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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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Coming soon:

- Tokyo trip photo essay
- J-drama: Hagetaka (Japanese private equity drama), Edison no Haha and Juken no Kamisama (Japanese education system)
- 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

James Zumwalt, Director of the Office of Japanese Affairs at the State Department came to Columbia to give us an update on US-Japan relations, hosted by Robert Immerman-sensei at the Weatherhead Institute. He was speaking on the record, so it wasn’t really all that exciting, but there were a few gems I took away.

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Joel Wit, a fellow at the Center for Korean Research at Weatherhead, gave a presentation on his February “Journey to Yongbyon” (North Korean nuclear plant) with an international assessment team. It was hosted by Charles Armstrong at CKR, and Samuel Kim was there too - for a guy who’s retired he sure hangs around his old office a lot. Some interesting takeaways:

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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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Thanks to the scholars program, I was able to see two Broadway shows: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the Lion King.

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Chris Hill, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and the head of the US delegation to the six party talks was invited to Columbia by WEAI to talk. I was not the only undergraduate present, but the room was largely graduate students and press. I sat in between mainland Chinese graduate students and this lady from a Taiwanese wire service. There were five or six television cameras at the back.

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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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