How was 2011? This is the first year I’ve spent nearly all of it away from home, and exploring new places. As a result, my learnings and my experiences have been in an ever-changing flux. 2011 has been a confusing mix of lessons, from which I had to closely select and draw from. Some good, some bad, but life never really hands you a basket of all things perfect anyway. I’ve gotten more whole, stronger,  not sure if I’m happier or more contented, but that doesn’t matter; it doesn’t need to matter now. I just want to do more, take more steps. See, hear, touch, taste, smell, feel more. Because this is the time for it, and every single year will be the perfect time for it until time stops and I take a step down to rest.

So dear 2012, this is what I wish for:

The deeper end of the pool.

Wider skies, but less defined paths.

A stronger back, and tougher legs.

Sturdy shoes that won’t wear out.

A stronger, more accepting, and more cheerful heart.

The final ten minutes are here, I shall enjoy the moment. Happy new year everyone!

Two days ago, I spent a big part of Christmas exploring around in the Grand Canyon. Honestly it didn’t feel physically like Christmas because I wasn’t exposed to much of the joyous atmosphere this year, but it was quite awesome just to stand on the edge of seemingly infinite layers of red rock and feel like you’ve conquered the world just by hiking all the way to a little rocky hill top that allows you to see the vast bottomless valley of canyon all around you. Some pictures are in tow:

My previously pristine brown boots now destroyed by the canyon dust. But it’s all good, I got a nice shoeshine back at the hotel later that evening!

Aside from that, there’s something funny about Vegas. It’s positioned itself nicely as a sin city within which you can contain all your escapades of debauchery and forget all of the crap once you leave it. It’s also a little capitalist haven (or nightmare, depends on how you see it) because of how much it can potentially satiate your senses and hopes constantly and unendingly, using lights, food, smoke, gambling, games, roller coaster rides, sex, luxury, money, cars, sex, money, sex, money, sex, money. People put their money in, experience all that they can get, and they put in more again just to get that kick in.

Few more days of traveling around America and it’s back to Virginia again, for a good start to a new term. The past semester has been pretty steady and I couldn’t have asked for a better time. Now that I’m halfway through college (goodness I don’t even believe how much time has flown by), picturing myself graduating has become much clearer, and it’s a pretty exciting thought but yet I don’t want it to arrive just yet.

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.”  - D. H. Lawrence

My third semester just drew to a comfortable close. I submitted my final history paper a little past noon on Friday, and at that moment I realized I haven’t felt free and un-busy for quite some time now. Right now I’m sitting by an airplane gate in the Charlottesville airport and awaiting my flight to Los Angeles.

Sitting in an airport a couple of minutes away from a plane flight makes things somewhat poignant; You’re leaving, you’re leaving once again. It makes me think back about the rush of time that has disappeared – one semester just flew past, I still remember taking a cab ride to university grounds and onto McCormick Road towards the ending days of the dusty summer, ready to pounce on the new Fall semester, grab it by the horns and deal it the best hand of cards I can possibly get. Now, in the middle of December, it has ended. It’s been my most academically intense semester in college so far, and it can only get more challenging.

I thoroughly enjoyed my classes. Moving on from completing most of my mandatory subject requirements in the first year to the more meaningful classes related to my scheme of learning, I can’t ask for more. This semester I engaged in my PPL major bootcamp course where every class was an intense 1-hour debate over contemporary ethics, political philosophy and public affairs issues; I studied how religion and politics meshed in with each other and how this produces various kinds of disputes over what is right, what is the sole truth, and how strong human nature can actually be; I studied the influence and psyche of imperialism, not just on the level of international relations but also on the daily level – how citizens and colonized people live and breathe its era and ethos; I studied social psychology, and had a really interesting insight into how the presence of other people influence individuals to think and act in different ways; I took my introductory course in Russian, culminating in a twenty-minute Russian performance and a comfortable ability to read and write; I took a military science course which grounded me in basic Army leadership, tactics and strategy. It’s been a good time.

