Oh, and thanks to my professor for being an incredible teacher.

—–

In analyzing the significant political and economic changes in the past 150 years, it is very important to examine the most prevalent shifts in our global system: the rise from agrarian societies to vastly and rapidly industrialized nations, and the deeply and profound impacts of the fall of global capitalism — particularly relating to social stability.

The biggest contribution to the rise of capitalism and free markets was the industrial revolution.  The revolution included the developments of faster transportation (i.e. railroads), which extended communication.  The growth of industries expanded and created a new system where humans became a commodity–machines that were considered assets to the industry.  This rapid growth and automation of humanity led to one of the most destructive wars and the first modern war: World War I.

Fought to the death, WWI was so absurdly devastating that leaders–particularly President Woodrow Wilson–sought to prevent such modern catastrophes to ever occur again.  This led to the “Liberal Theory of History” and the subsequent Bretton Woods Order: theories that both advocated democracy, free markets–which would provide economic and political stability– in order to achieve universal peace (the Wilsonian Triad).

What followed the devastation of WWI and later reaffirmed these ideas was one of the largest financial failures of laissez faire capitalism: The Great Depression.   During the Great Depression, unemployment skyrocketed and severe economic instability fed public unrest.  The insecurity within markets led to people thirsty for change and revolution, and even led to the growth of the German Nazi Party–whose country experienced extreme hyperinflation and economic instability.  As part of his fourteen points of peace, Wilson sought to create the League of Nations and build relationships among the WWI-ravaged European countries, but when WWII broke out, this institution collapsed and Wilson’s dream for the “war to end all wars” collapsed with it.

Nevertheless, as another war waged in Europe and the U.S. “saved the day” by bombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima and by helping rebuild Europe via the Marshall Plan, the ideas of maintaining free markets and democracy in the world continued to dominate American policy.  With institutions like the IMF and the World Bank to regulate exchange rates and fund reconstruction efforts, the “New World Order” was pushed upon the 21st century as the best political and economic alternative to achieving prosperity and peace.  The idea was that free markets –with a decent amount of Keynesian reform and some government control–could move forward to yield wealth in places where it can be most beneficial.  When countries traded, had comparative advantage, and reached a theoretical level of “no waste,” everyone would be employed, satisfied, and less likely to cause uproarious events such as revolutions.  Furthermore, a democracy where the political system is created “for the people, by the people” also adds to the idea of socioeconomic stability and that democratic liberal-market nations would not wage wars.

Interestingly enough, as these three main ideas of peace, democracy, and free markets took hold of the modern world, many “new” democracies emerged to challenge these theories.  In the case of Martin Jacques’s book When China Rules the World, Jacques describes an asianized form of democracy yielding prosperity in the Asian Tigers — especially Japan.  The Anglo-American form of democracy, which is supposed to be the only and best form in achieving peace, is not the system that has taken shape in modern Asia.

So, if democracy and free markets lead to both peace and modernity, what makes of the East and Southeast Asian cases? Singapore has survived and prospered under autocratic and free-market ideals, while Japan has prospered under a bureaucratic, “top-to-bottom” system.

Today, as globalization in economics and politics intertwine the East and the West, the ideas of free markets, democracy, and peace are ever more contested.  With a market-socialist periphery country such as China rising to meet the hegemonic standards of Europe and the U.S., the world will need to pay close attention to the developments of the 21st century.  It took the Great Depression, two extremely disconnecting world wars, and rampant political turmoil in the world to yield the modern liberal market, Bretton Woods, and U.N. system that we have today…What will it take for another revolutionary change or reform to occur in the global socioeconomic system?  It appears only time will tell–or the advocates of the Wilsonian Triad will not let that happen.

I got my book in the mail this weekend… and finished it in 48 hours.  As usual, it was a GREAT read, and I’m depressed all over again that I’ll have to wait a whole other year for the next installment. To deal with my re-withdrawal symptoms, I’ve thought about getting into watching True Blood (the HBO adaption of Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books) but I just can’t bring myself to watch it.  I guess I’m just such a loyalist when it comes to books: if the movie/tv series is not close to the plot of the novel, I have an extremely hard time enjoying it.  Who knows? Maybe one of these days I’ll snap and cave into the HBO pressure.

