto. At one extreme there's (perhaps deliberate) amnesia, which is for all purposes practically indistinguishable from a clean slate. But at some level, it's still really a lie.

Read it this way

Too much moping. Focus on the positive.
Home is nowhere. Actually, it's everywhere.
I can't even hold on to my memories. That's why you are endowed with the faculty of memory. What's the use of memory that's not warm and living, anyway?
Life is mediocrity. Only if you insist. Give it your best shot, and who cares about the rest?
But what if I screw up? If you screw up, you smile bemusedly, shrug it off, and figure out how to fix things.
Does that work? Who cares?

Imagining Imperial Grandeur

The crowds at the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace were, as usual for China, overwhelming. A board at the Summer Palace (it was wise of them not to attempt to translate 颐和园 from the Chinese) estimated 42,000 visitors. It was not all that bad---for one thing, the tour groups that made up a large part of the 42,000 tended to congregate at certain spots and completely ignore others, leaving them as spacious and undisturbed as they were meant to be. Still it was quite a crowd.

Imagine when the gardens and the palace were still imperial property. When its serenity and grandeur were savoured only by a select few---and a large army of servants scurrying around, but it would have been part of their job descriptions to be unobtrusive. The halls of the 外朝 would still have seen plenty of court officials and their entourages, but they would be moving in an orderly, regimented way; the scene would have been vastly different from that presented by today's swarms of tourists, roaming around at will.

The Chamber of Petitions in the Topkapı would have been a very much more restricted, sanctified place, open only to the Sultan and his closest viziers, and only permitted to others with their express permission, instead of the general free-for-all it is today.

Thus Black, in Pamuk's My Name is Red, could be awestruck with wonder in the Second Courtyard, and be quaking with enthralled fear in the Third ... That atmosphere of forbidden rarefaction has probably been lost completely with the fall of emperors. But surely that isn't something we should be sad about, is it? It is utterly insignificant compared to the liberation of the masses.

I Tombstoned Off the Bouldering Wall

Except it wasn't out at sea. Instead of breakages you get superficial bruises.
But that's what the bouldering wall is for, no? To practise, fall off, and emerge stronger from. Not really to tombstone off, but let's forget that for the moment.

Master of your own destiny?

Don't you see? Nobody really is the master of their own destiny. Even after they've shaken off the legion of tyrants intent on denying their freedom, after they've unshackled themselves from the deadening restraints of societal constraints, after they've conquered their own ignorance and fear. Even then, they face the cold, hard realities of scarcity and humankind's innate limitations.
The best we can hope to do is to reconcile ourselves to the messy compromise we must make between our wishes and dreams, and the unyielding, basic constraints that lie before us. Some deceive themselves into believing that once they have achieved that, they really are the masters of their own destiny, and that nothing can stand in their way. But of course that is really not quite true. It's only that they've managed to convince themselves that they actually really, really wanted to follow that painful but necessary compromise, rather than their originally-charted path which may have run smack into obstacles.

Cotton Castles in the Air

It was a long three-hour bus ride from Selcuk to Pamukkale. An interminable procession of low mountains, small towns and cities, and fields. But it wasn't all boring. There were friendly local passengers who tried to strike up conversations and one who actually gave a gift (even though we were just about complete strangers!) And then there was the shining white top of Pamukkale glistening in the distance. It looked somewhat like a huge dollop of toothpaste accidentally squeezed onto that part of the mountains by a giant. Or a huge layer of icing sugar, perhaps.

There used to be a large Roman city and health centre on the top of the Pamukkale plateau: Hierapolis, it was called. The place was like a Roman-era spa resort, complete with hot springs and pools. The Romans sure knew how to enjoy themselves.

