ICJ rules Kosovo independence legal

Still reading the opinion but this will obviously have huge implications for all separatist movements as the New York Times note here.

Potsdam

Sixty-five years ago today, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met in Potsdam, occupied Germany to decide and design the fate of the post-WWII world. More known as the conference on how to administer a defeated Nazi Germany, the last day of the conference also resulted to the issuance of the Potsdam Declaration which demanded the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire. The last line of the declaration was simply chilling. “The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.”

Two atomic bombs would later devastate the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, prompting even Albert Einstein to regret having taken part in its creation.

waking up as planned

One of the effective ways to wake up early (I discovered very recently) is to use an mp3 alarm clock, as opposed to the traditional one the constant buzzing of which has gradually become ambient noise for my dreams. An mp3 alarm is annoying and will surely get you out of bed, if only to turn the darn music off, most especially if you deliberately chose Justin Bieber (ugh) to be the wakeup call.

The obvious catch is you don’t exactly relish being woken up this way. So what to do? I have no solutions as of yet.

Next step to waking up as planned, writing chunks of my dissertation as planned.

Small things

So maybe being a graduate student isn’t that bad.Suspended somewhere between undergrad/first degree and a real job, people can alternately treat you like somebody whose life is pretty much on track to “grander” things whatever that may mean, or somebody whose life has careened to a halt and sought the safety bubble of a university.

Despite the fluctuating anxiety brought about by this ambivalence, every once in awhile I am reminded of the things I like about being a student. (My list has about twenty but it definitely shrinks as time goes by)  Like going to nice libraries for instance. Really nice ones. For some reason, they amaze me. It makes me feel thankfully small. There is a universe to discover. It makes me feel that I am at the center of the world. Okay, that might sound like a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the picture.

I went to Houghton library today, the rare books and manuscript library here at Harvard. I actually thought nothing at Harvard could amaze me anymore, after all, this is going to be my fourth year of residency here. But thank God, Harvard is not yet done with its treasures. A glass-paneled bookcase surrounds the reading room while portraits of famous (I assume) persons adorns the upper walls. The Edison and Newman Room, located across the reading room, with elegant blue wallpapering and chandeliers, is often a venue of public events. Security is a bit tight – you have to leave your belongings in a locker, for which you have to drop in a quarter to lock, and register at the reference desk with two different photo IDs. But that is only befitting the contents within its walls, e.g. the papers of T.S. Eliot, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Theodore Roosevelt, to name a few.

Anyhow I will definitely come back since they have some useful stuff for my project. For now, I take all the sources of inspiration that I can get.

Five weddings and the funeral of pain

Five wedding invites for the year, and counting.

I received the fifth one a few days ago. Unfortunately, for practical and personal reasons, I won’t be able to cross the ocean for it come November and so I sent my thanks and regards anyway. It got me wondering however, if my life had suddenly taken a turn that I wasn’t aware of. And if this course is something I am still in control of. I am not in the habit of making Plan Bs. In that sense, I am a fate-alist. But I’ve always thought fate is what you make of it. As days go by, I wonder if I made the right decision two years ago to stay here for more studying.

The funny thing is that, as I keep wondering about these things, the accompanying feeling of possible regret, likewise recedes into memory. It is not that I am being presentist, but maybe only realistic. Up until maybe a year ago, I was dead certain I haven’t had any regrets in life, but perhaps I shouldn’t really bet a house on that anymore. People are getting a life. I, on the other hand, ponder my days with what Hirohito could have felt while declaring himself human. Or why on earth stupid people invade others for an abstract principle.

It seems however I am drawn to such musings. So maybe this is why the well of emotions inevitably run dry. The miracle of life is that it is finite and therefore the challenge is to make it as meaningful as we can. Only a few can have a grand life in its entirety, but everybody can get those in terms of moments. And that is good. Moments can define a life. The problem is we don’t know what those moments are beforehand. This should be a source of comfort or God forbid, hope even, for mortals like me. The philosopher Gabriel Marcel said it best: to hope is to recognize the limitations in situations, while believing that opportunities also exist. Hope and despair arise out of the same condition. The funny thing is that while it ostensibly gives you a choice – there seems to be unseen forces that drives you to one instead of the other. 

My best friend tells me that I, more than any other person she knows, have been trained the longest for delayed self-gratification. I can get through whatever. She probably meant that my happiest moments came at a time when I least expected them to happen. Kind of like Cleveland landing LeBron back in 2003. But truth be told, I feel like the Cleveland of 2010. For now at least, I ain’t a witness anymore.