Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Some say we should not write essays for fun. However, I believe we should write essays for our own entertainment. I base my examples on personal, historical, and cultural reasons. In fact, if people can write essays for entertainment, they can also continue every aspect of their education simply for the joy of studying. The overwhelming sense of self-accomplishment, the merits of being simply knowledgeable, and the increased social status due to education can all serve to justify a person pursuing education not for practical benefits of getting better jobs with higher salaries. Higher level of education can bring a person greater sense of achievement in life. The pride and self-confidence associated with having a respectable degree from a respectable university can boost a person's stature in front of others. For instance, as I finally received my student visa to UK today, I am officially on my path to continue my one-year master's degree in the London School of Economics.

In Chinese, there is a proverb that says "望子成龍，望女成鳳" (watching the son become dragon, watching the daughter become phoenix). It denotes the urgency and the joy parents get from expecting and seeing their children become successful in life. Throughout history, parents have made endless financial and physical investments to help their children the necessary connections and education, so that the children can live better lives than the parents are ever able to during their lives. The case is especially true for immigrant parents who has in many cases, lost out on the same opportunities they would have had in their native countries largely due to their inability to fit in the societies in which they immigrated . But parents are not the only ones who constantly expect their children to succeed beyond anything they can imagine. The friends and other relatives also seem to put in at least certain emotional investment in the progress of the elite few in their social circles. And

It is not news that Chinese has been repeatedly voted around the world (even by the Chinese themselves), as the most difficult language to master. In addition to the weird pronunciation system involving for tones, the loose grammar rules, the most troubling of the language's characteristic to haunt the learners is the thousands and thousands of individual characters that must be memorized before basic reading and writing can be accomplished. With so many of these characters floating around, it is not surprising for even native speakers to forget the most commonly used ones. The advent of computing seemed to resolve the problem. With the language turned into a Latin alphabet-based phonetic code called Pinyin, turning spoken Chinese into writing has never been easier. Just type in the sound with a regular keyboard, and a list of characters is automatically generated. Type in a combination of sounds to form vocabulary, and the character combinations are automatically narrowed dow

Labor Day celebrates the hardworking men and women that made America the rich country that she is. But as America increasingly depends on her continued control of the world financial system for sustained wealth (keep issuing debts, printing paper money, and buying up foreign-made products), one can only wonder what the role of these "hard-working men and women" really is today. Evident enough, by the looks of a rusting industrial capital of Detroit and the enthusiasm new college grads have for dubiously "value"-generating sectors of investment banking and consulting, the positions of the traditional working class has been in steady decline in he this country. Gone are the days that even a senior worker in the factory can be considered "middle class" by definition. And increasingly, their decline in social status to mere "working class" has been accompanied by increased social gap with the new middle class of professional white collars, some of

Having been drinking almost nonstop during my free times (and as part of work) in Japan and Korea, I have been feeling quite puzzled as to how drinking happens in the U.S. Without convenient public transportation systems , people have to rely on cars to get to bars here in San Diego, yet somehow people (including Designated Drivers) just cannot be disciplined enough to not drink at all, leading to every outing ending up as a mild violation of the basic laws against Driving Under Influence (DUI). Yet, it is at the same times kind of funny to see how DUI has become somewhat culturally tolerable over the past years. What is supposed to be the sympathy people feel toward the sad non-drinking driver guys became sympathy felt toward the driver guys who are sipping their light drinks so slowly as to make sure their blood alcohol levels stay below the legal limit. The limitations of the transportation system forced people to adjust, not by cutting back on living their lives, but by find

The times are tough and the jobs are hard to come by. The grave situation of the world economy is certainly not news, and can be easily seen even with a casual visit to the neighborhood Chinese restaurant . For newly graduated college students of the past couple of years, there could not have been tougher times for starting up a professional career. With little work experience, little practical knowledge, and little professional connections, it is no wonder that many are left behind in the increasingly competitive job market, here in the US and across the world. While the anxiety and the sorrow behind not being able to find jobs after four years of hard work in college are definitely understandable and worthy of sympathy, the amount of depressing rhetoric that is accompanying the whole situation has been getting a little too hard to stomach for even (newly) jobless new grads like myself. Public sentiment, echoing the gloomy expressions of the printed media, has been convinced th

The first post of my September also marks the one hundredth post for the year 2011. The post finds me becoming a bit calmer after another scare for my UK visa application to be rejected (Thankfully, after staying up until 2am last night to call the LSE Admissions Office, the officers were very responsive and helped me obtain the necessary new materials within one business day. As I sent off the new materials to the Border Agency in New York, my visa application is officially back on track). The fact is that after suffering through so many natural and man-made disasters, I am getting so accustomed to the idea of something bad unexpectedly happening that my mind no longer feels any sort of panic in facing them. Whether it be the near-death experience through the Quake in Japan or dealing with prospects of not getting my visa to UK (even now), I can think beyond the initial fear or scare of everything not going according to the "normal way." No longer do I feel any sor

