before leaving on a jet plane

had my tap meeting the day before yesterday. after this whole time of being frustrated and preoccupied because of phd, i finally started to feel a bit back on track.

the-three-year thing does happen in a blink of the eye. i remember the first tap i had, where i felt overwhelmed by so many undecipherable codes behind what had been spoken in that meeting. i couldn't understand any of them at all, and yet i was told that i was fine, on the right track and just needed to keep on writing.

the truth was that they knew from the start what kind of phd student i was. i in that meeting appeared to be somebody full of ideas and sensitivity, but did not by instinct know how to structure things up. so they encouraged me to write as much as possible, and then they would push me to find a structure among most of the things i wrote. they thought that was how i worked. and now from the hindsight, after finally getting what they were saying to me in the very first tap, i guess they were not far wrong.

so this is the real part of this game: last 6 months for structuring and for proving my ability to keep a balance between endless ideas and a clear structure.

see the plural-vs.-single i just outlined? ideas vs. *a* structure.

am leaving this country to meet my lover and hopefully share some quality time together, while making progress on my phd of course.

self doubts

last half a year before submitting.

it feels very frustrating because i do not seem to be able to know what it is that i want to write about. repeatedly i ramble and go a million different places to find my arguments, only to learn that they are porous due to lack of self-reflexivity (from a methodological point of view).

i do not know what it wrong. in personal life i am full of self-reflexivity. i mean, me, without being self-reflexive is like pizza without tomato paste.

but i know ti's true. the chapter i've been working on over and over again is such a great example. i wasn't clear in terms what i was going to do, what cultural sites i was going to examine, why, from which perspective and with what methods.

ti's true. i was not reflexive in all these areas of concerns.

perhaps i need to in a way start this all over again. cast away what i've learned and start from the basics. . . but it just feels weird and frustrating.

i no longer know if i am able to really be the person i once wanted to be. if i am really that capable or if all this is just a facade, a lie and a dream.

someone to go out with

it's occurred to me recently that i don't really have anyone to go out and do things with. and sometimes i wish i did. it'd be good.

most of my life in the third year has been carried out either by myself or with my one or all of housemates. it- the idea that other than my housemates i don't really have anyone- has not really been a serious problem before and now. after all, each year of my phd, things have been different and people/friends around me just come and go. so it's not that difficult to get used to being always accompanied or always left alone. they are just different state of being.

but then again i feel that i can really use some company. it'd be nice to go for a coffee or a meal with someone here. just chit-chatting or not talking at all. just for the sake of knowing that you're comfortable around someone else.

but because phd has been such a solitary work and every one feels more or less isolated anyway. i sometimes don't really see the point of trying to make new friends. it takes so much time and awkwardness before you can really feel comfortable being yourself with somebody else.

making chocolates

I bought a chocolate melting pot some time ago at netto's. Since then it has been my new kitchen toy. I love melting chocolates- plain, bittersweet, milk, and white- and then put the fluids into a shape of a heart, an animal or something else. Some pictures of them can be seen on here.

I also made some wafers with chocolate and almond flakes. they were so good that i ate them all- only one of them was eaten by my housemate.

seems to me

that actually she might give up on me despite me being the one who's been not satisfied with our relationship. the thing is that she can be so easily disheartened and pessimistic. and i am not sure what to do. i've been a cheerleader for her so many times already and obviously it is not really working- otherwise i won't need to repeat myself so often and so many times.

not sure what to do but am prepared for the worst.

late-night panic attack

i had a late-night panic attack two days ago. i was on my bed, with my eyes wide open staring at the ceiling and wall beside me, thinking: how can i trust myself? can i trust myself? really?

so this was the moment in my life where you started to question.

all the variants of questions regarding 'self-trust' hinge on one point: how can someone go about doing whatever she is supposed to do to get her life going without having some confidence and self-assurance in herself?

it's a lot easier to trust all the other people than myself. i don't know other people's weakness, uncertainties, cowardness, and stupidity. not as well as they know them themselves at least. so i can still choose to be blind and be all innocent and say: i trust you. don't let me down. and if they still somehow let me down, i would have someone to blame. it's a good deal. you can get away with trusting others and have that option of blaming others.

i have been completing my doctoral degree partly based on my trust in myself and partly on my supervisor's trust in me. but what really counts at the end of the day, obviously, is back to my own trust in me.

you see, i am going to be that supervisor who encourage students and have trust in them. so i'd better learn the trick and have some more faith, as much as possible-- no matter how.

darkness

for the past 10 days or so, i am in the house alone. one of my housemate flew back home, the other went house-sitting for a friend of his. He is not alone though. his girlfriend who studies in Newcastle came here on the 22nd and stays with him throughout the holidays.


