June 6, 2013 It’s tough to say why I haven’t written in so long. Maybe I find the time now because my job is slowly winding down, and I have more time than I had up until recently. Maybe there have been moments when I had time, but the desire was lacking, and what brings it back now is a mystery to me. Writing, maybe, is like exercise. There have been times in my life when I didn’t exercise much. I think I took a whole year off from sports when I was at university, and unfortunately didn’t record the experience of such abstinence, but remember reaching the conclusion, after starting sports again, that I had been foolish to leave them behind. I can imagine myself thinking fondly of sports during that year, remembering what it was like to have a heartbeat, to run after a ball or a frisbee. In retrospect, it’s a wonder that I lasted as long as a year. Now I’ve gone several months without writing, and I wonder if I’ve gone through the same withdrawal. I probably haven’t, since I actually have written a lot, only not in any blog. Maybe I’m starting again now because I don’t have as many students to write to as I had through May. My reading has been on and off. As I write I have a pile of books in front of me at my feet, all of which I’ve read since January 1st. I’m pretty proud of this feat, since it’s not a small pile. There are other books about the room, many of which I’d like to add to pile at my feet, but only a few of them will be able to fit, because of time restrictions. I’ll be home in a month and two days, and what comes after that, nobody knows. For one thing, I’m afraid I won’t want to read as much as I have, since reading for me has been a real get away from work, but at home in California, there’s not really anything to get away from, since you’re already pretty far from everything. My anxiety about employment in the states and finding a place to live will probably quadruple as soon as I’m out of the job here. In any case, I still have three more weeks here. As in previous years, I feel like I’m three weeks before death. Before, it wasn’t a problem, since I knew I would be reincarnated the following Autumn, either as a teacher, or a student. Now, I’ll be reborn again, somehow, only nobody knows as what, and where. It’s kind of nerve-racking. On a side note, I’m even more convinced that reincarnation is practiced on the grand scale. What I’m going through now is like a mini-death. I’ll leave, and in all likelihood, never return to where I am now. This is just a mini version of what we all have to go through some day. The sadness, fear, or anticipation that I feel now, I may feel again somewhere ages and ages hence, when I’m getting ready to go on a much bigger trip, into a much bigger unknown. With this in mind, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to document my last month as Dolgoprudny-Peter. That’s what my last entry will amount to. June 16, 2013 It rains here in the summer. I like it. I’ve decided that there’s nothing bad about a warm rain. It’s actually rather refreshing. It might be a little inconvenient if you’re going to work, but it’s not the end of the world; and if you’re free for the day, then the sun is sure to come out soon after the rain, and dry you up. That’s what I was thinking a week ago on a random walk in Moscow, what will be one of my last. I could smell the rain coming when I got off the metro station, and soon after my stop at Ashan, it started coming down pretty heavily. I had my umbrella, but the rain was so heavy, that it almost didn’t matter. If I wear my backpack normally, then it gets soaked, so often during rain, I wear it backwards, in front of me, so it becomes a ‘’bellypack.’’ This way it stays drier, but unfortunately my back pant legs get soaked. It’s not the end of the world, as long as you stay outside for the coming sun. Tomorrow’s Monday. It’s the beginning of my second to last work week. I feel all right. June 28, 2013 15:55 Some documentary this has amounted to. I thought I’d have written more by this time, but oh well. To be clear, right now is officially about two hours after the end of my last lesson on the last day of the last week of the last month of what looks like my last year of teaching English in Russia. To be fair, that last frame of time isn’t one hundred percent. It might not be my last year, but in any case, I have reached the end of this year, and it’s a momentous occasion no matter how you cut it. If it’s not my last year, then I’ll follow my heart, or gut, or whatever it is that leads me, perhaps to Ekaterinburg, the gateway to Siberia in the Ural Mountains, for a long time. My heart has also been set on many other things, and I won’t be able to have everything I’ve ever dreamed of. How do I feel, now that I’ve finished? Dead. What I feel now must be how a dead man feels. Or a retired one - but is there a difference? Sure, I guess I’m still alive, in a way, but not as much as before. I’m deader than I was three hours ago (this is a universal truth, but particularly