a view from the 10th floor of a study space

Our very first family car was a crappy one.

We didn't have the air conditioner installed so we used to open our windows whenever on the road. And let me tell you, the road stinks. Of pollution, that is.

It was hot, it was smokey, top that with a bumpy road and it's not exactly a five-class trip. But I knew for a fact that our car was also polluting, even more than the other car perhaps, given the age. Got sickened of it one day I drew a car's exhaust filled with leaf and proposed it to my dad.

--Let's modify our car this way so it stops polluting. My teacher said leaves turn carbon-dioxide into oxygen. Why doesn't anybody do this?

That time, I think my dad just laughed it off and said maybe one day I will figure out a way to do it.

Now I am 25 years old and probably not any closer to inventing an oxygen-emitting car, but the story popped up in my brain as I am watching the BT tower in London this afternoon. It got placement from The Carbon Coalition, urges us to protect the ones we love from climate change. Next to me, a hard-cover book of Planetary Economics, one we all due to have an exam of within next week, opened. My Spotify's last played is a podcast talking about carbon pricing. My emails, newsletter, all revolving around the same topic.

Call it a calling, I can't possibly know. Moving to London with all of this thing happening all around me sounds crazy. Feels crazy, even now. Walking to an empty campus and having almost zero access to anything felt crazy. Drained out all my savings to be here feels crazy. Typing this in an empty room and having to wear my mask all the time feels crazy. Still.

I can't possibly know.

When I first read Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity roughly two years ago, I knew it struck something in me. One that never really sure what she is doing but doing it anyway. Perhaps clinging to a hope that we never knew what might come.

Dang, I'd better get back to my studying but yeah, as long as we have an objective to chase for, we'll make it, won't we?