Today's conversation added to the list of concerns evolving around my mind at the moment:

• will China invade Siberia when oil becomes scarce? or Iran?
• what will be the form of the next conflict between Japan and China?
• who will end up controlling North Korea?
• why doesn't the ECB propose to invest in a deep and far-fetching solution for the American mortgage crisis? Why doesn't China propose either?
• How is the obligation to carry identity documents helping against “terrorism”?
• what will be the long term evolution of the current tendency of governments to alienate citizens into criminals and “protect” them against themselves?

The lastest project I'm involved into is trying to get into additional studies. The initial idea was to build a network of fellow Dutch students to 1) get some kind of educational "legitimacy" in the country and 2) hang out with the natives. Of course, I could use some intellectual challenges as well.

For this purpose, I will be visiting the TU Delft tomorrow afternoon and see what kind of education I can find there. No specific plans yet, I'll just be checking out what's available.

Then there are plenty of other projects I should be involved with as well. In addition to planning numerous travel plans (only part of which I will probably accomplish) I should be:

• creating a website for a new guest house in Burgundy,
• keeping in touch with the people who count,
• writing code, tests and documentation for a Python -based project of mine,
• reading the several books I received lately, including a Treaty of Government from John Locke and some algebra theory,
• preparing some language exams that I plan to take before summer,
• strengthening my general knowledge and culture, including possibly visiting cultural places in the country.

And on top of that I can't even manage to do my laundry on time… I'm a joke.

The following is a quote from a semi-official Usenet newsgroup for the French institution EPITECH where current and soon-to-be students can meet and discuss their past and future education in computer science:

moi chui pa un intelektuel mer g ete pri fo just avoir la motiv couz. moi jveu savoir c ki kisera dan ma class et si ya moy kon se voi avan la rentrer. au fet jven un psp ki li ler jeu graver.

A translation of this text in “traditional” French would read as follows: « moi, je ne suis pas un intellectuel mais j'ai été pris; il faut juste avoir de la motivation, cousin. Moi, je veux savoir qui sera dans ma classe et s'il y a moyen qu'on se voie avant la rentrée. Au fait, je vends une PSP qui lit les jeux gravés. »

Regardless of the content, which is of little value outside of the specific milieu where this quote belongs, I find it striking how the new French differs from the language of the “litterature.”

There are two interesting facts to be observed here:

• to my knowledge, most youngsters below 20 of age nowadays use this new form of the language when they type on keyboards;
• as time passes, without major cultural transformations we will see more and more language corpus generated with keyboards.

Combining these facts, I would expect that in little more than 10 years we will see French being gradually replaced and/or transformed for many uses, including business, services, education, information, correspondence and all places where the corpus is not intended to be archived. This will result in a cultural shift where two languages will be in use : classical French for literature, law, treaties and such other items of historical interest, and colloquial French for all the rest, radically different and more closely matching the spoken language.

For my part, I will be practicing the new style for the coming years. I intend to be able to mold into the new generation and not be left behind.