apparent for me now). I feel, unsurprisingly, as though I’ve just finished a marathon. Of course I made my job that way. I saw the finish line coming a few weeks ago. And since then I grew more and more exhausted the closer I came to this moment. Honestly, it would have been better if somehow there hadn’t been a finish line to begin with, or if I had been able to deceive myself as to where I was in the race. For some reason the metaphor of race or marathon doesn’t please me as much as it used to. Maybe it’s hard for me to feel competitive or ambitious when I feel as exhausted as a dead man, but I can’t help but ask myself just how enjoyable a marathon actually is. Do you like the torture of acid flowing through your veins and of your joints being pulverized with every punishing step, every lesson in your schedule? On the other hand, the torture part only comes at the end. Furthermore it’s very psychological because like I said before, if you didn’t see the end coming, you might not feel the hardship that comes with running for a long long time. Near the end you begin to ask yourself why you work so hard when you’re going to stop eventually, one way or the other. The torture increases with the decline of your will to continue. Maybe something I don’t understand yet is that there must be a finish line somewhere, to everything and for everyone. One probably remembers this fact when it’s time to retire, first every once in a while, and then gradually more often until it’s constantly on your mind as you see that everyone running around you is so much younger than you are. It’s in the nature of races, marathons in particular, that the faster you run, the quicker you come to the end. So if life is a race, or an event –a term a little less exhausting – then it behooves us not to run too quickly – if you like living, that is. That way not only does it last a little longer, but I think you can enjoy yourself more along the way. I’ve taken my time in life in some respects, but in other ways I’ve worked too hard, and might have wasted my strength on things not as worthy as others. June 28, 2013 19:00 I spent the last hour or two throwing away papers that I don’t need. During that time, I might have realized why people like running fast: It makes life brighter, more vivid. I understood this after coming by an article, which had been given as a reading assignment, about sports; about how they are bad for your health. There was some German doctor and former athlete (marathon runner, of all things) who had reached the conclusion that sport is more detrimental than helpful. The real way to live long and prosper is allegedly to exercise little while eating only a little food. This seems reasonable since this sort of lifestyle is more efficient than the high octane life of an athlete. On the other hand, Dr. Deutsch, we’ll call him, might be forgetting the thrill of spending energy on a fast run. He may reach the end of his life when he’s one hundred and twenty, but by then will he have lived? Maybe he’s missing something. Then again, if he was a runner, he knows both sides of the coin. Maybe I’m missing something. I came across lots of other papers too. I found some thank-you letters from a year ago. They made me feel good. Most of the other papers were more recent. I had taken many of my students through a portion of my inspiration program, which includes discussions on climbing mountains and the genetics of language learning. The latter is basically a discussion on genetics all together. I asked my students what they thought would happen if we cloned Pushkin, Mozart and Einstein. Many said that Pushkin and Mozart would be drunkards and nothing more. Einstein’s potential fate was less decided. Personally I agree with the claim that these people wouldn’t amount to what they were in their original time and place. But if that’s true, then it follows that these people were products of their surrounding environment, and not of their genes, because if their genes played a role in their achievements, then the same genes would play the same role in their clones living today, which we agreed wouldn’t happen. Ergo so-called genius is not genetic, but a product of society. I find this an extremely interesting conclusion. Not only can I still safely, naively perhaps, believe that I might still amount to something great, perhaps a little more than a few thank-you letters, but the potential for greatness is then open to all. I can walk through the park, find a nearby drunkard (there are plenty of them) and try to convince him that if he gets his act together he might amount to something. Maybe he enjoyed studying physics in high-school; well, what is he waiting for? I don’t think the drunkard would care to listen. I’m really telling all of this to myself. Linguistics is on my mind. Am I sober enough to go down that long road? Maybe I’d have to be intoxicated to dare such a thing. September 20, 2013. When you can’t do anything else, you might as well write something. I’m