Personal regrets and the diversity of humanity

My facebook followers will know it, I have nearly finished my thesis now. Writing a thesis is not a good thing for your social life, I tell you. Writing TWO theses in one year is very bad.

I, with my protestant work ethic have written from morning to evening on these pieces nearly every day in these few months. In New Zealand I stayed at the university from morning to 10pm. Here in Thailand, I stayed at home all day, because there is no way you can work efficiently with Thai friends around. You will end up going to eat, going to SevenEleven, going to buy coffee, gossiping and so on...

So I stayed home. This nearly drove me crazy and my contacts with other people have been limited to chatting and telling each other that we should meet soon. I am a bit sad about that. Now, I am suddenly realising that there are about a dozen people whom I could have made really good friends with, but I just missed the chance.

I hope some of these people are patient and accept my apologies. I have always been too tied up with either the thesis, or my boyfriend that I was just simply too negligent of other parts of life.

I will stop moaning now and take this as a lesson....Our social environment is very important, and the family, boyfriend and a few best friends will not do. We need more than that. I'll try harder in my next destination and hope to come back to Bangkok sometime to catch up on what I missed.

In the meantime, I want to share a link with you. I am a great fan of world politics and also personally like photography a lot. I came across this portfolio of world leaders taken by a British photographer taken during the UN General Assembly.

In total, the photographer publishes 50 portraits and gives a short audi-commentary to every picture. Have a look at this site and find your own leader or your favourite.

Usually, we only hear about leader's policies, but in this case, we can hear a photographer talk about these world leaders' facial features and personal character for once. Interesting.

Maybe without realising it, the photographer has created a celebration of different looks and features of humanity. In my opinion, these looks do not represent power at all but the diversity of humanity.

Here are some highlights:

You can not beat Italian charm and elegance. Silvio Berlusconi.

This man, Rupiah Banda from Zambia has an amazing face, so many crevices and lines.

Lee Myung Bak from Korea. The small eyes with the outer end of the eyelid folded over the eye are so typically Korean.

This is a really beautiful face. Evo Morales from Bolivia. Extremely wide and symmetrical features.

Brian Cowen from Ireland. I'd love to have a beer with this man.