The next day, after having watched the Netherlands almost not get beaten 1-0 in the World Cup finals (and it was only 4 more minutes too! Though admittedly Spain was visibly in control of the game by then), we headed back to Selcuk to visit the ruins of another large Roman city. Ephesus, the capital of the Roman province of Asia and home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Some of the ruins were quite pretty---the restored façade of the Library of Celsus, for instance---but overall it wasn't really very impressive. Not even as impressive as Hierapolis---though that's partly because it wasn't as well-endowed geographically. It might have been partly, too, because much of the ancient city still lay below ground, undiscovered, unexcavated, unseen. (Off on a tangent: Istanbul has many ruins underground too; I wonder how many of its hills are not natural hills, but in fact made up of the ruins and rubble of its long history?) But mostly it must have been due to the ravages of time. The Temple of Artemis used to have 127 columns, impressively arranged in colonnades, resting on majestic foundations and topped with imposing roofs. All that remains today is a single, rebuilt column, standing in the middle of an overgrown field of grass. The forces of nature and history have claimed the rest.

Lütfen Dikkat

So you speak the world's new lingua franca. Perhaps you are entirely, or essentially, monoglot. But that doesn't matter now, does it? Because everyone speaks some English, don't they? Or enough people around speak enough of it to get around anyway. Why do I need to learn these other troublesome, pesky small languages?
Well if you would just care to observe carefully---the next time you speak to someone whose doesn't have native-speaker proficiency in English---how different they sound out of their native language. They usually sound hesitant, timid, withdrawn and a little defensive, no matter how extroverted, lively or, bold they may be in person.   If the conversation was initiated by the other person, in another language, you may well be able to feel the brief, but palpably awkward, slightly disappointed silence after you reply in English: oh, we don't share a language.
Of course you don't actually have to care about all this. As long as I get my message across, what does it matter? But you know, it would only be nice to take notice, and to at least try to bridge the gap.

Göreme

Apparently the name of the town meant "cannot be seen" in Turkish (gör root for "to see" + negative suffix -eme.) Because although the fairy chimneys were very much visible, it was very difficult for jaded military patrols who didn't know better to spot signs of human habitation amidst this surreal but entirely natural volcanic moonscape.

It was pretty cool. There was even a jandarma (police) station inside a fairy chimney. The only downside was that ventilation was always not very optimal. It was invariably comfortably cool inside, but a little stuffy with a few hints of mould. They should have worked on ventilation technology.
But then again, maybe they did have the technological know-how, but just didn't implement it in the fairy chimneys for some reasons. The underground cities---or at least Derinkuyu, which we visited---had very fresh air even seven storeys below ground, courtesy of an elaborate system of ventilation shafts and tunnels. These underground cities were truly invisible too: were it not for the concrete shell of an entrance built for the benefit of tourists, we would have been entirely clueless to the presence of the vast twelve-storey complex of tunnels we were standing above.

Can you imagine staying for weeks, months even, cooped up deep underground, or holed up in the mountains, cut off from the rest of the world and for all intents and purposes invisible to them? Life back then cannot have been fun.

It is I

I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages.

Amin Maalouf, Leo Africanus 

Custodians of the Crossroads

In Istanbul we took ferries between Europe and Asia. Sometimes several in a day. Once we tried to take a bus from Asia to Europe too, but we missed it, so we settled for the ferry yet again.

Okay so that was a bit of a cheap thrill. But how many cities can boast of straddling straits and continents? And of a history so rich ... though perhaps that comes with the territory. Such a commanding position--- between the Black Sea to the north and the Marmara to the south, between Anatolia and the Levant to the east and Europe to the west---would inevitably have drawn empires and conquerers, eager to gain control of strategic and lucrative trade and communication routes.
So the Greeks came. And then the Romans. Then the Byzantines, and the Seljuks, and the Mongolians, and the Ottomans ... Also, along the way, latter-day Europeans, though not as conquerers, but only as visiting merchants come to do business in one of the world's great crossroads. Each left their trace on the place, some more than others. The aqueduct, the columns in the Hippodrome and beyond, the Hagia Sofia, the great mosques, the palaces, the bustling marketplace of Galata and Pera.

How much of that can really said to belong to the history of the Turks, to the modern, unitary nation-state of Turkey? Very little, I submit. Istanbul's history has been, above all, a long and rich discourse between nations and civilizations. The Turks can only claim it as part of history in the sense that they are now the custodians of that discourse and its heritage.

