Years of Poems and Spirits

Started this blog about five years ago. Now it is slowing down so much I wonder whether it is worthwhile to keep it.

Haven’t read much at all for almost a year now. Life changed since I started at MF: turning from contemplative to active in a very short span.

The startup experience was fun. The downside of it was that some people, myself included, coming in thinking they have a larger role to play. It is true and good but could play out silly at times. And because it is a new business with a lot risk, some times it attracts people with substandard qualities, such as AT who is plainly not cut out for his position.

Yet I never felt so confident about my own ability after a year of intense work, and seeing my predictions come to pass and being proven right repeatedly. In some ways, it is as if MF was my lab.

So now I have decided to go solo, it is a really strange feeling. Call it leap of faith but for a while, it seems like I have lost all points of reference. There is no resume any more. There is no “whatever department” where you can throw a task to. But right now, I am still enjoying the roller coaster. The ugly triumph is still far away.

There are still some New Yorker articles worth noting. That is the only life line nowadays. The last several years of “exotic” reading is almost a memory. Now back to the highschool sweetheart.

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?