Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

What do you think of when you hear the word "prostitute"? What about "a Russian bodyguard"? The chance is that the former is imagined as a cunning power player, using sex to get money, information, and whatever resources they need to get out of the dire, impoverished environment that they are in. The latter is the opposite, a mindless brute who follows the orders of the rich boss, bestowing violence upon enemies without a hint of remorse or compassion. Thanks to the mainstream media, particularly the depiction of Hollywood movies, accepting such stereotypes has almost in itself become a social norm.

I was casually strolling through the Diwali celebrations of central London. It was 2011, and I was a master's student with little incentive to do beyond the bare minimum to secure my graduation. Rather than burying myself in books, I took short journeys around the city (and beyond ), seeking to understand what makes the city one of the most diverse and attractive for people worldwide. There at the celebrations, I was casually handed a red notepad, the type where each page can be individually torn off. True to the spirit of the Indian diaspora, it was a promotion for financial services provider HDFC.

Spare a thought for American election pollsters. After predicting massive victories for the Democrats in the two previous presidential elections, they again forecasted a tight election with a lead for the Democrats led by Harris. As the votes are counted, they are again proven wrong. Rather than waiting for days for ballots to be counted and then recounted to ensure that slim margins of errors are minimized in tight races, a picture emerged of the Republicans taking a massive lead in places they should not be, most notably in Florida where Trump won by 13%.

As a traveler who is currently too occupied with work to travel much, watching a few travel vlogs helps to quench the thirst. But as I watch these vloggers' well-polished recordings of their day-to-day in far-flung parts of the world, I often cringe at the effort that went into editing. In particular, given that they spend so much time talking into the camera, splicing and reviewing the output will inevitably take repeated listening of their own voice on recordings. For someone who remembers growing up hating my own voice through anything but my own ears, that effort does not sound like a pleasant experience at all.

The American college application is quite unique. Whereas one would expect that a "good" student is defined by good grades, both over years of classwork and one-off exams, the American system demands a student to be much more. So students spend years building up a list of activities outside the classroom. From excelling in the competitive world of music, sports, and academia to the more idiosyncratic leadership initiatives to show that one can change the world, one small impact at a time, high school students should be occupied even when they are not buried in books.

As a lifelong traveler who, due to the meeting-heavy nature of my current job , is unfortunately not able to frequently head to new places, I watch travel vlogs as one way to quench that travel thirst to some degree. With the competitive vlogging landscape that is YouTube today, plenty of people, from all sorts of cultural backgrounds, dishing up their views on the same sites, both famous and mundane. While all are united in their love of travel, how they portray the places they visit, through their visual recording and verbal explanations, illustrates how travel, as a hobby and a job, is seen so differently. 

By the standards of often blank-faced  Japanese politicians, the incoming prime minister Shigeru Ishiba is certainly charismatic. Years of going on TV shows and giving media interviews, not to mention running around rural Japan to shake hands with voters have given him a folksy, joke-filled talking style more reminiscent of George W. Bush than a Japanese bureaucrat in a suit. It is no wonder that he has earned the likes of the grassroots, while attracting skepticism among his fellow politicians, even within the same party. Being different does not help in the subdued one-party democracy that is Japan.