On The Move…

The big Christmas to New Year’s holiday season is barely over and marketing has already shifted gears to focus on the next big date: Feb 14.  Of course, this year that’s both Valentine’s Day and also the first day of the lunar new year, so it’s big.

Today at 10pm, after an entire day of almost no food, I speed-walked a good mile to the nearest not-so-nearby McDonald’s and ordered a Mega Prosperity Burger upsized meal (and various other things, but we can leave that aside for now).  It’s a giant, double-beef-patty long sandwich with black pepper sauce and fresh onions, but that’s not the point.  The point is that it’s a Chinese/Lunar New Year offering that’s been launched even as Starbucks is still serving special holiday treats and I saw maintenance workers just starting to take down the boughs of faux holly in the mall.

And then yesterday I bought my first Louis Vuitton trinket of 2010, an adorable and probably utterly impractical coin purse/clutch shaped like a chicken!!  It’s part of the new Animaux collection that’s apparently meant to commemorate Valentine’s Day… and the collection was launched worldwide on 1 Jan 2010.

Source: ilvoelv.com

Isn’t it fantastic??  I *heart* hens!  Actually, there’s a more attractive “songbird” version in a lovely blue colour, but I had to get the chicken… of course!!  The LV website hilariously tries to justify this piece of frivolousness (after all, it’s based on toy animals that the Vuitton family used to make, supposedly) based on it’s practicality.  First of all, it’s called a “Bird Clutch”, as if it has any possibility of serving as an evening clutch bag – this is an item that would be hard pressed to hold a box of tic tacs, no joke…

From the LV website:

Inspired by the wooden toys from the 1950s found in our archives, the Bird Clutch is a playful design in glossy Monogram Vernis leather. A delightful gift idea as either a coin purse or a bag charm.

Size: 4.9″ x 4.5″ x 0.4″

-Large capacity for coins
-Room for several credit cards
-Golden brass chain to hook the coin purse to a D-ring
-Foam under patent leather for extra softness

PRODUCT ID: M91406

——–

Let me state for the record that I just tried, and not even one single standard sized credit card will fit in this “clutch”…  but I still love it!  And I guess many other people agree with me, because the hen is already out of stock online (on Jan 3), while the songbird is still available.

——–

In the past three days I’ve just about finished three books, so we’re off to a good start, at least.  And in three totally different genres too – a light-hearted breezy read about the world of fashion by a fashion journalist (The Meaning of Sunglasses), a pensive/sombre novella by Kazuo Ishiguro (A Pale View of Hills), and hopefully tonight I will wrap on the thoughtful critique of Harvard by former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 (Excellence Without a Soul).

Reading the latter has really made me yearn anew for years past.  Or perhaps it’s just the comfortably fuzzy embrace of rosy nostalgia.

It’s been a little too long, I know.  Hopefully it’s a skill not easily blunted by disuse. 

Randomly, at today’s case kick-off meeting I noticed the date and realised it’s been exactly one year since I started at this job.  One year ago today I was a fresh new intern, and today it’s come full-circle and we have two fresh new interns on my case.  I’m even working with the same manager again. 

How to sum up an entire year gone by in a flash?   

Travel-wise, in the last 12 months I’ve travelled for work to Cape Cod (for training) and Bali (for office retreat) and also to Malaysia, Vietnam, India and Nigeria (all for cases).  I took a couple of vacations both brief (Hong Kong, Bangkok, Malaysia) and longer (back to the US).  I’ve worked on about 5 cases for 4 clients (and starting on my 6th case). 

Pet-wise, I now have a pretty full-grown Puff Puff and his two erstwhile companions.  Yay fluffies! 🙂 

— 

Earlier this week, a returning partner meeting me for the first time said, “I look at Jason, and they seem to be getting younger and younger.”  I thought that was funny, since I’m among the oldest of my class here. 

— 

I wanted to blog about the amount of attention that’s suddenly (re-)emerged about Harvard grads being lured into consulting and finance jobs, almost by default, and often to the detriment of more thoughtful, more ultimately fulfilling choices.  Aside from all the media attention, here in the office we’ve had several sessions where we’ve been exhorted by senior managers (and an alumna) to figure out what our personal vision is, our conception of personal success.  It’s hard not to be provoked to thought, and to yearn for that firm sense of personal direction.  But yearning is not the same as figuring it out, to committing to a plan or a path, with all the attendant risks and investment. 

As such, it’s pretty timely that the flavour of the day at Harvard (and elsewhere) is something along the lines of, “where have all the dreams gone?” 

