What is the point?

Tags

#education, reading

I recently edited a column in which a guy basically said – and I paraphrase – universities should focus on producing cheap labour for employers. These comments are part of a larger discourse in Hong Kong – and possibly the world – in which universities are seen as failing if they do not prepare graduates for the workforce.

The thing is, preparing people for the workforce is not the job of the university, in its historical sense. The university’s task is to educate. Full stop. If that education proves useful to the workforce, so be it. But if it doesn’t, that is not really the problem of the university. Education involves equipping young people with knowledge and hopefully the skills to acquire more knowledge.

Our modern universities are built in the European tradition, which distinguishes between universities (which perform the above function) and polytechnics which impart professional knowledge. But now it’s like people want the universities to be polytechnics, because otherwise what is the point?

Indeed. There is no point in universities in the true sense in a world in which everything is quantified in monetary terms.

In the past universities had patrons, just as the arts had patrons, because enlightened people recognised the value of funding the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. There was prestige in funding something beautiful or wondrous for its own sake. But also, there was the understanding that these pointless pursuits could sometimes yield results that would shatter human understanding and change history.

***

I also edited a letter by a student who bemoaned the growing utilitarianism of Hong Kong society – the idea that anything that doesn’t have an easily identifiable use is immediately worthless. I’d wager Hong Kong has always been utilitarian because it’s modern origins lay in commerce and in hardy people surviving by pursuing material goals. It is a pragmatism that is admirable.

But as Hong Kong has grown more prosperous, there is a seed of the desire for more. For the chance to do something that is besides the point, of doing for doings sake. And if any place has the money to fund such ventures Hong Kong has.

But still, you have people like that illustrious columnist insisting that everything must have its use … or go.

***

I am married to a man who asks ‘what is the point?’ Of a PhD for example. Spending years on something that doesn’t seem to have yielded any result to speak of.

The tedium of replying to these questions.

Before I was married, my husband’s sister asked what the point of literature is. At least architects build something, she said. She is an architect.

I recalled my iconic poet/teacher Eunice De Souza who firmly told us: “I’m not here to teach you how to sell toothpaste.” (Although many of her students did go on to do the many versions of selling toothpaste in the media).

I channelled Oscar Wilde and said: “There is no point. All art is quite useless.”

To her credit, she was silenced.

***

“What is the point of reading?” the husband asks, with just a touch of defensiveness.

The questioner in me can countenance the questioning of everything, and yet, I find this question more heretical than heresy itself. Nevertheless, I felt the need to engage with it.

The discussion was not so much about the point of reading but about whether one could gain the same knowledge without reading. I accept that there is certain forms of knowledge that are best gained through hands-on learning. For example, I never quite got why people need to do a two-year course or god forbid, a Bachelor’s degree, in journalism, when one could pretty much pick these skills up more effectively on the job. The fact that media organisations in Hong Kong screen resumes for even internships based on this ‘journalism degree background’ is another story. Admittedly, there might be some technical things to learn – though bizarrely in India the journalism courses were teaching software that was not used in newsrooms because the more updated programmes were too expensive probably – such as operating cameras and editing film for broadcast journalism maybe. And there could be some communication theory that would of of course. Frankly, I think journalists would benefit most from a cultural studies programme, which is actually worth three years of study, but I wouldn’t say it’s essential to being a journalist. But I digress.

Apart from the practical knowledge, there is more abstract knowledge – the kind one studies in a BA programme under the Humanities disciplines or some of the pure sciences – that as of now is contained in books. Some of it can be extracted and packaged in other media, which is what happens in classroom. But after a point, if you want to go deeper, this is not going to work. You are going to have to read the original – which is contained in a book. (I do not differentiate between listening to an audio book and reading here). There may come a time when books stop being the major source of knowledge – when people put their original ideas down not in paper but in film maybe – but you’d still have to grapple with book-knowledge if you want to go backwards in history.

The thing is, I don’t know a single person who has that kind of abstract intelligence, who does not read a lot.

So, it appears that the husband and I represent these two different forms of intelligence. And we each hold the other form in slightly less esteem. Ironically, this difference of intelligence was probably the very thing that attracted us to each other. But such is marriage.