The damned British visa is just not going to get approved! First, the visa application was quickly rejected for "insufficient funds" in my bank account. Then, the second application gets delayed. After waiting for a positive reply from the UK Border Agency for more than a week, I received a quick email from them noting that the materials for the application are incomplete. Why? It seems like a certain registry number for the visa application cannot be used twice. So, after an irrational first rejection, the second application is even affected. Now, I have to go beg the London School of Economics for a whole new registry number to send to the Border Agency within the next seven working days, or else my visa application will be rejected once again. At least things like this are making me concentrated again on something productive after lounging around at home doing absolutely nothing for the past week and a half . But, even as I feel more and more scared about an

Four years of economics courses at Yale has not prepared me for in-depth analysis of the global economic, not to mention financial, system. While Yale can be partially blamed the lack of technical knowledge she infused into her curriculum , it could be fairly said that no amount of so-called "economic expertise" can prepare one for the realization that the "expertise" is worth little in the constantly changing conditions of global economy. Especially with a global financial industry at its helm, the global economy becomes so volatile that no theory can last without constant revisions and updates. Despite sounding condescending, I must say that the controlling factors governing the future directions of economic health are just too complicated to understand for the average layperson. And after watching a documentary on the supposed causes of the 2008 financial crisis, such realization becomes more established and deeply rooted. "The Inside Job," as

I am one of those people who strictly consider themselves to be "men of the people." Growing up in low-income household with little materialistic possessions, I believed that I understood perfectly what it is like to come from the "lower class ." Even as my family's financial conditions grew more stable, I swore by the notion that I will always stand by the proletariat, partially fueled by political beliefs and partially by disgust of rich-world consumerism . But reality often proves me wrong in my naivete. And certainly, my professed knowledge on social classes may have been a bit too shallow up until now. A quick yet quite comprehensive visit to one of the supposed "ghettos" of San Diego yesterday showed me just how much more there is to learn about the world of the low-income populations. It is humbling to see that compared to some of the people who are truly in need of improvements in their livelihoods, just how lucky and how "not l

Preparing for graduate school, I found out the hard way, was not the easiest thing in the world. The flimsy "graduate offer pack" received with the acceptance letters had little more than the most basic information for survival. A brief introduction to the school along with a highly "abstract" campus map, a couple of paragraphs on "how to get accustomed to the new environment," and the dates and meeting place for registration. And that's all. The remaining information, if necessary, was all independent research, starting at the Google homepage. And interestingly enough, after I figured out how to configure my LSE email account, but had a hard time accessing it from my computer, it literally took four days for the IT staff over in London to get back to me via email. Although I am getting used to inefficient BS after dealing with the British visa agencies , the slow response, whether deliberate or properly designed, will definitely force every si

This blog is about criticism. I have spent probably more than half of the blog scolding Japan to the very details of her people's attitude and daily life . At the same time, I have not forgotten to keep up a constant rate of fire on the often politically originated indecencies of Chinese mentalities . And do not even get me started on America. The arrogant attitudes of the American people is and will always be a subject of constant scorn. Add a few criticisms of the countries that I have briefly traveled to and even briefly lived and worked in , and out comes the perhaps the darkest, most unfriendly sounding blog on the entire cyberspace. Many a faithful reader has questioned whether the incessant criticism really means something. As I mentioned from the very beginning of the blog's existence , I intend the blog to be something of a personal diary, a forum for my thought to be jotted down, along the same lines as wherever my mind decide to land at those very momen

The news of natural or human disasters, unfortunately for me, no longer raises even an eyebrow. After experiencing the massive earthquake in Japan , the massive floods and mudslide in Korea, and hearing about the massive rioting in London, waking up today to the news of a rare earthquake on the East Coast of the US did not even bring any sort of reaction to my face. Fortunately, so far, there has been very little reports of damages and human casualties. But given my insensitivity to disasters in general, would I act any differently if there were large numbers of deaths occurring from the quake? Sadly, my personal reflection at the current state would immediately tell me "no." As any other survivor of the Quake over in Japan, I have had a tendency to trivialize the dangers of such disasters in order to suppress the memories of being part of the Quake or any of its lethal consequences . While we the survivors ourselves may take pride on being able to speak of disaster

One and a half hour until the plane for San Francisco departs from Seoul Incheon Airport. My second short-term work trip to Korea concludes with more calmness and less of the passionate pro-Korean emotions I got from the country last time. Back in 2008, I remember telling myself that I will for sure come back and for months after, tried my best to keep up with everything and anything Korean (ultimately leading to my taking Korean class my senior year). Talk about the power of the Korean Wave ... Three years later, back in the same airport, going to the same place after finishing the same thing, there somehow is only a nonchalant, almost empty non-caring attitude. London, surprisingly, is not in my head, even though the news of the riots seem to make everyone around me a bit more anxious. And of course, going back to San Diego, as always, never really excite me more than the fact that I can get some free housing and food. Inside my mind is emptiness, pure emptiness, without a s