The New York Times: “Big Paycheck or Service? Students Are Put to Test”
The Chronicle of Higher Education: “The Big Paycheck”
President Faust’s Baccalaureate Address 2008 – the one that started it all

—

Ok, it’s pretty late now, and I’m still in the office.  This entry took nearly an hour to write (?!)  Maybe it is a skill that gets rusty.

So… I’m currently in a Hanoi hotel, gaping in disbelief at the TV, which I’ve turned on for the first time in three days in the hopes of finding FTV.  Instead, I’ve chanced upon a National Geographic documentary called “Wild S-x” that made me gasp.  Really, my inner prude is thoroughly shocked!  They’ve covered, and very explicitly descibed (along with suggestive background music) the notable practices of about three dozen species, including Bonobo monkeys, snails and sea hares.  The wry narrator has used lines  like “writhing”, “giving new meaning to the phrase ‘swinging in the trees'” and “shocking climax”.  Ugh. 

—

Yes, so I’m in Vietnam and excitingly it’s my first visit here.  The catch is that I’m working on a case, so I’ve been running about non-stop doing interviews and checking-out price lists.  I’m not complaining though, although everything seems like a health hazard: the second-hand smoke, the hectic motorcycle traffic, the industry I’m investigating…

I want to go see the water-puppet show!  Apparently it’s a must-see, surprising and intriuging.  Maybe tomorrow, after we done the last of our planned interviews and site-visits.

Whew, I need to get some sleep.

—

I finished Freud’s Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious as well as Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic and Baby this past week, and I’m fairly proud of myself of actually getting some reading in.  Now all I need to do is squeeze in a few more cultural activities and I’ll be a semblance of my old self 🙂  Although honestly who knows what I was thinking when I imagined that I might get to attend the opera or ballet at the Opera (directly opposite the hotel, I can see it from my window)??  Already I’m grateful that we even got to drive past Ho Chi Minh’s masoleum earlier while hurrying from one late-evening interview to another.

The pre-war architecture is beautiful, and I’m finding the city quite romantic and very picturesque, perhaps aided by the unsually chilly weather (I should have brought fluffier winter-wear!), and my admittedly selective vision and strong imagination.  I keep viewing everything through the hazy lens of a cinematographer dreaming about Indochine.  All of which I can easily see as perverse and astheticism of the worst sort (“ah, what charmingly decrepit alleys and crumbling French Colonial villas!”).

I’m thinking I must pick up a few glazed dishes and maybe a silk lantern or two while I’m here.

—

The food here’s been pretty good.  I’ve only had the pho at the Hilton Opera Hanoi and I like it.  For restaurants I recommend Wild Lotus, Opera Club, Vine and Wild Rice (whose decor I’m in love with).  For bars and clubs I like Ibox (sp?), and Chic Mambo (more a cafe), as well as Funky Monkey.   For hotels definitely stay at the Sofitel Metropole Hanoi (the historic Opera wing is fantastic).

—

I wanted to talk about nostalgia, and how nice its been to chat with people from college (K, S, R, and E), as well as visits by Kevin and Eric etc. etc.  Maybe next time.

—

I have one fluffy now.  I call it “Puff Puff”…  perhaps I’ll say its name is “Puffin”, as inspired by Louis.  Puff-puff!!  I miss my fluffy pet.

We’ve been staying at a lovely house in Hyannis this past week, spending the kind of relaxing but constant-activity vacation that results from being the only designated driver in the family.  We’ve been to Salem and the MFA, to Martha’s Vineyard and the beach, and tomorrow enroute to JFK we’ll be making a last shopping-stop at the ever-incredible Woodbury Common.  We’ve had good food and taken fun pictures, and I’ve said various unwilling personal goodbyes to places and memories and habits and people.

I leave on Saturday night on the direct EWR-SIN flight.

—

PS: Pictures to come, perhaps when I regain internet and computer access next week.
PPS: Jo and XY, I’ve been meaning to respond to your messages, but have been really tied up and infrequently online…  so sorry!  I’ll be back in Singapore in just 48 hours.

—

Just because it should be recorded – senior move out was pretty much as bad, if not worse than The Great Move-Out Disaster of 2006, if that’s possible.  The hallways and courtyards of Quincy (and probably every other House) bore an eerie resemblance to the set of a disaster movie or urban refugee camp setting…  furniture, clothes, documents, food and luggage were strewn, abandoned and forlorn, as far as the eye could see.  Theft and looting felt rampant.  It wasn’t a happy place to be at all.

Yes, there was Bill Clinton yesterday, and Bill Gates today, and honors and ceremonies and prayers and cheering and parties and toasts and family and hugs and pictures and perfect weather…

—

There should be more weeping, that’s my feeling about all this. 

