kindred spirit?

i just have to blog about this even though i've a midterm and a quiz tomorrow and somehow i'm still in slack mode. i can't seem to treat every assignment and quiz and midterm with the seriousness that most people here do, and this may haunt me later.

but anyway, i had an amazing dinner with rebecca, this girl in my history class who has been since one fateful day very friendly to me. to put it simply, she's the kind of person that jesley's quote refers to, one who is "mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved... the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing; but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." i don't know if it's in line with blogging etiquette to lift such quotes from other people's blogs, but it struck me so, and when i was searching my life for this kind of intensity, along came rebecca who shimmers with such reflective sponteneity. she seems genuinely curious, from the long conversation i finally had with her. finally cos our interaction has always been limited to short post-class chats. and when i sit down and dig deep within the both of us so much pours out, so much that i would never tell anyone normally. maybe she's right and the distance that separates our lives is so great that we feel free telling each other what we really think without fear of repercussions. but no matter what liberated us, it was so refreshing to find someone from an entirely new culture whom i was able to relate to and feel so comfortable with. i feel that the barrier between myself and the rest of humanity that exists because we're all so painfully unique has been partially bridged, thanks to an incidental breakthrough of differences that seems almost preordained.

history always unearths gems for me. both on a personal level like above, and intellectually too. intellectually cos my section instructor is this Lebanese chainsmoking guy trained in political science and who claims to be the most opinionated person around. he's made us question foundations that we accept easily such as the concept of modernity, neutrality, and one day after class he attacked me when i tried to ask him a question. he just interrupted me and said "yihui, you have a problem. you believe that everything must have foundations and value lies in objectivity." then he lectured me and demanded to know my opinion about opinions as we walked out of campus. a very tough 20 min walk which concluded with him saying that his goal and meaning of his time here was to just do his job and hopefully be the slackest prof ever and be free to do what he likes including taking drugs. i think he thought i was horrified and believed him cos of course he then qualified that he was joking. but my point is that he's crazy! i've never met an academic like him before. he makes us question everything in his angry way, in a bid to make us independent thinkers. i'm typing all this crap down because i feel that this will be the most valuable class i'll take at college, and my future history classes will have to be something special to beat this class in influencing the kind of person/thinker i'm going to end up being.

ok and that's all for now on the update on the chim that is evolving in the us of a. i hope you guys can tell that i'm enjoying myself. and i wrote down all three of your addresses on three separate envelopes, which means i'll be writing notes to you all soon and won't be lazy anymore.