On The Move…

It’s three hours to midnight, and 2009.  Today I’m in Beijing, yesterday it was Xi’an, and three days ago it was Shanghai, with a brief day in Singapore.  In just four days I will be back in Singapore and then almost immediately back on a plane to Shanghai.  What a difference a year makes.  I can barely recall where I was last new year’s eve, other than at Zen’s house party, followed by a fun trip to The Butter Factory.  I had just finished up a long project in Malaysia, and would be staffed on a Vietnam case within weeks.

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The food here in China is very good, we had roast duck tonight, at what is apparently the most famous restaurant for the delicacy in Beijing (tracing roots back to 1864).

Weather-wise we’ve been pretty blessed with sunshine and not overly blustery or icy days.  Nonetheless at the end of today’s walking tour of the Forbidden City I was grateful for the warm car and the chance to thaw my frozen feet.

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Beijing is completely different from the memories I have of the city from over a decade ago.  My half-memories (mixed liberally with scenes from various movies and TV serials) of an ancient Chinese city crowded with bicycles have had to readjust to the shockingly wide streets (filled with Audis and VWs), striking skyscrapers and bright lights.  I suppose I should have expected all this, given the many mournful and/or nostalgic articles and programs on Beijing (and a mythic Old Beijing) I’d previously seen on National Geographic Magazine, Discovery Channel and even CCTV.  Yet the reality is still a little jarring. 

I also realise that many of the memories I had of my last visit to Beijing as a young boy are simply false.  For example, I had the strongest impression that the Temple of Heaven was in fact an annex to the Forbidden City.  It is not.

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It’s been a good year, I trust.  May 2009 be an even better year, the best year yet.

Now that I’ve gotten my typical treadmill run up to about 90+ minutes, I’ve been watching far more cable TV then I used to, given that I have either my iPod or the gym multi-screen TV system to keep me entertained/distracted.  All in all, this is probably net positive, since I do not read the newspapers regularly.

Anyway, Proposition 8 passed in California.  I’m a little surprised, since I figured that most voters would be well-educated on the issue given the amount of media coverage and campaigning that resulted, and to me the obvious choice for an educated voter would have been to vote “no”.  I suppose that would have been giving too much credit to the majority of Californian voters.

The other night I watched Joy Behar moderate a farily heated discussion on the Larry King show on the passing of Proposition 8.  There was the mayor of San Francisco and a New York writer on the “against” side, and two Christian religious leaders on the “for” side.  The whole programme quickly dissolved into repetitive and vaguely nonsensical quibbling.

First, why were there two Christian religious leaders on the “for” side?  Is there really no other reason to vote to ban same-sex marriage?  This is not a rhetorical question, and I honestly wonder what else could be said against legalising same-sex (civil) marriage without relying on a religious tradition argument.  If there could be some vaguely secular reason, that would give the Proposition much more legitimacy in my eyes.  Not because religion is not a source of legitimacy, but because the whole idea of a secular democratic state is to seek a balance among differing sources of legitimacy, to prevent (usually one narrowly defined) religion from tyrannising everyone else.

Second, the arguments given by the two religious leaders…  to me they seemed embarrassingly weak and self-defeating. 

Christian leader: “When we look at the state of marriage today, with 60% of black children being born out of wedlock, and 40% of black women never getting married… marriage is in trouble, and needs to be affirmed, and protected.  Legalising same-sex marriage will weaken this sacred institution and threaten our already unravelling social order.”

Joy Behar: “But can you explain how does legalising same-sex marriage weaken or threaten social order or heterosexual marriage?”

Religious leader: “Historically, everywhere that same-sex marriages have been legalised there has been a further weakening of the institution of marriage.  In Europe, Canada, even in the US.”

Where to even begin refuting this??  Joy (and the other two guests) rightfully pointed out the the (worsening?) problems with the institution of marriage in America are certainly not caused by same-sex marriage or anything even vaguely related to homosexuality or gay rights.  How could they?  Marriage was clearly in trouble well before even Canada or the Netherlands or Massachusetts legalised same-sex marriages.  Going further, there is absolutely zero reason to think that banning same-sex marriages will have any effect AT ALL on the state of the institution of marriage.  (“Honey, they’re banning gay marriage in California now, maybe that means we should not get divorced?” -”Agreed, and we should also start to encourage all our friends to marry before having children now that gays can’t marry!”)   It’s an obvious lack of logic: even if you can point to two broad events happening at about the same time (e.g. growing support for legalising same-sex marriage, a fall in popularity/longevity of heterosexual marriage) doesn’t mean there is a necessarily a casual relationship in either direction, or even a correlation.

