Ahhh…finally its week 2 in Glasgow. Health check: Vomit more than once, blood test once and back pain all the time. Happy-o-meter : ooookay I think, I am 80% cheerful and 20% nauseous. So, I guess it’s quite a successful week.

In between Adam Smith, Gramsci and Hegel, I manage to squeeze in Pan`s Labybrinth and Amin Maalouf’s Balthasar ‘s Oddysey. Like the Genoan-originated book seller in the story, learning Glasgow has been an emotional journey for me these past weeks. Apart from arguing politics or international affairs at different levels and with diverse interpretations, tolerance became a challenge for everyone, I guess. Not in the bad  way of course. Few discussion with my coursemates revealed that our views and perspective are very much influenced by our own experiences and that can either be a connecting point for a great discussion or otherwise. But I valued the arguments in classes just the same. If we are to be a bunch of duplicated robots agreeing on everything, surely we need not spend our time learning international relations or world politics or …Adam Smith. When the going gets rough, I just laughed, sit back and enjoy the aggressiveness of the people arguing their cases.

Last weekend was also the time when I mourned for the sold out tickets for Arcade Fire’s coming up gig. Arcade Fire, the Montreal orchestral rock/pop extraordinaire is scheduled to tour Europe next spring in conjunction with the release of their sophomore album-Neon Bible on March 6 (which is also my birthday, hint! hint!). In just few hours, their tickets for the gig in Barrowlands are sold out! There goes a great plan for my coming birthday! Unless I grow nuts and buy their tickets on bid at E-bay. Well, if I think 200£ is nothing compared to the wonderful experience of watching Win and Regine “live”.

I ate lots of Indian food these past two weeks. I was too lazy to demonstrate my great cooking skills and opted for Indian delicacies take away down the Lymburn St. Speaking of India and the issue of tolerance, Shilpa Shetty‘ s controversy of being bullied in the Big Brother Show is just getting hilarious. Read here. An enlightened comment made by the media rep. for the show was “those are merely clash of cultural or class diferences” and…errs…wouldn’t that amount to racial remarks too?

I need to get more books this week. I am losing my imagination, well, most of it. There’s a nice small shop selling works by Mikhael Bulgakov, Salman Rushdie and something about David Bowie.

Ta and good night my Union Guy. Distance is a temporary setback. J