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| Statistics, damn statistics, and the west wing. a few months ago, after a long conversation with our aacf sage, daniel the song, i concluded that happiness was to be found by starting a bakery producing the world's only "2400" cream puff. to be a part of a community and to provide tasty things to a bunch of faithful customers sounded perfect.
One night, i came home from school later than usual, and i decided that i simply did not care about the big, crazy questions anymore. does economic liberalization promote democracy? is social capital quantifiable, and if it is, does it lead to comprehensive public goods distribution? do markets function on their own, or are they a product of institutional rules and regulations? does obama have the smart "china plan"? Does foreign trade improve or immiserate the lives of the rural peasantry? do all the statistical models I look at really tell me what they say they are telling me? blah. blah. blah. I set down my book bag and left the questions on the coat rack and joined the small group of christians gathered in my living room. All I wanted to do for the rest of my life was to be among good friends. This sense of divine purpose only intensified when a host of aacf buddies descended on SF a few weeks ago, including the likes of bertina, jason, mulky, jmtang, simon, and ted. It was my kinda heaven. I'll never be thankful enough for the friends I have. there was talk about dreams, ambitions, career plans and the like, but mostly it was just shooting the breeze. My friends are truly amazing in a secular sense, but what always astounds me is their loyalty to one another and commitment to be present in each other's lives. That's it, I concluded. I did not care about the trappings that the academy could bestow on me. God, friendship, and family - there's much joy to be found in that. My mom was certainly right.
...and then I watched season 3 and 4 of the west wing, for the 7th time. I got Kim hooked on it this weekend. as I watched toby, leo, josh, and the president duke it out on the screen, fighting for tax-deductible college tuition and other liberal causes, i felt like i was being called back to a part of myself that i thought i left on the coat rack a few months ago. I remembered that at one point in time, i truly wanted to get that nice cushy tenured chair at a research uni, and I did want to go to washington to inform policy. I'll be back in DC this summer to work for the congressional-executive commission on china. it will be good, perhaps even great. but every time I think about this "cool" life, I get tired. it just takes so long. it makes me tired and frustrated. why do dreams like these stir up hope and helplessness at the same time? It just makes me want to run away. I feel like there are two parts of me that are always at odds. Community john and vision-hungry yasuda are always battling. I sort of want john to win. yet leaving all these, let's call them DC dreams, to rest unnerves me. I feel like I was built to work on asia policy. But now, so much of me resonates with the resounding hymn, "joy is to be found in your creator, not in your calling." The DC dreams don't really include Jesus all that much, if at all. I think I've always justified the ambition by citing the parable of the talents, at the cost of the powerful truth presented by martha and mary who bickered before our Lord so many centuries ago. these DC dreams are so very faraway, but the joy i find in fellowshipping with my christian cohort is so real, so very evident NOW. sometimes i wonder if the DC dreams are all but a passing, childish, and utterly foolish fancy. Could I not be happy teaching at a small liberal arts school and spending the rest of my days living in relative obscurity, but being completely known by my wife and closest friends? Isn't that good enough? Is it permissible for me to be so, so content in this other dream? And yet, even as I write this, I think about the energy and excitement of being a part of something bigger, rougher, and sexier. God remains quiet on the details. As always, I am waiting for a sign. I just don't want to go galloping off toward another dreamland that I'll never ever reach.
Daniel talks about living in some giant AACF compound. I like the idea. spending evenings talking to jase while drinking beer; making late-night kimchee/spam fried rice with eddie ahn; walking over to have the occasional cigar with jerry; gambling with albert; laughing with daniel song for hours after a light day of work; worshiping with mulky; talking shop with yian and hanging out with "fun dave;" offending somebody with ted lim; youtube-ing absurdities with CT; watching pirated dvds with jmtang; getting counseled by the quachs; and, jogging with simon chang in the mornings - fantastic. Hanging with the '07 and '08 guys would be great. Of course, it'd be awesome to have the sisters there, too. We'd have our families, and our kids could play with each other. They'd learn the bean game, and get fairly good at wii tennis. Mo could keep us posted with the new music in town. Thinking about these things makes me happy. It's not AACF-hangover. It wouldn't be college all over again. It'd be something different, and equally stupendous.
thank you my friends. as for the career stuff, blah blah blah. god has and continues to be faithful. back to statistics.