tired. I haven’t been sleeping well. I took a nap this afternoon and noticed a huge difference some quality rest can make. So much has changed over the past nine weeks, I don’t know where to start explaining. I returned home nine weeks and one day ago, and have since then concentrated primarily on two things: finding a job and a place to live outside of Napa. I’ve succeeded in both endeavors, but I wonder if I’ll end up regretting it. I guess it was the day my parents came home from Europe that I was interviewed at City College of San Francisco for a potential job teaching in the math department. I talked with the head of the department who seemed rather desperate to get a replacement instructor for a full-time guy who had unexpectedly retired. I was to take only two of his classes, the others had been distributed among other instructors. I was told then that CCSF had been recently discredited by the one and only accrediting agency for California community colleges, which would cause the college to shut its doors at the end of the coming year. I presume this might have inspired some people to retire while they still had the chance to claim benefits. Yet the college still had at least one more year of operation with a depleted faculty in the math department, and here I was looking for some sort of job in math education. So it seemed like a perfect fit. Now, having taught a few weeks, I can say I’m rather satisfied with the job. The biggest problem I have to overcome is grading mountains of homework efficiently. If I can get over that, I’m set. But there’s this other job that I’ve signed up for too, in Palo Alto. My boss there says the minimum load is ten hours a week, so I’ll try to start with that, and see how hard it hits me. I did my first commute there just yesterday. It went well, aside from the citation I got for not having the right ticket. I had underpaid by two dollars, for which I might face a penalty of over two hundred dollars. People in Palo Alto seem to be of a different culture. They all have huge smiles and they talk really loudly. I guess I normally come across as soft-spoken, but over there people might have trouble hearing anything I have to say unless I project in a tenor’s voice. Honestly, I think some of them, young as they may be, are a little hard-of-hearing, which I suspect comes from listening to really loud music. Anyway, that’s about where I’m at right now. I’ve moved home, back to the other side of the world, changed jobs, and I still don’t know where I’m headed. Maybe only in that final respect has my world has not been flipped upside down. In any case, I’ll be struggling to come to terms with this world for a while. I better get going. I have lots of homework to grade. What should I say here? This might be my last paragraph that I blog ever – the grand conclusion my Russian adventures. God, I’ll miss them. That was a fun marathon.

30.1.13 I have a little time to write, so here I go. I was thinking I might come across as a real egotist after not denouncing Ayn Rand like so many others do. After all, she’s a champion of egotism, and indeed, you might consider me to be one of her followers in some respects. I was telling my family over Christmas, I think she’s a hero for writing what she did. From what little I’ve heard of her, I understand that she immigrated to the US from the Soviet Union when she was about 20, that she didn’t speak any English when she came, but she overcame this hurdle with flying colors, eventually becoming a very popular writer and influential political figure. Having read only Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, I find that she was trying to show Americans the great things that they’ve had in their country. She seemed most adamant about the pursuit of happiness and success that all Americans are allegedly entitled to (evidently this was something new for her, coming from the Soviet Union), but she also incorporated into these works the necessary role of government in people’s lives, or rather, the necessary lack thereof. This latter part may have been secondary to her, but I guess it had the greater political ramifications. I’m not sure what she would think, if a big government would not be so problematic as long as people still had the chance to achieve their dreams. Conservative politicians might appeal to her philosophy when addressing the subject of taxes. They might say that taxing people is wrong, because people’s money is a measure of their success, and the founding doctrine of America prohibits the limitations of citizens in this way. You might also see Ayn Rand’s spirit in the uncompromising nature of the conservatives. I get the impression that Rand was a really stubborn person who considered the smallest compromise equal to an absolute defeat of her principles. As hard as it may be to agree with the politics of taxes that might have resulted from her works, it’s not hard to understand it: any increase in taxes is precedent for more; if the government can raise taxes