Anyway, loved it loved it LOVED it!  I might just reread the whole series this summer.

Excerpt from chapter 7 – “Dragon’s Lair.”

“The terrible events of September 11, 2001 evoked memories of another deadly assault on the United States sixty years earlier: The Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.  In the magnitude of their historical impact the two events differed dramatically.  The first was part of the bloodiest and most destructive war in human history, the outcome of which reordered the world and altered America’s place in it.  The consequences of the second were far more modest, but did bear some resemblance to those of the first: The American public rallied in support of a foreign war–this one in Afghanistan.

There is another instructive parallel between December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.  Both attacks shocked the United States and the world, yet forewarnings were abundant in each case. The United States was sharply at odds with Japan over Japanese policies in Asia, and Tokyo had made plain that it regarded the oil embargo that Washington had imposed earlier that year, in response to the continuing Japanese occupation of China, as a severe provocation.

Similarly, the terrorist group responsible for the September 11 attacks, Al Qaeda, had claimed responsibility for three previous attacks on Americans outside the United States: against American soldiers in Somalia in October 1993; against American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998; and against the USS Cole, an American naval vessel anchored outside Aden, the capital of Yemen, on October 12, 2000.

The attacks of September 11 should not have shocked the world as they did for yet another reason.  The personnel, the resources, and the motivation for them all came from a part of the world well recognized as the source of the greatest post-Cold War threats to the world’s core: the largely Muslim part of Eurasia stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.

On early European maps, unexplored parts of the world thought to be dangerous were marked by the Latin warning “Cave, hic dragones“–Beware, here are dragons.   At the outset of twenty-first century, the region deserving of that phrase was the Middle East.  But unlike the European mariners of centuries before, the countries of the core knew precisely what dangers lurked there, though they could not easily avoid them.”

[Into the next section, "Oil"]

“…For part of the modern period the Western core had controlled much of the region, through imperial rule or mandates established by international bodies such as the League of Nations.  Borders were often drawn arbitrarily, laying the basis for the familiar kind of post-Cold War instability in which dissatisfied minorities chafe at the political arrangements with which they have been saddled.  But the Middle East was different from the rest of the periphery in one immensely consequential way.  What made it important was its oil….

During the Cold War, oil gave the countries of the Middle East a measure of independence from and indeed leverage against the United States and the Soviet Union, despite the intervention of both superpower s in the political and military affairs of the region.  It gave Middle Eastern rulers the means to appease or repress discontented groups without having to rely on the generosity of the core powers, and it made the Middle East more significant to the core tha nany other region in the world’s periphery, so significant that the core powers were prepared to go to war to protect their interests there.

The signifance of oil was very much a feature of the modern age.  It owed its value to the industrial revolution… Oil came to be known as “black gold” and like gold it was a kind of universal currency…Oil was also known as “the blood of the earth,” and it was almost as vital to the arteries of industrial economies as is blood to the human body.  A better comparison of this kind, however, was with oxygen, something just as important but externally supplied.  Oil, like oxygen, could be cut off, imposing the economic equivalent of suffocation. Economic strangulation, the withholding of supplies of oil from the Persian Gulf region, was the great strategic danger to the Western liberal core during the Cold War; it remained a danger, although a less acute one, after the Cold War’s end.

The West faced two associated dangers: that these reserves would come under the control of people who would place unacceptable conditions on their continued flow to the West, thereby subjecting the West to blackmail, and that those who controlled the oil would accumulate great wealth from its sale that would underwrite political and military power that they would turn against the West itself.”

Very, very interesting book.  I’ll try to share another interesting excerpt soon.  Makes you think though, doesn’t it?

On this lazy and beautifully sunny weekend, I finally downloaded her book I Am Nujood: Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali and Delphine Minoui and lied down to read.  The autobiography was instantly un-put-downable, and I found myself captivated by this incredibly mature girl and her story of bravery.  Women and girls like Nujood who constantly kick down “closed doors” inspire and “Wow!” me in ways I can’t explain.  Good for you, Nujood!

