Alex West
LightNews LightNews
banner
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West
@ajw87.bsky.social
760 followers 660 following 950 posts
Interested in the Columbian exchange. Philology. Manuscripts. Plants. #OldSundanese #MedievalIndonesia #TupianLanguages Old site: https://indomedieval.medium.com/ New site: https://medium.com/@WestsWorld he/him Book: https://brill.com/display/title/68202
indomedieval.medium.com
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · Jul 10
Hard copies of my book arrived a few days ago, and I've finally found the time to write a bit about it and why you should read it (or get your library to buy it).
indomedieval.medium.com/bujangga-man...
Bujangga Manik: Or, Java in the Fifteenth Century
My book on Bujangga Manik has been published by Brill under the title Bujangga Manik: Or, Java in the Fifteenth Century.
indomedieval.medium.com
5 21 76
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 3h
Well, it can't be bad forever, I suppose. We'll figure it out.
2
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 4h
I went out for a walk but I'm too upset and angry to engage with anyone so I was just scowling all the way around. Really need to process this change mentally before taking any action.
1 4
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 7h
I've been discussing an Indonesia-related book project with some chums and I'd been planning on starting it today. Planning it, at least. Bit too distracted.
1
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 7h
Well, the news has taken the wind out of my sails. I had planned on starting a project this weekend—a new book project—but I've found myself flitting between articles, videos, and posts online instead of doing anything productive.
1 1
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 8h
I hope so!
1
Reposted by Alex West
medievalchina.bsky.social
Prof. Dr. Michael Hö (Sinologist) 何彌夏 🇹🇼🇪🇺🇭🇰 @medievalchina.bsky.social · 14h
It is both uplifting and heartbreaking to learn that one shares one's woes with E. G. Pulleyblank (1922-2013), even 65 years after he wrote these words in Orientalism and History (ed D. Sinor, Cambridge 1954, 57).
2 14
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 9h
And it would be nice if we could, one day, create a world in which every sentient being has unquestioned freedom and rights regardless of background or birth.
8
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 9h
And I'm not sure my mum (who is Irish and lives in England) thinks this is so bad. I think she's happy we'll (probably) be closer to home.

Still, it will be a difficult process. Moving internationally always is, especially when you don't have institutional support.
2 2
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 9h
Thanks for the sympathy, folks. To tell you the truth, it feels like a luxury problem. I was reading about the events in Sudan earlier and I'm not sure our immigration difficulties are as bad as all that. And it'll be a fresh start, which isn't such an awful thing.
1 2
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 9h
You'd think so! Well, we're far from alone in having problems with immigration and citizenship.
1
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 9h
Me too! It's been a very annoying decade so far.
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 9h
If it isn't a good fit, that's all right. I'm an Irish citizen, and I believe it'll only take a couple of years for my wife to become one too. We'll see how it goes...
1 1
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 12h
So. Making plans to leave. I'll start looking for jobs in Ireland and getting rid of bulky things and books I no longer need.
4 2
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 12h
Otherwise we'll end up in anti-immigration climate-disaster Europe without proper legal status. I don't imagine the world of 2034 will be kinder and less restrictive than the world of 2025. Scary thought.
1 5
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 12h
What a cluster. Crushing, frankly. I don't particularly want to leave but if the next eight years are anything like the last then there's no time to waste. We've got to make sure we're genuinely secure and have long-term options.
2 6
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 12h
So I think we're going to move to Ireland next year. I don't know what we'll do there but that's easily the fastest route. If we'd prioritised the passport thing we would have moved there in 2022. Probably should have done that. But we do actually like Portugal.
1 2
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 12h
We've been here for three years but because of delays at the immigration service she has only *legally* resided in Portugal for a little over two. I don't think we can wait eight more years to renounce US citizenship and have real peace of mind.
1 2
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 12h
We moved to Portugal mostly because of history, language, and literature, and also because it's a nice sunny EU country by the sea. But we also moved here because my wife is a US citizen, and we wanted her to be able to get an EU passport at some point. We need security.
1 2
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 12h
It now takes ten years of legal residence in the country to be eligible for Portuguese citizenship. New law. It used to be five.
1 6
Reposted by Alex West
jdmccafferty.bsky.social
John McCafferty @jdmccafferty.bsky.social · 1d
Pumpkin/Squash [Cucurbita pepo], Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt, 1596 - 1610 (Rijksmuseum)
6 15
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 1d
You could do it! I'm sure someone's come up with ways to write European languages with it. At least one language in Indonesia uses it...
1
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 1d
What I like about Chinese is that you can look up characters in a dictionary fairly easily - when you've learned how, of course - and then you know the meaning and pronunciation immediately. A whole chunk of sound and meaning, (almost) no variation, no inflectional morphology. Nice and simple.
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 1d
I should probably go back a few thousand years in time and take this complaint up with the Proto-Sinaitic folks
1 1
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 1d
Not unconquerable, certainly, but not very much fun. I'm familiar with a few scripts, and my BA was in Chinese, which is almost certainly more difficult than Arabic in this regard—but I find/found the process of trying to read Arabic text much more frustrating
1
ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West @ajw87.bsky.social · 1d
So you can get away with only transcribing the consonants and a competent speaker can figure out the rest. Okay. So? Is it really so hard to write down all the sounds in a word?
1 2