The Study Game: If Doctor Who has a Tardis, I Have My Desk

Just quite recently, I have developed a daily exercise which I would like to refer to as ‘The Study Game’. I allocate Almost three to four hours of my day for this stimulating mental exercise. The Study Game entails that I sit behind my desk and play pretend. I pretend that I am still studying in the university and with the help of the syllabi I have collected from each course I have taken, I am retracing my steps since day one in the graduate school.

When I read and study the texts required for one particular week in that particular course, I read and study them seriously as if I am, again, Almost preparing for an examination or a class presentation. Basically, what I am doing is retaking the courses I took in grad school for the second time around on my own and on my own time. The graduate school has provided me the theoretical concepts and methodological tools that enables me to study and work independently.

The Last Day At School: A Victorious Defeat

Now that I am no longer in the university, I miss the university so much. The academic environment is one of those rare spaces in which I feel free and empowered. For as long as I can remember, I have always liked going to school and being in a classroom.

I am not one of the brightest students in all the classes I have attended in the past. In fact, I do not really consider myself to be bright or intelligent at all. Learning for me is a struggle. I have had no idea of what I was doing most of the time. Nonetheless, I enjoyed studying and learning.

Favourite 2017: A Good Match

via 2017 Favorites

These are not only my favourite photographs that I have posted in this blog page so far, but that week’s photo challenge theme entitled good match was also my favourite theme. When I see these photographs, I cannot help myself but grab my pen and fill the empty pages of words written by my right hand. These pictures are my favourite because it also depicts my favourite activity: writing.

Ascend: Good Morning Sunshine

This picture has been taken before I go to work early today. As the sun gradually ascend, it is also setting the tone of the day ahead: although cold, it will be a sunny vibrant day! Of course, the ascension of the sun is just an illusion. The sun does not ascend nor descend. It is static.

The Undiluted Pleasure of a Vegan Cook: The Experience While Cooking Vegan Balls in Sweet and Sour Sauce (recipe at the end)

One thing that can be claimed with absolute certainty is that I am not a legendary cook and my cooking is certainly no stuff of legend from which legends are made. But it will not be fair if I say: ‘damned! I can cook!’.

For someone who did not fancy cooking before like myself and always having food cooked for me in the past, I find cooking not only as the dreadful chore but also seems complicated and thus daunting. Perhaps, I used to find cooking to be dreadful because I thought it to be complicated. I have accepted that I am somebody who cannot cook.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Many are complaining about the weather today and quite rightly so. Cancelled flights, stranded trains, late buses (if they arrive at all), heavy traffic and many other disruptions to our daily routine can all be accountable to a thick snow as today.

A Cheeky Street Artist In Paris

If cheeky means asserting and creating a space in which one could express oneself to others, then this street artist we met in Paris is indeed cheeky in his own right. My friends and I were on our way to the Louvre to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Liza and other works when we were greeted by this man’s performance as we eject ourselves from the underground.

The Vegan Ideal: An Introduction

In the previous blog entry, I have expressed my commitment to write more about my nicotine addiction and the challenge I embrace to liberate myself from it. So far, I am able to restrain myself from lightning-up and smoking a cigarette for four months now. As far as my self-restraint is concerned, I have been Saintly so far. Although, in the whole grand scheme of things, abstaining from one’s addiction for four months is not that long, it is nonetheless not nothing. Four months of not smoking is an achievement I can be proud of. Smokers and ex-smokers alike would understand that sense of achievement.

Aside from not smoking anymore, another huge change that has taken place in my life this year is my dietary restrictions. For about a month or two, I have started to live on plant-based diet. I do not consume animal meat anymore and any other products that have been produced from the exploitation of non-human animals. Like ‘smoking and not smoking’, my conversion to not eating animals is also a theme I would like to reflect upon here in this blog. From hence forward, my reflections on this fundamentally different ways of living my life will be categorized as the ‘The Vegan Ideal’.

No Smoking: Not Today

Last 28^th of September this year, I posted a blog entry entitled: Launch(ed) A New Life Regime: A Life Free From Cigarettes. It was a response to the daily prompt challenge in the wordpress.com blogging community (www.dailypost.wordpress.com) in which many WordPress bloggers around the globe, including myself, enthusiastically take part. The word prompt that day was ‘Launch’, which has propelled me to blog about the huge change that has taken place in my life recently, namely, stop smoking.

In that particular blog entry, I have also made a commitment to write about smoking and the pursuit to liberate myself from it. I have promised that ‘not smoking’, like many other subjects, will be a recurring theme here in this blog called the Much To Tell About Nothing. It will be a theme that will hopefully state to permeate in this space like a Patina  on a surface that continue to grow over time.

Winter 2017: The First Encounter This Year

Winter marks the coming of age of every year and yet at the same time it is also the point in which a new young year is being born again. It is in the nexus of the old and the new.

There are quite plenty of the us who finds winter to be the most dreary season of the year. It is quite understandable. It is when we are constrained with indoor activities because it is very cold to spend our time outside. The sun rarely shine and the lack of its glorious presence has a tremendous influence to the temperaments of many.