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| Perhaps the most challenging thing about dedicating yourself to scholarship is this elusive notion of praxis-theory in action. We spend hours debating the generalizability of concepts over innumerable cases, arguing that operationalization of a variable is problematic only to wind up at the same damning question: "So..what?" All day we debate these esoteric artifacts of knowledge, yet are unable to inform policy. We stand on the other side of the great "practical divide" and sneer at the lesser beings who have dedicated themselves to...writing laws and lobbying and getting elected. Most social scientists harbor a deep resentment for the politicos and leaders we study. "They're doing it all wrong," we think. "Don't they understand that there are systemic problems here?" All this talk and debate and discourse in our little graduate lounge on the top of barrows. All of us condemning, critiquing, berating, reviewing, but not much doing. Perhaps, it's the satisfaction we feel after beating a dead horse or, it might be the playful one-upmanship. Is it enough though? So, when does one make the move? The next step? The scholars who have managed to get into the "big time" have been responsible for dictatorships (Friedman and Pinochet) or economic disasters (Marx). Political assassinations have also been quite the rage (Kissinger). I'd love for a chance to get into policy. I want my work to amount to something more than a "concept that travels well." It's early yet, but we talk about these things between seminar. I used to believe that the pursuit of knowledge in and of itself was good enough. How naive. I have friends saving lives, studying for the bar, serving the needs of testy clients, while I sit at a console typing "epiphenomenal exceptionalism" and smile a bit at my clever choice of words. Is there a problem I can solve? Maybe. It usually takes a few straw men to get there. Foreign policy sounds exciting-the intrigue, the strategy. The huge responsibility and the weight of glory hanging by a thin thread. A famous legislator in Hong Kong prior to the first open city-wide elections under the British commented, "The real problem here is that you might stand a real chance of getting elected and have to do something." Three cheers to the proponents of praxis! Warm regards, the procrastinator. Now, off to study utility functions.
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| I have a friend who used to finish her reading on a friday night for a lecture on monday. Another friend would stay at the library late on saturday to finish work on his thesis. I am a harvard procrastinator. Another day went by and absolutely nothing got done. I cannot for the life of me understand why I am so inept at keeping a regular schedule. I want to be disciplined. I desire to be able to follow a plan. I do not want to have to finish my course work, publication editing, and reading all in an evening's time. My harvard friends say it's a product of going to an institution which awards those who are capable of doing the most work in as little time as possible. I love being out and about, perhaps too much. Seeing how that "moments" with friends come far and few between, I have always been the guy to leave my room whenever a fun activity beckons. I have friends who are absolute monsters, they sit down and read for hours without moving-not even trips to the bathroom. Where on earth does they learn this? Am I A.D.D.? I must figure this out. Does anyone have any concentration techniques? I am in desperate need of a guru.
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| I haven't gone to bed so happy in ages. In England, I'd often call Albert on G-talk, straining to listen in on the happy goings-on at Chandler. At Oxford there was no trash night, no one to cook for, and no reason to go out. It was a quiet, solitary existence-conducive to getting my work done but dreadfully draining on the soul. Now that I am back home in San Francisco, I can hardly find the time to be by myself- it is absolutely wonderful. Home cooked dinners and light humorous conversation with roommates and friends from church, quiet evening strolls with the neighbors, and movie nights, all confirm that God had me move back to San Francisco for a reason. Dan often says that having friends over for meals and good conversation is how he'd like to live the rest of his life- I couldn't agree more. Thank you, Lord.
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| "Good morning, small minds. You will be here for eight years." Lovely.
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