The first week of quietness and peace was enjoyable. I felt I was totally fine spending time with myself and being well-rested. But these days it does not really feel that way anymore. I wish my housemates will be back here soon and we can again enjoy the nice time we share with each other.

But the truth is that one is gone and the couple only come in for a bigger kitchen. I sometimes am invited to their lunches and enjoy a fairly good selections of delicious food. (This male friends of mine cooks well and enjoys cooking.) Which is certainly something worth being grateful for, but it's not been exactly like company. I am excluded in one way or the other when I am with them, and I know it's supposed to be like that for them. I am fine with it, but I do wish that there would be somebody here who could spend the holidays with me.

along with this feeling of loneliness, i started to be a bit afraid of sleeping alone in the house at night. One night I went downstairs to turn off the central heating and router. On my way up again the door to the lounge beside me made squeak sounds. I was terrified at that moment because I thought the front door of the house was opened behind me. It was really nothingcome to think of it, but it made me realise that i felt vulnerable because it was one in the morning and nobody was around.

and then last night the winds were strong enough to make the door close and open, and things dropped. The sounds of these movements were also unpleasant to me because I got scared so easily.

I don't think it's really the state of being alone, but rather the darkness fallen at night. during the day I feel perfectly OK to be left here, but at night it just suddenly becomes a bit horrifying to think that i am here by myself. perhaps this is connected to my childhood memories of being too scared at the darkness to sleep well.

my first book review

is publicized on here and the response from the editors is here. The bio unfortunately contains some false information because i wrote the review and the bio long long time ago. but anyway, it's not like someone would check.

doing some justice...

things are fine. though i can still vividly remember how it once were, i've however chosen to feel fine for now.

it was due to her physical limits. she felt physically drained and wanted to give up just because she was exhausted. not enough sleep. too much running around and too much tasks. she felt she didn't have the capital，as it were, for staying in a relationship. she was tired and did not want anything that would add on extra work. those were the words.


what i started to notice in retrospect was that strictly speaking there was only one day i thought she was really perfunctory. we talked via text messages and that was it. she didn't even bother to reply my final good night message and went straight to bed. later she confessed that she was on the bed thinking texting was such an annoying and difficult thing.

but of course she'd been sort of like a lump of air to me for some time then. mostly it was just a feeling i get when we talked. or due to circumstances it was usually me who had to endure with the fact that she didn't have space for me because she had some other priorities. it was only that particular day (mentioned above) when i thought she was really not caring.

she called me on her mobile from taiwan yesterday, saying that she missed me very much. i had to get out of the bathroom to take her call. (was going to take a shower) was pretty speechless and dumbstruck when i took her call, as i was definitely not prepared for this. but it certainly made me feel happy.

we talked for 4 hours later yesterday after i returned from a seminar discussion with the MA students. it was pretty much all sorted in the 4 hours. because of her love for me and my own love for her, i promised that, as much as the pain and disappointments has made me feel sad and vulnerable, i will stride over this hurt and be ok. this feeling of pain and sadness will no longer hurt me because i want to validate her love.

so i actually felt quite strong because i could refuse to be hurt by the pain she inflicted on me (despite it was due to the fact that she felt it was beyond her control, not deliberately made). this has been a good learning process at the end.

loosening up

she's been busy and tired. all she wants now is rest, fun and sleep. even if she tries to be the person she used to be for me, she cannot do good enough as before. i am still left unsatisfied. i still feel there's something wrong and that keeps me from happiness.


she asked me what else would be left there if we no longer communicate intelligently? meaning that all we have together seems to be based on our intelligence, and it's not what a relationship based on love should be. i said sure that's a big part of our relationship because i cherish very much such interactions. but i also make sure that i take care of her emotional feelings. i just feel it's so unfair for me that she goes to work from monday to friday and when she goes home, all she wants and needs is relaxation. but i am not her relaxation. i don't know what meaning it has if we cannot be bothered to care about each other's experiences, feelings and thoughts in life.

i frankly don't see the point.

just to give a shout

i should have updated this more often but obviously i won't be saying this if i had. so, what's new?