Space Most Sublime

Istanbul's grand mosques all looked similar from the outside: grey brick topped by a slightly-flattened semicircular main dome, supported by a pyramid of semidomes, flanked by one or more pairs of minarets. They all seemed to take after the Ayasofya. Actually, they looked rather similar on the inside, too---not entirely the same, though. The most strikingly different feature in the interior of the Blue Mosque was the set of four elephantine pillars that held up the main dome. Those were truly huge---far thicker than an elephant's feet, really---and divided the interior space into portions of quite quotidian dimensions. The most unique feature of the interior of the Ayasofya, on the other hand, was the immense, soaring sense of spaciousness. The vast main dome, with its gilded calligraphic ciphers is not directly supported by any pillars, large or small; instead a complex structure of secondary semidomes directs the stress away towards the walls and buttresses. A ring of windows just below the dome bathes the interior with light from above, adding to the sense of space.

The resulting sense of spaciousness was simply awe-inspiring. It might have been an enclosed space, but it felt just as open and unbounded as a vast plaza. It was grand, mystical, sublime. It was truly a piece of art.

The Workday Just Ended

Forget Amsterdam. The weekday evening crowds along İstiklal Caddesi bring a whole new shade of meaning to "every day is a holiday."

Ex aura

Is that what maturity amounts to today's world---understanding that mediocrity is the easiest and most rational way forward, and accepting its muddled path? What if I understand but refuse to accept ... would that still count?

Reminder to Self

You're on holiday. Quit sweating the small stuff, take a deep breath, and relax. Like a still pond. Remember?

Spotted

Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles

-- Voltaire, Candide (after Leibniz) 

"Real Men Take Risks!"

Taken out from an entirely trivial context and placed into an only slightly less trivial one. Cheers.

"Something unbelievably raw ..."

I wish I could quote Schumann or Chopin at will. Words are such clumsy substitutes.

当局者迷

So the MV Rachel Corrie has been boarded and diverted to Ashdod without too much incident. It's an immense relief to see that both sides have learnt to be a little less block-headed after the sorry fracas on board the Mavi Marmara.
But you know, in a way, those directly involved in that tragic incident, who were in the heat of everything, were really the most innocent parties of all. With the "Free Gaza" sentiment having been whipped up into such a frenzy, how could the activists on board the flotilla have been reasonably restrained when the IDF started boarding their ships? And when the activists started attacking the boarding commandos so relentlessly, as the situation dictated would happen, how else could the commandos have eventually reacted other than fall back to their last resort, the use of lethal force? It was all bound to happen once the ball started rolling.
So don't blame the commandos, for doing what anyone in their situation what have done. Don't blame the activists for provoking them, because could they really have stood by calmly while their ships were boarded? After all that rhetoric and sentiment? If you really need to blame someone, anyone, blame those who set things in action. Blame the senior command of the IDF for such woeful preparation that lethal force had to be resorted to. Blame the Israeli government for trying to block the flotilla at any cost. Blame the senior leadership of the Free Gaza Movement, those who drummed up support for the cause and organized the flotilla, but conveniently declined to join the action themselves. Blame the armchair "pro-Palestinians" who think supporting the Palestinians is a mighty fine cause (and aren't shy about proclaiming that), as long as other people are willing to do the risky bits for them.
The others who were throwing plates and wielding knives, or pulling pistols and firing live rounds, were only their pawns.

We Love Civil War

The Uganda pavillion at the Expo 2010 in Shanghai has a brightly-painted mural as its backdrop. A car features prominently on one corner of the mural. The car's license plate reads "AK47". For a nation that has been wracked by so much civil disorder, and continues to be harassed by the Lord's Resistance Army, it was not the best of choices.

Expo 2010

The official publicity loves to promote the Expo as an opportunity for the exchange of culture and ideas. In reality, while that might be happening at some level, for most of the 45-million and counting visitors it is not much more than an expensive but interesting circus. Many, especially those following the massive tour groups, don't really bother to read the explanatory captions or even listen carefully to what is being said; instead, they just shuffle around and gawk at all the bright new things around them. That being said, it doesn't mean there was nothing worth seeing. Not at all. In fact, there were too many things worth seeing to recount all of them. So instead only the Best (and the "Best") will be recorded here.

Best single exhibit
The animated 3D version of the 清明上河图 in the China pavilion was just cool. And to use it to showcase urban development in ancient China was rather clever, too. The violin-playing robot in the Japan pavilion would have been a strong contender, but the one time I visited it tripped and fell flat on its face when entering. D'oh!

