Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Two Chinese grad students from LSE walked into a half-empty Chinese restaurant in the middle of the equally empty London Chinatown, looking for a quick late-night meal over a casual conversation in Chinese. The restaurant has about two dozen big round tables in a bright-lit atmosphere. Three or four groups of white people were having loud conversations in English over their meals and a few drinks. The two LSE students, seemingly the only Chinese customers at that time, were shooed by the waiters speaking heavily accented English to a small square table in the poorly lit back corner of the dining, skipping past many better tables closer to the entrance. Perhaps less than a couple of minutes after sitting down, the Chinese were immediately compelled to place their orders for food and drinks. After the food arrived, the staff of the restaurant came to check on our "progress" many times, and as soon as we were done, our table was cleaned and complimentary desserts presented. ...

"I remember those days when we were just playing around in the little stream around our house...there were no pollution, no social pressures, no corruptions...sure, we were poor, but everyone was really happy because everyone was equally poor ..." Speaking with the likes of my parents' generation, spending their childhood in the pre-economic reform, pre-Cultural Revolution mainland China, these are the kind of nostalgic thoughts that are often fondly remember and recall. The younger generations, too used to being surrounded by hardly comparable materialistic wealth , quietly react to such fanciful descriptions with scoff.

On a standard Sunday afternoon, the sidewalk on the Westminster Bridge simply becomes invisible. The massive hordes of tourists, of every skin color and speaking every language under the sun, spill onto the bridge, their camera clicking away at the sights of the Big Ben and the Parliament on side, and the massive wheel that is the London Eye on the other. Peddlers dressed up as British loyalty pose for pictures with the delighted tourists, while right there on the bridge, the visitor can purchase anything from an ice cream cone to a little gamble on the which-of-the-three-boxes-has-the-ball game. Yet, such sight of London as the cosmopolitan destination of global tourism is but another five-minute stop on the self-guided walking tour of the entire city. West from the modern skyscraper district of Canary Wharf and historical heart of the the Tower Bridge and its adjacent medieval castle, to the east with the underwhelming sight of the Buckingham Palace and its changing guards, seeing...

The gap that separates a globally known superstar and the endless queue of nobodies waiting to get their shot at fame, in professional sports at least, is a matter of a few stellar performances dished out in the most unexpected way. The "unexpected" factor goes up further if the amazing performances come from those who are least expected to make those amazing performances. And for the minimally perceptive public to list those with the least likelihood to "make it big," it rarely takes more than a few stereotype-based "criteria." As far as basketball, a sport requiring physical explosiveness and agility, not to mention height, physical appearance by itself is enough to make certain predictions regarding potential success. The easiest of those "physical appearance" classification is race, by which East Asians, with statistically proven lowest average height, not to mention worst records for every sport and activity testing endurance and speed, w...

The main street of Luxembourg City looked rather deserted on a cold wintry weekend, with windchill sending temperatures down to negatives even on the Fahrenheit scale. Yet, the wealth of the tiny Western European country could not have been more evident. Luxury cars from the "normal" Mercedes, BMW, and Audi to the more flashy Lamborghini are ubiquitous, yet blending in with the old town with visual evidence of ducal glory dating from the 8th century in a perfect mix of tradition and modernity . In a continent dominated by wars among major powers, the tiny country somehow survived AND became its wealthiest... Even as tourists quickly poke fun at the description coded by UNESCO at the World Heritage-listed Luxembourg Old Town proclaiming the country to "have played significant role in European history," in terms of defining what the existence of micro-states means in the modern era, the millennium-old living example of Luxembourg is perhaps playing a very significa...

A snowy weekend in London, and the only thing that seemed to have been more exciting than some people seeing the first snow in their entire lives were the excitement brought, at least for some, the Superbowl, or finals match of the American football match, occurring halfway across the world in Indianapolis. For some, it was a time to great homesickness, missing the beers, the couches, and the screaming with childhood friends who they grew up together watching the Superbowl every year. For some, perhaps, it was a time to put behind that rusty annual routine and get on with being a more locally integrated expatriate for once... With more life experiences, one comes to see more and more aspects of it being a reflection of true dichotomy, as opposed to any sort of spectrum with many grey zones. For every football game, there is a victor and a loser; and for every country, there seems to be an increased split of those who love it and those who despise it . Gone are the days of "mid...

The idea of "feudalism," as marked by the inflexible, hierarchical, and often hereditary relationship between a wealthier and more powerful lord and his poor and submissive servants, as opposed by the foundation of modern republican nation-state, is often just as socio-cultural in nature just as it was political and economic. Yes, the overthrow of the established elite aristocratic class was a means to break their monopoly of political control and means of economic production, but what really distinguish the so-called "feudalistic" society of the middle ages and most of the modern and developed societies is just as much in the field of "common attitude" as by wealth. The definition of what constitute that "modern attitude," of course, varies from society to society. In some, the values of individual freedoms are maximized and completely decriminalized as long as the freedoms of one person does not interfere with those of others. In some, the ...