February 2011
1 post
cristabela: Just had my first real time online... →
January 2011
1 post
cristabela: I like this analysis: "the contest... →
February 2010
8 posts
cristabela: Behind the kitchen counter at... →
Fleurs du Mal illustrated by Rodin →
I’d love to have this edition of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, illustrated with 27 pen and ink drawings by Auguste Rodin.
Inferno made anew
Midway through the journey of our life I found myself within a dark wood, for the straight way had now been lost.
Ah, how hard it is to describe that wood, a wilderness so gnarled and rough the very thought of it brings back my fear.
Death itself is hardly more bitter; but to tell of the good that I found there I will speak of the other things I saw.
I cannot say just how I entered that...
Undergrad research help →
Brock University has launched a cool way to support undergrad students with their research. A series of short video tutorials teach student how to get better results with Google Scholar, find peer reviewed articles in a flash and locate books using the library catalogue.
“Midway through the journey of our life
I found myself within a dark wood,
for...”
– Inferno, fabulous new translation by Stanley Lombardo
“How will you know what’s written in the Bible unless you read it?”
– Felicity says.
Prayer
Carol Ann Duffy
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hand and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift. Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth / enters our hearts, that small familiar pain; / then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth / in the distant Latin chanting of a train. Pray for us...
January 2010
2 posts
“The race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor bread to the...”
– Ecclesiastes 9:11-12
cristabela: CUHK's Chung Chi Library is now... →
November 2009
5 posts
New England nautical adventure of an orphan girl and her strapping doll companion. Gorgeous prose, great illustrations: Amy’s Eyes #cbc140
Reading local: PK Leung’s Islands and Continents http://bit.ly/1xPJgO
RT @olevia: Green Gables tale darkens in final book (CBC News) http://bit.ly/3D9j3G via @addthis
“Weave not, like spiders, nets from grief’s saliva
In which the woof and warp...”
– Rumi (d.1273). Translation by Annemarie Schimmel
September 2009
2 posts
Some breathtaking moves in the Kiev Ballet’s Raymonda, last night at the Shatin Town Hall. http://tiny.cc/QZ1Xs
Dozy after dinner and holing up in the typhoon.
August 2009
3 posts
Holiday catches up to you: a morning worth of online distance admin work.
11.000 words and almost all arguments in. And now refinement… and an august 30 deadline. I know why dissertations are not usu. published!
Downloading word files leading to a certain death. Time to get a new computer.
July 2009
1 post
Finally taking a holiday from the holiday and hunkering down for thesis writing at the Toronto Reference Library. http://bit.ly/tAyxB
June 2009
2 posts
“The voices from up there or behind the curtain are hot-tempered, powerful,...”
– Fred Wah, “On the edge of Centre. Just off Main.” Describing voices of old men playing mahjong in Vancouver Chinatown. (via cristabela)
We just published the audio and a transcript from an interview with Fred back in 2000.
(via matthewgruman)
thank you reader
Having a reader makes a big difference when you’re in the throes of drafting a long paper. Just knowing that someone is going to read your work, someone who will tell you when they expect to see it, and give you feedback after they do—this is absolutely essential to the writing process. Thank you for being that person, Elaine.
Now, with another deadline looming ahead, the big one, I...
May 2009
4 posts
Tag cloud of my library →
Another tag cloud toy.
HK Academic Library Link →
Need that book fast? Locate it at the university library nearest you.
HKU Library's Research Pro →
Best bet for research from home
April 2009
2 posts
“Bliss — a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive,...”
– David Foster Wallace, a note on The Pale King, the book he was working on when he took his own life. (via ayjay) (via portraitoftheartistasayoungman)
Saying goodbye: Quill&Quire's editor-in-chief →
Quill & Quire’s editor-in-chief Derek Weiler passed away unexpectedly last Sunday.
March 2009
6 posts
Obsession: Male Same-Sex Relations in China,... →
zotero launches new web app →
Now you can access your zotero library online, link a profile to your account, follow other zotero users through twitter-like feed, search other users and more.
“Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that...”
– David Foster Wallace (via ekf) (via portraitoftheartistasayoungman)
February 2009
16 posts
“They wouldn’t speak to me until after you were born, my mother explains...”
– From Diamond Grill by Fred Wah.
All the registers of chineseness you never...
In the short 176-page memoir that’s Diamond Grill, Wah captures all the registers and inflections of Chineseness you never imagined, from racialised officialspeak to affectionate appellations of the various members of his mixed race family. He talks China, Chinamen, Chinks, dirty Chinks, the Chinese, Chinese kids, Chinese Canadian, Chineseness, and even draws out lexical resonance in...
HKUL launches new catalogue
Hong Kong University Libraries has launched its new online catalogue, Dragon 2.0.
Looks alright, but I was a bit peeved that the about page suggested that you should go back to the staple Dragon search interface if you wanted to do a sophistaced keyword search on a topic. My little thorn. I still have to work on learning how to combine the right keywords with the right boolean operators. At...
“Good morning. Difficult time. I want a dollar a day. You provide...”
– English phrases found in the back pages of a Chinese cannery worker’s diary, annotated with Chinese syllabary. The diary was discovered with a 1901 fishery report of the British Columbia North Coast. From Chasing Their Dreams by Lily Chow.
proposed dissertation titles due
Make sure you get your proposed dissertation titles in to the Secretary at the Faculty of Arts today (15 February 2009) and cc Paul. Check webmail. Thanks for the reminder Virginia. When are we due for our next gathering?
“Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on....”
– Bruce Mau Design An incomplete manifesto for growth.
new library catalogue
HKUL is about to launch its new online library catalogue. The new catalogue offers a whole host of discovery tools, from faceted search results, refine tools (by format, tags, subject, location, language, etc), Recently Added, and Did you mean? or automatic spellcheck of your search query. A quick test using one of my usual queries yielded a few new discoveries right away.
Part of this new...
"virtually ungentrifiable" →
After 22 years This Ain’t the Rosedale Library moves out of Toronto’s LGBT neighbourhood
“Let us seriously warn you not to think of coming to this place on any account or...”
– Chinese circular issued by the Victoria Board of Trade (1913) said to have been widely distributed in China. It described the hostility, exclusionary laws, discriminatory taxes and labour exploitation which “confined Chinese workers to low-status menial work and reduced them to second-class...
“The 1,600-member writers’ union rallied behind Vancouver’s Jean Baird when she...”
– New rules coming to get Canadian literature in schools. This is great, great news. I was working with Jean while this developed and she’s got the perfect balance of drive, passion, and connections to make these changes stick. (via matthewgruman)