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Celebrating my arrival! (Hong Kong)

Someone somewhere has made a terrible mistake: Somehow I have been numbered among the hundred “young Chinese leaders”.

Congratulations! You have been selected as a delegate for the Dragon 100 Young Chinese Leaders Forum 2008! The Dragon 100 Young Chinese Leaders Forum 2008, will take place in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Region in Mainland China, 22-30 August 2008, where 100 delegates worldwide would register to our hotel in Hong Kong on 21 August 2008.

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Climbing a mountain with Price Waterhouse Coopers (Mt. Santis, St Gallen)

1. An incredible experience

SGS is truly the best student conference I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve been to quite a few of them. I met the most amazing people there – networking opportunities abound – including Nitin from NextBillion. Naturally Geoffrey was there charming the ladies in his bespoke suit.

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That’s a… different kind of leadership (Forbidden City, Beijing)

So I get to stay at the Marriott again:

CONGRATULATIONS! You have been accepted to the 34th Annual International Conference, “The Dynamics of Leadership: Transformation and Innovation in the 21st Century” held at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, New York City from November 22nd-25th. Out of over 1,100 applicants, you have been selected to participate in our all-expenses paid affair. The applicant pool was outstanding, with over 100 schools and 30 countries being represented. The conference will be a phenomenal experience as you now have the opportunity to meet over seventy CEOs from across the United States in small seminars and explore New York City with fellow students from all over the world. Get ready to break down Harvard Business School case studies with your peers, discuss crucial topics in politics, business, and entrepreneurship, meet recruiters from top companies, and have an overall incredible experience! To give you an idea of the types of executives you will meet, I’ve attached a list of executives who have participated in our programs over the past year.

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The to-blog list gets longer and longer:

- Tokyo trip photo essay
- St. Gallen Symposium photo essay
- J-drama: Hagetaka (private equity drama), Edison no Haha and Juken no Kamisama (education system), CHANGE (politics), Ryokiteki na Kanojo (remake of My Sassy Girl)
- Anime: Okami to Koshinryo (renaissance economics), Macross Frontier (OMG)
- Director’s screening of Blind Mountain (盲山), Dark Matter (黑暗物质)
- Broadway: Avenue Q, City Opera: Candide

Detoured to Hong Kong… (Beijing)

A month or two back, when discussing summer plans, I told my friends that I was spending my summer interning with a non-profit in Beijing to pursue a research project on microfinance in China, while traveling widely. I felt proud of myself for not following the crowd of investment bankers with their summer analyst positions in the city or in Hong Kong, squandering their precious summer days and nights (and yes, weekends too) in a cubicle in downtown Central peering through arcane Mandarin spreadsheets. And then the visa situation suddenly changed, and my carefully planned summer of productive work and exciting adventures has been frozen in purgatory.

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And loom over me like a Damoclean blade. All my sloth has come back to haunt me. I wonder if I will ever learn.

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These days I have come to accept that disappointment is a part of life and I should get used to rejection. You win some, you lose some. But it really sucks to have lost the important one.

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When a friend and I were discussing summer plans and how it seemed like everyone had some kind of financial services job except me, a part of me justified my “you don’t run with the crowd/ you find your own way” with this: it seems so selfish to focus on my personal happiness when I have a responsibility to do so much more. Like save the world. It was only later that it occurred to me that perhaps I’m the selfish one for simply pursuing my own intellectual interests, when my peers pursue lucrative careers not out of greed but a sense of responsibility to support their families in an increasingly uncertain future.

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(Shibuya, Tokyo) In our commoditized society, what is the price of friendship?

X: What do you think of Y?
Me: Sometimes I worry that Y only cares for people insofar as it advances Y’s interests. That once I have nothing to offer, our friendship will come to an end.
X: That’s funny… because Y said the exact same thing about you.

It was hard to say yes to the pretty girls who otherwise ignored me except when they wanted something: lecture notes, answers to problem sets, advice about this or that. I felt cheap for being so easily bought by a smile, but I gave in anyway. It sometimes seems like many of my so-called ‘friends’ are only interested in me because I have something to offer them.

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(Eden Center, Arlington VA - a.k.a. last remaining territory of the old South Vietnam republic) America needs more culinary diversity.

How do you define diversity? There is no logical end to diversity, since there are an infinite number of criteria by which people differ, but some definitions are more important than others in achieving some degree of proportional representation of whichever constituencies are defined. Some definitions are broadly accepted as bad or problematic definitions: ethnicity. Some definitions are difficult to employ in practice: means-tested income. Some definitions depend on the winds of fashion and political correctness: gender, sexual orientation. Some definitions are somehow very unpopular: political orientation. Some definitions are absurd in one aspect but are perfectly acceptable in another. I focus on one particular definition, which seems legitimate: diversity of worldview.

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