Just arrived in Berlin today, after a night in London.

Travelling, so I won't be able to log regularly (well... not like I have been doing so to begin with but...). Am in New York City right now, and wishing to the depths of my soul that I came here for university and not @#! Chicago. And while we're at it -- I wished I'd finished my NS too before starting uni.

Ah well.

Also, I am now much much more reluctant than I was before to travel together with my parents.

If you would like to know, I should be done with roaming after July 15th. Ciao.

Convocation was this morning. I am no longer a college student.

Just a bit more packing and I can leave tomorrow. I'm still having difficulty coming to grips with the idea that I am leaving the university and all the people that I have come to know during my time here, and am not coming back for years. A decade or two, maybe never.

I'm scared of these kind of changes, because I'm terrified that I have to face them alone.

How do you say goodbye?

You can, I suppose, tell someone whom you've greeted, chatted with, debated with, shared opinions with, laughed with, seen around all the time that you won't be there when they come back after the summer's over. But what is this sense of loss settling into a quiet niche within me?

I'm sad that I have to go. It's impossible to stay of course, but I feel sad all the same. Because for those whom I've had the fine fortune to know here, I don't know when we'll meet again.

Haven't updated my blog for so long because of various graduation-related tasks that I've had to get done. All the things that have to be packed up and shipped out are mostly on their way -- but it was maddening in every sense of the word. For some reason I always end up reinventing the wheel and this time it was no different. Had no idea where to begin and no idea who to ask and so seized on FedEx initially. But shipping with them costs a @#! bomb. Then I discovered that the U.S. Postal Service has a book rate for shipping overseas, and thanks to the help of my fantastic parents I managed to ship the books that I didn't give/throw away before the post office on campus closed. Thanks also to God for not letting me flip out, for having the support of my parents, and for letting me be the last guy to get in to the post office before it closed. :)

I gave away a lot of my books. As I was throwing volume after volume out of the boxes it struck me how futile having my own personal book collection was. I rarely reread my books after all -- perhaps I should utilise libraries better and think very carefully about my furture books purchases. How hard that was over here and that was just with a smattering of book fairs throughout the year and visits to Powell's on 57th. A greedy urge to buy buy buy while the self-restraint that usually reins the consumerist impulse is suppressed by some strange moral belief that reading is good for you. Maybe it's better that I wasn't in London or New York...

Well well, what d'ya know. I did find a copy of The Trial of Henry Kissinger at the book fair. True -- it's not fair to single him out for all the abominable things the U.S. did during the Nixon and Ford Administrations, but it's a start to uncovering the reasons why hatred of the U.S. runs so high in many parts of the world. Wish more Americans -- particularly in the current Administration -- would pay attention.

On a side note, it seems that the author Hitchens has become a yes-man for the Dubya Admin. I know next to nothing about the guy of course, but I hope he hasn't made such a hypocritical choice.

I think I'll start on the book after I finish Murakami Haruki's latest collection of short stories After the Quake. Picked up the new softcover edition while shopping on Fri evening, before the movie. Excellent stuff ^_^

At last -- done with classes. My last final for while ended at 12 noon Fri. Time to turn my attentions to preparing for my exit from Chicago.

Feels strange to have absolutely nothing to study for, for once.

Watched The Trials of Henry Kissinger this evening at Doc. Fascinating documentary. I'm compelled now to read Christopher Hitchen's book of a similar name, which inspired the BBC film. Perhaps I'll find it at the 19th Annual Printer's Row Book Fair this weekend.

What to make of the most famous American diplomat ever? I'm inclined to agree that he was as duplicitous and amoral as the film presented him as. The evidence is compelling, but more importantly I agree because in my opinion those qualities were what made him such an effective statesman for the times he lived in. His America was one that saw no end to the Cold War, was paranoid about the Communists taking over the world and so did everything possible to avoid appearing weak in front of other countries.

