Random post: Cramming

"Cramming" before class. Reminds me of my undergrad days. 

Weekend...what weekend?

So it was a pretty hectic work week and even though we technically had no classes last Thursday, that just meant more homework. The whole week, I felt like I was just reacting, fighting fires left and right. It's stressful but I realize that a big part of my new job will depend on how well I react to whatever is thrown at me.

This weekend, I plan to work on my life plan. It's a requirement for my Lasallian Leadership class and although it will only fall due two weeks from now, I have actually been thinking about my various goals so might as well use that.

If there was one life lesson I kind of wish that I learned when I was still young; it is that Time is a finite resource. I am not really a "Planner", my thinking being, if you make plans, you are closing yourself off to other opportunities. Back in HS or college, I would have crammed the lights out of this assignment (the irony is not lost on me). I think I will always be more of the spontaneous type but I also realize the importance of having plans and goals.

As they say, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

I have been giving my personal miss statement a lot of thought lately, and since one's goals and plans should be integrated with one's personal mission statement, I am actually looking forward to this project.

If that's the only thing I have for the weekend, I would have been a happy camper. Unfortunately, I have readings I need for my two subjects, a paper due on Thursday, and a group case study I need to start working on. I also desperately need to squeeze in some time for leisure reading.For my sanity's sake. 

I have come to accept that it will be a long time before I get a real "weekend". Oh well, it's the things we do for the things we are passionate about...

Bullets to fill up the blanks

Let's do this:

• I have read 262 of the 1001 books so far. (Actually, it is 1300+ books since I combined 2008, 2010, and 2012 lists.) 
• Of the original 96 books to be read, 16 remains unread. I have swapped out most of those for other books in the list. 
• Also read a number of "pop" books. Just wanted to mix it up.
• Yes, I read the  "Fifty Shades" trilogy. I am a firm believer that you can only hate on something if you've actually experienced it. The whole series feels like 2 1/2 books too long and made me seriously re-consider my commitment on finishing books I start
• Read (more on, plowed through) the 1st book of Mortal Instruments. Life is too short to bother reading the rest. 
• Dan Brown's Inferno is a disservice to Alighieri
• Last year, I was able to fulfill my challenge of reading 140 books. This year, I decreased it to 120 books in anticipation of my MBA classes. 1st week of classes made me realize I need to scale it down even further.
• Goodreads is the BOMB!
• Thank you Amazon for creating the Kindle. The Paperwhite is definitely one of my essentials in life.
• Special mentions: 1Q84, The Luminaries, The Sense of an Ending, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Fahrenheit 451, Sputnik Sweetheart, The Satanic Verses, The Savage Detectives, All Quiet on the Western Front, For Whom the Bell Tolls,The Plague, Hell by Henri Barbusse
• To call James Joyce's Ulysses as "challenging" doesn't begin to cut it. Took me almost 2 months to finish. 
• Currently reading: The Bonfire of the Vanities
• Book Challenge for this year: Moby-Dick 

Sidebar:

• Transferred work this year (lot of big changes this year). 
• Was able to travel to Budapest, Singapore, and Guangzhou for work.
• Not really into Big Bang Theory anymore. Still love Sheldon Cooper, though.
• The engagement did not work out. Shit happens.
• In a relationship for almost 2 years. Just goes to show that shit happens for a reason.

The Two Kinds of Freedom

A book about the dystopian future, Handmaid's Tale made me realize that there are so many freedoms that I take for granted.   Gilead is the end-product of an ultra-conservative group's destabilization and call for a new world order.  It tells of a world without choice, especially for women.  Women were stripped of all properties and all rights and were treated as chattels, judged according to their use in society.  We have the Wives, the Marthas, the Handmaids, etc.

"There is more than one kind of freedom...Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it."

 
Given the amount of freedom that I am enjoying today, it haunts me to think that there might come a time where I will only have freedom from choice, instead of the freedom to choose.  I hope it never happens in my lifetime.  I hope it never happens...Period.

"You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter."

Mao II: A Look on Terrorism and Mass Organization

Don DeLillo's 10th novel, Mao II deals with terrorism and mass media that were also the themes explored in his novel, Falling Man. 

"What terrorists gain, novelists lose.  The degree to which they influence mass consciousness is the extent of our decline as shapers of sensibility and thought."

Considering that the work was published in 1991, the novel is considered to be ahead of its time in foreseeing an age of terror and its effect on America.  One of the main themes explored in the novel is the "psychology of crowds" as seen in the mass cult wedding depicted in the first chapters.  I liked Falling Man more but I think the reason for this is because I will never forget watching on television the actual falling down of the two towers and I saw how this changed the world.

As to the title of the novel...

"Bill had his picture taken not because he wanted to come out of hiding but because he wanted to hide more deeply, he wanted to revise the terms of seclusion, he needed the crisis of exposure to give him a powerful reason to intesify his concealment.  Years ago there were stories that Bill was dead...they were not about Bill so much as people's need to make mysteries and legends.  Now Bill was devising his own cycle of death and resurgence.  It made Scott think of great leaders who regenerate their power by sropping out of sight and then staging messianic returns.  Mao Zedong of course..."

Even though this has always been a personal blog, I have carefully avoided in making this, well, too personal....and a lot of it went into making sure that I don't put up any rants whatsoever...but in retrospect, screw that...

it's 12:40 am...my back is killing me but my mind refuses to go to sleep...(sorry spine, you just have to buck it up)...it's true what they say that if you don't expect, you won't get disappointed....easier said than done...i guess i just assumed i meant a little more...they say that when you assume, you just make an ass of U and me...more of me in this case....oh well, those tears cried are lessons learned...crystallizing everything in its proper place, correct perspective...message received, loud and clear

times like this, i just want to shrug it all off and walk away...don't worry, i can feel the blood already coagulating...what doesn't kill you just makes you stronger

speaking in riddles...so what...get your own blog

"We carry the dead with us only until we die too"

"Thus in the minds of the many does the one ramify and disperse. It does not last, it cannot, it is not immortality. We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations...True, there will be something of us that will remain, a fading photograph, a lock of hair, a few fingerprints, a sprinkling of atoms in the air of the room where we breathed our last, yet none of this will be us, what we are and were, but only the dust of the dead."

 Winner of the Man Booker Prize and John Banville's 18th novel, The Sea is told in Max Morden's viewpoint.  Reeling from his wife's death, Max retreats to a cottage by the sea where he used to spend his summers.  It is there that we are taken in a journey through his recollections of his childhood summers with the Graces and the time before his wife's death.  The novel was poignant and honest and all praises for this book are well-deserved.