Nujood with her lawyer, Shada

To share some of my favorite excerpts from the book, which I hope will move you to read her wonderful story:

“I’m a simple village girl whose family had to move to the capital, and I have always obeyed the orders of my father and brothers.  Since forever, I have learned to say yes to everything.  Today I have decided to say no.” – Nujood Ali

“I’m shaking–if they see me, they might arrest me.  A little girl running away from home, that just isn’t done.  Trembling, I discreetly latch on to the first passing veil, hoping to get the attention of the unkown women it conceals.  A tiny voice inside me whispers, Go on, Nujood! It’s true you’re only a girl, but you’re also a woman, and a real one, even though you’re still having trouble accepting that..” – Nujood Ali

“‘I’ll be by the candy vendor,’ she had told me, betraying the sweet tooth of children her age.  Almond-shaped eyes, a baby face, an angelic smile.  Seemingly a girl like any other, who likes candy, dreams of having a big TV, and plays blindman’s buff with her brothers and sisters.  Depp down, however, she is a real little lady, matured by her ordeal, who smiles today to hear the congratulatory cries of ‘Mabrouk!‘ called out to her by the women of Sana’a [Yemen] when they recognize her as she passes by.” – Delphine Minoui

“Perhaps Nujood does not realize this yet, but she has shattered a taboo.  The news of her divorce traveled around the world… bringing an end to the silence enshrouding a practice that is unfortuntely all too widespread… If her story touches us so deeply, however, it’s also because it impels us to take a good look at ourselves.  In the West, it’s fashionable to instinctively bemoaan the fate of Muslim women, yet conjugal violence and the practice o child marriage are hardly restricted to the Islamic world.” – Delphine Minoui

“Whenever I travel to Sana’a, she asks me to bring her colored pencils.  Crouching on the floor of the same modest living room, she always draws the same colourful building with plenty of windows.  One day, I asked her if it was a house, a school, or a boarding school.  ‘It’s the house of joy,’ she replied with a big smile. ‘The house of happy little girls.’” – Delphine Minoui

..and now it’s back agian.

I’m unsure why I’ve chosen one of the most busiest academic quarters in my life to start this up again, but a new encounter as moved me to start writing again.   This time around, I have a foreign policy course–my first–and it is taught by one of the most articulate and mesmerizing professors I’ve had in college.   With the course’s title being: “America and East Asia in a Globalized World: Transformation, Accommodation, and Confrontation,” I expect there will be many fascinating topics and discussions, which would undoubtedly motive me to share them with you– my reader. 

In the course’s next session, we will delve deeper into the “Bretton Woods World Economic Order” and discuss the beginnings of modern foreign policy in the U.S. and the Western world.  Stay tuned!

These past 4.5 months abroad has been an amazing eye-opening experience.  As my second time studying abroad, my experience in East Asia has really solidified some of the epiphanies I had during my abroad year in Spain, while also opening my eyes to brand new perspectives on myself, my priorities, and the world surrounding me.

Unlike my first experience, which gave me sights into a future I hadn’t really considered, my exchange at National Chengchi University gave me the opportunity to delve back into my past and take the much-need time to reflect on myself and the path I’ve taken.   I’ve reunited with old friends and made lasting relationships with new ones.  I’ve surpassed all of the expectations I had in coming here and have also ended up with more questions.

With everything I’ve learned, what will I do now and who will I become?

It doesn’t take much to realize that only time will answer these questions. However, with everything I’ve experienced here, at least I know I’ll have the heart and state-of-mind to accept whatever answers life decides to give me.

I’ll miss my friends and the little life I’ve built here, but it’s safe to say that..

I’m ready to go home.

So here I am. 

Sitting at my younger aunt’s computer.  

Skimming through various news articles, since my usual forms of entertainment (Facebook, Youtube, etc) are blocked here. 

Considering I had skipped out on sharing my week-long trip to Sydney, Australia, I figured it was about time I posted something a bit more personal on my blog.  As I had mentioned in my earlier posts, my initial goal in coming to Southeast and East Asia was to answer some questions I had about myself.  Looking back over this exhilarating rollercoaster ride,  I’ve realized that as long as I’m moving, growing…changing, I’ll always want to know more and more about me and everything else.

