Sunday, April 23, 2006
Consider all the relevant posts linked
I do still think we should have a book club. Not to improve literacy and not to read or refuse to read milton, but just to be able to read the same book at the same time (for once, excluding Pratchett, which is a constant) and talk about it. I'm thinking of the conversations between A. S. Byatt and Ignes Sodres on six books they liked (which I believed was called Interesting Conversations or something like) - that sort of thing. Everyone should get to pick something in turn, and yes I guess you can pick Paradise Lost and yes I guess you can refuse to read anyone who's still alive, who writes from a minority point of view and all the rest of the rules - but probably good to start with something we all wouldn't mind reading and which doesn't require three years of prior study and who can reasonably be read on the train and in bed and the odd moments of time we have entirely to ourselves.
Stuff
1. Did you know o.k. stands for oll korrect? (I still owe you ten minutes for that.)
2. Dinner on Friday with the usual crowd at Kalinka-Malinka, which has excellent shashlik and some unpronounceable cabbage roll thing (but avoid the dumplings), and later coffee and cake and Milton and Donne and the existence of free verse. Lunch on Saturday with WN and then dinner with S, SX and mf at a cosy little dim sum place in Tanjong Pagar where we ordered one of everything on the menu except the porridge. Then mf had to go off for a supper date so the rest of us ended up at Bakerzin talking about comfort books (children's books) and TV shows (anything written by Aaron Sorkin) and drinking milk. (I can't remember if I've said this here so I might as well say it again - watching Aaron Sorkin's TV shows is like reading Pratchett. It's not that he's the world's greatest writer exactly - it's that one buys into his moral vision. You watch the show/read the book and think yes that's how the world should be. And if you're me, you think it's how the world is, but that's a different story.)
I think this all the time but don't say it - it's so good to be with friends who will argue about poems and free verse (or the denial thereof) and the importance of children's books. And TV shows whose characters are involved and stimulated by their jobs and not willing to give anything less than their all and whatever else Dana said to Casey.
3. Sunday, sadly, was spent staring into space a lot and doing homework. I'm basically indifferent to a lot of what I'm supposed to be doing - in the sense that I've no emotional or ideological or philosophical (this one very rarely) preconceptions about these things - so it's mostly ok. I don't think one should work in (for?) the administration/regulation of something one really does love. I'm a little saddened every time we talk about schools, and especially universities, as a place to churn out workers. I guess that's the sensible way of thinking of it, but the part of me which values academic work can't help thinking about what Sayers had one of her characters say about Oxford - that Oxford has been called the home of lost causes; if the love of learning is a lost cause, then in Oxford at least it has found its abiding home.
4. Suyin - my dear, congratulations (very belatedly)! Hope you're feeling better.
5. My computer says it's eighteen minutes to Su-Lin's birthday. Happy birthday darling!
2. Dinner on Friday with the usual crowd at Kalinka-Malinka, which has excellent shashlik and some unpronounceable cabbage roll thing (but avoid the dumplings), and later coffee and cake and Milton and Donne and the existence of free verse. Lunch on Saturday with WN and then dinner with S, SX and mf at a cosy little dim sum place in Tanjong Pagar where we ordered one of everything on the menu except the porridge. Then mf had to go off for a supper date so the rest of us ended up at Bakerzin talking about comfort books (children's books) and TV shows (anything written by Aaron Sorkin) and drinking milk. (I can't remember if I've said this here so I might as well say it again - watching Aaron Sorkin's TV shows is like reading Pratchett. It's not that he's the world's greatest writer exactly - it's that one buys into his moral vision. You watch the show/read the book and think yes that's how the world should be. And if you're me, you think it's how the world is, but that's a different story.)
I think this all the time but don't say it - it's so good to be with friends who will argue about poems and free verse (or the denial thereof) and the importance of children's books. And TV shows whose characters are involved and stimulated by their jobs and not willing to give anything less than their all and whatever else Dana said to Casey.
