dropped by Fully Booked the other day. i decided to watch Resident Evil: Afterlife in digital 3D and had some time to kill (about 2 hours. i was 5 minutes late for the 1pm screening) before the start of the movie so i roamed inside the mall a bit. i ended up going to Fully Booked (i also ended up in Toy Kingdom but there's nothing really worth sharing there except the toys are expensive!). i said to myself, ive been reading books and staying in the library for months and im still interested in going inside a bookstore?
anyway, i looked at some graphic novels (which made me groan because of the price) then went to history and politics section. then i realized that the selection of books we have are mostly western and eurocentric. then i tried to recall the assigned readings when i was still a political science student. i think there was only one author that was asian (excluding Filipino authors. i think there might be an indian author but im not really sure), japanese to be more specific, and i cant even remember his name. all i know is that he wrote something about the waves of democratization. so i started looking for books that were not written in english or tagalog. found a few (written in spanish). then it made me wonder how much we are missing by not being able to read and understand other asian and western languages. i remember someone told me that the Das Kapital is a good read in its original version (which made we wonder about other books of german philosophers). i think im missing a lot of information by knowing only two languages (not sure if other people have the same sentiment). law professors sometimes say that some laws that we have that originated from spanish laws and that we adopted arent direct and exact translations of the original. some stuff are lost in translation. then i said to myself, after having the realization that language limits the information i can gain, that im just being greedy again, by wanting more information than what i could possibly have now (and i dont even try to master the information within my grasp! well, i do have the "jack of all trades, master of none" tendency). i ended up saying to myself that im going to learn at least six foreign languages and two local languages (i agree that what's spoken in the regions outside NCR arent dialects but languages). i think that would be enough to last a lifetime (i think its more than enough to keep me busy until i die). i continued talking to myself in my head, saying that's crazy talk and that i just want to learn new languages so i can watch the korean, japanese, chinese, german and french channels on cable TV. again, greedy tendency.
i should be focusing on the bar exams right now and not thinking about stuff that i could do after. but then again, during last sunday, minutes before the exam, i was already planning how im going to study for this week (i think i did that to distract myself so i wont get nervous). i just cant stop myself from planning ahead. i never live in the present. right now im planning how im going to take this sunday's exam in case i wake up tomorrow with dengue. at least im prepared...for stuff other than the exam itself!
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