Sofia Bajerova, Author at The Orbital

9Jan

By Sofia BajerovaNo Comments

Opinion

Nostalgia

Nostalgia: from the Greek Nostos meaning “return home” and Algos meaning “pain”. The word literally means the ‘suffering evoked by the desire to return to one’s place of origin’. Of course, today the word takes on a different meaning, yet there is definitely something to be said about the pain of looking back. The complex emotion of nostalgia often depends on our experience of the present. It's ironic how a concept all about the past can be completely dictated by the present, and the prospect for the future. At times it can be hard to think back to a time when things were less complicated, less lonely, less painful - or just less. Knowing how good things once were can show you just how far you’ve fallen. It can make it seem impossible to claw your way back to that happy place. Th...

Fresh Starts

What even is a fresh start? Is it when you finally decide to put in place that new skin care routine? When you paint the walls and move furniture around in a room to make it feel brand new? How about when you move to a new house, town, or country? When you walk into your first class in September, or when the clock ticks past midnight on New Year’s Eve? Why do we look for fresh starts? What makes us feel the need to start over and do something different? Does it originate from a deep sense of stagnation? The feeling of not being good enough? Is it the sense that we could do better? I once rented a house which had one of those patterned, textured wallpapers in the hallway. It was painted over with a fresh coat of white paint to make it look brighter and more modern, ready ...

No Longer Standing: The Monumental Message in What Remains

In the early hours of the 23rd of December 2021, Hong Kong University’s Pillar of Shame statue was removed from the centre of campus. It has stood there at the University of Hong Kong since 1997 and represented the numerous lives lost in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, one of the most delicate topics in Chinese politics. Recently replaced with a new seating area, no remnants of the statue remain onsite. The image of the orange twisted bodies imprinted only in memory. The Tiananmen Square Massacre has largely been erased from history in Mainland China and Hong Kong is now following suit. The Pillar of Shame stood as a symbol of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, highlighting the difference of freedoms between Hong Kong and the Mainland, a gap that is being gradually clos...