obviously nothing new. i have just been feeling very torn inside due to my over-a-month separation from the beloved one. i wouldn't have felt so bad if the dynamics between us had not changed. the truth is, though, that although i am still important and everything, i no longer am able to feel it. it's been very difficult for me to believe that it is still there. but when i confronted this with her, she was all concerned and showed that she still cared and loved as much. and i did and still do believe her. but there's still something wrong.

maybe because she's switched her focus. being an older person running a studio perhaps just means a lot of responsibility and hard work, now more than before. she's probably just trying to earn some more money. . . so this has been how i explain things to myself. but why do i do it instead of her doing it herself?

reading again her emails, i realised that she's never really explained it. she actually did not agree that she'd been less concerned about me. she argued that she thought of me when there was something there that reminded her of me. she admitted that she thought of me less often because of work. but nowadays she'd imagine that i was with her, that i would be saying nice things that would comfort her by showing that i cared about her etc when she imagine me there.

weird. so for some reason, she'd rather do it by herself with her imagination than really getting me involved.

at the same time, i've also started to realise that our discussion on marriage(!) has led her into believing that it's been 'settled', 'we're both certain of our minds' and that 'we will stay together forever and ever'. . . but i am not so sure.

i know i said that i was willing to get married. i was perfectly sober, not drunk. but i said it under the condition that marriage is not understood as any kind of promise or a life-time commitment, because i just don't buy it personally. i thought i communicated this with her and she agrees that nothing in this world can promise anything eternal other than the simple fact that you keep on doing it day after day. but obviously she still thinks that my willingness to get married with her means something bigger.

ok, so i did feel that it probably meant something bigger for her before i said yes. but it was very difficult not to. you can never say 'i want to be with you as long as i can but i do not respond to your yearning for marriage'. i thought i was just doing something that did not mean that much to me, which would make her happy. . .

this discussion is really leading me to no good. i can never figure it out why this has turned out like this. human beings are the hardest to understand. i could hardly understand myself anyway.

so you see i am torn between trying to understand her and trying to just go on with my own life all the same.

taiwan, australia, uk and sweden

am now in taiwan. have been back here for over a month. what waits for me ahead in my last one-month count down is a busy flying schedule. at the end of september, i will be in brisbane australia for one workshop discussion and one conference presentation. after that, i will be briefly in taiwan for a day or two before going straight back to england. at the end of october, i will fly to sweden for a conference. after being away from sweden for two years, i am very looking forward to going there again.

a quick summary: days back in taiwan have been good. i am enjoying the humidity and heat. at the same time, i am falling in love, too. :)

amazing castle museum

spent several hours in castle museum and it was truly amazing. really wonderful experiences of standing/walking in the restored kirkgate/ victoria streets. i would love to go back there some other time, enjoying the nice experience of time travelling.

desire, flexility and distance

i read some old postings i'd done in 2003 and 2004 in chinese- the one year studying and living in sweden and the first year of being here- and discovered how embarassing it seems now to have exposed myself in some rather risky ways to the total strangers who'd read my blog. on the one hand, i suppose i do envy my old self where i'd say whatever that seemed true and cared very little about possible undesirable effects- misunderstanding, giving out bad impression, and the likes. on the other, i feel that these postings were probably products of a less stablized personality as well as the fact that i was still adapting to the in-some-ways-drastically-new-environments in both years.

i know i definitely feel much less nowadays. and whatever that i do feel does not tend to go that deepin me either. i am more capable of handling disturbing feelings while i am also trying to answer bigger questions. i don't necessarily have problems though i might have things to do constantly. and i do have a handful of questions that relate to huge issue in life, such as fear, trust, life-guiding principles, value systems etc.

there seems to be a kind of belief in me that champions flexibility. i sincerely hope that, for whatever reason that is unclear to me, i can be very 'flexible with my desires'. i wish to experience life as much as possible, but i don't want any obsession of anything/anyone on my part. i think obsession has a lot to do with desires. desires certainly spice up life but they should be an art that is put into practice daily, which means that certain distance and flexibility has to be kept there. and this has recently become goal, most likely, i think, for life.

something still makes a difference to me

to know that certain people's existence and written words still cause a skip of the beating of my heart is so strangely significant and yet very endearing. i am mortal, nothing more than flesh and blood. of course. but i've been so skilled in managing my emotions and feelings to the point of sometimes, if not most of the time, coming near to numbness. anyway, the fact that certain things/existences still make a difference to me is basically positively affirming- it affirms that i am human.