***

Unfortunately, the job market prioritizes degrees, even when the degree has no real connection to the job. It’s possible that employers would prioritise work experience over degrees, but how to get work experience without a degree? It’s a vicious cycle.

This is the fault of employers, who instead of interviewing people and seeing if they seem bright enough for the job, judge them with a piece of paper. In the process, there is pressure on the piece of paper to conform to the job market, which is a pity.

***

In related reading, this.

Yay me

Tags

#education, #phd

So part of the reason for the silence is that I had to start prepping for my PhD oral defence in a hurry. I submitted my thesis at the end of the August last year and hoped I’d be done with the exam by the end of the year. Our department is notoriously slow about arranging the exam – which involves getting together a committee of two external examiners, two internals, one chair from the faculty and much coordination with the graduate school. To speed things up my supervisor and I identified the externals and got their agreement on being part of the committee before I even submitted. And yet, it was months before the committee was officially even formed.

At some point I gave up. I realised that I was too busy with teaching anyway to focus on an exam, and it would be better to have the exam around February, once I had settled into my new job. But when I checked in February, the admin guy told me it didn’t look like it could happen in March. So I was like whatevs, la la la while my parents and in-laws seemed more anxious about when I would finish than me.

Then suddenly I got an email from the admin guy informing me that my exam had been scheduled. It threw me into a panic. The first thing I had to do was get leave on the day. I had two weeks to prepare, which was not too bad but work turned out to be fairly busy and I had stuff lined up for the kids on the weekends leading up to the exam, so it wasn’t ideal.

I found myself thrown from the developments on the Korean peninsula and Trump’s threat of trade war into my own thoughts on single women and chick lit in India. I felt somewhat detached from the whole thing and was struggling to care.

However, I know from watching other people’s defences that this is a subjective process that can go badly wrong if one says something that ticks off a particular examiner and that the only defence is to prep thoroughly. I had had feedback from the two external examiners and there were a couple of sticky things that I did not relish the need to deal with.

I warned V that I was going to be missing in action the weekend before the exam, and cancelled a girls night out on the Friday with some regret. I barricaded myself in my room and plugged away at my presentation. I had to somehow whittle down three years’ work into 15 minutes. And I had to anticipate questions on and around the 80,000 word behemoth.

I allowed myself one social gathering – a party for Nene’s kindergarten friend – that weekend, at which I stupidly drank a glass of wine. I was fine until I got home and then had the worst headache, that prevented me from rereading my thesis as carefully as I would have liked, with the added irritation of V shaking his head and going “I told you not to drink.” (I mean, ONE glass). Finally, I turned in early, only to wake up at 2 am with the runs. So I guess I was nervous.

In the end, it went off rather well. The chair of my committee was someone I was comfortable with, the technology worked so that the external Skyping in could hear me and I her and the admin guy stuck around to switch between my slides and the examiner (something I had been worried about), and the external who I thought might be tough, was measured and polite. I had slides anticipating some of their questions, and by and large it was a good discussion, although I didn’t agree with all the feedback.

The result – passed with minor revisions.

So yeah, I’m basically there. I have to submit revisions and I should be working on that instead of typing this blog, but I’m hoping to get clearer idea of what I must do from the committee report. Then, it gets approved by my supervisor and the chair and goes to the senate for stamping.

The exam is the hardest part and I have to say that passing is a major relief. Although I had been teaching just a few months ago, I felt out of practice when it came to presenting. I hadn’t been in touch with my own thesis either for ages. But I survived, relatively unscathed.

I must have done something right because after the exam, the examiner I had been worried about alerted me to a job at her ink and pretty much told me I’d be perfect for it. You’d think as a newly minted almost-doctor I’d jump all over being on the inside track to a full time position. But I thought about it, discussed it with V (who was more into the idea than I thought he’d be considering what a mess I’d been during my teaching stint) and decided nah, I’d rather be a sub at this present moment. Being a highly paid minion suits me, and I’ll just have to find some other way to share my ideas than the prestige of academia. Not closing that door, but just sticking with what I’m enjoying right now.

Ending

 

I submitted my PhD thesis this week. Woo hoo.

I had planned to submit it earlier, the middle of the month, not the second last day before the deadline, but I kept proofreading and finding errors and I did not want to inflict the 70,000 word beast on a friend so I plodded on myself, until I ran out of time.