Yes, it’s a jubilant, joyful, blessed, exciting, hopeful, inspiring, beautiful, precious time, but it’s also a time of ghosts, of memories, of finality, of fleeting youth, of loss and separation.  To weep seems to be the only appropriate response.  Weep for joy, weep in relief, weep in exhaustion, weep in mourning, weep in gratitude.  Weep for the bittersweet tang of unrealized relationships, forgotten dreams and missed opportunities.  Weep for the painfully beautiful metamorphosis of nebulous possibilities into sharpened minds, coherent personalities, and recognizable individuals.  Let the tears of rejoicing and anxiety and disbelief comingle and stream freely down in respectful acknowledgement for the kindness of time, of others, and of God. 

What else can we do but weep for the ghosts that we will add to the multitudes already wandering the hallways of the buildings we loved and the dining halls where we ate and the libraries where we worked?  The accumulation of emotions and energy and effort that we have expended here over the years echo ever and only louder and more poignantly as our rooms become empty, and we violently, unceremoniously, and even unwillingly erase the physical evidence of our time here.  Every bare shelf and abandoned bed starkly attests to the existence of their previous owners.  And these owners no longer exist – where is that boy that worried about a midterm grade, or that girl that threw everything into her student group?  We will be different tomorrow, we have no choice, and the future promises so much.  How can we not weep?  There should be much more weeping.

—

Weep, and you will know then that in some small way, perhaps without noticing or even acquiescing, in this place and with these people you encountered the mystery and meaning of life.

I just got back from the Senior Soirée, which was beautiful in the rain, and I’m currently feeling deliriously wobbly.  Not because I had anything to drink (I stuck to Sprite), but because I’ve had so little to eat today. 

Emily and I were going to have lunch at Wagamama, which would have been a big meal, but it turned out we were there an hour before it opened for lunch at noon, so we went into Fanueil Hall instead, where I had a cookie and a bowl of chicken vegetable soup that I didn’t finish because it wasn’t very good.  Then after our visit to the precious-jewelry-box-like Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (a must-see!  Amazing!), I promptly took a nap until the Senior Soirée was already well underway (and I had missed all the pre-party receptions and get-togethers).

So essentially in the last twelve hours I’ve eaten two slices of brownie and had two cups of soda, all at the soirée.  That’s why I’m feeling wobbly.

Thank goodness Andrew has a huge box of barbeque pork jerky in the fridge and substantial leftovers from his dinner at Grendel’s 🙂

—

In six hours I must leave to drive to New York… to pick up my family from JFK!!  🙂

No time to blog now.  Must run to dry-cleaners.

Family arrives on Monday in New York for Commencement week.

Las Vegas trip last week was very fun.  Won money, ate good food (buffets!), saw Jenny McCarthy (at a club) and Celine Dion (wow!).  But fell very sick with cold I can’t seem to shake.  Still coughing now.

Still don’t want to graduate, but completely resigned now.

Senior trip to Six Flags was…  fun?  Yes, it was.

More later.

That’s it.  I took my last final exam for my last college class today.  And of course it had to be, erm, Ec1010b (ugh), and of course the exam was almost inconceivably long and hard.  I mean it was literally almost inconceivable – during the exam I wondered a couple of times if I had somehow become drugged or affected by heatstroke (it was about as hot as Singapore today – high 80s) because everytime I looked up it seemed 35 minutes had passed and I had only completed three points worth of questions despite working as quickly as possible.  This was a problem because there were 180 points on the three-hour exam, i.e. you had to work at a rate of one point per minute to finish in time.  In the end I completed the first 30 points in 90 minutes and the last 100 points in 40 minutes.  Awful.

But it doesn’t matter anymore.

🙂

—

I’ve been reflecting a lot about my Harvard experience, unsurprisingly, to fill out the many various surveys and end-of-course evaluations that accompany graduating college here, and also in preparation for Experiences, for the admissions office tours and other related projects.  I’ve already said all the harsh, critical things I’ve wanted to express about my academic, social, extracurricular, advising and residential experience (lots of appreciation to the people who listened to my rants), so I shall not repeat them.  But it must be remembered that in the end I am overwhelmingly happy, and grateful, and very, very sad to leave. 

I remember Jeff telling me last year about how he cried before we left on Tour, and now I think I will cry too.  Even just typing that makes me a little tearful. 

