War With Words

The girl in Hongkong just got her first Holga, and the other in California is going to football games and making yoghurt.

i'm just the one here with my laptop, thinking of saving the world by wielding the pen (or the keys of my computer or whatever).

i still havent used the brand new oven i bought, and i think that while i can slice carrots and other vegetables better now my cooking still sucks. and i want to take pottery and teach english to the community too. why is it that even though my days have been taken over by the massive torture of writing a thesis i am still stung by the fear of being unproductive?

i mean really, is sitting in the grad room for hours on end that meaningful to the rest of the human population? lately i realised that the so-called pursuit of knowledge is a narcissistic endeavour, an exercise to please the self. i claim that my work shall make known the conditions in okinawa and help make it a better place, but the truth of the matter is, the only people who are ever going to read my thesis are my supervisors, the teachers who have to grade it and possibly two other kind-hearted souls who share my field of research.

if i am so keen on taking on the role of mother theresa i should really just go out and get my hands dirty. this is perhaps the very reason why activism never went down well with academicism.