In between, as you know, I was scrambling with the job situation, and prepping for the FOUR courses that I will teach together. Ok, actually prepping for two, because I don’t know what is going on with the other two because it was only confirmed I was teaching it last week, and that’s when I got the textbook and a flood of info which I have only glanced at. And I still don’t have a contract.

I had all these plans for the way my PhD would end. I would submit at least a month in advance and use the last month and plentiful library access to write and submit a paper. That didn’t happen because a) I didn’t finish writing as quickly as I expected b) I realised I’d better prep for courses if I was going to take on enough work to make a liveable wage (by this I mean at least as much as my PhD stipend, oh how the mighty have fallen).

Then I planned to submit 15 days before and be completely prepped for the courses I would be teaching. That didn’t happen either. Well, I finished writing but the editing didn’t end, and I didn’t finish all the lecture PPTs, though maybe that was unrealistic too.

I held on to my 80 something books till the last minute because another of my grand plans was to scan everything I needed. Didn’t happen either. I did scan the material for the courses and got all of it (I hope) and some extras, but nowhere close to everything I would have wanted done. Finally, I just had to let go.

Returning my entire collection of books was the hardest part. In the end, I had to take a little suitcase to office and make two and something trips down to the book drop and finally, my bookcase was empty, and so was I.

I had also planned to hold on to my office key and use the office till the last day (or obnoxiously more) but a) I realised there were new students coming in, and they were being assigned the not-so-nice desks because we were still occupying ours b) I like abiding my the rules, but mainly c) something in me clicked shut when I saw my empty bookcase, and I cleared out my desk that very day and carted everything home in my little purple suitcase and handed back the key. And that was that. Happily it turns out that because I am part-time teaching I will get a desk in some other office, or at least some sort of office space, so I won’t be totally adrift.

I was soooo tired from a) lugging the six copies of my PhD across campus in the hard sun only to land up from at the Graduate School counter to an unceremonious “what?” from the inept woman there who acted like she had never encountered a student submitting a thesis before b) clearing out the office and lugging the admittedly stuffed suitcase to the MTR c) the emotional intensity of the ending.

The next day I felt incapable of doing anything, although there was so much to do, so I went for a run and cut myself some slack by sitting in the bath for like an hour, reading fittingly Bridget Jones’s Baby and when I finally got myself to emerge, I had finished half of the (slim) novel and so said what the hell and basically read the whole thing. That evening, some of us grad students met in a bar to celebrate/drown our sorrows and it was nice, though the sad thing is, I don’t think these people are my friends, not really. You can tell I’m in a maudlin mood, right?

At drinks, the other two people who submitted described their feeling as empty. I don’t feel empty, just… detached? I had finished writing and disengaged from the thesis a while ago, and had moved on if not made peace with to the next phase of my life which is being an underpaid adjunct, though there was something about having to give back my books that made me feel like I don’t know something died.

It really is the end of an era. The other day, I was grumbling to V about our department and he said that you shouldn’t say such negative things (eyeroll), you spent so long there, why did you do this anyway. And I said, don’t get me wrong, I loved it. When I look back on my life, I will look back on this as one of the best periods of my life. Despite all the disappointments, the lack of money or being made to feel like I wasn’t bringing in enough money, the imposter syndrome and questioning whether I was good enough, the insecurity about what now after and the fact that it appears I cannot go back to where I was even if I wanted to, spending three years immersed in ideas surrounded by books and people similarly preoccupied was the experience of the lifetime. Maybe our desire to extend this experience into a career is unrealistic, and maybe even more unrealistic is that the experience will not be sullied by the realities of ‘career’ but can you blame us? Not to mention the travel for conferences, getting hotels paid for and exploring a city on my own. The sitting alone, entirely alone in an office for days on end, and writing about something that probably noone else cared about but which I was being paid to do anyway. And the not small achievement of writing essentially a book, finally forming an argument even if not the most groundbreaking one (well, of course I’m going to downplay it).

So yeah, for this I am grateful.

 

 

 

 

Life without control

I have not yet mastered the art of letting go of the things I cannot control. If anything, I have become more anxious, or at least I am conscious of my anxiety, or there are more things to be anxious about. Or less things that I can control.

