Last Exile

Borrowed Last Exile from an old classmate again over the weekend, and have been rewatching the series, one episode every night. I don't watch much anime, honestly, and I can't say that I am an authority on the subject; however, this particular anime has proven to be far more enjoyable than I could have predicted.

The graphics are lovingly, delicately rendered; the hand-drawn bits reveal the mastery of the legendary anime studio Gonzo (CGI, though, is clumsily done, more so than you would expect from a Japanese studio). The series is pretty short as well, so I guess you could call this a "boutique" anime series - a collector's item. It's somewhat sci-fi, being set in a fictional past, a Victorian era which recalls the nobility and daring of a naval culture - except that all the action is relocated into the sky.

And that's the real clincher, I think: the wholesale relocation of the nostalgia and romance of naval tradition into the surprising context of aeronautics, a context that turns out to be more appropriate than one would first think to receive the said notions. There is a striking elegance in the great floating warships, the coat-tail-sporting and cloak-wearing crew that mans them, the sturdy and delicate architecture of the machinery of that era. There is also an uncanny innocence and guilelessness in how the characters live among such wonders as if it were the most natural thing in the world for them. And for them, all this really is taken for granted, and they would see our own ground-bound civilisation as quaint and disconcerting. It emphasises eloquently how adaptable people's perceptions are; it hints at the extent to which we can get used to anything.

And it sets things up nicely so that the arresting contrasts serve to outline the similarities even more starkly. The inversion of the familiar, the alienation of asumptions we take for granted in the physical, gravitationally-grounded world, the total removal of the very ground we daily take to symbolise solidity in our lives, all serve to highlight what does not change: the belief in higher ideals, nobility confounded in the face of an unfair world, and the source of happiness that lies in simplicity. The two main characters are deeply endearing to me, because they are so unassuming; and, being so unassuming, they ironically embody what I assume pure unadulterated goodness must manifest itself as in the real world.

So, if you have time, try to find this series and give it a gander. I daresay you will not regret it.

*

For lunch today, went out with URA colleagues to this great Korean restaurant in Chinatown (because my mentor is partial towards Korean food, and he was treating, along with other recently promoted personnel). It was a place where you had to take off your shoes and sit on a raised platform around a table. And to see said table laden with everything from small dishes of kimchi, shredded potato, beansprouts, long beans and kangkong, to large bowls of stew, bulgogi and the smoothest, tenderest chicken soup I've ever come across - to see all this was a happy sight.

Over lunch, through talking to them, I really got the sense that I had made, if not the right choice, then at least a choice I could eminently live with, in signing the bond. I realise that saying this may sound condescending to them, but I can't think of a plainer way to state the truth: these are honest people. Solid people. People with whom working would be a privilege, I feel. And indeed, people with whom I could not only work with, but also live with. Is it too presumptious, too premature to assert that I have found a way into a community by taking up this job? But from what I have been able to see, even if the job turns out to be crap in a few years' time, at least the people that I will get to meet and work with will make it worthwhile.

Oh, and the Royce' chocolates went down well, too! They deserve to be warmly recommended.

One of my colleagues handed me a present today as a send-off. It turned out to be an elegantly bound book, with, coincidentally, blank pages - the kind that is good for both sketching and writing. "Life is compared to a voyage," it says on the cover. "Promise yourself to be strong, that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Look at the sunny side of everything, and make your optimism come true. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on the greater achievements of the future." As you can probably tell, it's a Japanese product, but I do appreciate the thought very much!

On the cover and the back is a sketch of Shakespeare and Co, the hallowed Parisian bookstore (Googling the shop reveals that there is an unaffiliated establishment of the same name in New York - but I guess that shouldn't come as such a surprise), and on every page are two quotes in French. Sometimes, how things work out is so uncanny - and, if one is lucky, the uncanniness is poetic rather than frightening.

*

Will be meeting more people who've returned tomorrow for dinner, one from London and the other from Detroit (or, to be more exact, Ann Arbor). Also, yet more people are due to come back this week, and I certainly look forward to that! However, I've also noticed that the desire to meet up again is not as urgent as last year. It is an unexpected development; I had not expected my perspective on these returns to change, even if the change is only so subtle. Joel had remarked about a similar feeling, and he had said that it was due to this summer being largely a repetition of the rituals of last summer. As the theory goes, we had gotten our fix of returns last year, so this year doesn't have the novelty factor anymore. But I think, on my part, it has more to do with the promise of my own departure in August. It has changed my perspective, I think, so that the promise of the future somewhat eclipses the promise of the present opportunities. It has made me more reckless with my various friendships and acquaintances than I would otherwise be, I reckon. It is a disturbing realisation; things should not be allowed to continue like this.

Looking forward, I wonder how my perspectives will change again. I mean, in the face of a new place, you have no references which you can use to judge what is important and what is not, and so you are forced, at least in your first few days, to take in everything that comes at you. It tends to be overwhelming. And I daresay my sense of perspective will not prove impervious to such an immersive disruption. In the face of new things, people change, and this much is inevitable. But I hope that at least I can control the change, or, barring that, that I can at least be aware of the change as it happens. I hope my sense of perspective has matured enough over the years to at least permit me that. But it would absolutely be presumptious to assume that this is necessarily true. It may even be self-destructive, serving to cut off a vital segment of experience. You are, after all, only an undergraduate once, and the experience is to be absorbed to the fullest. The only thing is to somehow find a way to do that without getting lost in the midst of it. Whether by holding on to morals, principles and that lot, or by committing philosophically to the vagaries of living completely in the moment - somewhere between the two lies the balance that I am looking for.