Education vs. schooling
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Before I relate my high school experiences, I would like to draw attention to the very important distinction between education and schooling. Mark Twain wrote, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education,” and that is an adage by which I have always conducted myself. Asian parents have a reputation for a very heavy emphasis on education, a reputation that is simply not deserved. In my experience, and in the experience of other Asian children I knew, most Asian parents are actually against education. They are in favour of schooling — which is an entirely different thing — and oftentimes actually at the expense of education.
This is not necessarily a bad thing, at least not for everyone. In fact, it probably benefits most of the children of Asian parents… » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]
What is holding me back
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This project of writing out my autobiography is taking a lot longer even to get started than I thought it would. I had intended to post something months ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, even after I had written a considerable amount of material. The writing process itself took a long time, because I had to re-live the experiences that I was writing about, and some of these have been extremely painful.
There are several things holding me back from posting what I have written, the primary one being that I suffer from a pathological perfectionism — I cannot bear to let anyone else know about a project that I’m working on until after it has been completed, for fear that someone would deliberately act to sabotage and derail my efforts. I was not always like this; in fact, once upon a time, I used to drag everyone I knew, and even many people whom I didn’t, into anything that I was involved with. The reason for this drastic change in my behaviour will become crystal clear as I tell my story… » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]
Walden, beloved companion, 2007-2008
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Walden — a mostly white mixed dwarf rabbit, with a few handsomely placed black markings — whom Mina had entrusted to me while she is in Iran, passed away on a cold muggy morning just before Christmas. He had been sick for less than a day. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognise the his symptoms immediately, and in rabbits illnesses kill quickly. In retrospect, his behaviour had been somewhat strange since the previous morning, and maybe even the evening before that. By night it was obvious, but it was too late. The necropsy showed that he had died of a stomach infection, which could have been caused by just about anything. He was just under one year old.
Walden had been living with me for several months. In that time, a lot of people have asked me whether rabbits make good pets… » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]