One Week in Bangkok

In a few hours, I'll be flying to Bangkok. Wee! :) For fear of missing my flight, I decided to just keep awake and wait until it's time to go. I also thought I could write (yes, I'm still writing those effin papers!) while waiting, but that was, like, two hours ago. After an hour or so of re-writing a paragraph I must have re-written ten times already and not being able to finish a sentence I'd been trying to finish since last night, I gave up. I wasn't really accomplishing anything. Might as well do something else that I could actually finish.

So here I am. Hee!

My trip to Bangkok is not really for pleasure. Well, there will be pleasure, yes, and I hope lots of it (hehe), but what I'll really be there for is this conference on English in Southeast Asia. I'm proud to report that I'm done with my script (because it can hardly be called a paper--heh!) and my powerpoint presentation. My topic is on gender and call center discourse, which is basically what my research project is about. I'm not sure how it will be received, as I've been told that the conference is more concerned with pedagogical issues relating to the teaching of English in the region. But, whatever. I suppose I'll just do my thing. Then, I'll have fun, go shopping, and enjoy the night life. Haha.

Honestly though, I'm sort of looking forward to the conference and seeing some of the plenary speakers, especially Teun van Dijk. van Dijk is a big name in critical discourse analysis (cda), and one of those whom I read over and over while I was just getting introduced to the field. I have to admit though that I have lost track of his recent works, having moved out of cda to explore other (so-called) 'critical' frameworks, but still, it would be awesome to hear him talk, maybe even meet him--and if I muster enough courage, maybe ask him to have a picture taken with me. Haha.

But I suppose wanting to have a picture with a person who has had some influence on your work one way or other is not really a crazy idea. For instance, when I told a former teacher/mentor that van Dijk would be in the conference, he told me the exact same thing: Pa-picture ka with him. Hee! And I remember I had a classmate in Textual Construction of Knowledge (a primarily cda-oriented module in NUS), who when he reported on Fairclough's CDA (Fairclough's is CDA; the rest is cda--hay!) showed pictures of himself having lunch. With Fairclough! There were two other people in the pictures, yes, but still, I was like, 'OMG, he's with Fairclough. OMG!' Apparently, Fairclough was in his university for a conference at that time.

All I can say is, if van Dijk is major, Fairclough is major-er, probably the major-est in cda--thus, his CDA gets the all caps. Now that I think about it, there are other scholars I'd really just love to meet and, yeah, that picture thing again. Hehe. Oh well, I suppose, we'll see what happens in this conference first.

It's almost time to get ready now. And I'm beginning to get really excited! :)