And another thing, on the “sacred” institution of marriage - like it or not, the church (or mosque or temple or synagogue) does not have any monopoly on the term or the institution of “marriage”.  Yes, legalising same-sex marriage does somewhat “redefine” marriage - but this only necessarily redefines civil marriage, the legal, State-sanctioned version.  It does not in any way dictate religious marriage, just as much as a “not guilty” verdict from a secular judge has nothing to do with divine calculations of right and wrong, sin and guilt, karma and retribution (or lack thereof, say, if you’re an aetheist). 

It’s worth mentioning that while pretty much every religion has some concept of marriage, there are some wide variations on the theme, the most notable being monogamy versus polygamy.  More interesting, some of these variations occur within the context of the same religion across different sects or across time.  The Old Testament acceptance of polygamy is an obvious example.  So even the oft-cited ”Biblical” view that marriage is “one man, one woman”, is a little less black and white than some modern Christian leaders might like, since for hundreds of years it was at least socially acceptable to be “one man, several women”.  That doesn’t mean same-sex marriage is Biblically endorsed, of course, but that’s not the point, since the Bible (or Torah, or Analects, or any other holy text) is not the source for the definition of modern civil marriage.  No priest or religious leader will ever be forced to perform a religious ceremony against their will or against their religious beliefs, and that’s the way it’s always been in a secular state.  You would Americans should be able to accept that - aren’t they the ones who practically invented the phrase “agree to disagree”?

PS:  I thought Cynthia Nixon was simply stunning on the show when she spoke up for same-sex marriage.

PPS:  Other things I heard on CNN - in 2000, California voted against same-sex marriage with a 22 point margin; in 2008, Proposition 8 passed by 4 points.  Across the US, over 30 states voted against legalising same-sex marriages with an average rate of over 70%; back in 1967 when the US Supreme Court outlawed state bans on interracial marriage, over 70% of the population opposed that decision.

PPPS:  Yes, I am Christian too.

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Sometimes it seems like we’re all growing up to fast.  I remember a time when 1982 was not long ago, and people born that year were barely out of secondary school.

It’s been a good couple of months since I last wrote, and who knows why, given that I’ve had a very relaxed couple of weeks lately.  Almost a month, in fact.  In summary, since the last time I wrote:

- I visited the Dins of 2008 on tour in Bangkok, but was away again in Lagos when they got to Singapore around National Day
- My Nigeria project wrapped up in late August
- I went on vacation with the Dins to Mexico and LA where Tour ended.  That was a lot of fun.
- I’ve been put on a few little things at work, a little wrap up here, a little client development there… then I got assigned to a project that got put on hold

So now I’m holding steady, and happy for that, too.

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American politics…  yeesh.  Listening to the public debates for the 2008 presidential elections makes me feel like the whole process is all fluff and no substance.  Sure, there are talking points, catch-phrases and carefully rehearsed evasions.  But how can any voter be expected to educate themselves based on a 90 minute debate?  Even a three hour debate seems insufficient.  Can it be surprising that the American “media elite” often takes a mocking stance towards their Government (at all levels, from Federal on down)?

In contrast to the media circus that constitutes the public-facing side of American Democracy, it seems perfectly reasonable and logical to prefer a quieter, more efficient form of democracy (e.g., the Singapore system).  We would like choices, our opinions to be heard and heeded, our decisions to be embraced.  Sure everyone would like a lot of things, but someone has to figure out how to best balance out conflicting desires within constraints.  And no, the free market is not always best, because the “free market” is itself nothing of the sort.  It’s a social construct, with rules and rulers, unequal access and information assymetries, powers and social responsibilities just like the rest of our social world.  It’s a mirror image of the rest of society, so trying to pretend it’s somehow different or exempt from the constraints of the real world is silly, and dangerous.  The free market is not fairer or more neutral, or more meritocratic or more efficient, rational or adaptive than government.  It just depends on how you define “fair” or “efficient” or any of those other measures, and just as importantly, which government is being compared to what market at what point in time.  For most intents purposes, the free market is a form of government: it’s a way of ordering society, securing contracts and property, allocating resources. 

The current massive collapse in confidence in the American financial system, now spilling over to Europe as well, makes it easy to point out the potential pitfalls of a lack of regulation in the market (with both presidential candidates promising more regulation to come) when trillions of dollars of wealth and debt were essentially figments of the system’s imagination - “synthetic” products and mortgages and derivatives thereof.  The natural reaction is to swing back towards more regulation, or more “government” (government bailouts, handouts, nationalisations, state assurances, guarantees, capital injections).  But the age-old swings in opinion between regulation and deregulation is illustrative of a more fundamental tension between democracy as mob-rule (carte blanche, laissez-faire, caveat emptor)  and democracy as technocracy (expert-rule, faith in the system, specialised division of labour).  Note that technocracy is not incompatible with democracy - the ideal system is one where every or at least most members of society are educated experts (the US, with it’s two-thirds high school dropout rate, can hardly be said to qualify under most reasonable analysis), but even barring that ideal it’s a question of degree: how much decision-making is handed over to experts and dedicated specialists rather than being made by referendum, petition or lowest common denominator.  Furthermore, a true technocracy is a network of experts whose influence is bounded by the breadth of their expertise, which provides the necessary checks and balances - the economists have to debate the social workers and environmental scientists, the historians and lawyers, with conflicts mediated justly by the judges acting within the constraints of that society (precedence, Constitution, values, law). 