this year, then the government won’t have to worry about how much money it spends, and then how do we know that they won’t come back again next year with another tax increase? Of course, conservatives have so blinded themselves to the idea of compromise they don’t see that liberals are willing to sacrifice government programs which cost a lot of money (not only the military (which, not surprisingly perhaps, Rand actually condoned as one of the few purposes for government spending)). I think the following compromise makes sense: for every dollar in tax hikes there should be a dollar in spending cuts. In the end, no side loses face, taxes go up as the size of the government goes down, and in the end the national debt decreases. Who could complain? The people will complain, that’s who; how can they fork over more money when the pursuit of happiness (an education, a sports car, a house and a family) already costs so much? 6.2.13 I’ve not only been reading political literature on the greedy side of the spectrum. I’ve also finished reading a small pamphlet called “The Manifesto of the Communist Party,” that’s right, the one and only. I didn’t understand it entirely, and might read it again sometime. It’s not very long, and it’s rich in ideas, so it might be worth another reading. As with Rand, I disagree with some points made by Marx and Engels, but also am fascinated by some of their ideas. While Marx goes into specific examples of the working class and its exploitation by the aristocracy in different times and places, thus demonstrating a historical relationship between these two extreme classes, Engels, in the second part of the pamphlet, explains what communism is all about and also gives something of a ten-point plan as a political platform for the party, wherein lies some interesting points and suggestions for the structure of society. One of these points that I really find fascinating has to do with education. Evidently, one of the problems of the time when the authors wrote was the severe exploitation of workers in factories. These workers were given a menial task to do under rather harsh conditions. If these were too harsh for the worker, then he or she would be fired without any loss for the employer, as there were thousands of people literally dying (of starvation, for example) to get a job. (One example of this story is told in the novel ‘the Jungle,’ which brought to light this sort of order in the American meat industry in the early 20th century.) What I understand from Engels’s explanations is that under communism workers were to be trained to do many different things. This way, if workers were in a meat or vegetable factory, for example, they wouldn’t be able to only chop meat, or shovel guts, but they would do both equally as well, in fact they would be trained in all aspects of farming and agriculture so that they wouldn’t have to rely on a single menial skill in order to get by in life, but could apply any number of skills where and when they needed to. This is a brilliant idea, one which I think has been adapted into our society – even our greedy capitalistic one in the west – but which, I think, could be taken to an even further extreme. You see, one of the things I might not like about my current job is its monotony. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to quit being an English teacher because of the fact that it’s the same thing day in and day out. As a matter of fact, I have to admit that most other jobs would be much more monotonous than the one I have, and I don’t think I could possibly change jobs until I find one equally as demanding in creativity, planning, perseverance, and other aspects, all of which I can’t imagine as applicable in any other profession as in my own. As various the demands of my job might be, however, there’s no avoiding the eventual monotony of the same rhythm of work day in and day out. Why can’t I get some further training, maybe in a new field of expertise? I’ve so much as even toyed with the idea of finding work at some restaurant and learning the ins and outs of food preparation, or at least taking a cooking class, if only I could find the chance and the time to attend. The really sad fact is that this monotony is something we have to deal with in most jobs. No matter what career a young man decides to undertake, it’s invariably only one thing, all day, every day, for the rest of that poor young man’s life. How can a person enjoy their job when they do it over and over again for the span of decades? They are inspired as children or students at university, they go down a certain road and then they realize to their horror, regardless of the road they chose, that there’s no way out. There are no other roads left. All doors are closed, your way is chosen, or in other words, your life is more or less over. No wait, life begins again at retirement, when you’re sixty or seventy, and you can’t walk up mountains or run marathons like you used to, but if you’re lucky you still have a few dozen