Hey, maybe things haven't changed that much since HK fell out of the public limelight. Now that's a disturbing thought.

City Trees

I have seen city trees
fight for air --
elbow each other
with their crooked arms
for a gulp of sky.

Even their spring
is hard won --
the pyrrhic victory
of scant leaf
from blackened branch.

I admire their slant on things --
the way they spire above
the small irony of fences
and tulips at their feet --
the way they stare down
the envy of windows --
the traffic of windblown faces.

They remind me
of what is not concrete,
what is in spite of what is.

-- Linda Opyr

Ugh -- I am sick and tired of thinking and writing.

No energy, no understanding, no love, no community, no confidence -- no happiness.

Ah! Nostalgia! Relieve those days of fine Squaresoft 8-bit RPGs that kept you indoors while the sun shone outside and your childhood passed you by! 8-Bit Theater

Or maybe not.

Anyone remember Secret of Mana?

Secret of Mana Theater

And why bother sitting through all 26 episodes of Anno Hideaki's animated opus, Neon Genesis Evangelion? Not when you have the Evangelion Thumbnail Theater.

I saw The Hours. Pretty good. Not a great film though. Philip Glass's piano tinkling is omnipresent and gets irritating quickly (Heard the piano playing on the official movie site? That's basically it for the whole movie). Julianne Moore's and Nicole Kidman's bits were... lacking in the complexity found in Meryl Streep's section.

Still, the film raises the intriguing possibility of people getting stuck in other people's happiness. I suppose as an intellectual or literary device it makes sense -- not everyone has the same idea of happiness. Yet on a more personal level I find it difficult to believe that in a two person relationship, you either force-fit yourself into the other person's idea of happiness or you end up bitter, broken and having to choose between suicide and "life". Relationships aren't that static, are they? Don't people adapt their behaviours to each other to some extent? Takes both people to work for happiness, right? Or is that kind of "happiness" by compromise (for lack of a less suggestive term) a less-adequate happiness than if you found the "perfect" person?

Well... even within that framework couples still break up I guess. I suppose when one party feels that he/she will be happier elsewhere, what is the other party to say? What is she/he to do? I have no answers for that. All I know is that it sucks to be the one left behind, dealing with the fact that the happiness wasn't as -- well -- happy as once believed. The intellectual solution is of course, to analyse and correct. Letting go of someone however, isn't something you can reason out on your own even if you know it was something between the inevitable and the right thing to do.

I wonder how other couples do it? Break up and join up with someone else together so easily like some folk dance. Man, am I missing something here?

Came back and watched Krzysztof Kieslowski's Red, part of his famous Three Colours trilogy. A better movie, I think. I liked the way the movie generated its own self-enclosed logic, its own sense of destiny. The film also deals heavily with human communication, particularly by telephone. A disembodied voice that separates more than it links. But the movie is never ponderous. Slow-moving perhaps, but the plot development is delightful to those who stay awake.

Betcha didn't know what Gundam actually stands for:

General
Unilateal
Neuro-link
Dispersive
Autoromic
Maneuver

No, I did not just make that up. But the folks at Sunrise probably did.

The New York Times
May 23, 2003
Senators Sharply Criticize Iraq Rebuilding Efforts
By ERIC SCHMITT

[W] ASHINGTON, May 22 � Democratic senators assailed the Bush administration's postwar reconstruction effort in Iraq today, peppering Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz with complaints about the planning and execution of the strategy. Even Republicans joined in, offering pointed criticisms of the administration's performance.

Lawmakers have been stewing for weeks over the administration's failure to consult in depth with Congress about the costs, methods and goals of rebuilding Iraq, and some of those frustrations boiled over at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The concerns from lawmakers underscored the challenges facing the administration not only in Iraq, but also in maintaining support in Congress, allied capitals and among the American public for the difficult and dangerous postwar mission.