For example, when applying for jobs, I worry about what if this one calls me before that, will I accept, but what if? Which is all pointless because a) noone calls b) if they call, would it have done me any good to be worrying about all the possibilities and permutations and combinations before the fact. To be fair, I worry about these things because I want to figure out whether to apply at all. Why apply, if I won’t accept. But I only won’t accept if a number of other things fall into place, which I have no way of predicting. So.

I have always said that having kids is an exercise in losing control. This feeling of basically having to let go and go with the flow (even if the flow is basically getting no sleep, or having to sling your baby and carry her around 24/7 because she will not be put down. The alternative is to run from pillar to posts for solutions that basically stop being relevant just when you found them because the baby has moved on to a new problem). I never quite got the hang of this loss of control or at least, I never got over the resentment of having to lose control, but thankfully, the babies grew up, and gave in to a modicum of a routine. Of course, modicum is the operative word.

My kids are older, but they are unpredictable. One of the unpredictable things is there health. Last year, Nene has been sick one every month, if not more. He basically has a permanent stuffy nose (like allergies, but to what we don’t know, likely the air which we have no control over and I do not possess a husband who believes in the expat solutions of air purifier, special cleaning of aircon with tea tree oil, what not), which at some point degenerates into a bacterial infection/tonsilitis. Mimi’s health has been pretty robust – being around a sick brother notwithstanding – but occasionally she falls sick too. And then, there’s me. So there are three variables that cannot be controlled, and doctors visits and care etc which all takes time, which in between trying to finish writing a dissertation and apply to jobs and write a proposal for a postdoc that will anyway not consider me (and which now is not posting the recruitment ad eveb) and prepping for the poorly paid jobs I’ve been offered, is time I barely have. Even with hired help at home.

I am sorry to say that the time before last that Nene fell sick I collapsed into a blubbering mass because I just did not have the time to take him to the doctor. Again. Then I felt guilty about that.

But today I did better. Today when each of my children complained of some ailment that would require a trip to two separate doctors, requiring me yet again to reschedule my carefully laid plans for the day, I took a deep breath and went with it. Sequenced the events in my head – prep helper to get appointment for local pediatrician in case ENT for Mimi doesn’t work out, call ENT on repeat in the morning and request afternoon appointment so I do not have to cancel lunch meeting with former boss, if afternoon is not available, cave and take whatever appointment, but resist urge to contact former boss until this has been confirmed. Once inevitably only 2 pm appointment is available, accept it and cancel lunch. Go with Mimi to Central to ENT to be told she has middle ear infection, but basically it could have been diagnosed by pediatrician (but what if it coudn’t have so good I did ENT and saved myself two potential visits, at least I’m covered by insurance), head back and work on bibliography while Nene plays with cars on my leg, only snapping at him when he jabs at my keyboard and basically erases entire bibliography which I thankfully am able to recover, then dither over whether to send Nene to doctor with helper because the doctor will give the same medication anyway, cave to guilt and take himself, bring home the same medication including one dodgy looking cream that I’m not sure I want him to apply, dither over whether to sacrifice run in favour of packing for next day’s minibreak which I probably should not go on because of all these doctor’s visits but it’s the summer vacation…

The thing with kids is that I cannot afford to procrastinate on my own stuff. When time is mine, I have to work like a horse, because I have no idea at what inopportune time the interruption will come. How do working parents with no flexibility do it, I wonder? But I know. I was that parent. You do what you can. You don’t feel guilty because you don’t have a choice. Because I seemingly have ‘the time’, I am plagued by endless claims on it. But it is finite and so am I. Nobody else seems to understand this.

I am not good at making decisions on the fly because I want to agonise over the perfect one. I am getting better at deciding something and then squeezing my eyes shut down on the what ifs. Today I managed this, even with the PMS hormones raging and threatening to take me down into sadland. Of this I am proud.

I write letters

Tags

#phdlife

Cover letters. Applying to jobs. Every other day.

Are cover letters necessary? Couldn’t one just forward a CV? Well, in my case, I feel the need to explain why I’m still competent even though I’ve been stuyding for a PhD.