years to take your arthritis medication and enjoy the sunsets in whatever home you’ve managed to afford yourself… 9.2.13 Life would be better if people had many different jobs. This is what Engels was suggesting almost two centuries ago, and the suggestion is still applicable today. When I walk to work at this time of year, I often see so-called guest workers, who come from former Soviet states and current regimes that have little to offer their people in the way of education and employment. I see them chipping ice or shoveling snow from the sidewalks with large picks and shovels. I see them and am a little jealous that they can enjoy the outdoors and use their muscles as much as they do. Russians will laugh at me if I tell them that I’m envious of the poor guest workers who have to do this menial labor to get by in order to live in sordid conditions and to help their families back home with what little they earn and don’t waste on cheap vodka. Of course I don’t want to be in their economic position. I don’t want to have to do that kind of work, but I would like to be permitted to do it every once in a while instead of repeating the same toil of the previous days and weeks. I would love to give a Tajik a break, do his job and chip ice just for one day. My arms would be sore and my fingers calloused after a few hours of this challenging labor, but my psyche would be flooded with endorphins of a kind I haven’t felt for a very long time, ones that come from doing hard work of a different kind. You’ve heard of the idea of a balanced diet. I say this idea doesn’t apply only to food, but also to every sort of activity, including our professions. What could the Tajik be doing during the day that I work for him? He could teach English, or if he doesn’t know it, he could study the language and learn to teach it, or he could train to professionally occupy himself with something new and interesting to him, cooking for example. This idea of balance in our professions and of continual growth and development of the working class isn’t new. It probably reeks of socialism, the validity of which westerns have long since refuted, foolishly basing their judgment on the history of the Soviet Union. But there are other countries, some of which might be called socialist, where this sort of balance is possible (I’m thinking of some Scandinavian countries). It’s perhaps most necessary that the people want to acquire new skills. It’s then necessary, if not sufficient, to employ lots of teachers in every area of profession that society needs. The former necessity might be circumvented if a government simply forced people to learn new things, and the latter necessity would be fulfilled trivially (also by the government). This sounds somewhat draconian, but is it any less so to force a child to eat vegetable at supper? We are, after all, talking about a balanced diet here. Ironically perhaps, this idea could also appeal to the stringent capitalists out there, who are so concerned with their levels of production. Consider how much a professional of any kind can work in a week. Most people can work forty, maybe fifty hours a week, doing their single profession the entire time. If, however, these people didn’t have one job, but three, then they could be much more productive. I think they could even work sixty hours a week, twenty hours at each job, and they would finish the week having produced more at less expense to their psychological health because they will have done a larger variety of different tasks, instead of spending the entire time on a single profession and, therefore, a less balanced diet of work. Do you see how simple this is? This is capitalism and communism working together: production is maximized when the working class members have a variety of different jobs, and are allowed to balance their work with further training, with the goal of enriching their lives further with even more avenues of occupation.

28.11.12 OK, I have a little time to write before class. I wanted to write a little more about moods and happiness. I’ve been thinking about the two ideas, and sometimes writing your ideas down helps develop your thoughts even further, so here we go. One’s mood, mine at least, and most other people’s I think too, can be measured by a sine curve. For those of you who forget what that is, suffice it to say that it goes up and down, invariably, for eternity. It’s a simple suggestion for a measurement of mood, but I find it fitting. If your mood is up, then it’s bound to go down, and if it’s down, then, ironically, things might be looking up. Again, I say that this is invariably so. Your mood can never, under any circumstances, stay positive (or negative) for a long time. [Revision: Depressed people have a constant negative mood. Conclude: constant positive is nevertheless impossible.] You can try to do the things that make you happy, you can take all the anti-depressants you want, and by doing so you might manage to delay the inevitable, but eventually your