MiKE: I get it, I think.

So, I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I have been very distracted from work. I am supposed to be completing my comprehensive examinations any time now, the exams which confirm my candidature for the PhD. I have two paper proposals which have been accepted for conferences in April next year (which means submission deadlines sometime in March), and three professors want to write papers with me, or want me to submit a single authored paper. I've not finished the comprehensives, and needless to say, I've not started on any of those papers yet.

And all I've been doing is obsessing over photography. Of course, you'd noticed that the recent posts about my fascination with large aperture lenses, but I bet you probably don't know I've taken over 6100 photographs since I got my camera in September. Sure, the vast majority of the shots have been the "just in case" kind of duplicates, adjusting the aperture/focal length, and general messing around. Also, the dSLR makes taking pictures really easy - with such rapid responses rates, it is not hard at all to fire off 3-4 shots in about 2 seconds. But still, there's something not really right here. And I think I know what's wrong.

Part of what drives me, what makes me want to be an academic and write and be a scholar and all that, deep down inside, is a desire to want to change the world, because of injustice, unfairness, stupidity, political machination and other such ethical moral and social injustice that I experience personally, or through close friends and family. I believe education can be one very powerful way out of situations of oppression and unfreedom, seeing my own personal example as a very strong example. If I had not gone to school and did well, if my parents had not forbidden my association with the neighbourhood kids and strongly encouraged (to put it mildly) me to study, I probably would not have been where I am now, in relative luxury to contemplate these matters in such a theoretical way.

And now, since I've been in Toronto, I've been in this neither-here-nor-there situation. I've stopped reading the singaporean blogs, because I've stopped caring. It seems to be some place far away, like reading about the Mumbai terrorist attacks. Yes, I know the town council funds have been mis-invested and all that, but, really, do I care? Does it concern me, here, now? Besides, I am so far away, and have no sense of being able to do anything about it.

On the other hand, I've not been integrated into this local community yet. There is a strong activist culture here, to be sure, much stronger civil society presence, and a somewhat more democratic government, but, once again, things here are happening to others, not people I know, not to me (well, ok, some of it is), and as a 'guest', I feel as if there is little I am qualified to do. To top it off, I know little of the political histories and struggles of this place, and how the battle lines are drawn, so to speak, so I am wary of suggesting anything.

And all these is affecting me. As I live in this place as a guest, and isolated from the stupidity and outrage at both places, I am feeling as if what I am doing is highly synthetic, and at points ethically wrong, or at least, hypocritical. And that is giving me pause.

I want to get angry. I want to get connected. Outraged, worked up, and activist. I need to know what I am doing is actually connected to some real action in the world. I want to know that I am changing the world, not just for my selfish ends, but also for others.

Do I sound like over-idelistic and naïve yet?