Ola Brazil!

Just arrived in Rio de Janeiro! - a flight that took 15 hours from New York. (& 48 hours for my poor sister) ^_^ Can't wait to check out more places with our CS ambassador Jordan! :-) Will be here for the next week or so - might not get much chance to blog but will do asap!

E ai Brazil!

New York - growing on me

Am in the Big Apple right now, and am actually liking it for the first time in my life.

I remembered the first time I set foot in the Land of Dreams. I hadn't even turned 21. That feeling of gazing at the behemoth skycrapers, taking in air that blended exhaust and pretzels, being grateful to Life/ God/ My parents..it's hard to forget. A 20 year old country bumpkin in the (then) heart of the financial world - an experience that got a Marketing major to pursue Finance the very next semester.

But as time went by, I felt like there was not much to New York. The hype and glitz that people associated so much with was only on 1 street (42nd street/ Times Square) - and that was definitely not representative of the poverty and crime that lurked in many corners of the city. So I didn't like it. I felt that the city lacked character.

Now that I'm back again, 5 years later, I can begin to appreciate the beauty of New York. Maybe that's also the beauty of perspectives and time. I learned again that it's not a place that makes me tick, but the people that makes the place beat.

This time round, I met my cousin who has moved to New York in pursuit of his dreams as a hairstylist. I helped him move into his nest in SoHo, and convinced him to allow me to paint his room black (we converted that into a walk-in wardrobe). :)


But what was perhaps most significant in my liking of New York was that I got to hang out almost daily with my old team from my previous company who happened to be here for business too. How surreal right? :) Just 1 year ago, I was part of this team evaluating leveraged loan opportunities in the USA... Now I'm the outsider.

But it's almost refreshing and really great to be able to hangout with them as friends and buddies, not as colleagues and superiors. Life is indeed queer with its twists and turns, as many of us sometimes learn.

Happy 1 year to me!

Aug 1, 2007 - started my full-time professional work life, and
Aug 1, 2008 - tendered my resignation and begun serving 2 months' notice
Sept 11, 2008 - finished serving notice after having worked 1 year, 1 month, 1 day
Sept 12, 2008 - arrived in USA
Oct 13, 2008 - obtained social security # and started work in the USA
Oct 14, 2009 - happy one year! (wow...fast...!)

Dawned upon me in a casual conversation today (Oct 14) that it's been 1 year since I worked in the States. Wow, it's hardly believable that time really went by so fast! 1 more year to go...and then what?

Grrrrrowwwwwling like a grouchy grinch!

I am seldom upset-upset but today I got really pissed by uber bad service (bad = 2 chinese waitresses staring at u eat from 3 steps away to pressure u to eat fast n get out of their restaurant, failing to serve my shrimp appetiser on my set menu n claiming that it doesn't exist (!!!), giving me melted ice cream & serving it before I even had my main course) at a crappy japanese restaurant...omg, it was horrendously lousy food that's worse than take-out, and at 8x the price! -_-'''



That aside, I was totally flabbergasted by the new Kindle. I bought mine just under 2 months ago without having used it and now the new one boasts international downloads (!!!) ...i.e. you will be able to download books even when you're out of the USA. Talk about the woes of technology... I honestly don't hanker after the latest stuff, but this function is -really- important to me given how I'll be bouncing from one country to the next every 4 months. :((

Alone but not lonely

While recruiting at Brown & Wesleyan over the past 2 days, much of the questions I have received had to do with "What is the greatest challenge of joining this global rotation program?" My response has to do with 2 things: 1. A love for uncertainty (not just threshold, because that would collapse at some point given all the stress) and 2. Emotional resilience.

Perhaps one of the greatest things about living alone in the USA in the past year is managing loneliness. Many times, I remind myself that I'm alone but not lonely. But now, I'm sipping Cinnamon + mint expresso in a cafe with a pretty cheesecake brownie (sinful indulgences) by Middletown (a total 鸟不生蛋的地方) and feeling like it's pure torture that I have no one to share my experiences with. This is fundamentally different from an overseas internship or posting where you often have co-workers, or friends or even a 4 year overseas education where there's college mates and room mates.

Can I truly be alone and not lonely? I'm not confident the answer is Yes all of the times. Not good, not bad - just an observation through this journey of life.

Niagara - Thundering Waters

Niagara - the indian name for "Thundering Waters" - today, I heard it before I even saw it. It has been a power-packed 2 days where I managed to do the below: (A, B, C, D) in the past 2 days. (PY darling!! - wished u were still in Boston...!!) I'm in D, Providence now and will be going to E, Connecticut before spending the weekend in F (New York) as part of the recruiting team at Brown and Wesleyan University, respectively..

I took the chance to go to 1000 Islands, which has 1875 islands that dot Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River encompassing communities on both sides of the US and Canada border. The 1000 islands were formed almost 12,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. This is my first trip where I didn't read and plan in advance and it's actually pretty cathartic after months of slogging away on my company review - PetSmart.

