qui tacet consentire videtur

My winter break on campus is dedicated to essays, applications, self-study, and exercise - which I had been diligent about all summer but neglected completely during the term. Now that the dorms are empty, I have the gym all to myself, and I intend to make full use of it. Gotta get back in shape, mens sana in corpore sano and all that. Now every muscle in my body aches. But I can’t be working all the time, so to prepare for my long-awaited Tokyo adventure, I am immersing myself in a semester’s backlog of j-dramas. All k-dramas and c-dramas have been put on hold. Here’s what I’m watching:

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After my classmate who lives in Tokyo dropped the ball on me for accommodations, the cost of my holiday has shot up a few hundred dollars more, and now I have to figure out where to stay. It’s really hard to get reservations this late in the game, but I’ve narrowed it down to a few options in descending cost order. This is a classic case of optimizing various utility functions under imperfect information: I have competing interests but know absolutely nothing about how they work in Tokyo. Without narrowing it down my brain would explode.

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So it’s confirmed, I’m going to Tokyo, and they have posted the full text of the essay online if you care to read it. Although they liked my essay, they didn’t like it enough:

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My love of anime, combined with my interest in Japanese business, has finally paid off, and I might have the opportunity to visit Tokyo in January.

We would like to express our gratitude to you for submitting your essay to the JFTC Essay Competition 2007. After a strict screening of all the essays, we have selected your essay, “Gundamnomics: Transforming Corporate Japan for the Challenges of Global Capitalism” as a candidate for an award. The final result is scheduled to be announced on Friday, December 14, and the winners will be notified directly. The Awarding Ceremony and our New Year’s Reception will be held from 16:30 to 19:00 on January 9, 2008 at Hotel New Otani, Tokyo, Japan.

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