After weeks of anxious waiting, the accommodation offer from LSE finally arrived in my mailbox. At the rather expensive rate of around 120 pounds a week, I will have a single dorm room located at the heart of London, two blocks away from both the main campus as well as my new home station of King’s Cross (of the Harry Potter fame, as I discovered last weekend after watching the 7th movie). Yet, the uneasiness upon acknowledging the prospects of going back to that dreaded environment of school dormitory is somewhat outweighing the joy from not having to go out and find my own housing in an unknown metropolis. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that dorm life, more than classes, activities, or personal relationships, defined my four years of college life. The dorm-mates, for better or worse, became not friends but collectively a surrogate family: people you may not necessarily like at all, yet must spend time with in a regular basis. Their presence, no matter how unwelcome,

The monsoon rains of July turns into the sweltering heat of August, and the life of everyone began to progress again after going through half of laid-back summer vacations amid definite signs of lethargic slowness. For some, it is already a season of tearful goodbyes, and for some, the tears of separation are also mixed with anxiety, and hope, for the somewhat unknown, yet exciting future. The same faces and personalities, so familiar after what seems like an eternity of constant interaction, begin to disappear one by one, without any promise of future reunions... People speak of their "best friends forever," they speak of love that last forever, and they vow to never leave others behind or alone. Unfortunately for all of us who chose to spend different parts of our lives at different corners of the Earth with completely different groups of people, such so-called promises can be nothing beyond empty words. We have have to go. We just have to. New chapters of our lives aw

Many an intellectual out there tend to argue how the ability to form complex yet efficient organizations gave human beings the ability to efficiently execute complex projects. The ability to divide up work to different specialized tasks shared among many people is the pinnacle of human institutional achievement; it is the one thing, perhaps alongside the ability to communicate complex ideas linguistically, that set human beings apart from mere animals out there. And modern society, with new technologies and new demands propping out everyday, has taken that gift of organization to a whole new level. Every few people one meet in life would form an organization, whether it is non-profit or a small business, carrying out incomprehensibly small projects with extremely vague and dubious purposes. And every few people that one meets in an organization would have some sort of rank, denoting the place within the command structure just as complex as the web of organizations out there. Certainl

With this week drawing to a close, the isolated boot camp at Chuncheon has officially passed its "1/4 completed" mark. As the students began to get accustomed to the study environment, schedule, and the routines of daily life here in the camp, we all have began to shift attention to things that are much more conventional in any social environment. As the same group of people interact everyday, they are bound of get to know each other deeply, and with the knowledge, a whole new level of communication beyond "Lets play" and "Lets study" sprout among the populace. And with the increased communication comes increased drama. The stories of who likes who, who hates who abound, and precisely because no one has anything else going on in their lives besides studying/preparing for the SATs, such "exciting" rumors spread like wildfire, often leading to intricate subtleties in relationship among individuals and social subgroups. Well on the surface ever

...so the self-introduction of our male Korean staff went as we went for a handshake on the first day of my arrival in Chuncheon...fortunately or unfortunately, that phrase (meaning, "Sorry, but I don't speak English") has been the defining "tone" of our now 3-day-old SAT camp here in Chuncheon. Somehow feeling confident in my Korean ability more than in their own English abilities, the Korean staff has somehow now became completely alright with speaking in Korean to me 24-7, going so far as to admitting that they wish to learn to speak English...in Korean. Ambiguous comprehensions and struggling in even the simplest conversations, as much as seemingly endless preparations for classes, has become the norm. Sandwiched by a Korean-Canadian colleague with fluent Korean and an African-American colleague who no one will expect to know any Korean, I am bearing the blunt of this inherent "only Korean spoken outside of class" policy. Perhaps I was wrong to

In all societies, there are students who do not give a damn about school. It is nothing surprising that some people, under any environment, would think that school can be worthless or that they can find other ways of success beyond prestigious schooling. And similarly, there are parents who believe in the same thing. They allow their kids to choose their own paths, or simply just do not care where their kids end up without proper schooling. Sometimes, the students and the parents who do not give a damn happen to come from the same household. The result can be a disaster for the kid (in the normal case) or creation of some sort of absurdly unique and widely envied stories of abnormal successes for the kids in question. Well, not in Korea. Kids might be varied in enthusiasm for school just like kids are in any other country, but parents see absolutely no variance whatsoever. In the financial situation allows them to do so, the Korean parents will gladly pay up (and in my opinion,