had a crash course in cross-strait relations last night. my flatmate, for whom english is not the first language, had a couple questions about referencing in her dissertation, so I said I'd have a look. she handed me chapter two of her thesis and a few pages out of books on international relations and asked if what she'd written was what the book said and whether her chapter was titled appropriately. I read it through once and asked, first, could I borrow a pen to fix a few grammatical errors, and second, what did PRC stand for?


by 1:00am, after we'd exchanged lectures on history and english grammar, I'd developed a new appreciation for the complexity of east asian politics and the words 'as', 'while', 'therefore', 'because' and 'so'.