I recognise that in some ways it is a question of values - the American ideal essentially means that the voice of a relevant expert is considered equal to a barely sober, barely literate, unemployed 18-year old high school drop-out.  For me, I see that history has demonstrated that greater acceptance of democracy-as-technocracy–where thoughtful, studied expertise is the foundation of negotiation and decision-making–can lead to the sort of smooth efficiency and faster, greater achievement associated with Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan these past few decades.

That’s all.

—

I’ve recently heard the term “outstation” being overused, and as with most overused words, used inaccurately.  Firstly, a simple definition look-up indicates that “outstation” is a noun, not a verb (as in the common Singapore usage: ”He is currently/will be outstation”).  Secondly, outstation is traditionally used to indicate remoteness and inaccessibility in a post or location.  Neither Bali nor New York are outstations.  Thirdly, and bafflingly, outstation is quite cumbersome and multisyllabic, compared to ”abroad”, “away”, “not here” and other perfectly good (and more accurate) substitutes. 

In conclusion: No, I will not be outstation from tomorrow.  I will be away in Bali till Sunday for my annual office retreat.

See you later

Here in Nigeria again, for work.  Who would have thought I’d be back here so soon?  Certainly not me.

Nigerian TV is surprisingly good, with top notch Hollywood films and the latest music videos playing seemingly non-stop.  To date, despite being fatigued every night, I have watched Meet Joe Black, The History Boys, and Blood Diamond.  Admittedly that last one wasn’t the best film to see while in Africa.

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I recently read an article about Inequality in America which commented that poor health among the urban poor is driven, among other things, by a lack of safe, convenient options for outdoor exercise.  It’s one thing to read it in a scholarly magazine, but it’s quite another to experience this first hand.  Here in Lagos we are often entreated by our hosts not to go anywhere unescorted, and the “roads” around the hotel compound in one of the nicest parts of the city are uninvitingly muddy, pot-hole riddled obstacle courses lined with discarded tyres, fallen lamp-posts and other debris.  I’ve been told the nearest big parks are an hour outside the city, by car.  In this I’m reminded of my time in Dhaka during the monsoon floods back in 2004, when we were equally restricted with few options for taking walks.  Even then there was a small park a block away from the hotel that was accessible for the first week or so before being flooded.

Here I’ve been making do with desultory in-room exercises, supplemented by energetic prancing around the enormous bedroom to music from iTunes.  I’m concerned that someone will embarrassingly see me through the balcony doors, but so far I think that hasn’t happened yet.

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I went to church today, prompted by my curiosity to see what is apparently the largest Christian church in the world.  Turns out it’s an enormous network of smaller churches under the “Redeemed” banner that meets as a huge congregation on the first Friday of every month.  On this Sunday we attended a smaller service near our hotel in Victoria Island.  It was more colourful, varied and fun than I had been prepared for.  I supposed I hadn’t formed enough of an image in my head of what it would be like.  The two of us that went were terribly underdressed.  Most of the women wore large hats with feathers and silk flowers, a la Ascot.  The men were mostly in suits or vibrantly hued local garb.  The singing was sensationally joyful, rather like attending a concert, or being on the set of an African Sister Act.  The large church band had an excellent saxaphonist, and a lot of stamina.  I’m glad I went, especially this will likely being the only bit of tourism I do on this 9 day trip.

—

I pray I manage to successfully stave off excess eating these next few days.  There are many good restaurants here (two lovely Italian outlets in this hotel alone), and our hosts have been very insistent that we eat rather too well for my waistline’s liking

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

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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.

Do you remember how much easier and more resiliently promising everything seemed to be once upon a time, years ago?  Sometimes it feels like you take a whole bunch of steps forwards, towards some vision of what an “adult life” might look like, with the requisite loosely-framed beliefs and inevitable responsibilities, hazy plans and daily effort, small triumphs and minor compromises.  I filed taxes in Singapore for the first time yesterday (thank God for the ultra-user-friendly e-filing).  Last week a group of us discussed the dynamics of arranged marriages in Indian culture and its more universal applicability. 

Then other times I feel almost perverse in my instinct to push away as alienated the norms of normalcy, growingly aware of the mismatch between the state of my mind and state of affairs, either imagined or otherwise.  Yet I occassionally experience in powerful flashes the strong suspicion that this isn’t it, can’t be it… hopefully.

