living, thinking and writing
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| PRACTICE living, thinking and writing |
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Friday, December 20, 2002 From my paper to my destiny I need to finish my "world -system and American's knowledge on other countries" paper and revise my "Determinants of Internet diffusion in China" paper before New Year, so I can present them to my committee as soon as possible. I do not expect to get my candidacy done before the new semester now, since the preliminary defence thing will take me tremendous amount of time. And I still want to spend more time working on Network connectivity paper with Alex, which might be presented in SUNBELT on Feb. I also want to focus my disseration on this track. The situation for me is quite kinky now: I want to dedicate to my disseration next semester instead of taking 9 credits' course, but as an international student, I need to obtain my candidacy first to get my full-time student status. In order to get my candidacy, I need to defend two of my preliminary paper in a very formal manner and the papers should be qualified for journal publication. However, since I have to take pains to dearl with my heavy course work to keep my full-time student status, I never have time to either focus on my preliminary paper or my dissertation. I've come across numerous awkward deadloops like this as a foreigner. Another classic example is visa application to France in the past Fall. In order to get visa to Schengen countries, I need to hold valid US visa, as well as prepaid round-trip tickets and room reservation in France. Since all poor Chinese citizens are only issued six-months visa, mine has expired a long time ago. Ok, to obtain a US visa, you need to go to a third country with the US embasy or consulate, however, you risk being rejected to reenter US, then all your money on expensive flight and hotel room are spared. You may ends up buying another aritickets flying back to China to apply for US visa.... I have a Chinese girl friend whose greatest wish of her life was to give birth to her baby in US territory, and now she has proudly brought her US baby back to China. I used to scoff on this kind of "American Moon is rounder than that in China" logic. But now I accept it with deep sorrow and swear to give my offspring life with more freedom that I did not enjoy. All humans are born as same species of creature, but nationality is something really makes our life different, despite all our ultimate goal is being free humanbeing. posted by lmeimei @12:42 PM| permanent link| | |
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