Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

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...

Watching my friend talking to random people in the electronic store as we shopped around for his new laptop, I was once again amazed just how one "out-of-the-line" guy can brighten up the entire place. In a society which talking to random strangers for no reason without being talked to is often frowned often (behind their back) as "inappropriate" and "weird," one guy's action can make all of us rethink just how "appropriate" such unwritten social rules really are. And certain enough, these unwritten rules have become too deeply rooted in our psyche. For instance, whenever people learn new languages, they always start with greetings. "How are you?" "Where do you come from?" "What do you do for living?" and other inquisitive phrases often top the list of useful phrases to master in the beginning of any formal language instruction. It is as if, in any language, asking about other people's backgrounds is stan...

More than a year ago when I was solo backpacking through central China, I argued that the illegal underground markets for imitation products provide an economic way for increase material consumption and employment of relatively poor areas. But the argument back then was still much too deviated from the legal reality to make much of a difference. After all, the value of expensive brands exist because of high quality and restricted supply, both of which are undoubtedly disturbed by the very existence of such markets for imitation goods. And people have the perfectly legal alternative to buy cheaper, non-branded, legally produced goods serving the exact same functions. The closure of the imitation market should not fundamentally reduce the standard of living for their consumers. The illegal markets fulfilled a "want" (most likely for "face" and bragging of the consumers to fulfill a standard Asian mental desire to out-compete others in everything ) rather than an...

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...

In the course of modern politics, great power relations has always defined what is considered right and wrong in international relations. Whether it be the Europeans and their colonial imperialism, the Germans and their theories of racial superiority, the Soviets and their communist ideologies, and most recently, America and her democratic internationalism, for centuries, those with superior military and economic powers always forced their philosophies upon the weak. And as they also dominated the education of the ruling elites and control of media across the world, such great powers, at their height of power, managed to affect public opinions in their favor on a global scale. However, even as American superpower continue to follow such a trend in the post-Cold War era, the emergence of so-called "non-state actors," especially in the Middle East, is slowly changing how people perceive the right and wrong. First came the truly ironic instance of Egyptians using that "t...