—

I’m still in Delhi, give or take a couple 6 hour flights back and forth.  I’ve actually fared very well with the pseudo four-day-workweeks, between fly-backs and a birthday holiday for Lord Rama.  We’ve switched accomodations, to someplace lots nicer, and with copious amounts of quite thoughtfully curated art everywhere–no insipid watercolors–in the public spaces.  I appreciate.

Came across an article about Adorno…  and now I really want to read me some Adorno.  It’s fun to recall the mind-boggling fun we had those days, trying to speed-read through the excerpted convolutions of Horkheimer, Heidegger and Weber in translation.  The titles of those books and articles alone signalled the mental gymnastics to come - Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, anyone?  Good times.

Today I told a funny story about an economics professor XW took a class with…  and then it occurred to me later that the professor in question had a Nobel prize, and several bestselling books, and worldwide name-recognition.  And there wasn’t anyone around to share in my contentment with this memory.  A small pity.

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Puff puff is now big enough to wear his diaper :)  Yay!!

The teeming cities of South Asia I think I will now always associate with this acridity of the air, which mercifully today has nonetheless been light and cool.  It might almost be called refreshing, if you somehow ignore the omnipresent and insistent charred notes mixed with something earthier.The resulting light is also strange; you are always straining your eyes to make out hazy shapes in the half darkness of no streetlights and dusty clouds, or else squinting to see through the blinding glare of a single functioning headlamp accompanied by the blare of klaxons and the roar of motorized impatience.  Always straining and squinting, and trying not to breath too deeply or slip off the shallow, pitched seat of the rickety rickshaw.  Must not let anything fall out of one’s grasp, or venture limbs too far off the spatial footprint of the carriage, and even that strategy often seems risky, what with oncoming traffic and swerving mad dashes across highways, racing against trailer trucks and buses.  It’s also strange how the strength of the headlamps can throw certain details into such stark relief, making a surreal dream sequence of hazy silhouettes contrasted against a chiascuro dirt road.

Ok, I have 7 minutes till my first pre-launch meeting with my new project team…  in New Delhi.  Well technically we’re somewhat outside Delhi, in a neighboring state, actually.  But nonetheless I’m in the Delhi office.  I arrived this morning, about 2am local time after a fairly tiresome evening spent in the airport very unrestfully fixing the consequences of what was probably a poor choice.

By the time I cleared the endless immigration line–I started reading On The Road while balancing my bags out of determination not to put them on the very dusty floor–and checked into the hotel it was already 4am.  This was of course after I was moved to a very nice executive suite, which probably resulted from the large lightbulb that frighteningly EXPLODED in a shower of glass shards over my luggage while I was being checked into a much more ordinary room.

I want to note Kieran’s lovely help (from Chicago?  Las Vegas?  Unclear) in finding out the hotel address even as I trundled along in the dead of the Indian night in a taxivan swarming with lazy mosquitos (I turned my collar up to avoid tempting them).  Merci!

Ok, time to go to this meeting.

After two consecutive weeks of having my travel plans to Vietnam thwarted, I am left with just one week before the case wraps.   Will my final itinerary be foiled again?  True, I’ve managed to make two trips on so far, but I literally set up the trip for last week (told not to go with team at last minute - after I had already checked in for the flight!) as well as next week (plans still on-again, off-again).  Still, C is partly right, I am determined to see this water puppet show!!!

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In the meantime, being based in Singapore these past two weeks has given me the opportunity to fully benefit from the many free meal opportunities here.  In case I ever wondered why my pants are starting to feel tight (?!?!?!), I can remember the past week, during which I ate many rich meals at Relish (late meal), Les Bouchons (mentor lunch), Oso (buddy dinner) and Gunther’s (case team dinner).  I can actually still taste the caviar, foie gras, truffles, wagyu beef, lobster and valrhona chocolate that seemed to comprise the bulk of my meal tonight… it’s actually bordering on being /too/ rich to stomach.  Especially if you throw in some champagne.  No complaints from me though

I can’t believe I actually convinced myself that I had started to eat more healthily.  Argh!

The picture above of Puff-puff running after Jenevieve was taken the morning of CNY, just after the obligatory family portrait.  It’s nice to get to experience the occassion again after four years of missing it while away at college.

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I’ve started reading again, which is heartening.  In the space of two weeks I finally finished Freud’s Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious (an assigned book I never read while in college), then raced through Shopaholic and Baby, Freakonomics and The Tipping Point.  Those last two books have left me a little wistful about academia…  but that’s a topic for some other day, or year.

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Oh, and that’s twenty-six, today.  Hard to recall, or imagine, or grasp properly.