In all honesty, I was never uber interested in seeing Niagara Falls given how it's relatively inaccessible (9 hours drive from Boston/ NYC) + I was gg to be alone + the crazy logistics of trying to do it in 2 days from Los Angeles + I didn't think there's anything -really- spectacular about waterfalls..But I'm so grateful the timings worked out and I went! - Maybe there's really some truth in the Law of Numbers: 14million tourists annually can't be wrong!

Niagara Falls was actually rather spectacular - great muscular bands of water arch over the cliff like liquid glass. There are dozens of taller waterfalls in the world, but in terms of sheer volume Niagara Falls are unbeatable: more than a million bathtubs of water plummet over the edge every second.



I took the famous Maid of the Mist boat where I had the opportunity to sail right up the base of all three falls, with the mist spraying up in my face. I also climbed a path that brought me right up to the side of the falls and got completely drenched.



Am reading the following book, from which I'm deriving much joy. Gosh, I really have some introspective thinking to do - particularly after how the vacation at Niagara made me realize humans aren't built to spend 8 hours a day for 20 years stuck at a desk...

What is this?

My bosom buddy just returned to London today after having visited for 20 days, and returning home alone felt really odd/ empty. There were, however, 2 'surprises' outside my door that almost spiced things up a little:

I recognized the first one - 18 pounds of commitment, pain and hopefully, reward.

But I didn't recognize the 2nd one: which I walked by unknowingly and shocked the life out of me. It seemed pretty gentle though (and didn't seem to mind me snapping flashing photos of it) Does anybody know what this animal is?? It's at times like this that I wished Google would develop some form of photo identification search :)

On an aside note, I just got the Snow Leopard OS installed onto my macbook and am pleasantly surprised to see that it has freed up almost 8GB of space with a smaller OS footprint! Cool cool... :)

Rising to the level of incompetence

The Peter Principle... hm, very interesting, never heard of this one. But the idea of humans rising to their level of incompetence actually has some truth in it.

Sept 12 - I'm ONE in the Land of Dreams!

When I first took up my current job, I took it to lose myself, and then, to find myself. To open my heart and eyes and learn more about the world than newspapers and packed trips can accommodate. We need sometimes, to escape into open solitude, into the unknowing, run into hazards - in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship and shake up our complacencies. I like that people cannot put a name or a tag to me, and have the opportunity to come into contact with more essential parts of myself.

Part of the enjoyment comes in finding fun in ordinary things, and truly discovering - not in seeing new places but in seeing with new eyes. The past year has taught me not to get answers, but to ask better questions. It has given me the chance to be transnational - able to adapt anywhere, used to being outsiders everywhere and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder. The most valuable Pacifics we explore will always be the vast expanses within us. The year past has brought me to a heightened state of awareness, in which I am hopefully more mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to transformed.

The freedom and joy of traveling in the midst of work has been phenomenal. If a diploma can famously be a passport to a journey through hard realism, a passport can be a diploma for a crash course in cultural relativism. As what Santayana said, "There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar; it keeps the mind nimble; it kills prejudice, and it fosters humour." I know I have evolved to be a better person with a stronger character yet a lighter heart in the past year in the USA. I hope to keep this going - even when I eventually, hopefully get back home. :)

On an aside note, my sister is here, along with Clone! :p We celebrated their visit, along with my 1 year in the USA (which was just purely coincidental) with an evening at the HOLLYWOOD BOWL. I love the bowl! Tonight's concert had guest star Bebel Gilberto (one of my fave. Bossa Nova singers), alongside the LA Philharmonic Orchestra and eye-popping Samba dancers. It truly went beyond what I expected, with even a spectacular firework finale as part of the concert "Firework Finale - Blame it on Rio"!!! What good fun, considering we're going to Brazil - Rio in a month's time! Talk about the little things in life that come so nicely together.. ^_^ (Paiseh, meant to edit the video but no time for iMovie now, so pardon my crazy cheers...u got to see the finale at the end..the fireworks are REALLY amazing!)

The power of Focus & Energy

Buddy & Xiaomeimei left today. I'm missing them already. So much to do, so little time, so many distractions, all rolled up in a period of bad/tight timing. I need to focus so badly. A holiday should be a rather simple affair; it can be so draining when it ends up being a list of justifications and plenty of moving parts. Speaking of which, I read this article in the Harvard Business Review on "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time" which I thought was pretty interesting.

The core problem with working longer hours is that time is a finite resource. Energy is a different story. Defined in physics as the capacity to work, energy comes from four main wellsprings in human beings: the body, emotions, mind, and spirit. In each, energy can be systematically expanded and regularly renewed by establishing specific behaviors that are intentionally practiced and precisely scheduled, with the goal of making them unconscious and automatic. I was reminded of a time in the past when I experienced how interacting with someone really drained the energy out of me even though our conversation hardly lasted 5 minutes. It was so unbelievable, I made it a point to reflect on that. So I really believe in this, we have to learn to manage our energy, not our time. :)

On an aside note, I've been appreciating how God creates opportunities for us in every day life. The way in which things we think are less than ideal do work out beautifully fine like a clockwork mechanism in His time. Really amazing when we get to reflect upon His blessings in retrospect and go "Uh-huh! NOW I know why it happened!" :p