This is probably why I dislike extroverts (and should stop)

Because I spend more time---or at least think I spend more time---in a conversation asking questions about the other person than saying things about myself, and I---subconsciously, at least---expect others to reciprocate. And you get annoyed when they don't, and see it as a case of their monopolizing the discourse for their own ends. Except, you know, that's probably not the most helpful way to think about or deal with this. Especially not when you start to go into long cycles of resentment, variously directed and undirected anger, self-loathing, and rinse-and-repeat. 

Calc I Haikus

(i)

The derivative 

The derivative is hard

Good luck GPA

(ii)

Lemurs live the dream

They don't do derivatives

Math is really hard

(iii)

The lemurs jumped from

the space shuttle and began

skiing down Diag

(iv)

Flying through the void

Leaving behind the ground quick

Always fly: shuttle

(v)

Nothing is as odd

as skiing down the diag

that has no real hill

---from the overworked students of section 001.

Ick!

I didn't particular enjoy writing college admission essays---the whole idea of "selling oneself" just didn't quite click. I understand what it is and why it would be necessary, but somehow just. Can't. Bring myself to do it. People should't make judgements about other people based on a small amount of information cherry-picked and presented to them in a short period of time under intense pressure. Such judgements seem to be almost certainly doomed to be bad judgements, on the whole. But well. Such is the way (parts of) the world work at the moment ...
And now I find myself on---not quite the other side, but another side anyway---of the table. Not making admissions decisions, but having to give my evaluation or impression of an applicant based on a small amount of information they cherry-pick and present to me within a short period of time under pressure. An evaluation or impression which will then form part of the small amount of information that the people who actually make decisions will actually see. I'm not particularly enjoying it either.
Talking to those people was fun. Having to evaluate them, not so much. I could be just brutally honest. Some of the applicants I interviewed were really interesting people and had interesting ideas, and those I thought really deserved a shot at admission. Some others just seemed like lost high school seniors. But I feel bad writing that. I don't know whether that would be quite enough to torpedo their chances of admission, but it's certainly not going to help; and looking back, I was probably more like one of them than like the people who had ideas and interesting things to say.
Meh. Maybe I'll just bite the bullet and do that (in more diplomatic language.) I'm sorry, but at the end of the day I'm not responsible for the dizzyingly low admission rate.
I guess what you really should do, if you feel bad about hindering these kids, is to address the issue of educational (in)equity more broadly and think about broadening opportunities and access to education at a level comparable to Princeton ... 

In which I feel vindicated

A proprement parler, il n'y a pas de certitude; il y a seulement des hommes certains

Charles Renouvier

Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point

Blaise Pascal 

And so the wheels of the world turn

... as Chilean Ambassador in 1972, Neruda spent most of a three-hour meeting with President Georges Pompidou designed to negotiate Chile’s foreign debt discussing Baudelaire instead.

--d'ici

Expand your comfort zone

You're comfortable in your solitude. There's nothing wrong with that. If anything that's a strength, not a weakness. But you should also learn to be comfortable around people. 

Finely-tuned apathy

Does it strike you that there is a slight resemblance between (a) what you regard as your parents' mildly unhealthy attachment to you, (b) what your students might regard as your being too demanding / micromanaging in your concern for their grades, and (c) what you perceive as someone caring too much about what his class thinks about him?
In all of these cases, there's one party which holds itself responsible for some aspect of the other, expects that to be reciprocated to some extent by some form of appreciation, and is duly nonplussed (and a little upset) when that appreciation does not quite materialise---but have they taken into account how the counter-party feels about this whole rather paternalistic setup?

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty,

in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence---too weak to live, too cowardly to die.

(Emma Goldman, Anarchism: What it really stands for)

Part of a conversation I'm having with 2012 me

I believe that nation-states are legal fictions and artificial constructs, whose current shapes and peculiarities are but accidents of history. Lots of people---most people---would disagree, perhaps vehemently so. But that is only because of a lack of clear thought, often encouraged by politicians and regimes for reasons of their convenience.
Certainly there should be some sort of apparatus to give a coherent organization to society, and the modern nation-state, where it works, does this very well. But also we should recognize that nation-states, as such, are nothing more than conventions of convenience. Why should we get so worked up and excited about mere conventions? I don't understand.

