Years of Poems and Spirits

HK: human congee, the bookstore guy, meeting GQ, BD story, evening on the beach, football and dinner

GD: place names, Jin (泾), Cao (漕), Bang (浜) in Wu, Cantonese dialect (氹 Dang4)

Macau: Da San Ba Pai Fang, the island name, bastardization

SH: road signs, Pete, expat life, bars, the Expo, “I shit in a hole”

Milton Friedman money mischief, examples of inflation and politics, questions about fiscal policy and high-power money, fed regulating m supply vs int. rate

HZ: resort during a major holiday. Rained in in Tao Guang Si. Restoration of the temples, lack of stories. Staying in a hotel, worried about being spied on

SH: family tension, failed 15 year project, global financial center building, open hostility toward Japanese, dusty view of shanghai

Hai Yan – peasant’s apartment

Hai Ning/Yan Guan/Xia Shi – pi pa, Qing history, fight against flooding, hero worship, hai wang temple, wang guowei old house, his view of acquiring knowledge

Xu Zhimo: a pampered life

Qian Tang wave: spectacular

misc: how difficult it is to plan anything in China today. road sign, map, asking for direction on the road

Google research

Where I started this blog

Two weeks passed and I still remember everything I meant to say behind those hints. Do I still need to write anything down after all? Somethings are worth writing down. For others? Maybe those short handed keywords suffice.

Waiting for my flight to HK in Vancouver.

Arrived in late afternoon on a small propeller. Passengers had to walk a long way to get to the Custom. I took a wrong turn and found myself alone in a long hall way. The northern sun lingered low, casting a long shadow of everything. The walls are dressed with washed-out pictures of panoramic views of landmarks in Canada.

I felt like being transported back to a day 20 years ago when I first landed in the States. Forgot where it was, but it was an airport, also in a long walk way. I bet there were plenty of people around me yet I didn’t see anyone. It was the building, the white wall and faded beauty–the overall strange environ–that had all my attention. I felt alone too, perhaps because I came to the States almost naked. The hope and anxiety was intoxicating. I was only aware of myself.

Now that I have fewer dreams, a lot less hair but much more trepidation of the people around me, it takes an empty hallway to bring myself back to my own consciousness.

It has been fun. If I had to live the past twenty years again, I doubt I’d live any more differently, except I’d have lived more intensely. I always hated a banal life and it only deepens as I age. The adrenaline rush twenty year ago is still intoxicating today.

The last year has been intense. I started with MF with high hopes. Although it is apparent now that things will not work out, I never felt so close to action before.  Think back a few more years, other than a few month in business school and the torturous last lag of Jackson School, it was intense too.

But I have yet to create something. The ability to create is a gift: some have it, some don’t.  It is not just the ability to envision things, but also to be able to execute.

At this age, I think I have a deeper vision of the world than most. Yet, I tried but failed to materialize the vision, at least, into some kind of academic achievement.

In one of Sara C’s class, one of the girls wrote a paper on woman’s education in SE Asia or something. I knew it was a “machine” paper, a work without a soul. Yet it was a creation. She was able to see something in the web of data, and saw a market for her argument. I bet writing came naturally after.

Similar enlightenment didn’t come to me until much later, after much more agony. I did see “something” but wasn’t convinced (and now am convinced not) that there was a market for it. In the end, much of my labor came to nothing.

Now I am on the cusp of trying again in another field. Would it work this time?

Read an article on the New Yorker about the pending anointment of the first female bishop in Anglican Church. The resentment of women among some Brits is just unbelievable. I would thought of it as some kind of shock journalism had it NOT been printed on the New Yorker.

One man said something like, “Can you imagine the anger in me, if I had to kneel before a bishop, knowing there is a female body behind the robe?” It is just plain astonishing.

I wouldn’t have cared as much had it came out of the mouth of a priest in Alabama. But the English has the oldest Democracy, one that is closest to the Platonic form. It has given the world some of the greatest liberal thinkers like Darwin, Burke, Hume, J.S. Mills and so on. Yet till this day, such devilish sentiment is strong enough to counter natural progression. It really shake to the core my belief in man’s ability (and the desire) to transcend himself.

The Greek debt crisis – had an interesting exchange with Debra G. I didn’t think EU will drop Greek after all. She stated the standard economist line: too much unchecked government spending. We should learned the lesson and rein in deficit.

I think she, like many economists, missed the political aspect of it all. To dig deeper, hers is the same “Economic Man” argument. But how to dispense wealth, in the end, is as socio-political as it is about economics.

The Greeks chose a collective life style. They are paying for its irrational consequence. Yet such a life style was hardly “wrong” to them. The economist may start a game of death watch. But even after a spectacular crash, people still live. As long as they are not wiped out and took the polity with them, it is hard to envision they suddenly change their life style just because of this one event.

And the political calculation may be enough to keep the Greeks in the euro zone. After all, euro is more than a widely pegged Deutsch mark: it is a statement of a political desire of cohabitation. The fact it was born in the first place was a shock to me. It is still very difficult to comprehend the collective resolve behind the decision till this very day.

I asked Debra whether it is possible that the desire to keep a favorable exchange rate may be a good enough excuse to keep Greece inside euro zone. She hasn’t replied yet.

Lady Gaga: mesmerized by her “Bad Romance”. I seldom paid attention to pop artist, but am totally taken by her. I have watched the video four times now. Every time I felt a surge of energy and excitement.

Her performance has a psychotic element that is hard to describe. I heard she used to do hard drugs, maybe that is why the imaginary is very hallucinative. Yet the video is a fairly cohesive story: the expressions of desire, suffering, revenge and dark humor are well harmonized.

At the end of the day, creativity is the most seductive element of human communication. We clamor for that more than for anything else.

Someone should tell that to the Chinese … haha