going away

i will be gone in a month , flying to taiwan for a hot and humid summer. the idea was to bridge over the gap between my current housing contract and the next one, but now with s coming into the picture it has become a plan that is all about 'seeing (and being with) each other again'. oh well, this is what you get after starting a relationship with someone i suppose.

problem is that my mom is not happy about this situation and asked me to stay away from her. 'why not try dating some british men?' she said. -___-|||

it's not about some teenagers trying to steal time to spend together. or it shouldn't be.

what you do and what you are

never before have i been involved in this intense situation, but perhaps intense it's not the right word... i use this word not in the sense of having lots of quarrels or fights, but rather to mean a nonstop series of 'uncertainties' coming up in life.

i suppose i am just not used to having another person in my life (however far and away she is). by having this person and constantly talking and communicating with her, i feel that some orders or priorities set in my life are quickly disrupted or even dismantled because of my own behaviours. i become much more easily disturbed by lack of attention or contact, though i don't necessarily fancy being contacted every other hour (that would have driven me insane too). guess it's probably about insecurity, although i know perfectly well that if i didn't trust her, i would never have let this happen and gotten myself into this relationship. so, it's really more about my own insecurity than anything else.

the way to deal with this new situation is probably to do the best i can; choose to trust and be who i am by doing it. i realise that it's all about what i do rather than what i am. whatever happens, it's really what i do that makes who i am. and it's shouldn't be about who i am that makes what i do. but it's a lot more difficult than thought because previously my relationships with people were not this close and did not make me feel some things that were crucial to me were rendered at stake. . .

but really, whatever turns out in the end would be benefitial and helpful to me in the long run as long as i do my best. i feel this is an ultimate test of some kind.

after she paid a visit

she came to my currently rented house and spent one week here plus another one week with me in the lake district. in general it was good. relaxing, simple and interesting.

i did see a _lot_ of differences between us, many of them cultural (despite we came from the same island) and some of them generational. i think some differences were also due to our past experiences, by which we shape up what we have come to know as 'the world'. but of course you get that all the time.

she's still quite egoistic in a crude and obvious way; sometimes it bothers me, but i am doing well by letting them go and learn to be big. and to be fair she's really meaning well, and can also be quite touchingly thoughtful.

there are the words to be said

for some reason i've never thought of this, nor have i ever come to realize this in this particular way: that there are simply some things that you must say outloud in order to make it work for you.

most of the time, my own observations on, understandings and judements of the surroundings/circumstances will suffice for most of my decision-making. i don't really need people to spell it out for me so as to get a grip of what has been going on. (well sometimes i do need that though. . . esp. when it's primarily cultural- of a different cultural origin or based on some unfamiliar set of sociocultural pracitices, for example). but in relationships, for the first time i've realized that you simply have to say it outloud so that the other person can be 100% sure of what you're thinking about her and your relationship together.

i know it shouldn't be such a huge revelation and this idea is rather natural and basic. but i am quite struck by the fact that it has to be played in this way. i didn't know.

i've come to understand that this has nothing to do with someone lacking a sense of security, or having lost her frame of reference to reality. neither do i think that this means somebody, when in love, suddenly becomes too stupid to be able to tell what is happening. i think what it is may be that we're just too immersed in certain things and feelings, and so we are in desperate need of some clear, simple and straightforward words to pin some reality down for us, to ensure and to give us some warmth and stability- though we might be perfectly aware of some of this reality.

it's actually very nice to be able to do this for another person- to say what you think of them, or how they make you feel; so is it nice to be able to hear or read some words that ensure you of your importance to the other person. i've never learned to do this for someone else before. but i am glad that i am doing it now. it's perhaps never too late.

vulnerability

haven't expressed myself in this language for such a long time. suppose this is what comes with dating- however virtual it is- someone who speaks mandarin.

at this point, i feel that i am pretty much fed up with the suffocating process of making conjectures. it's rather unsurprising. lots of time and energy has been wasted on huge amount of guesswork. of course i personally appreciate 'speaking up for your mind' as strategy but when it's long distance and technlogy-mediated, it seems so unavoidable. . . though i really wish to be able to avoid it as much as i can.

so anyway, i have to find a way to deal with this while being able to be vulnerable in front of her. otherwise i suppose it won't work.