A Janus-faced life

Why is it so hard to be joyful?
Nah...its not a depressive question, just an honest question...
I think it has got to do with a lack of sleep...
I vaguely remember I had a pretty joyful dream last night.
I ought to have slept longer.
Consciousness speaks volume to me sometimes.
Maybe I should sleep lesser.

Killer smile

Do ethics ever exist in international relations? I've been thinking whether I should pursue this as a Masters research next year. It is crazy that the research proposal for Masters is due on 15 Nov, which coincides with my Theory of IR essay, as well as my extended ISM deadline. At the same time, I am doing a complete overhaul for my honors thesis, to turn it from ASEAN regionalism to EU-China relations. My good friend has convinced me that ASEAN is hopeless. But apparently I need to submit another synopsis for re-approval. Gah...

Back to ethics and IR...hmmm...I dunno... sometimes I don't even think ethics exist in human relations; maybe it is more transactional than ethical. But I think ethics is a good blah blah topic for a masters reseach, I can be the next political Deepak Chopra. "Ah....world peace......"

Starry Night

A starry night alright

no turning back

This week has been rough, though it is hardly mid-week. Rough weeks for me these days are characterized by anxiety attacks when there are irritating-but-tempting tea sessions to entice year 4s to join the civil service. Anxiety attacks in the sense that it feels like a mental betrayal just to contemplate going in for the sake of going in. For the past few weeks, these anxiety attacks have been neutralized by a very rationalistic approach to look at the screw-up elitist system that advances the scholars and retards the brain of every other decent social sci grad. Somehow, walking towards the Nat Lib today for a Administrative Service recruitment talk was like a rite of passage to translate my rationality into something very real and tangible - that I honestly will die a mental death by slotting myself into one little chink of the whole administrative machinery. The speech acts of the perm secs, the smiley civil servants in the videos (think of the smiley IMF policeman to feel my sense of cringe ), the prominent 'senior' servants who gave their 2 cents worth, everything is symptomatic of a strange plesantville - satisfied people who measures satisfaction in terms of God-knows-what.

I guess the flipside of living outside of pleasantville is that it gives a sense of liberty for one to dare to lose, cause you already form a baseline expectation of the worst possible situations that can happen to you, and I have reasonably calculated my worst possible situations, which really isn't that bad. Historically speaking, I seem to thrive on bad situations anyway.

Today's trip to nat lib is like fitting in a big piece of jigsaw puzzle in my contemplative moments. Academia feels good, at least to me, it nourishes my brain, which to some extent, existentially speaking, is all that humans possess, if we neutralize the theory of property rights. I think I wasted too much mental energy dissecting the blah blah of this strange country, and trying to rationalize my way into its strange system. The people are nice, and they define my identity, but the system is just strange. And that makes me feel strange, like an exile in my own home. There is an escape valve, and the challenge for now is to find the right opening, in terms of space and time.

The New Left

For those interested in sinology, this is a super good summary, though it is still slightly long, but we are talking about a summary of 50 years of China's political economy...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/13/news/left-web.php

Little Beijing in Little Jerusalem in Little Bali

The vicarious lived his week through
Religion
Philosophy
and Food
Unstructured joy in a structured world.
That is, a structured world, that kills the soul.
Joy finds its way in strange interstices.
The mind suffers, yet reigns, in selectivity.
The subaltern finds his way in exile.
But the God of little things,
will find him in good hands, at all costs.

Life and Deadlines

It is sad but somehow comforting to observe a pattern in life and in school-life. Always a case of almost there, like achilles' tortoise in the zeno's paradox.
One can never catch up, never quite reach, a perpetual sense of incomplete...ness.
History speaks volume, and it takes a bit of insanity to go against the flow of History.
But its comforting in a sad way.
The poetry feels familiar,
like words dripped in poison ink.
And you don't know what went wrong.
Try to smile, we don't have to change the world.

fire the missiles!!

This is a pretty cool spam mail I got.

Once again, another spam mail from Korea. However, you
may understand why I send this Email. Today, North
Korea announced that they succeeded nuclear test and
it was confirmed by several sources from neighboring
states, especially China, which received a notice from
NK directly.

My office, Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, is primarily
responsible for operations in Korea Theater of
Operation (KTO), which encompasses the whole Korean
Peninsula. As you may understand, as soon as the news
spread, the whole Korean armed forces issued the high
alert and I also have to wear field uniform at the
office to be ready for any contingency.

Any chance of war? Our preliminary assessment is "not
now." But we have to be ready for the worst case
scenario... In addition, you should note that it is
likely that all the neighboring states will vote in
favor of economic/military sanction of North Korea in
the upcoming session of UN Security Council.

What do I think of things afterwards? I'm not in a
position to speak up, but I'll be glad to hear your
thoughts. I want to open up a discussion here among
ourselves.

Actually, if I'm S.korea, I think I'll just keep super quiet and let the political elephants around me, China, Japan and US, do the mumbo jumbo. Once the regime cave in, I will reunify korea on my own terms and acquire their nukes in the process. Hmmm... I think international politics is just kinda like an amoral game to me. haha... gonna start on my humanitarian intervention essay soon...