3. Sunday, sadly, was spent staring into space a lot and doing homework. I'm basically indifferent to a lot of what I'm supposed to be doing - in the sense that I've no emotional or ideological or philosophical (this one very rarely) preconceptions about these things - so it's mostly ok. I don't think one should work in (for?) the administration/regulation of something one really does love. I'm a little saddened every time we talk about schools, and especially universities, as a place to churn out workers. I guess that's the sensible way of thinking of it, but the part of me which values academic work can't help thinking about what Sayers had one of her characters say about Oxford - that Oxford has been called the home of lost causes; if the love of learning is a lost cause, then in Oxford at least it has found its abiding home.
4. Suyin - my dear, congratulations (very belatedly)! Hope you're feeling better.
5. My computer says it's eighteen minutes to Su-Lin's birthday. Happy birthday darling!
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Google, or, A Remembered Conversation
My little brother took part in the Google worldwide programming competition (or something like). Anyone can take part. The top 500 in the world get through to the next round. The top 250 get a tee-shirt. The top 50 get to go to California for the final round.
Him: But I don't get to go.
Me: Why not?
Him: Because I'm not 21. So at best I get a tee-shirt.
Me: That's not a very balanced incentive structure.
Him: It's a cool tee-shirt. It's got "Google" on it.
Postcript: And so it does.
Him: But I don't get to go.
Me: Why not?
Him: Because I'm not 21. So at best I get a tee-shirt.
Me: That's not a very balanced incentive structure.
Him: It's a cool tee-shirt. It's got "Google" on it.
Postcript: And so it does.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Well, was it untoward?
From one of the Sports Night transcripts:
Dan: Our anniversary. Today is our anniversary.
Casey: Jeez, Danny, that night in Minneapolis with the Jaegermeister, we didn't do anything untoward, did we?
Dan: You mean did we get married?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: No.
Casey: (getting up and going backstage) Good.
Dan: (following) You recited the St. Crispin's Day speech from the lobby of the St. Paul Radisson.
Casey: (examining himself in the mirror) Well, was it untoward?
Dan: No, it was just embarrassing.
Dan: Our anniversary. Today is our anniversary.
Casey: Jeez, Danny, that night in Minneapolis with the Jaegermeister, we didn't do anything untoward, did we?
Dan: You mean did we get married?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: No.
Casey: (getting up and going backstage) Good.
Dan: (following) You recited the St. Crispin's Day speech from the lobby of the St. Paul Radisson.
Casey: (examining himself in the mirror) Well, was it untoward?
Dan: No, it was just embarrassing.
Do not depend on fairness of face, or why women always need new clothes
"[I]n Precepts for Women, written by the great woman historian, Pan Chao, the virtues and appearance of good women are described:
- From a brief survey of Chinese women and literature in Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung's Women Poets of China, which Yisheng pointed me to one day.
The virtues of women are not brilliant talent, nor distinction and elegance. The virtues of women are reserve, quiet, chastity, orderliness, governing herself to maintain a sense of shame, and conducting herself according to the rules of Confucian etiquette.
The appearance of a woman does not depend on fairness of face. The principles for a woman's appearance are to wash away dirt, wear clean and new clothing and ornaments, bathe often, and keep her body clean."
- From a brief survey of Chinese women and literature in Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung's Women Poets of China, which Yisheng pointed me to one day.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
When we grow up
I think we should have a bookshop, and I think it should be like Books Actually - except actually with books.
What I'd have (in addition to novels, I mean):
(1) A decent poetry section. Which means that twentieth-century poets cannot be limited to the collected poems of Yeats and Auden (separate collections, I mean).
(2) A decent non-fiction section. Why is it that Singaporean bookshops hardly ever carry non-academic non-fiction? Including personal essays, humour (I'm thinking of Thurber), travel, journalism with footnotes (I'm thinking of Eric Schlosser and Timothy Garton Ash), critical essays (I'm thinking of Northrop Frye's radio lectures? - The Education Imagination, and Anne Carson's wonderful book-length essays), political essays (but only if very good; can't think of an example), food, and so on. And some academic books (I'm thinking of Benedict Anderson).
(3) Children's books.
What I'd have (in addition to novels, I mean):
(1) A decent poetry section. Which means that twentieth-century poets cannot be limited to the collected poems of Yeats and Auden (separate collections, I mean).