Yes, even though the PhD. It seems as if a doctoral degree is like krypton to commercial employers. I’m beginning to think I should leave it off. It seems weird that 10 years of media/corporate editing experience at some pretty good firms counts for nothing in the face of the stupidity of pursuing a research project for a little less than 3 years. Now I know what those mothers who took breaks to look after the kids feel like. Except, ironically, I never took a break to look after the kids. I never even took a break from commercial work, I kept freelancing throughout. But I guess the fact that I got accepted into a programme for abstract thinkers that very few people get accepted to makes me untouchable now?

And why do I want to go commercial again? Well, because academia will qualify you but not employ you. That is, all the jobs want teaching experience even though you just got your qualifications. It seem impossible to get even a part-time teaching job (which by the way pays less than my PhD stipend) without teaching experience. That old chicken and egg thing. The way around this is to know someone. Basically, many positions aren’t advertised, and when they are, it’s a formality and they already have someone in mind. Yet, the ad makes the poor sods out there who don’t know enough people think they actually might have a chance and so you apply (‘to the void’ as my colleague put it because noone ever replies). The only two gigs I’ve secured are through people I know, which should make me happy but makes me sad instead. These gigs pay so little there is no point celebrating them,.

Forget part-time teaching, I have not heard back from teaching assistant jobs. Maybe because it might make the actual teachers who are not PhDs insecure, I suppose.

Okay, to be fair, I still don’t have a PhD (I haven’t submitted and done the exam yet). Though honestly a PhD as a part-time teacher is overqualified. But okay. Fine. Maybe all this will miraculously change when I have that piece of paper.

But what won’t change is how little they pay. After spending 3 years, at best (at worst 5-7) on this thing, you have to spend a couple more doing part-time work or if you’re lucky a postdoc before you can actually get a job that basically pays less than my previous job correcting people’s English.

This makes me feel so angry that I want to chuck the whole dream posthaste (and I would if someone would offer me something else to do. See part on commercial sector cold shoulder). The poor pay, exploitative working conditions for part-time staff and general lack of transparency makes me want to smack the next academic who starts sanctimoniously critiquing the commercial sector.

Because you know, in the commercial sector, if you apply to advertised positions, you actually stand a chance of being considered based on your resume. Well, it seems like a better chance than in academia which really does seem to run on influence at the lower levels anyway. And that sector pays better. And you get nice tea in the pantry. For free.

This morning when I was reading a story to Mimi I was thinking that I could apply for a teaching assistant job. At a kindergarten. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

By the way, those are the jobs that seem plentiful. The teaching English. At all levels. That I am not actually qualified for, because I don’t have TESOL qualifications, but I know that doesn’t matter in the lesser institutions, if you’re the right colour. Which I’m not. Too much cafe in my au lait.

I really should have gotten a TESOL qualification if I wanted to diversify my career path (which I didn’t. I thought of the PhD as a passion project and that I would get back to editorial work after. Except the blemish of the PhD it appears is overwhelming).

When I started this job hunt, I was wracked with indecision about what I wanted to do. Ha! Now I’ll take whoever will have me.

 

 

Conference notes

Tags

#phd

It never fails to amaze me how weird academic conferences are.

At a conference I attended recently, the first session I went to, one of the presenters mumbled about logistical problems and then proceeded to read from her paper at super high speed. Yeah, people were mostly ‘reading’ not presenting. All the while she was pulling her hair in different directions.

Another panelist in an attempt to be helpful turned out the lights during the presentation so we could see the visuals. But the lights system turned out to be more complex than anticipated and for a while it was a disco in there while hair pulling woman kept on going. Instead of giving up, the guy seemed to be obsessed with getting the perfect lighting, only when he did, it was time to turn the lights back on. Turns out he was this really famous scholar too.

In another sessions, the moderator timed the sessions using a standard watch instead of a digital timer, got into a passive aggressive thing with one of the speakers, and sliced her finger across her throat to indicate that speakers had to stop, now! Then at one point in the discussion, she burst out, “Well, I’ve been clinically depressed” to complete silence.

It struck me how this would be considered totally bizarre in any other setting. But here everyone remains totally poker faces through these shenanigans. Don’t get me wrong, I kind of love it. But it does make me want to laugh out loud sometimes.

