Possibilities

Possibilities are endless

Possibilities are endless

Possibilities are endless

Possibilities are endless

Possibilities are endless

Possibilities are endless

Possibilities are endless

Possibilities are endless

Possibilities are endless

Typed without copying and pasting. September 10th, 2006, 20:38, US Airways Flight 224, somewhere about what I believe to be North Carolina.

Okay, this is going to be one strangely personal post. Kinda what the blog was supposed to be in the first place, before it became a travel-political-than-travel blog again.

Did you ever do things you knew were wrong just to know that you could?

I wonder why it is that we’re so fixated on knowing how far we can go, how high we can jump. So what?

I guess it somewhat gives us something to look up to. To know that we can jump that high again - and perhaps to want to try to jump even higher. Even if you know that it isn’t a good idea - at all...

Okay. So what if the possibilities are endless as I claim (and have typed 9 times in the beginning of this post)? How far does that mean we can/will go? And how deep will we fall until we discover, or rediscover, that we weren’t supposed to in the first place?

And perhaps more importantly, what will make us stop? Morals? Laws? Guilt, as would an islamo-christiano-judeo tradition require? Shame, as Japanese culture would suggest?

I still need to figure that out.

Until then, the feeling that possibilities are endless will be taking me over I guess - for better or for worse.

Back to Cambridge!

Just got back from a conference in Salt Lake city. Was pretty good, had fun, met a bunch of interesting people and learned a lot for sure. The best thing perhaps is the feeling of belonging to a community that I had there. In this case, the community is quite a fancy one: scholars. Researchers. PhD students. It is in moments like this that I feel that research and knowledge are pretty cool - I almost considered the use of the adjective euphoric but I wouldn’t go that far :) But seriously, it’s so great.

I wonder what I'll end up doing after this academic year - which starts tomorrow, by the way! Yikes! :)

Stay where I am? (I wish...). Go back to Paris? Find something else? NY? London? Beirut, Aceh, Ouagadougou?

Photo of the Day

'An Israeli man looks at military cardboard targets placed outside the Jerusalem office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert by reservist soldiers protesting over the Lebanon conflict.' (from BBC News)