Three Weeks Off Here

I haven't been on here for about three weeks because I'm kind of jumping around with my reading and managing to get quite a lot of solid hand-written note-taking and making done in SOAS library. I'm now desperately trying to get a whole Pukka Pad of handwritten notes typed up, but I keep getting distracted chasing up and reading internet links every time I start doing it. Must stay on task!!!!

I went to a time management and First-Year Skills Audit at the Medway campus yesterday and the tips we got were quite good. The problem was that, in mechanical terms, this is all stuff I know that I should do. The problem with time-keeping and time-wasting, as I see it, is not a matter of lacking the skills - its a matter of feelings, emotion and anxiety and the sense of time running out. If it were as simple as learning a few practical skills and applying them, there'd be no problem. The main issue is much more psychological.

Anyway, some things to bear in mind for today:

1. Just get the notes typed up and don't get distracted.
2. Concentrate on the process and the product will be better.
3. Start focusing on the time management stuff after these notes are typed up.

Managed to blast up the M2 to London in time for the Taiwan Studies seminar on the Taiwan elections and saw Jonathan Sullivan, Malte Kelding and Dafydd Fell presenting on the upcoming elections in Taiwan. The presenters were all non-Taiwanese/ Chinese and most of the audience seemed to consist of Taiwanese/ Chinese postgrads and, I think, some reps from the Taiwan Representative Office in the UK. Not sure how many Chinese spies were there. It does not seem to be a requirement that you present in Mandarin when delivering to a mainly Chinese/ Taiwanese audience or, indeed, that you even be able to speak good Mandarin in order to be considered a Taiwan expert. Judging by the ongoing informal whispered interpreting and the blank looks from some of the audience in response to idiomatic jokes and asides from some of the presenters, it is also not a requirement that Taiwanese postgrads be up to speed in English either.

Must get a copy of Malte's presentation and findings on KMT discourse on identity and visit Taiwan 2012, the University of Nottingham, Pol/IR blog on the elections edited by Jonathan Sullivan.