mood has to go into a negative zone. This is clearly so because no matter whatever reason you have for being in a good mood, you get used to that reason’s validity, until in the end it’s no longer valid. A new car, for example, puts some people in a good mood, but does a car that you’ve been driving for a year? The car is still rather new, it might look and drive exactly the same, but it doesn’t give your ego that kick that it used to. All of a sudden your mood isn’t as high as it was at first. It’s falling, as indeed it must. The frequency of this rise and fall depends on the person and their lifestyle (i.e. the quality and quantity of anti-depressants); also the measure of the peaks and pits of your mood, the high and low points, may vary from person to person – these variations can be expressed by parameters in the sine curve formula, but in general our mood is a sine curve. For those who like to see a concrete expression, we could say, for example, that Peter’s mood is as follows: m_P(t) = P1*sin(P2*t), where t is time, and P1 and P2 measure the peaks of the mood, and its frequency of change, respectively. Having established mood, it’s easy to define happiness. I think it can be reasonably defined as the change in mood. Look, if you’re in a good mood, but your mood is going down, then you must be unhappy, because you’re losing goodness. Conversely, if you’re mood is bad, but it’s getting better, then you have something to be happy about, so your happiness is positive. In short, while mood is a sine, happiness is a cosine, and happiness is thus a derivative of mood. This makes sense. Leaving happiness aside for a moment, let’s consider only moods. I’ve put a lot of thought into what effects moods. I don’t take anti-depressants in the traditional sense because I don’t trust pills of any kind; but I do take anti-depressants in the form of physical exercise, sleep, good food and music. These all clearly affect one’s mood. The question I’d like to address someday is how other people affect our moods. When two people interact in some way, their moods might affect one another. What happens when they’re both in a good or bad mood, or if their moods are at different extremes? 1.12.12 Sasha and I have had an argument. We have arguments every once in a while, which I think is necessary in any relationship, but yesterday was an extreme in some sense. That’s not to say it was such a horrible argument. Honestly, it could have gone a lot worse. Maybe the worst is yet to come. Anyway, the topic fits right in to this blog entry. Maybe I was subconsciously aiming for an argument so that I could then write about it (Sasha will accuse me of it if she reads this.) 14.1.13 (Happy New Year!) I’ll write for twenty five minutes and see what comes out. I’ve felt a little apprehensive recently about the daunting schedule I have before me. In the previous months at work, I knew that there was a finish line of sorts, not far away: Christmas; I only had to work so much before I would be free to enjoy some time off in paradise. Now I’m looking at two single-day holidays between today and May, the rest of the time my schedule is as full as can be. Will I be able to keep such a pace for such a long time? Who signed me up for this marathon anyway, huh? It’s been almost twenty minutes. And this is it! I guess my writing muscles are sore. Oh well. By the way, I’ve been reading a lot more since the beginning of my second academic year here. I record myself reading and send it to whomever is interested, so far mostly to Sasha, although I don’t think she manages to listen to much of what I record. I thought that being a professional reader would be an interesting job, if there actually were such a profession. I think it’d require some acting skills, not to mention an ability to read complicated prose in a clear and understandable way. I don’t have any of these skills, but I’m working at it, and it’s been a lot of fun so far. Tonight, I think I might start part two of A Tale of Two Cities, or continue with Revolutionary Road or Frankenstein. 26.1.13 These words are a revision of what was previously written on 1.12.12, which ended up being a long and detailed account of an argument and how the elements of which might contribute to the study of moods and their changes. Without going into details of the argument (which was remarkable mostly in its complete lack of foundation), it’s enough to describe the day itself, which could hardly end in any other way but a stupid argument. I had had a long, miserable day, had woken up early to see an older student who rather resembles an ogre both in appearance as well as English proficiency (and if you wonder about the latter, please remember that ogres are not the most intellectually adorned of fantastical creatures), then raced off to the company on icy streets, before racing back home to wolf down lunch and desperately prepare for the last two lessons of the day and week. One of those lessons was supposed to be the last one of mine with the