nyps

oh no i forgot about this for awhile! mak, if you dont want to do law forever, at least you'd have funding to go do a master's or phd in something else. as long as you dont make the dumbass decision of studying law in the usa.. hahaha. ;p sigh. does the imbalance of resources make you sad; i wish americans didnt create so much waste and i wish other people had more room to choose either the traditional lifestyle or contemporary lifestyle. like women in more repressive cultures. hrm.
anyway the boyfriend is still in europe travelling and he didnt get into either yale or stanford =( just as i had decided to do a second degree in comparative studies and hence do four years of uni. now i dunno what i want to do. or i do but the financial/timing considerations are quite important. bah.
as for tibet, all they want is greater autonomy. dont know much about their history, so i am not going to have an opinion about it. the dalai lama fascinates me though. apparently he asked a neuroscientist whether mentl activity like meditation can alter your mind, and they found that it's possible ten years after he asked that question. do you think it's the ability of cultural practices to alter the brain that makes people all so different? do you think a globalised world will make people more similar? doubt it but who knows how easily humnkind can forget our histories eh.
charmaine when is your bali trip? are you going to organise another one next year? i kinda want to do volunteer work for the rest of my life but then at the same time i question it - why must we teach them english? why can't we learn their language instead? isn't their lifestyle in a way richer than ours? isn't it imperialistic to go to a place where tradition (which is constantly evolving, although revolutions may not have taken place) has held on for longer than it has in europe/singapore/etc? how do we behave less as if we are doing them good and more as if we are repaying a debt? i dunno. the whole do-gooder thing makes sense to me on one level but on the other how it is carried out is important too. whether it's an exchange or a bashing-through-to-change. aiya but while i sit here and think about inconsequential things nothing gets done. dont you wish it were true that you can just meditate and radiate love to the world, and the world will be a better place?
ps have you guys done yoga before. if you find a good yoga teacher you shd try it out, heh. good yoga teachers demonstrate clearly and combine philosophy with movement and breath. it's kinda amazing i've been having far more bright-minded days cos of yoga. but maybe other things also la. meh.
mingen is your program 3 or 4 years? i forget. what's everyone doing this july-aug-sept?