Joaquin Del Mundo

The Neverending Essay...

Sitting at the café Seven Monkeys near Ehwa University, I tried to concentrate.  I tried to focus through my dizzyness that started with a headache turned flu-like.  I attempted to concentrate, and eventually, I started, on trying to summarize China.  But how does one summarize the prestige of China through the ages in a way that a Western audience could perhaps discern and reflect.  Eventually, I got through a single page, talking about Tang dynasty, the founding philosphies, and the dabbling into Confucianism.  I know it is probably of the wanton path, and the style is not pretty, but this is a draft essay, and it is just important to barf whatever on the paper.

I need to somehow harness and capture the immensity of China, to show how the Western world pales in comparison, so that later when the imperial powers come crashing into the Eastern world with sytsems and technology that far exceeds anything fathomable by China, it causes rippling effects that help propel Japan to dominate the region.  And within this I have show how Confucianism, threaded into aspects of Eastern societies, has been a barrier for Korea and China to modernize, while for Japan remolded into a tool to manufacture a new cultural identity that would unite the nation, a unity that would be the impetus to make Japan a respected world power.

I think the game plan now is to tackle other simpler tasks in the essay, and concentrate on more and more demanding Accounting

The Girl that Made Me Wonder

There was a girl I met one day by accident.  I was resting my head, and when I looked up there was a girl smiling at me.  We talked, and became new friends.  I can feel her enthusiasm toward me.  Later I met her, and I was really impressed by her character.  She is more natural and sort of innocent Korean girl, like the people I met 7 years ago, before large slices of society became more and more superficial.

She intrigued me, and I became really excited to see her again.  But then I get a message that her father is angry that she will see me, and she can never see me again:

아빠가  지훈씨* 만나는 걸 너무 싫어해요. 많이 혼났어요. 못만날거같아요.  미안해요.

* Ji-hun (지훈) is my Korean nickname.