On n'a plus le temps

I found this with languagehat:



On ne lit plus, on n'a plus le temps. L'esprit est appelé à la fois de trop de côtes; il faut lui parler vite où il passe. Mais il y a des choses qui ne peuvent être dites, ni comprises si vite, et ce sont les plus importantes pour l'homme. Cette accélération de mouvement qui ne permet de rien enchaîner, de rien méditer, suffirait seule pour affaiblir et, à la longue, pour détruire entièrement la raison humaine.

Félicité Robert de Lamennais, 1819.

(Translation: "We have stopped reading, we have not the time. Our mind is solicited simultaneously from too many sides: it has to be spoken to quickly as it passes by. But there are things that cannot be said or understood in such haste, and these are the most important things for man. This accelerated movement, which makes coherent thought impossible, may alone be sufficient to weaken, and in the long run utterly to destroy, human reason.")

Some news about wikis and blogs

I found Ross Mayfield's reference about investments in Wiki- and Blog-mania quite interesting to note here for my future reference. I've just signed myself onto to Wikipedia yesterday, hope I'll be able to contribute something there. There's the Thai Wiki to keep an eye on. These past two days, I've also found Wiki's city, weblogs, slashdot (very interesting!), social networking, nanotechnology pages useful.

My other internet "identities"

For the sake of transparency, I thought I should point out my other internet identities. Google's new services encouraged me to start two new blogs: my Thai History Blog, a subject I'm planning to be more deeply invovled in; Manila Galleon, a blog I initiated for my husband's baby book, (I'm pressuring him to get it on published, he's not doing much about it).



Then I'm regularly posting with the community at All About Thailand, my alias there is globalwoman. I've just starting posting with the discussion forum at 2Bangkok.com. In my previous post, I wrote about how I started logging in at Wikipedia.



Lastly,there's the MMS2 group/class blog. And of course, this blog was started as part of MMS1 course.

Still struggling to make my blog a transparent medium of my thoughts

I haven't been blogging much lately because there's just too many things going through my mind, too many life events I'm trying to integrate, too many books I'm reading. When I log on to the internet, I prefer reading my Thai newspaper, my alternative news source: 2Bangkok.com, looking for websites or blogs on subjects that interest me, and posting on "All About Thailand" Forum. I'm also taking French lessons. I have an exam next Monday, which I haven't studied for. There's also a bunch of projects in my "To Do" list. Even without a 9-5 job, there's too little time to do all I want to do, especially for a dreamer like me. I need time to write in my morning journals, to think over things I experience by reading up on the various topics, the books being my little looking glass, so blogging comes at the bottom of the list of all that.



Through the years, I think I've deepened my multi-tasking skills in real life. Now I wish I could multi-task with the use of computers. It's so time consuming. So instead of writing what I want to write with care, I rush through my posts (when I do post). Then what concerns me is that what I write can't express the variety of things that interest me. Transparency is what I hope to achieve, I wonder if it's hopeless? Hmm, maybe a better goal is clarity?

Chicago, birthplace of skyscrapers

Last weekend I visited Chicago and it was such a great trip that I wanted to share some of the cool sights!



Chicago, I discovered, was the birthplace of skyscrapers. As a result of the Chicago fire of 1871, an innovative style of construction was created to build taller buildings. The first skyscraper was built there in 1884. The nine-storey structure was supported by a steel skeleton that become known as the distictive architectural style called "the Chicago School". Chicago's skyline is probably one of the most interesting in the world because of the density of tall buildings with many different unique features.



Other impressive things were the Millenium Park, which has the coolest interactive public 'sculptures', the "Bean", and two water towers that showed interactive faces of the city's people; the Art Institute of Chicago which houses the largest collection of Impression and Post-Impressionist art outside of France. I was also lucky to be taking a river and lake tour in a boat during an air show and had F18s fly and do stunts right over my head several times.





My stepdaughter in front of "The Bean".





One of "The Towers", there's two of them with different pictures interacting with each other and eventually spraying water through their "mouths" on the kids playing in the water plaza between them. Sorry I couldn't figure out how to rotate the picture.





The air show planes going over the boat next to us.



Chicago was soooo interesting because it gave me firsthand insight about the birth of industrialisation and capitalism. I have to go back again, because I just missed a musical I wanted to see (The King and I), I haven't gone to listen to the blues, I haven't had time to do the south side of the city, nor seen the famous old houses of the world famous architects who have for some time made Chicago their home. I also want to take my son to see the Chicago Bulls. That's for my next trip! It's only a 8-9 hour drive from Toronto, now I know the roads.