How many times have I said “time flies so fast”?

September went by in a blur. I started a hydroponics project and as of this moment, I cannot see any result yet. I also received an ARC from a literary agent and hopefully I can get around to reading it.

What else is new? I’ve been keeping something under wraps for quite some time but as always, I will reveal it when the time time is right… or I can also go to the route of not divulging anything altogether.

Here I am again, wrapping the month up with a number of articles I read, all for love of language, literacy and literature.

The Wound of Multilingualism: On Surrendering the Languages of Home (Literary Hub)

In this article, Sulaiman Addonia expounds on the challenges in learning, unlearning, and relearning languages. She posits that as an individual immerses himself or herself into a new language, he or she breaks down the foundation of the one previously learned. This makes me reflect on the period of my life when I resisted learning a regional language, focused on honing my English and began studying Japanese. Eventually, I evaluate my conscious preference for my second language over my first one. Like Addonia, I also struggle-writing in my second language. You’d think by now, having taught English to fellow second-language learners, spoken it, quite proficiently if I say so myself, I’ve gotten the hang of it but I’m still discovering new stuff about the process of choosing between hifalutin and simple vocabulary, stringing words together, making them sound right, conveying my thoughts across, doing all this in a snap when speaking, editing parts when writing and yet still managing to miscommunicate.

NASA Missions Spy First Possible ‘Survivor’ Planet Hugging a White Dwarf Star (NASA)

They say it is impossible because the natural occurrence doesn’t go along with their created theories but from what I’ve learned from my Coursera course, theories may be changed in accordance to what can be observed. Since this is new data and, no doubt, other instances like this will definitely be observed in the vast universe granted our scientists are provided more advanced technology, new and better theories will be created.

How has my reading taste changed over the years? (WordPress)

This is a very interesting read from Orang-utan Librarian whose taste in books evolved from classic fantasy, to a bunch of romance, and then to non-fiction, and based on the blogpost, this change in taste can be attributed to blogging and book recommendations. Though I confess myself guilty of this- it’s not a crime!- the factors that brought about change in my reading taste are quite different, and yes, one of them is my age. However, this topic deserves a separate blog post so I’m just going to leave it here for now.

Make a Collage with your Newspaper (The New York Times)

This is a cute how-to post on how to repurpose newspaper clippings and attempt to be creative. I used to do this when I was in college. I only used one record book for my lectures in my four years of stay in the university so I spiced things up with newspaper clippings. To be honest, my journals turned out to be more on the artistic side than my record book ever did.

Dreading a dark winter lockdown? Think like a Norwegian (The Guardian)

David Robson writes about the Norwegian resilience to dark thoughts in the imminent threat of lockdown in winter due to COVID-19. This article helps to put things into perspective. I live in a tropical country and though the pandemic has definitely affected my country, there is no way I can downplay that, I can imagine how tougher it would be to have winter added to my plate of worries. In the middle of reading this article, I had a thought that although I admire the Norwegians, there’s a fine line between optimism and toxic positivity. However, it is explained in the article that opting to be optimistic can help people focus more on what can be achieved and therefore they can put their energy into these small actions that may contribute to their conditions getting “better.”

Why arrogance is dangerously contagious? (BBC)

“Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are,” or “birds of the same feather flock together” are two cliches that popped into my mind after reading the article, but as explained, one does not need to be friends with an arrogant person to be arrogant himself/ herself–s/he just needs to be exposed. Imagine being bitten by an arrogant spider and turning into Your Arrogant Neighbor, Spiderman. Of course, it’s not only arrogance that has the “social contagion effect” on anyone. Much has to be studied on herd mentality in the workplace as well.

You might have noticed, I have gotten more creative in using featured images in my posts. Let’s just say, I have more time now. See you in October for another series of what I read.