As I’ve observed earlier, people seem to come to these things in groups and stick to these groups so while there is an illusion of networking, people are just largely talking to their friends while the monitory of us who didn’t come with a posse stand around FOMOishly. When you do reach out to someone they politely spend about two minutes with you before moving on. Except in this part of the world no one passes out cards.

Nevertheless, there were some really good papers and the discussions were some of the best I’ve witnessed. My own panel attracted a small audience partly due to being scheduled early in the morning but I got a great response from those who were there, so that was lovely (and frankly a first and a welcome change from the blank looks I have sometimes been greeted with).

On the final night, there was a dance party with a full-on brass band contracted to play, and it was great! I dithered over whether to go or not, seeing as I didn’t have anyone to go with, but finally FOMO and wanting to listen to the band got the better of me and I went, and it was fun. There were people from the age of 80 down dancing up a storm. I had lengthy conversations with more people here than I had had the entire conference, and ended up getting sweaty as hell dancing, resulting in me having no clothes to wear to the conference the next day and having to attend in a flannel shirt and slightly torn jeans (which again is perfectly fine at these things. heh.). I also noticed a couple of women dragging guys onto the dance floor and then getting really flirty, while the guys looked uncomfortable. One of these was a woman who had been quite aggressive to a guy during a panel, but then I saw them going to dinner together so they had clearly made up, only then she tried to get more handsy with him and he didn’t look happy and then she left.

Overall, this was one of the best conferences I’ve been to, and I think conference should always open with a dance party.

 

 

 

 

Academia

Tags

#phd

Attended a lecture in our department by a staff member of our department. Should be cozy and nice right. Well, not quite.

Looking around the room, I wondered at how things have changed. A couple of years back, I’d have been agog with interest and enthusiasm, gearing up to contribute to an exciting discussion. Now I find myself scanning the room and struggling to keep a poker face and not to roll my eyes because I can see all the posturing.

First we are urged to come sit in the front row, but the minute some senior person walks in there’s this silent pressure to move. Or to pull out more chairs for everybody. Apparently, this is the duty of the junior people in the department. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised given the part of the world I’m in, where hierarchy still prevails, but given the discipline I’m in, I thought the point was the smash these systems. Bah.

Then, the way questions are asked to the speaker and the politics of it. If the speaker is well-liked, the questions are less acerbic. The expressions around the room less smirky. Also who gets to speak. Two years down the line I realised, there really is an order in which people should speak and students are not high up in that order.

There are a couple of people in the department I really admired when I started. I still admire them as intellectuals. But as people, not anymore. I realised they are scary fake. Realizing that gave me a shock, even though I’m quite a cynic. I didn’t realise people could pretend to be that nice and end up being the opposite. It made me take a hard look at other people and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s hard to find nice people at the professor grade or thereabouts. Maybe because academia is so cut-throat these days that they are constantly embattled. I think it was easier to find nice people in the corporate sector ironically. Or maybe I never expected much in the first place.

The junior staff are much nicer. But I realise they are on the make too. They have to be to progress. So they choose who they give their attention to, and us being students, they don’t want to be seen interacting too much with us. There are I think exactly two people who fall into this category among the many quite nice ones.

Maybe the only people one can get on with are one’s peers, if at all. Even they, I guess, one will have to watch out for because we are all competing for such a small slice of the pie? Though there seems to be some genuine camaraderie among peers.

When I look at the new students in the department, I’m reminded of myself. How naive I was in some ways. How I wanted to read everything and do everything and be everything. There is one guy who keeps citing theory after theory and babbling about how he wants to “use” this and “use” that. And I was the same. Until I realised – two years down the line – that the boring things some people were telling me was true. You can’t apply everything and many of those big names are irrelevant to a work grounded in Asia. Then another girl wants to read everything. That was me too. Until I realised there isn’t time. You need to know what you want to do and read only what is directly useful. Such is a three-year PhD. Maybe it’s different if you have the luxury of time.

I feel so jaded, similar to when I was at the end of my MA, but not as fed up with the work itself. I still love what I do, even if noone else does.

 

Snippets

Nene’s eyes seem to be settling down. On his second week of steriod drops, at least I see no redness, and the swelling is down. I hope the drops can be stopped soon, but at this moment I’m just happy to see progress.

