Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Late last year, an article in the Atlantic magazine spoke about the disarray the world of social media services (SNS) is going through. With plunging usage at Facebook and corporate overhaul at Twitter, the platforms and the ways people interact with friends and strangers in cyberspace are due for a complete revolution. The article boldly predicted a world in which netizens are less dependent on SNS for social interactions, a change that is decades in the making and can make for some positive changes in the role that the internet plays in people's day-to-day lives.

Persuading people to buy a product is often much more about them than the products or services that are being sold. Yes, the products or services need to be explained in a way that fits their needs and solves their problems. But for any established product or service, there are multiple alternatives out there, many of which have similar functionalities at similar price points. The differentiation factor often comes down to how the salespeople can find some sort of emotional connection with the potential buyers, tapping into emotions just as much as logic to incentivize and motivate consumption.

Being a mother means doing whatever you can to protect your child from physical and mental harm. Being a top-level investigative journalist means doing whatever you can to find out and expose the truth. Both often involve going to extremes to achieve intended goals, often at the expense of the very safety and sanity of the undertakers. Yet, the fact that so many are involved in these crafts signal that motivation for continuing in them go beyond personal gains.

This blog started in 2010 to chart my life out of four tumultuous years as a student at Yale University. Those four years were at times traumatizing and left me with emotional scars that, at times, led me to conclude the very worth of going to Yale in the first place. The struggles of not only classes at a high level, but the social expectations of Yale students all being future leaders, lead to pressures to succeed in professional and academic ways that many, including myself, were not mentally prepared for. Some students excelled in such pressurized environments, while many others lost their ways.

It is around 8pm on a weekday in a big shopping mall in Chiba. A few shoppers walk through its wide corridors and most shops, selling everything from high-end fashion to tacky knick-knacks, predictably feel rather empty as the peak New Year's shopping season has already come to an end. Yet, in one corner of the mall, next to all the cheap eateries, some two dozen people are lined up in front of a boisterous restaurant behind a food court. While the other shops in the food court served the usual Japanese and Western cuisines, this one made sure its Chinese background was both seen and heard loud and clear.

A regular theme of this blog is self-reflection. Just a few months ago , I was looking back on my past year as a 33-year-old, wondering what is the next step now that I had my fourth anniversary working with Blackpeak, graduated from my Ph.D. program at the University of Tokyo, got married, as well as became certified in Teaching English as a Second Language, Fraud Examination, and Anti-Money Laundering, all in the matter of one year. A new life project beckons, but at the time, I was unsure what that would be or where it would happen.

It has been more than 16 years since I graduated high school. Many memories of my old days as a public school student in San Diego are fading, not the least because I have practically never lived in the city since graduation. But a recent request to summarize some tips on how I managed to get from a no-name high school to Yale has triggered a need for me to do a relatively rare self-reflection on my four years. It is not an easy one since so many other things that happened in my life since 2006 have been much more memorable and noteworthy than anything I've done back then.