Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

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...

In the day and age when the economic and international political power of a rising China is no longer doubted, the image of the country abroad has, at the same time, been declining steadily. While her economic freedom has increased, there is increasing criticism regarding a lack of a corresponding increase in political freedom. And what's more worrisome is the fact that the continued strict social controls are bound to make her proud export- and investment-led economic growth to ground to a halt as people get both wealthier and older in age.

My family rarely finds itself as a complete whole. With my attending school in Connecticut and London and running all over Asia-Pacific in between , and my father running his own research lab in Shanghai and attending conferences around the world, the family is often split up in three pieces, three countries, and even three continents. Its only so often that we can actually have family meal together, especially on my birthday. The rare coincidence called for a quick visit to the neighborhood Chinese restaurant on the eve of my birthday . Physically speaking, San Diego and US as a whole certainly has not changed much during my one-and-a-half-year absence. But just by going to a meal in the restaurant, the superficial sameness goes away, and much gloomy changes reveal themselves. Specifically, I can say after a single meal that the general economic conditions in the US, after that financial crisis of 2008 , has not gone back up (as some expected), but pretty much stayed the s...

Let's be perfectly honest: since coming back from working full-time in Korea, I have been a complete lazy stay-at-home bum. After applying for UK visa for the second time after that heartbreaking first-time rejection , I have been doing little more than hanging out with friends, watching TV, and updating this blog. Ironically, I tend to write the best posts when I am stimulated by the many personal experiences I get traveling around the world , yet it is often times like now when I am not traveling (and thus have little to write about) that I have the most free time to do casual writing. And being unproductive is not the worst thing. Even after landing in American soil for more than a week now, I am still having trouble staying up beyond 10pm at night, and almost promptly wake up at 7am everyday without alarms or noises. And during the day, the constant tiresomeness, characterized by pains in the eyes and headaches fading in and out, just would not go away. Even the daily e...

In the quiet confines of my room I welcome the addition of another year to my age. Without much fanfare (even less compared to the little I had last year in China ), but the quietness before the storms of a whole new episode in London is giving me just the environment needed to contemplate exactly what I want and need to do as a 23-year-old. In a year when the title of a new college should start to wear off, whole new characteristics and undertakings are definitely to be pursued and achieved. As wishes of happy birthday stream in from Japan and Korea (where it is already the 30th), I am slowly coming to the grip with the fact that I am turning a year older, and one more year closer to fully independent adulthood. Obviously, a few short paragraphs cannot detail all the little things I would like to do to complement my step forward toward that "full adulthood," but I would still like to at least summarize a few general directions I would like to pursue in my "New Ye...

Walking on the streets of America after more than a year of absence from permanent residence, I cannot help but notice that many of the fashion trends prevalent during my years in high school and college have not changed much. In fact, if anything, the trends have been greatly intensified. For instance, the most noticeable one has been the affinity of the American youth toward loose-fitting pants that are pulled down to the level of their butts. After all these years the pants seem to have only gotten looser and the level of the pants' waist have become lower and lower. In contrast, the trends in Asia have moved in the opposite direction. The adherence to the American urban dress culture (loose jeans, decorated T-shirts, sneakers, etc) has been significantly altered along Asian tastes in the past few years. Jeans have been becoming noticeably tighter, T-shirts are becoming increasingly abandoned in favor of causal dress shirts, and the Asian love for black-rimmed glasses ...

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 ...

Idealists out there are often adamant about their personal definitions of happiness. Money, they would proselytize, is the ultimate evil. It does not give the beholder any more comfort than the amount of materialistic possessions needed to fill in lonely, empty, sin-filled hearts. As long as the average men have aspired to accumulate great wealth, the major religions of the world have been piously calling for simplicity, to be away from the lures of the seemingly all-powerful cash that have "corrupted" all modern humans. The purported nobility of the idealist should not be doubted (especially since I am one of them in many ways). Yet, the genuineness of those who believe higher income leads to greater happiness also cannot be doubted in any way. And certainly, by following through on their respective dreams, each will certainly lead satisfying and enviable lives that they can proudly brag to anyone else. Both camps ascribe a certain predefined way that can lead to a...

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...

My parents love to watch Chinese war dramas. The dramas all invariably depict poor Chinese farmer-turned-militiamen fighting relentlessly against the immoral, arrogant Japanese invaders. Shouting patriotic messages of the freeing the country from foreign domination, the Chinese militiamen use various sabotage tactics and mind games to win struggles of attrition against the otherwise dimwitted-looking Japanese. Sometimes a few heroes die of dramatic deaths, but at the end, the established formula always fate the Japanese aggressors with devastating, unrecoverable blows. And my parents are not alone in their hobby. Such war dramas still constitute a large portion of domestic productions in China every year, even more than six decades after the end of the events they portray. And the continued production, above their propagandist value of showcase for patriotism and devotion to the Communist Party , actually makes economic sense. When asked about the reason for continued producti...

