Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.

Staples era ending

To be reconnected with a lost partner in valuable conversations is an excellent thing. It’s even more excellent when it happens by means of a blog whose value you’ve been questioning and becomes further sweetened when you learn, quite unexpectedly, that you share the same favourite novel.

At work today, in the space of one hour, I earned Staples almost two weeks worth of my wages in profits. It was a realization tinged with bitterness. Not many more than a dozen shifts can be awaiting me, before I will abandon my red-dyed synthetic shirt forever and move on to better things. Meeting with Fernando tonight to produce our combined draft version of the NASCA report should be a hint of that; for most of our purposes, it works well to have his diplomat’s sense of tact counterpoint my desire to be provocative. In the end, we should all have a document we will be proud to show people.

In the past few days, I have been frustrated by my inability to devote any tranquil time to reading Hazzard’s The Great Fire. Such has been my appreciation so far, and my dedication to unlearn my undergraduate’s speed-reading, that I have been reading each chapter twice over. It is a tribute to the prose that the practice has been more than worthwhile.

Renaming the blog – starting it over – creates the uncanny sensation of initiating a new era. An era whose beginning, while certainly prompted by events outside my control, does not have its roots in the many and dramatic orbits I have occupied around the women who have defined my adult life. Perhaps that feeling of empowerment can become a defining characteristic.

Birth of a sibilant intake of breath

There will always be times in life when circumstances force us to start anew. Such is the case today, with regards to my most candid form of online presence. While the hundreds of pages that constitute Night’s Sindark Nave are not lost to the universe, they are to be effectively lost from the internet for at least the immediate future – in increasingly thorough fashion as various caches are cleared. This is a circumstance that seems to me regrettable but not avoidable.

The forum that succeeds it shall necessarily be a more circumscribed and restricted place than its forbear: again, a circumstance that I lament on many levels but feel bound to accept. It was always an experiment that combined boldness with folly to be so forthright in so open a medium. The possibility remains that, when I have the time to actually pick my way back through that lengthy archive, some portion of it will be returned to a form that is properly publicly accessible. For now, I ask that any bits you happen to possess or find be retained in a private capacity and not advertised or distributed.

Between work, the report, and preparing for my departure, I really don’t have the time to either create anything new and extensive or go back and render safe that which has already been written. For the moment, just feel confident that my urge to write is not a weak or passing one. I shall find a way.