Brief movie review: Brokedown Palace (1999)

A 'chick flick' we thought, set in Thailand and Hong Kong.  How bad could it be? 

It was actually filmed in the Philippines.  And it was a chick flick in that the two faces on the screen most were female, but they were powerless females, victims of scummy men and rescued by less scummy men.

But for all that, it was worth seeing.  And the ending has a nice surprise to it.  And it's way better than Mystery Men!

For reasons I can't identify, today was the day I finally cracked the books.  Actually, it was more like leafing through the articles, but it's the same idea.  In most cases, I was skimming articles I'd never read.  And, heaven help me, I was finding the content interesting!

I was counting on adrenaline kicking in at some point.  I'd have been grateful if it had kicked in more than five days before the first day of exams.   And it wasn't really adrenaline.  It was more like a decision that I could count on myself to be a "quick study", but magic isn't among my tools.  And baffling them with bullshit is unlikely to work at the doctoral level.  However, I'm still counting on casing the exam to work to some extent.

Given that in each course, we get a choice of two questions, I focussed today on two related policy areas in political science: competition theory and industrial policy.  I'm ready for any question that includes either of those as the example. Correction: I'm almost ready.  I wouldn't want to swear that I'm sure of all the authors' names yet, but I am clear on their theories or analyses or both.

The cool part, though, was running into very brief summaries (more like precis, actually) of authors I need to know for other courses.  I knew that theoretically there was some synergy among these courses and these readings, but while it's encouraged intellectually, we're reminded that the professor who taught the course and asked the question has the greatest weight in the marking.  Okay.  So there is synergy, but keep the courses straight.  I've got it. 

But not only is this overlap among authors convenient (means less reading in the rapidly diminishing time left to me), but it's also quite cool.  I mean, if these authors have read these other authors, then either it's a giant conspiracy, or there really is some substance to what we're reading, and it really does add up to some body of knowledge that we'll value at some point.

Now, if I only believed that the calculus would someday be useful, or a Legrangian formula for optimzation, or even shifting demand and supply curves and indifference maps.  But, for those at least, I'll have to satisfy myself with making sure I understand the underlying theory, and storing in very short-term memory the formula and math skills that will contribute to my passing.

One of my favourite little books (I read lots of little books, especially before bed-time) has this wonderful little "how to" on "playing your free square".  Like the free square in bingo.  The author argues that we all have one thing we're particularly good at.  And we should make sure we use it all the time.  I've figured out that I have two: learning quickly, and writing well.   Between the two, I may even pass this trial, and get on to the learning that I really want to do.  What would I do without those free squares though?

Next entry

Archived entries