***

I submitted my chapter. I feel so relieved, and although I have like many more to do, I can’t seem to focus on the next one.

***

I had my first squabble on the PTA whatsapp group. Someone was clearly enervated with a line of (factual) questioning I was pursuing and went: “FFS, it’s this…” Please enlighten me hear if you have any other understanding of that acronym, but as far as I know it means “for fuck’s sake” which I think is inappropriate for a parents whatsapp group. I said so, she actually jeered at me for not knowing the meaning of it, so I screencapped the Google result and since then not a peep out of her. Some people are mental really. I wish it hadn’t come to that, I was rattled that morning and it was drama I could have done without.

***

Mimi had her mid-term break and I managed to sneak in some time with her. I took her to a cafe for breakfast after dropping Nene off to school and then to the park later. She ate every scrap of the (very substandard I must say) English breakfast and later commented that it was “so fun”. Then, on the last day of her break, I took her to office with me to pick up my computer. She played with stuff on my desk while I did a spot of work, and then we went to a park near my uni, which is one of the rare ones with lots of grass and not one but five swing sets. There were no kids there so Mimi had her pick, followed up by picking up sticks, unsuccessfully trying to smash fallen almonds, and drawing in the sand. That park usually has a couple of fat cats lying around, but they weren’t unfortunately absent, possibly due to the heat.

Save

What’s been happening

Nene was sick for about two weeks. First he had red eyes, but it wasn’t itchy or runny so I ignored it but it got progressively worse so I took him to the doctor and he had a slightly stuffy nose so the doctor says it’s an infection and gives antibiotics. Now, this doctor gives antibiotics at the drop of the hat, so I’m reluctant to give it. We decide to use the eye drops and wait for a day, and I take him to another doctor who prescribes eye drops but no antibiotics even though she checks his throat. But that night he develops a fever and the next day we spot white spots on his throat – which is the first time I’ve ever been able to (I remember when I was a kid, my mum would make me open my mouth and peer inside but I’ve never been able to see anything when I did the same, until now!). So we decide to give the antibiotics, but basically he has a fever for three days and no progress, so we go back and the doctor changes the antibiotics and drops, but after another two days, he still has a fever. Now, some people are recommending I take him to the hospital but I decide to go back to the doctor and he gives yet another antibiotic.

When there’s no change overnight, I take him to the hospital and the doctor takes one look and says she thinks it’s adenovirus because of the eyes and asks me if I want to get a swab test. Which was my aim of going to the hospital. The next day we get the results and it’s a virus. Not the one she suspected, but a virus which means the antibiotics were pointless – except probably preventing a secondary bacterial infection. I’m pissed for listening to stupid doctor.

So after a week, the fever has gone, but the eye is still bad and he has a cold again. He’s been out of school for a week, and fortunately had a midterm break after so he had time to rest. Take him back to the pediatrician at the hospital and she now thinks the eye is an allergy as is the cold. She prescribes a nose spray and drops for the allergies. I give it a day or two,  go to an opthamologist, who agrees that it’s allergies but prescribes steroid drops. This finally seems to be showing some results but considering the strength of the medication, his eyes are still reddish.

I feel so sorry for my boy who has borne all of this stoically. After the opthamologist appointment, I take him to a cute little cafe in Mong Kok, just a few streets away from the craziness of the Ladies Market. In a cafe with numerous coffee choices, I pick Earl Gray and Nene has a hot chocolate. We split a ciabatta and fish and chips. The flavours are unusual, but I’m surprised that Nene tastes and likes them all. We have a lovely time decompressing and go home. I decide that I need to do a date with each child more frequently. V tends to favour cha chaang tengs for meal stops with the kids, but I’ve noticed that they do appreciate places with nicer ambience.