Last Saturday, I flew over to Shanghai to spend some time with my 小阿姨 –  literally “little aunt”, my mom’s younger sister.  Originally I was only planning on spending a long weekend here with her and her family, but I had so much fun within the first couple days that I decided to change my ticket for a week later.  I’ve been fascinated with the rapid development of China for years, and I find Shanghai to be a particuarly curious and intriguing city/microsm of it all.  The skyline is impressive and particularly breathtaking in the evening — it could be the Chinese New York City– and you can easily spend forever exploring everything.  Within the nooks and crannies of this 21st century metropolitan, you can still stumble upon small traditional Chinese neighborhoods and streets, mingling amongst the people, buildings, and narrow streets that seem to date back a hundred years. 

My particularly favorite experience has been the time I’ve spent shoppnig and learning from my aunt, the 杀价, or haggling, pro.   In one week, I’ve gone iceskating with my cousin, taken

A Canal in Suzhou, China

pictures with the Oriental Pearl Tower and the beautiful PuDong skyline, ridden the bullet train to Suzhou, walked within the beautiful Master of Nets Garden (constructed over 800 years ago), and spent lots of quality time with extended family that I hadn’t seen in over ten years.   Much different from my usual adventures abroad, this one was tranquil, simple, and fulfilling in a heartfelt way.  To my surprise, my brief and relaxing time in Shanghai has actually made  me feel quite… whole.

I call this entry Shanghai Sunset because it is what I consider the most perfect way to end my East Asian experience.  No matter how far I go, how long I’m away, or how Americanized I am, there will always be a part of me that has and always will be part of this eastern sun.  Asia will always be within me, even if I’m not within it.

Although I’m still asking questions, this is my best answer for now.  And I’m satisfied with it.

Read on..

CEOs say how you treat a waiter can predict a lot about character

By Del Jones, USA TODAY

The purple sorbet in cut glass he was serving tumbled onto the expensive white gown of an obviously rich and important woman. “I watched in slow motion ruining her dress for the evening,” Odland says. “I thought I would be shot on sight.”

Thirty years have passed, but Odland can’t get the stain out of his mind, nor the woman’s kind reaction. She was startled, regained composure and, in a reassuring voice, told the teenage Odland, “It’s OK. It wasn’t your fault.” When she left the restaurant, she also left the future Fortune 500 CEO with a life lesson: You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she treats the waiter.

Odland isn’t the only CEO to have made this discovery. Rather, it seems to be one of those rare laws of the land that every CEO learns on the way up. It’s hard to get a dozen CEOs to agree about anything, but all interviewed agree with the Waiter Rule.

They acknowledge that CEOs live in a Lake Wobegon world where every dinner or lunch partner is above average in their deference. How others treat the CEO says nothing, they say. But how others treat the waiter is like a magical window into the soul.

And beware of anyone who pulls out the power card to say something like, “I could buy this place and fire you,” or “I know the owner and I could have you fired.” Those who say such things have revealed more about their character than about their wealth and power.

Whoever came up with the waiter observation “is bang spot on,” says BMW North America President Tom Purves, a native of Scotland, a citizen of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, who lives in New York City with his Norwegian wife, Hilde, and works for a German company. That makes him qualified to speak on different cultures, and he says the waiter theory is true everywhere.

The CEO who came up with it, or at least first wrote it down, is Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson. He wrote a booklet of 33 short leadership observations called Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management. Raytheon has given away 250,000 of the books.

Among those 33 rules is only one that Swanson says never fails: “A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person.”

Swanson says he first noticed this in the 1970s when he was eating with a man who became “absolutely obnoxious” to a waiter because the restaurant did not stock a particular wine.

“Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they are interacting with,” Swanson writes. “Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles.”

The Waiter Rule also applies to the way people treat hotel maids, mailroom clerks, bellmen and security guards. Au Bon Pain co-founder Ron Shaich, now CEO of Panera Bread, says he was interviewing a candidate for general counsel in St. Louis. She was “sweet” to Shaich but turned “amazingly rude” to someone cleaning the tables, Shaich says. She didn’t get the job.