Ryan and I have been indulging in so much nostalgia recently.  Every day is the last day now, every time is the last time now.  The last time we’ll work HUCEP, the last time we’ll turn in blue books, the last time we’ll use Board Plus.  It’s a little heart-wrenching to think about, which may be partly why we don’t think about it much and usually don’t remember.  But then we do, and it’s a little blow. 

The last chance to say goodbye to the underclassmen, the last opportunity to take pictures, the last access to that favorite professor’s office hours…

—

Right now I’m finishing up my last two CUE-guide course evaluations, and I’m writing the most glowing praise I can come up with for this particular class. 

For the question “Would you recommend this class to other students, and why?”  I indicated the most positive possible response: “recommend with enthusiasm”, and then wrote in the reason:

Professor L. is one of the best professors at Harvard, no question.  She is brilliant and willing to share her wealth of scholarship and incredibly rich first-hand knowledge, yet also wonderfully down-to-earth, irrepressibly curious and eager to hear about new ideas and technology.  Professor L. is warm and interested in students and genuinely concerned with gently but firmly pushing them towards excellence in this class and all other areas of their lives.  Anyone who has the privilege of taking any class with her is blessed, and will likely remember the class as one of the most motivating, intellectually invigorating, relevant one they’ve taken.  This is what all Harvard courses should be like, so perhaps you shouldn’t take this if you don’t want most of your other classes to pale in comparison.

And then to the prompt “Please comment on this person’s teaching”, I write: 

Superb.  Almost beyond superlatives; the quality of Professor L.’s teaching is matched by only a very small, precious group of professors at Harvard or anywhere, I imagine.  What more can I say to laud her ability to put students at ease and make them feel engaged and valued despite her intimidating intellect plus her daunting scholarly AND noble (humanitarian) accomplishments?  I have never encountered such a thoughtfully and successfully designed seminar – one proof was that we never wanted to end discussions on time, and I wouldn’t be able to decide which sessions were most highly anticipated, useful or generally enjoyed, those where Professor L. lectured, those where invited guests spoke or those where fellow students presented.  Professor L.’s leadership of the class must be credited for this exceptional learning experience with quite literally never a dull moment.  I will stop only because I imagine my praise will start to be undermined by seeming to be embarrassingly effusive and hyperbolic.  But I stand by what I’ve written as my accurate and well-considered opinion.

I *heart* my professors.  Can you tell?

It seems so unreal.  The end of the semester (in just 3 days!) will mark the end of my college career.

I feel as if I’m wasting time not thinking carefully about what I should be doing and people I should be spending time with before the opportunity slips away forever.  Already lots of underclassmen have completed their final exams, moved out and taken off to start their summer vacations, which means I won’t get to say goodbye to them.

But the truth is I don’t really know how to say goodbye to this place.  Will these four years worth of relationships and experiences all turn into a distant, hazy memory of a mirage in the years after I leave?  I don’t know, and not knowing is also scary.

I’m no longer very scared, in truth; I suppose I’ve reconciled myself to the inevitable, and I also feel some excitement for the dim promises of the future.  I’m tired of trying hard, so I’m just going to relax for a while, and see where God takes me.

—

 
Achim Steiner, the new Executive Director of the UNEP spoke at the JFK Jr. Forum at the Kennedy School earlier this month (May 8th).  He is outrageously only the second speaker I’ve ever seen at this public forum, which hosts several speakers a week, from former Iran President Khatami to the current Director of the FBI to Queen Rania of Jordan.

Can you believe this was my first time at Fenway Park? Ryan was very good about explaining what was happening – the Sox trashed the Baltimore Orioles (May 12) 🙂 

—

PS: I got my thesis comments and final grade today.  Meh.  I thank God for the (emotional) damage control.

PPS: I got a blood titre drawn today to check if my previous Hep B immunization worked.  And I managed to pass out.  Huh?!  I will declare that I am not consciously afraid of needles or blood.  I’ve also felt faint before when having blood drawn, but this was my first full-out loss of consciousness.  Very odd.  When I woke up I didn’t realise I had fainted until I discovered that I was in a different part of the room in a different (reverse reclined) chair that I must have been carried into.  I didn’t even think to ask how long I’d been out.

And just because I think I might never have time to blog about the past weekend’s flurry of activity (some 700 miles of driving around NYC, Boston and Cape Cod, only three-hour naps on either end, Dins and Din alums, my first Red Sox game at Fenway Park, the SIAMA end-of-year dinner), I feel compelled to record that I saw Terence in NYC!  It was a wonderful coincidence that Terence had flown in from Stanford that morning and that I happened to be (very briefly) in the city as well for Dins.

Catching up with Terence (who was very nice about having to fight jetlag and general fatigue at the end of a loooong day) was really, really nice.