Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Sometimes being a consultant feels like providing advice, but also chasing the raw materials needed to give it. As I approach the four-year mark of my current job helping high school students with their college applications, I have, unfortunately, become a bit more cynical about what "helping" entails. As much as the job seems to be rooted in collaboration between the knowledgeable advisors and youngsters motivated to absorb the knowledge and put it into action, the reality can sometimes be a bit different. Specifically, the amount of following up I do as part of the job is surprisingly high.

After Chinese-American figure skater Alysa Liu scored a memorable gold medal in the Milano Winter Olympics, more details are emerging in her underdog-to-winner life story. The world is slowly putting together the reasons behind the sudden retirement at age 16, after failing to medal in multiple world championships that she competed in, and her insistence that her return to the skating world would be entirely done in her own terms, skating when and how she feels, eating what she wants, and looking how she desires. 

After three years working in college admissions consulting and speaking to more than 100 high school students worldwide, this is my biggest learning. Skills are easy to pick up. For those who can afford it, professors are willing to mentor, NGOs can be set up, hardware prototypes can be built, and diverse cultures can be learned firsthand. Even those without money can pick up skills through free online courses, bugging adults to share their expertise out of the goodness of their hearts, and run small projects to help out in the community.

Ah, a Lenovo laptop. It almost takes me back to the college days, when the ThinkPad represented the pinnacle of the aspiring white-collar professional, ready to take work on the go, no matter how rough the road ahead becomes, both metaphorically and physically. Those were the days when the MacBook was the exclusive territory of deliberately non-mainstream hipsters, attracted by its quirky colors and functionalities. The serious kids, those heading to the world of finance and management consulting, needed a business laptop to accompany their business suits.

Got into a top American university? Congrats, you may have just finished the easy part. For aspiring international high schoolers aiming for the best that global higher education can offer, an acceptance letter may no longer be enough to start the journey. Those who secure interviews at their nearest US embassies and consulates now face the meeting with anxiety. What used to be a formality, a stamp of approval preordained by acknowledgement of intellectual excellence from elite universities, has now become a brand-new, entirely separate hurdle to go through.

China and the United States negotiated a temporary truce in their ongoing trade war, slashing the tariffs they had imposed on one another for 90 days and lifting stock markets worldwide in its aftermath. However, analysts from various news outlets, and surely, investment banks, continue to see uncertainties as the two sides left largely unsaid what will happen after those 90 days expire. Will the tariffs go up and send business and markets downhill once again, or will the vaulted idea of "continued negotiation mechanism" established during these talks help dial down the temperature permanently?

The storyline was almost reminiscent of the assassination of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a couple of years ago. A young man, with no history of violence, was driven to gun violence by a deeply held grievance, a perceived unfairness shared by millions. But this time, it was not the Unification Church and its forced donations that bankrupted families in Japan. Instead, it was the perennial shortcomings of the medical care system in America. Should the ongoing investigations shed more details on the storyline, the American assassin will likely elicit as much sympathy as the Japanese one.

The concept of an English-language school already puzzled me. These schools, privately run and often have no accreditation from government authorities in charge of regulating educational institutions, propose that students show up in a different, English-language country to learn the language through classes and immersion. Yet, with the tuition and living expenses high and the concept of scholarships nonexistent, students can ill-afford a full-time study lasting beyond a few weeks, especially considering that they cannot make money working on the side while enrolled.

It has been several months since the end of the Euro 2024 soccer tournament, but I still remember the sheer visual diversity that the event illustrated. As part of partaking in the once-every-four-years event, the Maltese government set up several "fan zones" in major towns across the island. Each offered a giant projection screen, plenty of seats in the shade, and food and drink stalls, bringing together several thousand revelers each time a match was broadcast live. The sheer passion of the cheering fans, loud enough to echo through several blocks contrasted with the fact that Malta has never played in a Euro Cup.

When people start learning a language, the goal is simple: to become more proficient in the target language. But the definition of "proficiency" varies. Some are serious enough to acquire a language to get a foreign job, live in a foreign land, and marry a foreign partner. Some are more casual: just enough to engage in basic banter during short-term travels and the joy of learning some phrases in the process is sufficient. But at all levels of seriousness, the keyword is "interaction": language acquisition is simply not something to be done alone for the sake of being alone.