***

We’re into birthday season, kicked off with V’s. This year was a big one and though he insisted he wanted nothing better than to be left in peace, his sisters decided to surprise him with a trip to HK. They are the fun loving types and I warned them that he would not want to anything crazy. Unfortunately, V ended up seeing their messages on my phone and the surprise was out of the bag (though he still pretended for their benefit). We had a lovely dinner at one of our favourite Chinese restaurants on his birthday and ice-cream cake which he requested. Then it was four days of basically non-stop shopping madness with the sisters-in-law (i.e. they proceeded to buy up half of Hong Kong; we watched in bemusement and were sometimes plied with the spoils). We also had some intense conversations, and ended up sleeping at 2 am almost every night. On the weekend, we went out for a drink with friends, the boys left after a couple of drinks and we proceeded to party till 3 am. I pretty much only go dancing in Hong Kong when the SIL is in town, and though I turn my nose up at the crazy of Lang Kwai Fong, it is pretty much the only place I know to go dancing properly (rather than shaking a leg to some uber trendy stuff). It took me a week to recover from the four days that the SILs were here.

***

In between, I’ve been trying to revise and submit a paper. I had submitted a manuscript to a journal a year ago, it came back with tonnes of very useful feedback from the reviewers, requiring major revisions. I asked if there was a hard deadline, and was told that there wasn’t. One year later, I get a note saying that my submission will be deleted if I don’t resubmit within 60 days. The fact is that I would have preferred to resubmit a little later on once I had finished writing a chapter or two and got my thoughts straight in my head, but I do understand that a year is a long time. Having gone through the process halfway, I couldn’t let it go either even though there is a low chance of acceptance. So I scrambled and wrote basically a whole new paper in about a month.

***

That’s what I’ve been up to. I have a birthday coming up, then Nene has his, and then we’re off to India in December. In between, I need to write a chapter of my thesis. Oh and did I mention, I’ve started Mandarin classes?

 

 

 

Writing a PhD

I rarely write about my academic life here, but I feel I should record bits of it at least.

A lot of it is reading. Reading frenetically, with excitement, all the time. A girl who finished her PhD in Anthropology once asked me: “Are you one of those whose research i mostly sitting in a library?” Why yes. Not specifically the library, but I do read there sometimes for a change of scene. (Mostly, I tend to behave in libraries as if I’m at a buffet. I go there for one book, and come back my arms full, some of which I will not get around to reading but I can’t find it in me to return them yet).

But also, the couch in my living room, my bed, the MTR, escalotors, and of course, my office. (Actually, in my office, mostly I’m writing.)

My object of study is novels so I read those too. That’s a different kind of fun, and a built-in change of place.

I read along different, seemingly random and endless trajectories. Today, I decided I needed to define “the middle class in India”. I know that there is no easy definition but I still wanted to a) see if there was one b) if there was none, cite those people who say so. I asked my friend Curly how she would define the class the protagonist of chick lit novels in India belongs to and she said, “it’s complicated.” Ha! So Curly was in agreement with current scholarship on the subject. However, I still needed a concise and articulate explication of that.

So I found a book on the anthropology of society in India. In one essay on the body and call centres (a superb one), I found some references to the middle class. I tried to find that book but it wasn’t in our library system. I googled and found the pdf of the book online! I proceeded to read book. I should probably have just stopped at the introduction but no, that wouldn’t be me. I never stop at the introduction, because reading for me is not merely goal-oriented.

I get fascinated by things that might not necessarily be directly useful to my work and I tumble down the rabbit hole. And then at the end of that hole, I tumble down another. The problem is that while the stuff I’m reading may not be directly useful, it is always going to be indirectly useful. There is no useless knowledge. So I don’t limit myself, though I should.

I like reading theory. I try to tell myself that the theory I’m reading is relevant to my work, and again it’s hard to argue that it’s not. I want to use every theory I have read somewhere in my work, and my supervisor gently tries to tell me it’s looking like a mess. But all these ideas are so cool and I want them all.

Amid them, I have to find my own. Ideas that is. It’s hard to remember that sometimes, surrounded by all this brilliance. I would be happy to bask in it without offering a thought of my own.

Eventually, I have to dig myself out of the rabbit hole of ideas, and write something. To write my two lines or one paragraph on the middle class, I’ve read some 10 things or more things. It’s serendipitous when the paragraph I was writing before I tumbled into the rabbit hole connects nicely with the paragraph I start writing when I dig myself out.

It doesn’t always happen, and I wish the connections would make themselves or the reader would just get with the programme.

Only there is no reader right now. It’s just me.

So tell me… how do you define the middle class? Do you think the protagonist of Indian chick lit is a middle-class girl?