group, and an extremely unfortunate last lesson, for I had to give them the results of their first test, which four out of five of them failed miserably, and then report to them that as I had evidently failed miserably as their teacher, they would have another one from then on. I unfortunately failed to part with these students on a positive note, which set the tune for the rest of the evening. I remember leaving the company with Sasha late after my last class that evening. There had been an ice storm. The trees were all decked in crystals, as fragile as whatever psychological strength might keep a person from screaming bloody murder at the world. The evening was cold, not by today’s standards, but relative to the warmer days not long past, and the cold broke into my tired defenses, rendering my mood as frosty as the coming winter. It was not a good evening for a chat or a walk. I just needed to sleep. All this is evidence for claims that I’ve made before. If other people are like me (which is questionable, and if true, then only in degrees). Bad moods are caused by the following: lack of sleep; too much work; and bad weather. Does this sound about right? As for the weather, I’ve since then confirmed the observation that mood is directly related to the amount of sunshine on a given day. Or am I only projecting what I’ve heard other people say? With the New Year I inevitably fell into thinking about my future, the future year, and further. In past New Years, I had resolved not to hurry into any rash decisions and established that although I wasn’t sure of my place in the world, I was nevertheless happy enough; I was happy with being unsure. This year, after leaving a Californian paradise for this cold, cloudy, dark place that I’ve been calling home, I couldn’t help but feel a little anxious for some substantial change in my life. But then, eventually, the sun came out, and all of a sudden I realized how great life was after all. I think I’ve understood how the sun influences me, and am currently studying the effect of sardines and mustard as a substitute on weeks when the sun doesn’t show itself very often. What other things can be done to keep your mood on high? Well, there are pills and tablets of all sorts, probably filled with all kinds of vitamins from sardines and mustard and other ‘natural’ antidepressants. So why should I be so picky? I guess the inevitable truth is that your mood is never as high as when it comes off of a cloudy day. This gets back to the inevitable ebb and flow of a person’s mood. Every day could be sunny and you can have fresh fish with mustard every evening, with dark chocolate for dessert, but that can’t maintain a quality state of mind over the long term. At the very least, you’ll get used to whatever you serve yourself, be it actual sustenance, or food for the mind, no matter how ‘good’ it might be. This suggests the necessity for constant change, or at least the wherewithal not to spoil yourself with too much of any one positive thing. Just as a lack of sleep, too much work and bad weather are sure to cause the worst of moods, maybe in the end these things are necessary so that at the very least we don’t forget that they’re there. These negative experiences help us appreciate the good in our lives. It’s the Yin-Yang of our psyche. A question which arises is how much negative we should expose ourselves to in order to not lose sight of the wonderful things we have in our lives. Here I am, complaining about cloudy skies and too much work, when I’m lucky enough not to have to deal with starvation or the horrors of war. Somehow I don’t think I have to live in a war zone to be able to appreciate the peaceful cities that I’ve enjoyed living in. So I don’t have to go to that extreme in order to recognize a good thing in my life. But what does one have to experience in order to live a full life? With this question in mind, I can’t help but think that working as an English teacher isn’t a bad position to be in. Here I’ve recently got my CELTA certificate – a rinky-dink teaching certificate which is nonetheless the standard for the worldwide market – and there’s a world out there still waiting for me. Am I in a hurry to get out of my current life? I guess not, as much as that might hurt some people reading this. They’re apprehensive about my fate because my future is so unknown. It’s unknown to me too, but I still think it would be worse to put myself in the standard track of life: career, money, wife and kids. It’s not that I deny myself the possibility that I might want those things in the future, it’s only that I want to know that it’s I who want them, and not all the people around me who want these things for me. It’s easy for people who care about me, myself included, to be apprehensive about putting these things off, because besides them, they might not know what to value in life. They might not understand or believe that life can have meaning without kids playing football on Saturdays and parent-teacher conferences. I’m