"I am concerned that the administration's initial stabilization and reconstruction efforts have been inadequate," said Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican who heads the committee. "The planning for peace was much less developed than the planning for war." Mr. Lugar said the physical and political reconstruction of Iraq could take at least five years.

In a particularly testy exchange, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the panel's senior Democrat, berated Mr. Wolfowitz for the administration's failure to acknowledge publicly that the postwar efforts would cost billions of dollars, require years of involvement and get the United States bogged down just as it is in the Balkans.

"When is the president going to tell the American people that we're likely to be in the country of Iraq for three, four, five, six, eight, 10 years, with thousands of forces and spending billions of dollars? Because it's not been told to them yet." Mr. Biden said. "I don't know about you, but home constituency doesn't understand that. They think Johnny and Jane are going to come marching home pretty soon."

Mr. Wolfowitz said the pace of reconstruction was hard to pre- dict. "It's possible that things will go faster," he said.

When he tried to discuss Iraq's resources for rebuilding the country � notably its enormous oil fields � Mr. Biden cut him off.

"What are the resources?" Mr. Biden demanded. "For us just to get to the point where we're talking about increasing to 1 million barrels per day export, there's going to be a need for a $5 billion investment in the oil fields to get to that point."

In his opening statement, Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged that security, especially in Baghdad, was still a problem, but he said that media reports of looting, lawlessness and violence in the Iraqi capital overlooked improving conditions there and in other Iraqi cities.

He reaffirmed the administration's long-term commitment to rebuilding Iraq, and ticked off a list of initial successes, from the availability of electricity in Basra all day long for the first time in 12 years, to the reopening of primary schools throughout Iraq.

"We cannot afford to fail," Mr. Wolfowitz told the senators. "We cannot afford to allow Iraq to revert to the remnants of the Baathist regime that now ranges throughout Iraq in their desperate bid for influence and power."

But even as he sought understanding for the difficulties confronting a monumental rebuilding task that has been under way for only a month or so, Mr. Wolfowitz was greeted with skepticism from many senators.

Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said in a statement that "we may have underestimated or mischaracterized the challenges of establishing security and rebuilding Iraq."

Democrats were far more punishing in their assessments.

"It is very hard to fathom what the administration's strategy is with respect to the immediate stabilization of the situation, let alone the longer-term reconstruction of Iraq," Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a statement.

Senator Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, accused the administration of squandering a well executed military campaign with "a half-baked plan for reconstruction."

"Answers from the administration about the scope of the job, and the likely requirements in terms of U.S. manpower, resources and time, remain vague at best," he said in a statement.

Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged that the administration misjudged how quickly qualified Iraqi police officers could be trained and assigned to duty and that Pentagon officials erred by not having Jay Garner, the first civilian administrator, brief lawmakers more fully before leaving for the Persian Gulf in March. Otherwise, Mr. Wolfowitz gave a spirited defense of the Pentagon's planning for the war's aftermath.

He said he stood by his criticism of Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, who suggested in February that it could take "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" to stabilize Iraq. Mr. Wolfowitz said he interpreted that to mean 300,000 troops or more, and the Pentagon did not envision needing that many.

Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who joined Mr. Wolfowitz, said there were 145,000 American troops in Iraq with 18,000 more from the Army's First Armored Division on the way. Beyond that, General Pace said, there are no plans to increase American force levels. There are also about 20,000 British troops in Iraq.

Mr. Wolfowitz also defended a decision by L. Paul Bremer III, the new civilian administrator, to delay the selection of an interim civilian Iraqi authority until security improved and American officials took more time to vet Iraqi representatives.

"If the situation in Iraq is somewhat messy now," he said, "it's likely to seem even messier as Iraqis sort out their political process."

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	High
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Very Low

Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test

But I knew that already -- I'm at the place where fun comes to die right?

Returned from Anime Central on Sunday evening. I'd love to write a report of what happened, but I have a 10 pg Korean Civ paper due later this Tues morning. On page 5 right now, and struggling to write something that isn't plaglarism...