What was most important about this semester, was conversations. Conversations with all kinds of people from all kinds of places, and conversations within oneself. Sometimes conclusions and great ideas are consolidated through conversations. Next semester I should take them to higher levels. I can’t rest on the thought that I still have so long to go in college – I’m now already halfway through college, and if the first half has sped by this fast, the other half will soon end, probably quicker than I would expect. At the end of the day, it’s knowing that I still don’t know much – and I still don’t really know a darn thing – about life that makes me feel that every day spent here and every day spent living is a sure step towards somewhere. I want to keep staying uncomfortable, keep staying unseated.

It’s time to board soon! Next stop: Los Angeles, CA.

So rather irrationally, I took a self-imposed study break and went scouring through Google (really wasn’t that hard) for images. I hereby title this small photo collection,

EVERYONE HAS WANTED TO

DO THIS AT LEAST ONCE

And finally, this has the most class and swag; my undisputed favorite.

Now, time to move on from delusions of grandeur and get back to work.

I like cities. People always say that cities are dirty, grimy and its citizens are packed in so tightly that the overcrowding desensitizes them and makes them all numb to the sights and senses of life. But I don’t think so. There’s something special about the hectic rush that begins even before you awake in murky bouts of initial consciousness as you slowly drift awake from sleep. A couple of my friends are college students in the city, and I’m trying to imagine the life of a finance/business student studying in the depths of Manhattan. It probably feels awesome to be studying in your dorm with the window propped open, such that you can hear the sounds of cars and random slices of street life; it probably feels that you’re this close to the life you want to live, in this city of ambition, and the education before you right now is the key to that life. When you’re that close to something such that you live in its reality, it must feel pretty exciting.

On the other hand, the vast suburbs and greenery are perfect for a philosophy and political science student like me. Although sometimes this sleepy little town gets a little stifling from its unchanging beauty and quiet peacefulness, I can’t quite imagine reading a thick philosophical text by a city street. The physical environment of a living place suits certain kinds of endeavors and fields of study, I guess.

Will let the photos do the talking from here:

I stumbled upon a little art display by the corner of a street. Thousands of paper cups hung on lines of string, decorated with merely simple ink markers but producing such an exciting collage of city life. I should start something like this in my dorm room!

Inside the New York Grand Central station, where so many movie scenes are filmed. It somehow feels odd to be finally standing in a place that initially, only existed onscreen for a big part of your childhood life.

At the edge of Central Park in midtown Manhattan. The water is so still, it makes a really good snapshot.

Nothing like a typical American breakfast to pump us up after an intense bout of Black Friday shopping. I got up wearily at four in the morning, and hit the stores by five. We shopped away to our hearts’ content in a gigantic consumerist frenzy until fatigue and hunger at 10:30AM brought us to Andrew’s Coffee Shop in the middle of Herald’s Square, somewhere along 34th Street. 

As November speeds to an end, and the December days lurk round the corner, the final exam season now makes its swinging entrance. It’ll be three weeks of good academic fun before the next travel adventure comes round! Now that I’ve finished my cup of hot chocolate it’s time to stop writing.

I have come to enjoy traveling a lot, and I feel I haven’t done enough. Every now and then I experience tiny reprieves long enough to admit a good trip out of town. Traveling with good friends is always an awesome experience; traveling alone and exploring a foreign place in solitude, on the other hand, brings a kind of self-discovery that could lead to two opposite outcomes: utter annoyance or fresh liberation. The last time I took a solitary adventure, it was through the streets of Saint Petersburg in Russia. I wanted to take some pictures of various monuments for a final paper I was writing, and I spent an entire afternoon wandering through the city. Until now I still remember my mental snapshots very clearly, and I miss it dearly.

Last year, I spent Thanksgiving in America with an American family, and had a traditional dinner where I ate myself into a nice sleepy coma. Come this Wednesday I’ll be taking a train to New York City; I can’t wait. I’ve always been a city boy, and probably always will be, as much as I enjoy the beautiful Virginian suburbs. The momentum and energy in the city is irreplaceable.

