Spring Break
Gotta Go, Gotta Get Right Out Of Here
Bryan Murphy
Issue date: 12/29/07 Section: Commentary
Some people give the University of Connecticut a hard time, but the astute observer cannot help but detect its many salubrious aspects, its many magnificent advantages; what with healthful country air, the delightful munificence bestowed exclusively upon the athletic establishment, the wholesome social isolation and the bitter, bitter cold.
So it is with the deepest regret that I have had to face the prospect of packing my meager belongings and departing 12,000 miles for Singapore - a smallish trading post in Southeast Asia which is the very definition of backwards barbarism in comparison to our own, cosmopolitan Storrs.
Ha ha ha, psyche. One might very well term my enthusiasm "unbounded," if one were into that sort of flowery stuff.
There are things to be said for studying in Asia these days. When you look at the news, it isn't Florence that's all up in world affairs, meddling with human rights treaties, propping up military juntas and mass producing poisoned Thomas The Tank Engines. Really, Italy is merely the world's capital of cheap wines and organized crimes theses days. On the other hand, Asia is the world's capital of unorganized corruption and cheap DVD's. Now, what kind of contest is that? (No contest: I'm much rather go for the cheap vodka, at any rate. I'm a terrible Italian.)
There's the whole culture argument, the necessity of traveling to Paris or London so that one might take in the great Western works of art - but that is a view so commonly held that one feels the need for some dissent, some Faustian advocate to go out on a limb and propose that digital photographs are really very, very underrated. If one ever gets the opportunity to see the Mona Lisa in person, be prepared for an experience akin to that first, long-awaited moment of coitus after the wedding of two devout abstainers: an incredible surge of mind-blowing disappointment.
To be fair, however, Italy does have its advantages: while increasingly irrelevant on the world stage and culturally stagnant, most people can find Italy upon a map. Even if merely because it resembles footwear.
So it is with the deepest regret that I have had to face the prospect of packing my meager belongings and departing 12,000 miles for Singapore - a smallish trading post in Southeast Asia which is the very definition of backwards barbarism in comparison to our own, cosmopolitan Storrs.
Ha ha ha, psyche. One might very well term my enthusiasm "unbounded," if one were into that sort of flowery stuff.
There are things to be said for studying in Asia these days. When you look at the news, it isn't Florence that's all up in world affairs, meddling with human rights treaties, propping up military juntas and mass producing poisoned Thomas The Tank Engines. Really, Italy is merely the world's capital of cheap wines and organized crimes theses days. On the other hand, Asia is the world's capital of unorganized corruption and cheap DVD's. Now, what kind of contest is that? (No contest: I'm much rather go for the cheap vodka, at any rate. I'm a terrible Italian.)
There's the whole culture argument, the necessity of traveling to Paris or London so that one might take in the great Western works of art - but that is a view so commonly held that one feels the need for some dissent, some Faustian advocate to go out on a limb and propose that digital photographs are really very, very underrated. If one ever gets the opportunity to see the Mona Lisa in person, be prepared for an experience akin to that first, long-awaited moment of coitus after the wedding of two devout abstainers: an incredible surge of mind-blowing disappointment.
To be fair, however, Italy does have its advantages: while increasingly irrelevant on the world stage and culturally stagnant, most people can find Italy upon a map. Even if merely because it resembles footwear.
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