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.