Friday, May 04, 2007
Grad School Rant
週一早上從紐約坐了五小時的車回來，疲倦神智不清到極點。感謝來自城市街道規划井然有序的紐約客司機，居然在隧道和Big Dig高速道路上大玩迷路游戲，office hours 遲到近半小時 ... Thank God it's the last week of school.最近在某些層面上諸事不順。買了兩年半的二手書桌椅幾近報廢，從哥那兒承繼下來的PowerBook G4第一次在我長達15年的蘋果電腦使用歷史裡漏氣，發出垂死前的哀號。不得已，辛苦做了一年TF退回來的tax return全數捐獻給新的MacBook購買基金 ...
值得高興的是，這是人生第一次擁有一台非二手亦非水貨的貨真價實新品（淚）!更感動的是，新的電腦可以任意簡繁互轉，從此不用再因用拼音系統打簡體字而和之前速度緩慢的軟體糾纏不清。（淚 x 3）!
距搬家打包生活作息開始瘋狂的日子不到一個月。是該繼續努力維護一般居家生活簡潔和秩序，還是該就此放棄？反正幾個禮拜後家裡能看到的不過是成堆的紙箱，包裝紙，泡棉，膠帶，和寫地址的簽字筆。
Another bigger question - where shall the mailing address to which all those boxes be sent to? Taipei? Tokyo? Or a split between a few friends' basement in Cambridge?
After the very last lecture for sophomore tutorial on Tuesday, Prof. C took us out to Grafton for a quick mid-afternoon snack/drinks. Everyone started to share about their plans for the summer and/or schedules for the upcoming school year. One of the TF's shared with us the joyful news of a upcoming baby, and the other invited us to the party of yet another advancement of his age. Prof. herself talked about her sabbatical projects in TW, and very soon the conversation moved on to what to do with getting help from a Filippino nanny in TW while still keeping your own intimate time with a 2.5-year-old son, to how it is like to be in a position of double alienation after years and year of being away from her - once - home country. Right before I dashed out for another meeting, we were discussing the idea of getting a storage container for all the books accumulated throughout the years.
"Somehow there is a strange sense of security knowing that all of your books are contained, sealed, and nicely stuffed in a cube-meter-square container. The only problem is you never know when it'd arrive, sometime between the next month or three months from now?" Prof. C commented.
Someone should eventually come up with a Friends- or Grey's Anatomy-version of grad student/academics way of life. Although since there would be neither beauties nor prince charming and only dates with the diseased scholars in the world of books and JSTOR articles in a 24-hour library - if one wants to be as close to reality as possible, that is - then I guess no TV stations would be stupid enough to put that series out there during prime viewing hours on, say, Thursday nights from 9-10 pm.
Even though I still think the drama would be fun enough to watch - just to get a sense of what it is like to be living constantly below the povery line, under exploitation by the university employment agency, and with the reality of always needing to deal with a long-distance or cross-Pacific-Ocean relationship, whether dating or marriage.
還是好好研究我如何能多睡幾個小時好了，這樣比較切實際。
梅ちゃん at 3:40:00 AM
4 Comments
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at 5/4/07, 11:29 AM
refresh_daemon said... I'll get to work on a pilot for the show "Grad School Blues" right away. ;) It'll be like real grad school, except with more time to socialize and pretty TV faces. And very little actual schoolwork. ;)
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at 5/9/07, 1:52 AM
Chat Noir said...
you can send books via m-bag with usps. it's cheaper and arrives in about 1-2months.
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at 5/9/07, 1:53 AM
Chat Noir said...
and i temporarily shut down my blog now.
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at 5/11/07, 11:40 AM
Ferdinand said...
Sleep. :)
休んでください！