keninabu!

Recent life updates

I have not updated this blog recently because I have been extremely busy. I don't remember what my last entry was about, but since then, I have...

a) travelled to Shanghai and Kyoto for a globalization conference
While there,
- I made a number of contacts with Chinese businessmen and entrepreneurs in China, whom I am contacting about jobs
- Drank. A lot. Newly acquired a taste for Japanese sake, and am banning shochu from my life forever
- Ate. A lot. In China, in spite of the bird flu scare, we had Peking roast duck from the Shanghai branch of Quanjude, Szechuan hotpot, and the infamous Shanghai xiaolongbaozi from Nanxiang Mantou Dian (Nanxiang Bun Shop) which was amazingly juicy and tender on the inside. In Japan, I had handmade tempura udon noodles, two kaiseki meals, sushi, sukiyaki with lots of sake and fun, and supermarket strawberries which cost a bomb (580 yen for a dozen!) but tasted amazingly sweet and fragrant!
- Danced. Quite a bit. Apparently I was pretty good when I was drunk, although I can't tell if people were being serious when they told me that...
- Clubbed. Went to a nice bar in Shanghai with a pole dancer and a freaky fellow-customer who bore a disturbing resemblance to the Chinese actor Ge You in 'Farewell My Concubine' and reached out many times to grope the pole dancer. In Japan we went to a really cool club called Club Metro which was actually located inside a subway station, and played a mix of house, techno and other cool beats, all mixed by two very competent DJs.
- Missed my honey like crazy (believe it or not), and kept wishing I could call, even though I had...
- Perved. A lot, especially in Japan. Unbelievable how many stunning women there are in that country. Padraig and I basically spent our whole time holding to our jaws and pushing our eyeballs back into their sockets. But they're all so submissive to the sexism in the country, it's ridiculous.... maybe as Jason says, "I hear they are tigers in bed". Not that I care to know.

Since coming back, I have
- been adapting to the jetlag, and slept 13 hours straight on my first night
- completely tidied up my room, and especially my desk, along the lines suggested by Dave Allen in his book "Getting Things Done". I have done a similar spring-cleaning for my computer desktop. Except for the distraction from my computer, I would say my work flow is a lot smoother, and much more efficient than before.
- trying not to fall sick (still successful! -fingers crossed-)
- been making up to my honey by calling her every day and exhausting my Skype credits, but also because I really missed her while in China and Japan...
- sent out resume and cover letters to potential employers in China
- thinking carefully about what I want to do in the future
- catching up with work. Am drowning in math and dying a slow death in that course, even though we are on a very interesting topic now of matching theory and are discussing destabilizing pairs and stable marriage functions
- making up lost time in research. Basically got things sorted out with the research chief, who now doesn't think I am an idiot anymore (hell, I'm just an undergrad for now!), and things have suddenly up-tempoed as the semester is coming to an end and I am more than eager to at least get some results, having had everything short of a jumbo-jet crash landing get in the way of my research progress!
- exercising again. Now I can do 6 pullups and 42 straight situps without pause, and within one minute, which is about the basic standard required for the Army... that said, I still take 28 minutes to run three-miles, which works out to 14 minutes for a 2.4km run, which is very very VERY bad.... I can always claim the excuse that I am medically downgraded anyway, but while that might fool the medical board, it doesn't fool me inside, and I would really like to be fit.

I've been talking to the Missus much more regularly since coming back. There was a momentary disjoint when I came back, when I was super-jetlagged and very out of sorts, and there was a bit of friction there, but now alles gut und gesund. She's going to S-town for her internship, which makes me very very excited... ! I'm now looking for opportunities for work back home, even if it's not that high paying, but as long as it is decent enough for the two of us, and as long as it is interesting work, I don't mind.

I just came across a number of jobs that I will definitely try applying to, but really, I would prefer getting some sort of finance or renewable energy job. As of now, I am eyeing a job with a government agency for industrial programmes management, which entails being a liaison between industry and research groups, which sounds exactly like the kind of thing that gets me all excited...

I'm also going to try and rush a paper to submit to the World Bank writing competition, which might well be the last year I am entitled to join. Having missed the chance to participate in the Commonwealth writing competition while in JC, I sure as hell am not going to miss my chance this time...

My blog is a bit all-over the place. In addition, it doesn't really have a coherent theme, nor does it really serve any function. As of now, I have been thinking about re-engineering my blog (or creating a new one) that has a meaning to it, some sort of visualizable outcome. I'll need to do more soul-searching first before I actually embark on it.

In the meantime, work beckons.

posted by keninabu @ 11:04 PM