In the meantime, school has lost its tense atmosphere this week, and life now slows to a gentle crawl as people are packing up, leaving their books behind to return to their families. Too much routine, too much routine, but not that bad of a routine.

On this uneventful Friday night I rummaged through my drawers and found my old set of four markers with nibs of varying thickness. I figured this blog could do with a logo, perhaps a faded vintage one that could convey a feel of recounting experiences, and documenting journeys. So I started on it, and in about half an hour it was done.

And here is the finished product on paper, along with the four markers I interchangeably used.

Eventually I scanned it in, did a slight bit of photoshopping, and now here’s the logo at the top of this blog. I get lazy after a while about my blog design and I tend to let it stagnate, so I figure it will stay there for quite some time. Other than that, it’s a really monotonous, homework-less friday evening, just a few days before Thanksgiving, where the cold winds are sharp, and hot chocolate can never get any tastier than this. I gotta find more things to do.

Welcome to today’s age, where 70% of America’s high school graduates go to college, and ending up in university doesn’t really mean anything substantial. This can be dangerous, especially if you don’t take charge of your own learning and just end up drifting along in school, in accordance with your classes and all that your social environment has to offer in the confined boundaries of your school grounds. There has to be something more, something intrinsically arising from yourself that makes your own learning process special.

I try, as much as I can, to de-standardize my process. On some days it works, on others it just feels like I’m wasting my time.

Aside from the above thought, I’ve observed that this mental haze comes round the corner to haunt me from time to time. This mental haze can be forcibly described as some unplaceable, unidentifiable veil that’s wrapped around the cognitive clockwork of your brain such that all your mind processes become one merely big undiscernible haze, and all things good associated with creativity and productivity just go down the drain. Sometimes this haze can be cleared with a good dose of coffee. Sometimes I just need to sit out there in the gradually freezing cold of the approaching winter and let the cold wind pervade the mind through every single duct or channel possible. There’s got to be a way to prevent these random annoying slumps throughout the semester.

Just looking at this makes me slightly more alert. Speaking of which, I was fortunate enough to win a $25 Starbucks gift card from a small photo exhibition/competition of my Russia summer trip (guess who won top prize for his photo huh)! Good coffee therapy awaits.

That’s a lot of people. A rather devastatingly huge number, if you ask me. Malthus was wrong in predicting that the world could only withstand a number of people lower than the actual number today, because he didn’t take into consideration the possibility of technology extending the Earth’s capacities and increasing our levels of efficiency with our resources. But above all that science, and going down to the social power this represents – 700,000,000,000 people is a force to be reckoned with.

What will the seven billionth person be born into? A beautiful world / a wrecked dystopia? What have we as predecessors who have lived a certain x number of years before this lucky guy/girl done to make this world the place it is? What will this person experience, and what will all the seven billion-ers go through? What does this person deserve, and what will this person eventually face? We all wish for good living conditions and a happy life, but what are the chances this person will actually be born into the idyll we hope he/she gets? What defines a good life anyway – money, contributions, happiness, love?

Seven billionth person: maybe I’ll get to meet you someday along the years, along the road. I’ll have a chat with you about how life has been. How Earth has treated you, how people around you have treated you, how people different from you have treated you. And I hope sincerely that it will be a happy response.

At the first Second Year Dinner Series dinner session last week, the College of Arts and Sciences Dean mentioned, among a whole lot of other thought-provoking points: “There will be a person who comes out of the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, takes full advantage of it, runs with it, and makes from this present a future that none of us could imagine.” I was intrigued, because more often than not we tend to think of revolutionaries and great leaders as people who resist the waves of society, and against the tide fight and prevail, and in the process open up more possibilities and new ways of thought. But these great people could be riding on these societal waves, just embodying the full culture of thought of the times and expending their full energies on the present, hence being a wholesome representative of what it means to be the definitive person of this era.

She was talking about Steve Jobs. And she went on to say that any single individual on this earth could be the next person who comes out of the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, and manifests it in its whole. I have no idea what this very spirit or culture could be, but perhaps I don’t need to know about it to have been operating very comfortably within it. We all did, and we all still do.