Get Stuck

Get stuck in the middle of a working paper. It should’ve been done by the end of the last year. Yet the new year still starts with an unfinished paper. Feel quite anxious and a bit depressed. The good thing, though, is that I’m getting more clear about the topical focus and the way to trim the paper length. I only hope that by finishing the paper, I would learn more in both thinking and writing than before. Otherwise I really don’t know how to go on to do it.

Recently, I fall into a status of grave dissatisfaction about my own research. It should be time for breaking free from the phantom in the past and breaking a new ground for the future. Yes, the future. I’m waiting for a future that is not only redeemable, but able to redeem my past.

N's learning

How to set a goal for N’s learning? What does it mean by learning? Is it to learn simply to become one of various techniques, to become oneself more like a technician, in the broad sense of the word, than like one who knows how to think and what to think of? Does learning a foreign language, for example, mean to master oneself a tool, a linguistic instrument, to communicate, more often than not, all that is trivial and redundant and to show oneself off, to mark oneself different in skin-deep vanity, or should it be tended towards more profound understanding and love of the culture underlying that language to give it its very life?

Too many questions left unanswered, yet to be the food of thought. It’s time to think this over for better involving myself in N’s learning at home.

Typhoon Holidays

Because of Aere's extended attack, two days off work and school ensued. Advantages? Holidays were holidays. A time for rest and doing-nothing. Disadvantages? Well, the time of rest and doing-nothing really gave off nothing.

My initial plan to finish reading the major part of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception by the end of this week may have to be postponed due to the repose. A bit anxious to see time slip away with nothing that could be done about it in these two days. Though the familial gathering was no less enjoyable, the pressing of time still has its hold on me all the time.

N's new and very first semester in primary school will start next week. Hope my plan can be fulfilled by then.