Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Britain is by no means a cheap country to live in. This is a fact established by the experiences and constant complaints of so many expatriates calling the city their temporary home. But the existing prices, just as death and taxes, are something that people simply have to accept as constants, barring any sort of sudden economic meltdown that cannot possibly serve anyone any sort of long term benefits. Yet, many seem to just completely unwilling to let the prices off their minds. From the Americans meticulously (and vocally) converting the price of every little thing into US dollars before opening their wallets, to many from developing countries who simply disappear from common activities with friends for fear of excess spending, the financial cost of London, in a way much ore than I could have imagined, is affecting the very fabric of our lives. First-time “nice to meet you” events become inundated with stories of exorbitant prices paid for otherwise ordinary goods, providing readi

Walking around the meticulously kept grassy grounds of the Windsor Castle, the hordes of foreign tourists simply could not hide their excitement. Snapping away with their cameras at every wall sculpture, every statue, and every traditional-looking signage, they shouted to their friends to stop and look, filling the traditional heart of the British monarchy with simultaneous calls in dozens of foreign tongues. The keepers and guards of the Castle, dressed in the traditional costumes little changed since the Empire's heydays, can do little but to smile politely at the incomprehensible noises. Once, the Castle was the home of a ruler governing half the world, including the lands that now send these enthusiastic tourists. And for centuries, the rulers of the Empire sought to educate these colonial subjects in all matters British, from that standard Queen's accent (which I still find exotically attractive after a week here) to every aspect of the British culture, the highest mate

The registration of new LSE students on the first day was by any means “epic.” Even with a dozen computers working simultaneously to complete a process that takes no more than 2 minutes each, the registration staff was soon overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. The queue of students, minutes after registration opened, snaked out of the largest auditorium on the campus and spilled onto the busy main boulevard in front of the building. And the crowd that had gathered was, well, a curious bunch. Most came in groups of twos and threes, easily identifiable by their respective nationalities. Small talks consistently appeared to be something not local. Overwhelming noises of Mandarin Chinese are mixed in with various European and South Asian languages, occasionally broken by spurts of American English. Distinctive British accent only came from the administrators trying to keep the whole place in order. Indeed, judging from the actual registrations, the vast majority of the people i

The roads in the heart of London are not straight; they are designed not to be. Going about my usual exercise of walking around the immediate neighborhood around my dormitory, I found out the hard way just how difficult it is to get acquainted with the historical neighborhood. Every road curved, beginning and ending in completely random places so that the very concept of cardinal directions became completely useless as one tries to get from point A to B. And the physical appearances do not help. Looking down every street, both sides are packed with five-story-high stone buildings that seemed to have persevered through centuries of urban development. They remain utterly devoid of any commercial signs: no advertising, no store signage (except on the occasional shop fronts on the first floor), and no unique colors to distinguish one building from the dozens around it. All buildings harmoniously blend into two long stone rows extending down every street. In awe at the first sight, one

To the eyes of humans living today, history is full of bad decision-making. To almost every historical event that occurred, someone can wisely say "If the leaders at the time carried out the plan this way, the results would be different, and people of today would not have to suffer through the bad consequences." Unfortunately, most of such wise comments are exclusively based on information of the said "bad consequences" available to us but not even imaginable to the decision-makers of the past. Thus, it is not only unfair to judge events of the past through modern lenses, but any conclusions from such exercise are also completely meaningless. The political events occurring on the Korean Peninsula serve as the perfect example to illustrate the point. To the dismay of the entire world, the authoritarian regime of the North continue to flaunt a brinkmanship-based military power at the expense of trapping the necessary resources for developing the national economy a

The quietness of my home in San Diego can sometimes get quite addictive. With only the sound of wind in my ears and the whole world accessible via the Internet , I can not only think about anything I want without anything to disrupt my train of thought, but also find plenty of materials to add on to that train. Left alone with the entirety of the two-floor real estate, I can pace through the confines, lost in my own mind, without awkward stares or forced conversations. Perhaps that would be the thing I would miss the most as I am set to depart for London in less than a week. Although I do have a single dorm room, much of the dorm life will revolve around what happens outside the room itself. The need for "harmonious" interaction with fellow hall-mates, even at the very superficial level, will define the entire atmosphere of the building, for better (to provide a crisis-free, quiet study environment) or for worse (make room for all those mentally stressful gossip and "

In one week, my vacation in San Diego will draw to a close. The airplane ticket to London is purchased, the registration for housing is completed after that endless wait for visa is finally finished. Most importantly, that day of enrollment as a grad student, anxiously expected since my moment of acceptance back in March of this year, will finally come. As I continue to lounge around my home in San Diego, doing little besides writing this blog , I wonder, am I really ready for studying again? It is a question that I thought about time and time again, under different circumstances, with different suppositions, and for different rationales. A part of me keeps on reminding myself of how difficult the upcoming year will be. After a year being outside of school, doing work that requires little critical thinking along the lines of regular schoolwork, I know that the massive amounts of reading and essay composition will give me endless headaches. The ability to concentrate on little d

Development of the world economy has not had equal effects on all people. Some countries with strong governance and suitable policies grew much faster than those that do not, leaving massive wealth gaps across national borders that are still now being enlarged. And within national boundaries, those with the right social connections, high education, and access of economic means of production benefit disproportionately from growing wealth, leaving behind many compatriots who are still struggling to cope with economic changes. And at the bottom of those coping with economic changes are who the society ruthlessly calls the "homeless," those too poor to afford permanent housing even in the shabbiest of the neighborhoods , scrapping by what little wealth they can find on the street-sides of the world's wealthiest and most developed cities. Furthermore, the municipalities that these homeless reside generally have relatively well-established social welfare systems. It only ad

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