not sure there’s meaning out there either, aside from these traditional values; nevertheless, I don’t think it hurts to search, maybe even for a long time. Will an entire lifetime of searching end in vain? Maybe even if little is found along the way, there might have been meaning in the search itself. I feel like a fifteenth century European sailor exploring unknown seas. I may fall off the edge of the world, or my ship may sink and I’ll be eaten by sharks. Who knows what dangers lay waiting in that horrible unknown? I could easily run from it all and return to my home to set up a life for myself which will be exactly as meaningful as everyone else’s, which is to say … something would be missing. Or maybe I need to come to my senses, realize that the world is flat and that there’s nothing out there except a dismal end. 27.1.13 I’m not sure if the people who suggest that there is nothing out there can really be trusted. After all, what do they know? For one thing, they might not have searched very long themselves before they decided to follow the footsteps of whole generations, past and current. How can you tell me I won’t find what nobody knows? I’ve been reading a lot recently. I’ve started this new hobby and have really taken to it full-bore, so that I risk a relapse of boring myself with it before long. I’m currently reading three books, along with some collections of short stories intermittently. The first of three novels I’m reading is 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I started this immediately after finishing Journey to the Center of the Earth, also by Jules Verne, which I had listened to but never read before. I liked the latter novel more than the current one, since there seemed to be less focus on secondary material, such as local plant and animal life of whatever ocean Captain Nemo’s submarine is sailing through. Speaking of whom, however, I have to admit that I kind of like Captain Nemo – a hermit scientist who has ostracised himself from all of humanity for reasons as of yet unknown (will I find out?) I’ve been called a hermit before, and I have to admit that while I wouldn’t want to cut every single tie with people, every once in a while I think it might be nice to spend some time in a library in a submarine a few kilometers under water. This appeal of reading fiction, I’ve discovered, is in how the reader can relate to the characters of the book. It may be selfish of me to like reading for such a reason, because in the end I’m sort of reading about myself as I put myself in the characters’ places and thus enjoy the story as it goes along, as though it were happening to me! (As selfish as it may be, I don’t think I’m the only one who has enjoyed fiction in this way.) Just yesterday I finished rereading a novel called ‘Revolutionary Road,’ by Richard Yates. This might have inspired me to express my hesitance on going down the road of fatherhood; if I was five or ten years from such an endeavor before, I’m now twice as far after reading this novel. I find it comes across as a horror story for those stuck in the quagmire of life in suburbia. Or maybe it’s a warning to people like me, who have waited patiently thus far, testing the waters of a different life before plunging into one pool or the other. I’ve also started reading ‘The Fountainhead,’ by Ayn Rand, a second time, which will probably scare my family members a little. I’ve heard plenty of criticism of Rand in the past years, mostly from my family, and although I can’t disagree with all of it, there’s still plenty of stuff that I like about this author. Again, I can easily put myself in the position of the hero, more because of his dissatisfaction with the world around him than anything else. Furthermore, I find the other characters are rather well developed, and I see them in my everyday life too. On the other hand, it might not be smart of me to apply her writing to my life, since Ayn Rand was evidently not the most tolerable of other people, and not one willing to compromise, so my adopting such an attitude might have negative effects for me at work and elsewhere. On the other hand, there are lots of people whom I just can’t tolerate. I can’t help but relate to this author. I’ve also started reading Frankenstein, and A Tale of Two Cities. They both are good vocabulary exercises. Reading them is like drinking a fine wine. It takes some effort to understand them completely. The latter novel tastes a bit like Sense and Sensibility, which I finally drudged through earlier this month. Dickens has a more varietal language, though, not as monotonous as Jane Austin or Mary Shelly. I have a list of books that I’d like to at least look at this year. I’d like to get into Anna Karenina when I’m finished with Verne, and this summer, if I get a month or two off, I might undertake something even bigger, like War and Peace, Ulysses (Joyce), and or Paradise Lost. I’ve been told that they’re worth reading. If I have the strength, I might get through one or two of them.