Took a study break, walked to Future Shop, came back with a DSLR. haha no, it wasn't quite that spontaneous or impulsive. But it was a weird feeling when the CSR handed me the box after I'd paid and said, "Congratulations." Which I suppose is a fitting thing to say to someone who's now the (hopefully proud) new owner/parent of a camera? I've wanted a DSLR for so many years that it's a little odd to actually have one.
A few years ago, I made myself a promise, where I set the parameters for when I would've "earned" myself a DSLR. I haven't met those self-imposed requirements yet, so I guess I don't fully deserve this right now, but at the same time, with the big 2-1 creeping up (mixed feelings about birthdays), it's a somewhat of an early consolation/birthday gift. (And I mean technically I'd also said that if this worked out, some of it would go towards this.) So quasi-justified.
But anyway, on another note - in the process of studying, I've been catching up on this semester's readings. Most if it is fairly standard academia fare, but there was one I read this afternoon, "Ecological Urbanization: Calculating Value in an Age of Global Climate Change" by Shannon May, that really stood out. It was sophisticated and articulate as per expected, but also thought-provoking beyond the primary subject matter. To quote* some snippets:
[H]ow claims to a universal knowledge of the good life are constituted - often with the handmaiden of science - and how easy, how logical, it can seem to take one's own life as an unalterable good, and others' lives as desperately in need of improvement - to be more like one's own.
[T]he dreams and plans from abroad do not ever encounter a blank slate, however much the drawing of development plans on blank pages may trick some into believing otherwise.
To make an analogy after George Hegel, if philosophy is its time comprehended in thought, architecture is its time constructed in things.
[T]he non-sense of that which is taken as common sense in our time.
*May, Shannon. "Ecological Urbanization: Calculating Value in an Age of Global Climate Change." Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global. ed. A. Roy and A. Ong. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
Definitely so exciting! I remember when I got mine - can't belive it's been over two years now. Take good care of it bc my poor thing has been tossed around a bit too much
ReplyDelete