There are many things I missed and failed to make it in the past like everyone else, but I have little regrets about not making it except for the following.

Playing piano is the one I wasn't given a chance to learn in my early years. I wanted to learn, but my parents didn't encourage me at all learning piano. It was not until my late 20s when I bought Casio electric keyboard and practiced Hanon. That gave me a little bit of satisfaction.

I've tried to read Goethe's Faust since early teens, but never gone more than several pages. After several attemps to read through, I gave up reading either Book I or Book II. The reason why I'd tried was my friends at that time read it and talked to about it. So I wanted to take part in the discussion. What I realized is that reading book is not to show off, but to learn from it for myself. I don't think I'll try to read Faust quite a while unless I have really nothing to do in my late years.

I still have copies of Faust in case I want to read over. Among all the books I have, Faust is the only one which I haven't read yet, but still keep it. For the books I bought, but haven't read yet, I put in the separate place and never put in my bookcase. For the books I decided not to read, I sell it back and never in my posession. So all the books I have, I read significant portion of each volume already.

I should have read on Semiotics, which would have given me a fresh outlook on languages and symbolism. I once skimmed over Umberto Eco's book on Semiotics, and am barely understanding the flow of talks where semiotical concepts are mentioned. Semiotics is on my reading list number one. For the past several years, reading computer manuals, language references and debugging codes occupied me, and thus leaving me little time to delve into Semiotics.

During my early twenties, I should have read Marx's The Capital and Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason, which would have formed my thinkings more critically although I would have not understood much at that time, but to have acquired what those had talked about and to have set the ground to read again and again for the coming years. If I do my first reading of those now and several more readings for the years to come, I will learn something, but don't think my thinking habit and horizon would change. It's never too late to start, but I hesitate to start on those thesedays. (Unlike copies of Faust, I don't have copies of the above two mentioned books in my bookcase).

If I were to born again, I should never change major at college and should stick to the first one I should take at my freshman year :) (03-27-97)