Well as you quite rightly point out there is no one natural way of organising human society; what we have is, perhaps, not as good a solution as could ever exist, but it is what it is. Accidents of history and mere conventions by agreement they may well be, but the fact of their existence, the miracle, minor or less minor, that they have been conjured, willed, brought into existence, is surely worth something,
So, perhaps, these things are worth celebrating and worrying about. Though, also, it behooves us not to take them too seriously, for there are, ultimately, higher and more important things in this world than country. 

Hier gaan over het tij,

de wind, de maan en wij

(the Dutch, at Neeltje-Jans on the Oosterscheldekering)

Now I really want to see that plaque. It is a little bit out of the way though ...

Both bitter and serene

'The next day I woke up with the feeling that I was myself at last. A great calm, at the same time both bitter and serene, spread through me. I no longer had to struggle between my Russian and my French identities. I accepted myself.' 

(Andrei Makine trans. Geoffrey Strachan, Dreams of My Russian Summers, 183)

You're missing the point.

Yes, it hurts to care. But that doesn't mean you should just not. And it certainly does not mean that you should systematically construct a worldview that will justify why you should not. 

To discover

 ... to push a little farther back the foamy line of language, to make it encroach upon that sandy region that is still open to the clarity of perception but is already no longer so to everyday speech---to introduce language into that penumbra where the gaze is bereft of words. An arduous, delicate work; a work that reveals, as Laennec revealed distinctly, outside the confused mass of scirrhi, the first cirrhotic liver in the history of medical perception.

(Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith, 169)

Where do you live now?

Singapore. Do you want a street address? Yes I do happen to be studying here now, and for that purpose I'm staying at this other address about an hour from here. How long will I be here? Five years (four and a half more, I guess.) What are my plans after graduation? I intend to find a job in my home country. Which is? See above. I know that's not entirely true and you probably have an inkling that that's not entirely true, and I know that you know and you probably know that I know and here I think the chain of mutual knowledge might break down. But we will mention none of this. Because you're only a CBP officer, and that's as far as you need to know, and the subtleties of what a home country is and what it means to inhabit a place are entirely irrelevant to the purely bureaucratic concern of border control, and there are twenty people behind me in the line waiting to clear the border so why don't we end this conversation right here and let's all go back to our merry business. Next!

To fight aloud is very brave, / But gallanter, I know,

Who charge within the bosom,
The cavalry of woe. 

Who win, and nations do not see,
Who fall, and none observe,
Whose dying eyes no country
Regards with patriot love. 

We trust, in plumed procession,
For such the angels go,
Rank after rank, with even feet
And uniforms of snow.

(Emily Dickinson, Poems, Series 1, XVI)

In before the tsunami

Home is where the heart is. It's the people, the things, the places you care about---all of them, not just any one of them. (Clearly these aspects can be independent of one another, but oftentimes it makes little sense to think about them in isolation.)
So don't be so worried about not having a roof over your head here where you think home is. As long as you continue to engage with the place in a meaningful way, as long as you continue to care, these will be mere logistical details. They matter, but they can be overcome.
And, now, welcome to Michigan. Tuesday morning will be a fun time.

54 hours later, some thanks are due

To Singapore Airlines for upgrading me to a flat bed across the Pacific, and to a truly awesome friend for offering a couch to crash on for a night at extremely short notice. 

Abstract Nonsense

I woke up this morning feeling distinctly unmoored. Maybe it was just the lack of sleep, but for a fleeting but distinct moment, nothing and no-one seemed to matter at all. And then I fell asleep again.
Maybe the relentless drive towards fundamental, pure nihilism has just about bottomed out, and now you can actually build something meaningful. 

I don't know, the Chinese come pretty close

Culinarily, they are among the most homesick people I have ever met.

---ici