My Tree Hugging Blog Has Been Created!

Have you hugged a tree before? Yes? Great, we shared some common experience. No? Then do it! It feels different.

So why am I blogging, and why this strange name, and what is it all about?

I am on my exchange semester in Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University this semester. This block, I am taking a course called "Companies in Ecologies". I have studied or practiced business for five and a half year now. But I have always wanted to do something else. I have a lot of ideas, but I don't know which one to pick. Or if I picked one, I might end up still want to do something else. "Life is else where" as the title of a Milan Kundera book so suggested. Or as Freud pointed out that there is always a "lack" in us because of the fear that mother does not have a pennis, so we keep on searching for things to fill this gap. And in building up desire to fill the gap and then fulfill our desire we created an enjoyment. But reality is always a step away from our desired stage, so we keeps on desire, try to realize it, then enjoyed it but also disappointed at it. It goes on and on. Or as the Slovenian philosopher Zizek suggested "fantasy teached us how to desire", yet any attempts to realize the fantasy can never live up itself.

Ok, it's too complicated. In short, I always want to try different things. And I am happy that I have the opportunity to still be a student till today. The best thing of being a student is you can experiment so many things, and a lot of gate will open for you just because you are a student. One way I experiment is by taking all kinds of courses from different disiplines. I've taking courses on film study, art history, theater, philosophy, sociology, food and beverage, just to name a few. And now I am taking some ecology course.

What is this course about? This deserves another post. But this course was known as the "tree hugging" course in the university. Hence the "hug a tree" in the name. And the course takes place in Trompenburg Tuinen & Arboretum, a lovely beautiful botenical garden with water running, flowers blooming and birds singing, and sometimes cats stalking and ducks mating. A major reason I chose this course is the location. How nice it is to be away from the computer and sit among trees. Although we do not drink a tea and have a treat in the class, but the environment really reminds me how beautiful life is. But I've kept a journal for the course, in a notebook. Then I thought why don't I blog about this? I can add a lot more multimedia material to it. So, voila, this is the birth story of the blog.