Nature is ruthless. As COVID has shown us, a world that seems to be humming along so well can suddenly be stopped dead in its tracks, borders thrown up and people holed up, by something so small and invisible yet fast-moving and deadly. And an epidemic out of nowhere is by no means the only way that nature can hurt us, very badly. From earthquakes to tornados to landslides to sinkholes, nature will put mankind into a calamity, without any prior warning. Unlike a manmade war, no compromise can hope to halt the disaster. Nature does not negotiate.

Malta at this time of the year is home to some unusual faces. Whereas the old British long-stay tourists and the Filipino/Indian migrant workers stick out like a sore thumb amidst the Maltese crowds at any time of the year, groups of Japanese youngsters navigate the country's narrow streets, polite, confused, and looking, in general, all-around out of place. It is vacation time for many of them: Japanese school and work years do not start until the beginning of April while the previous year already ended, giving many just a small window of a few weeks to partake in short-term English language programs in Malta.

I often half-jokingly say that I am way past my peak at age 35. While it is a way to prevent others from setting too high of an expectation for how much further my career can go, it also reflects how I reflect how I see my career so far. As a mere 24-year-old, I was already a Vice President of Operations at Lazada , an e-commerce firm that became a major player in that industry in Southeast Asia. Overseeing more than 150 employees, some more than twice as old as I was at the time, made me realize that corporate management was frankly, not my cup of tea.

Every line of work ebbs and flows based on a calendar of deadlines. When no imminent projects are on the horizon, employees enjoy their downtime, taking vacations and going home early from the office. When clients call in with urgent requests, employees reluctantly do overtime, trying to get through all the tasks while their managers and customers breathe down their necks for constant updates. The deadlines vary greatly from industry to industry, with expectations being three months for management consultants to three minutes for the fry cook at McDonald's.

One thing that this blog does not particularly do well is "specificity." Often, posts start with a concrete event that triggers a line of thinking, but then dive deeper and deeper into the philosophy and values behind the thinking, until the reader is left thinking, at the end of the post, what do the abstract thoughts developed across multiple paragraphs have anything to do with the event that triggered the post in the first place. And too frequently, I am inclined to agree with the readers: as a space to freely jot down my thoughts, the thoughts are prioritized over structure or narrative.

The recent bankruptcy of the co-working space operator WeWork in the US spelled the end to a rather embarrassing saga in the world of tech. Under its flamboyant founder, the firm was once deemed a tech darling ready to disrupt the fossilized world of real estate management. For a while, it seems to have succeeded, offering up rental spaces to other tech startups hoping to bask in the glow of how tech can be utilized to solve legacy industries. Getting other tech firms to believe that it is an integral member of the tech world propelled WeWork to new heights in valuation.

The short corridors to the recording studio are heaving with people, running back forth, looking for cast members, and talking to staff members about what's next on the busy schedule. On both sides of the corridor are a series of tatami-covered waiting rooms, each fronted with a lockable door and a nameplate to denote who is inside. Some of the names belong to well-known celebrities on Japanese TV, and others, like mine, belong to temporary guests not used to being there. Some are no doubt nervous, even if they've been on TV for years. Others are calm (like me), and nonchalant about the prospect of being recorded.

One of the most useful skills, in any industry and any line of job, is the ability to think on the spot. Some people can, right after listening to comments from others or even skimming through some dense text, immediately provide their feedback and critique. If the comments are relevant, insightful, and sharp-witted, they leave lasting impressions of being quick to think and capable of real-time communication. Having more meetings, like I do for my job , can be a good way to train the mind to react to information and reply more quickly.

Spending years in "basic" education from elementary all the way to high school can give students an absolutist view of right and wrong. In math and the sciences, answers that adhere to the principles of existing "laws of nature" and rules of computation are correct. In humanities, those that align with historical precedents and the opinion of "expert" teachers are not to be questioned. Such thinking promotes the idea that there is always a right answer, and that answer can be reached by reading books, asking teachers, or conducting research with experts.

College admissions consulting has a straightforward premise: those who are experienced in the admissions side (through a combination of getting into top universities themselves and years of experience helping others succeed) provide expert advice to high school students who are going through the process for the very first time. In any conversation, who is the teacher and who is the student is supposed to be very clear. The high school student, or more precisely, their parents, is paying for the time to be taught how they are supposed to present their near future in a way that is attractive to university admissions officers.