The cobbler quietly worked on the dress shoes, right before my mesmerized eyes. He put glue into the sides of the shoes that were opening up, pounded in mails to the bottom to keep the glue in place, applied new bottoms to hide the nails, and finally polished the shoes to give them a brand-new shine. All this happening within 30minutes for equivalent of 20 US dollars in a shipping container-turned-personal workshop placed smack on the sidewalk of the busiest financial street in all of Seoul. After admiring Asia's superb public transportation system as well as cost-efficient and convenient compactness of her urban areas , the lingering existence of many traditional service professions in Asian cities also becomes a phenomenon worth a few words of praise. While the likes of such humble shoe cobbler can be rarely seen on the streets of the US, in Asia they continue to provide their, indeed, still popularly used, services to the general populace. But, alas, as Western conce...

The Japanese and South Koreans never stop bragging about how they have the fastest Internet connection in the world. Nor do they ever stop making fun of the Americans or the Europeans only switching out of dial-up years after they started using high-speed broadband. Surely, the ubiquitous Internet cafes with their hordes of online game-playing teenagers do show the need and existence of high-speed connections, but for the travelling foreigner only concerned with news and basic text-based information searching, the difference seems quite minimal. In fact, if anything, living in Korea or Japan occasionally would make the foreigners feel like there is SLOWER Internet connection than they can get back home, for the contents they wish to obtain. After all, especially in the case of Americans and Europeans, their favorite sites from back home can only be viewed after the data travels thousands of miles below the Pacific Ocean, no doubt slowing down the processing speed. And it is doub...

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...

There was this perpetual drunken joke of myself and my Western acquaintances about using US citizenship to leverage dating the local girls in Asia. "Who cares about language or cultural barriers ?" We would say, as long as we can hang our US passport around our necks and flaunt them around the nearest Western-styled bars we can find. If we do it correctly, we do not even have to say anything at all before we can hook some young pretty wives to bring back home to the good ole USA... But the drunken joke really in essence reflects a sad truth that unfortunate still is very much relevant in most parts of a fast-developing Asia. Besides the perpetually isolationist Japan where young people no longer have any desire to be anywhere outside their native country , for most of Asians, settling down in the West, and especially the States, is a dream that they would like to be fulfilled in one way or the other. Even in wealthy places like South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, emi...

"You know, I am just so used to living in a big city that I feel uneasy when I do not see a convenience store and a subway station within ten minutes walk of where I live." Those were the exact words coming out of my mouth two minutes after getting picked up by my parents at the San Diego Airport. Harking back to the last conversations before departing Japan for one last time , I constantly remarked that I will miss the lifestyle of convenient shopping and transportation that I will not get in the U.S. I was totally right, as I realized even immediately after landing on her soil for the first. Indeed, to the accusation of inconvenience, San Diego certainly can make no justifiable comebacks. Aside from a few un-cared for and unconfirmed rumors of her non-extensive trolley system extended a little bit beyond its current northern terminus "very soon in the future" (without any concrete plans besides a "proposed" 2015 completion date), public transpor...

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...

While Seoul and the northern half of South Korea drench in the leftover of yet another storm (after a previous one flooded half of the Metropolis and caused deadly mudslides in Chuncheon), over here in Busan, the skies are clear and the beaches are packed. The only three-day weekend of the Korean summer seems to have brought the entire youth population of Seoul down here, to the point that the characteristic Gyeongsang accent is getting drowned out by the more "standard" stuff spoken up north. Youth and sunshine in the premier beach town in Korea means quite much...and honestly, it is exactly why I am drawn back here for the seocnd time (going against my standard principle of not traveling to the same place more than once). Unlike my trip here back in 2008 when the city was rained out for an entire weekend, this time around the crowded beaches of Gwangalli and Haeundae were perfect for photos...and crowd-watching. Yes, crowd-watching, to the single male seeking a mate...

The dogs just barked away in their little cages. As I passed by the inconspicuous corner of the market, I could not have possibly missed those distinct sounds. I had to keep up my nonchalant appearance as I continued strolling down the dusty little market streets. But the hawking would not stop. Targeting the strange, innocent-looking young tourist, the vendors came. They blocked my way down the street, whispering into my ear, “hey, how about one for tonight? It is cheap today.” I had to look where the vendors were pointing their fingers. The dogs, all of which perhaps the most massive I have ever seen in my lifetime of strange travels, looked back at me from their cages. Some whimpered at the sight of a “new guy.” All examined me with almost teary eyes. Toward the further inquiring voice of the overly enthusiastic vendors, I had no response. I was at a loss for words, any words. The sight of “the men’s best friends” happily wagging their tails at the sight o...

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,...