Done

I went back to Cairns last week to see the renovations. There was a letter for me from the university, containing my degree. A Bachelor of Arts majoring in Chinese and Philosophy.

It's taken a while to complete-four and a half years-and it didn't sink in at all. It was like finding an old birthday card that you'd forgotten about. This is probably because I didn't go to the ceremony, and for that there is a slightly longer story about how I thought I might stay for an honours year, and my dislike of ceremony in general.

So now what? Applications for the Taiwan programs don't really open until early next year. That gives me a couple of months more or less to myself. I'm going to focus on my Classical Chinese, since that's something that has pretty much been entirely neglected in my Chinese all this time. And I've been tarrying with Cantonese for a few months now, with some considerable progress, so I'll keep that up, and hopefully make a trip to HK, China and Taiwan before too long.

I'll probably write on here some more, too, keeping updates on good books and films. Speaking of which...

The Secret in Their Eyes is a brilliant film. It hit a range of emotions, and the actors brought a real depth to all of their roles.

Inception is also one I'd highly recommend. I saw it three times in two days.

Animal Kingdom should take a place amongst the very of Australian cinema. I saw it twice, the second time to gauge reactions from my friends. They all told me they'd never been so tense for such a long period in a film; this is consistent with my first viewing of it.