(2) A decent non-fiction section. Why is it that Singaporean bookshops hardly ever carry non-academic non-fiction? Including personal essays, humour (I'm thinking of Thurber), travel, journalism with footnotes (I'm thinking of Eric Schlosser and Timothy Garton Ash), critical essays (I'm thinking of Northrop Frye's radio lectures? - The Education Imagination, and Anne Carson's wonderful book-length essays), political essays (but only if very good; can't think of an example), food, and so on. And some academic books (I'm thinking of Benedict Anderson).
(3) Children's books.
Catching up
I just started reading the blogs after a long absence and I am completely lost.
Random and less random thoughts:
There is no Swedish restaurant. It is a place of legend and myth and wishful thinking.
My dear, I had no idea his family were so horrible. How dare they? I can imagine being upset about a former lover's marriage, quite apart from what I thought about him. In this case, the man is clearly an idiot and a louse.
And if it's not too late to say my piece - I don't understand how you could have thought us smug and complacent and the other thing (there were three things, weren't there?). (From here I'll drop "we" and just speak of myself.) I do think of you and J as standard-bearers, and I am very proud of you, but I don't think that justifies my own laziness. I say "laziness" because it helps me to think that I could do anything I wanted to, if I just put my mind to it; but if I were honest I would admit that I don't think I could have got into grad school. What would I possibly study? Anything I enjoyed at undergraduate level (I realise now), I enjoyed on the level of emotion rather than intellect - I enjoyed reading Mill's "On Liberty" for the passion in it, rather than the argument (not that the argument was complicated - another reason in its favour). I'm afraid I can't think and I can't write; sometimes I'm afraid I couldn't think and couldn't write. How can it be that you don't think what you do is real work? I've always thought that scholarship was real, more real than the work I do. I remember being very lost and afraid and alone in Oxford; I also remember being in the Old Bodleian along one Saturday morning and reading (a translation of) the Phaedrus(?) and watching the sunlight slanting in and colouring the pale wooden desks a soft gold. At least teaching has some connection to language; I'm afraid I've lost all that.
What I mind about where I am is not the part about selling out but that I'm bad at it. I think it could be a worthy job and it could require a good deal of hard work and dedication; I'm unwilling to put in the hard work and dedication because that would only get me to average, and I'm unwilling to work at being average. I don't think much about it nowadays, and that worries me when I do think about it. I'm afraid not so much of losing desire but the desire for desire.
Common experiences and shared books are one thing (two things), but surely not all? Wouldn't we (all) be close anyway, whatever we did or did not choose to do?
Random and less random thoughts:
There is no Swedish restaurant. It is a place of legend and myth and wishful thinking.
My dear, I had no idea his family were so horrible. How dare they? I can imagine being upset about a former lover's marriage, quite apart from what I thought about him. In this case, the man is clearly an idiot and a louse.
And if it's not too late to say my piece - I don't understand how you could have thought us smug and complacent and the other thing (there were three things, weren't there?). (From here I'll drop "we" and just speak of myself.) I do think of you and J as standard-bearers, and I am very proud of you, but I don't think that justifies my own laziness. I say "laziness" because it helps me to think that I could do anything I wanted to, if I just put my mind to it; but if I were honest I would admit that I don't think I could have got into grad school. What would I possibly study? Anything I enjoyed at undergraduate level (I realise now), I enjoyed on the level of emotion rather than intellect - I enjoyed reading Mill's "On Liberty" for the passion in it, rather than the argument (not that the argument was complicated - another reason in its favour). I'm afraid I can't think and I can't write; sometimes I'm afraid I couldn't think and couldn't write. How can it be that you don't think what you do is real work? I've always thought that scholarship was real, more real than the work I do. I remember being very lost and afraid and alone in Oxford; I also remember being in the Old Bodleian along one Saturday morning and reading (a translation of) the Phaedrus(?) and watching the sunlight slanting in and colouring the pale wooden desks a soft gold. At least teaching has some connection to language; I'm afraid I've lost all that.
What I mind about where I am is not the part about selling out but that I'm bad at it. I think it could be a worthy job and it could require a good deal of hard work and dedication; I'm unwilling to put in the hard work and dedication because that would only get me to average, and I'm unwilling to work at being average. I don't think much about it nowadays, and that worries me when I do think about it. I'm afraid not so much of losing desire but the desire for desire.
Common experiences and shared books are one thing (two things), but surely not all? Wouldn't we (all) be close anyway, whatever we did or did not choose to do?