Best visual effect

The Hong Kong pavilion was pretty nifty, but not especially outstanding compared to the myriad of other pavilions in the Expo. Still, the crystalline pavilion design was very pretty to look at, even from the inside.

Best photo gallery

Lots of the pavilions at the Expo were really nothing more than glorified photo galleries: collections of photos and media which were nice to look at and all, but weren't really very interesting. The Belarus pavilion, however, was a nicely-illustrated kaleidoscope of images. It may not have been as realistically informative as a photograph collection, but it was so much more fun to look at, and prettier, too.

Best video
Many other pavilions chose to feature prominently a video showcasing their country or organisation. Mostly, like the photo galleries, these videos turned out to be decent and showy but ultimately rather tedious and droll affairs. The one in the Iceland pavilion, though, was actually exciting and didn't come across as self-congratulatory in any way. Though to some extent, much like the winner of the Best Single Exhibit, that owed as much to the sheer power and beauty of the source materials as anything the latter-day creators have done with it.

Masterstroke

The Japan pavilion had a lot of cool exhibits. Water-purifying technology, electricity-generating floorboards, cameras with extraordinary zoom, extremely versatile multi-touch wall displays ... but there was more to it than just awesome technology. For the Show segment, the Japanese chose to express their message in the form of the prized local opera tradition of the host, 昆曲. And they didn't do it badly at all. We aren't just here to show off our best things, it says. We also understand you and what you are proud of, and respect that.

Cheapskate Award
The wall tiles on the exterior of the Philippines pavilion look pretty decent. Once up close though, you'll realise they're actually just printed mounting boards. Wonder how durable that is.
Bang-head-on-wall award
Upon entering the Benin booth in the African Joint Pavilion, you'll see nothing. Then you turn a corner, go down a passage, and there's ... a row of empty display cabinets! Oh, and a LCD screen displaying a screenshot of two random photos.

Best overall pavilion design

The Hamburg House at the Urban Best Practices Area (UBPA) clearly incorporated passive design features in an edifying way. It did add to the queues though, because the passive design called for strict crowd control in order for the house not to overheat.

The Netherlands pavilion, on the other hand, with its open design concept, maximised its capacity and minimised any queues leading into it---I never did see any throughout my 3.5 days at the Expo. The whole pavilion was designed as a "Happy Street" snaking through the air, with the ground level given to AstroTurf and plastic ruminants, and various "houses" along the street housing intriguing exhibits.

Clear Message Award

Many pavilions at the Expo tried to do too much at once, so that I walked out of them somewhat washed-out and with no clear overall impression or idea about what they were all about. There were some notable exceptions though. The Porto Alegre pavilion at the UBPA was small and not particularly impressive, but clearly brought across its message that collaboration can lead to better outcomes. The UK pavilion, colloquially also known as the pincushion, spoke clearly about the role of Nature (and greenery in particular) in cities: its centrepiece, the Seed Cathedral, was not merely a flash showpiece, but served to highlight its central message. The USA pavilion, though it didn't have too much in the way of concrete exhibits, at least clearly brought across the inspiring message of how the American values of vision and teamwork can bring about a brighter future.

Best overall experience

There were a lot of things worth seeing in the Expo ... but many of them became much less worth seeing due to the overwhelming crowds. Sometimes the queues were just too discouraging---up to 6 or 7 hours for the Saudi pavilion at one point; more often the surging crowds would be far too distracting and mar any sustained appreciation of the exhibits. The Taiwan pavilion was one of the few pavilions to implement measures to avoid this---by strictly limiting visitor numbers to perhaps 350 an hour, in groups of 25 at a time. As a result of this, plus the much warmer, more personalised reception they were able to give visitors as a consequence of it, the overall experience felt a lot better.

Maybe all the pavilions should have learnt from the Taiwan pavilion. But then I wouldn't have been able to visit nearly as many pavilions as I did either ... oh well. In conclusion: visiting the Expo can be like touring the world without leaving your own country (不出国门 游遍世界). But it's such a poor substitute. Especially when the Expo is being held in China.