Bought stuff. Didn't get to do all the things I wanted due to lack of sleep and skit preparations (related -- was out helping make props until 5am Friday morning, on top of mad BA paper writing in the week preceding the convention). We were runner-up for Best Group Skit. Oh well. I suspect our winning awards two years in a row might have tipped the scales against us. In any case lots of people came up to us after the Masquerade and told us how cool our skit was. Our Kikkoman was immensely popular. Of course, no one cared about my crappy Amon.

Well, with the end of ACen my duties as President of the Anime Club have mostly been discharged. I don't quite feel so much fulfilled as... relieved... I'm glad things went ok. Can sleep in peace now -- once I finish that damn Civ paper.

One of the things that amazes me about the U.S. is how often pro-industry legislation (more often than not at the expense of the common person) is justified using xenophobia and patriotism. Take for instance, then Commissioner for Patents and Trademarks Bruce Lehman's statement at a 1997 hearing regarding H.R. 2281 a.k.a. the WIPO Copyright Treaties Implementation Act.

"To the extent that we wait in implementing the [1996 World Intellectual Property Organisation] treaties; to the extent that we fall behind other countries in implementing them, we will be abrogating that leadership role that appropriately belongs to us. And so I encourage you to move expeditiously on these matters; they are very important to our national economy [...] We have to keep in mind that in other countries people will be looking to us for a signal. Many developing countries around the world -- and we do not want to give them a loophole to be able to steal our intellectual property."

H.R. 2281 is, of course, better known by the title that the Senate gave it: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

South Korean industrialization was far more difficult and problematic, from both an economic and political standpoint, than those who celebrate it are willing to admit. More specifically, in addition to rapid growth, [Park Chung Hee's] economic strategy also produced an unbalanced and unstable economy. Moreover, because of the oppressive nature of the growth process, Park's strategy generated its own political opposition. Growth itself thus created the need for ever greater state repression.

--- Martin Hart-Landsberg, The Rush To Development: Economic Change and Political Struggle in South Korea (USA: Monthly Review Press, 1993), 164

My BA just hit 30 pgs.

:)

Lots of paper writing to do. 5-7 pager for Monday. Korean Civ 10 pager *and* BA both due Friday.

I'm so screwed.

To entertain you while I'm gone -- Shibuya-kei!

"Shibuya-kei is the world seen from Tokyo." (Don't let the Italian throw you off)

"Whereas Britpop was a movement based on the premise that bands signed in Camden had relevance worldwide, and was marketed by an export drive marked by copious use of the union jack, Shibuya-kei (taking place in the same time period in Japan) was all about import. The young Keigo Oyamada of Cornelius, the young Kenji Takimi of Crue-L Records, were CD and vinyl junkies. With no weekly music press exerting the straightjacket pressure of peer group conformity, Keigo and Kenji simply bought whatever records they could afford, disregarding category, period, country of origin and critical endorsement. They bought records with cool sleeves, in languages they couldn't understand." -- Momus

Talk about a testament to modern Japanese consumerism. The rest of the article is here.

Once you've read that, you'd know that an important part of Shibuya-kei is the album design.

Ah... ScavHunt is here once more. I have to admit that I'm not too fired up about this year's ScavHunt. Looked at the list -- nothing really interests me unlike last year's "Manga of Job". As usual, no anime/manga items, except for one "Virgin hentai, virgin mai tai" which has as much to do with anime as ice-cream has to do with the crude oil from which the bowl in which the ice cream is served in was made. Eh, previous years' lists were better constructed. Well, not that I understood the items in previous years' lists any better, but this year's one seems particularly arcane and inaccessible to me.

Anyway, after last year's ScavHunt experience... well... that was my first time and I guess it's not my kind of thing. I'm not that masochistic. Besides, I need to graduate this time round.