Shaich says any time candidates are being considered for executive positions at Panera Bread, he asks his assistant, Laura Parisi, how they treated her, because some applicants are “pushy, self-absorbed and rude” to her before she transfers the call to him.

Just about every CEO has a waiter story to tell. Dave Gould, CEO of Witness Systems, experienced the rule firsthand when a waitress dumped a full glass of red wine on the expensive suit of another CEO during a contract negotiation. The victim CEO put her at ease with a joke about not having had time to shower that morning. A few days later, when there was an apparent impasse during negotiations, Gould trusted that CEO to have the character to work out any differences.

CEOs who blow up at waiters have an ego out of control, Gould says. “They’re saying, ‘I’m better. I’m smarter.’ Those people tend not to be collaborative.”

“To some people, speaking in a condescending manner makes them feel important, which to me is a total turnoff,” says Seymour Holtzman, chairman of Casual Male Retail Group, which operates big-and-tall men’s clothing stores including Casual Male XL.

How people were raised

Such behavior is an accurate predictor of character because it isn’t easily learned or unlearned but rather speaks to how people were raised, says Siki Giunta, CEO of U.S. technology company Managed Objects, a native of Rome who once worked as a London bartender.

More recently, she had a boss who would not speak directly to the waiter but would tell his assistant what he wanted to eat, and the assistant would tell the waiter in a comical three-way display of pomposity. What did Giunta learn about his character? “That he was demanding and could not function well without a lot of hand-holding from his support system,” she said.

It’s somewhat telling, Giunta says, that the more elegant the restaurant, the more distant and invisible the wait staff is. As if the more important the customer, the less the wait staff matters. People view waiters as their temporary personal employees. Therefore, how executives treat waiters probably demonstrates how they treat their actual employees, says Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes, a former waitress and postal clerk, who says she is a demanding boss but never shouts at or demeans an employee.

“Sitting in the chair of CEO makes me no better of a person than the forklift operator in our plant,” she says. “If you treat the waiter, or a subordinate, like garbage, guess what? Are they going to give it their all? I don’t think so.”

CEOs aren’t the only ones who have discovered the Waiter Rule. A November survey of 2,500 by It’s Just Lunch, a dating service for professionals, found that being rude to waiters ranks No. 1 as the worst in dining etiquette, at 52%, way ahead of blowing your nose at the table, at 35%.

Waiters say that early in a relationship, women will pull them aside to see how much their dates tipped, to get a read on their frugality and other tendencies. They are increasingly discussing boorish behavior by important customers at www.waiterrant.net and other blogs. They don’t seem to mind the demanding customer, such as those who want meals prepared differently because of high blood pressure. But they have contempt for the arrogant customer.

Rule works with celebrities, too

The Waiter Rule also applies to celebrities, says Jimmy Rosemond, CEO of agency Czar Entertainment, who has brokered deals for Mike Tyson, Mario Winans and Guerilla Black. Rosemond declines to name names, but he remembers one dinner episode in Houston a few years back with a rude divisional president of a major music company.

When dinner was over, Rosemond felt compelled to apologize to the waiter on the way out. “I said, ‘Please forgive my friend for acting like that.’ It’s embarrassing. They go into rages for simple mistakes like forgetting an order.”

Rosemond says that particular music executive also treated his assistants and interns poorly — and was eventually fired.

Odland says he saw all types of people 30 years ago as a busboy. “People treated me wonderfully and others treated me like dirt. There were a lot of ugly people. I didn’t have the money or the CEO title at the time, but I had the same intelligence and raw ability as I have today.

“Why would people treat me differently? Your value system and ethics need to be constant at all times regardless of who you are dealing with.”

Holtzman grew up in the coal-mining town of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and in the 1950s saw opportunity as a waiter 90 miles away in the Catskill Mountains, where customers did not tip until the end of the week. When they tipped poorly, he would say: “Sir, will you and your wife be tipping separately?”

“I saw a lot of character, or the lack thereof,” says Holtzman, who says he can still carry three dishes in his right hand and two in his left.

“But for some twist of fate in life, they’re the waiter and you’re the one being waited on,” Barnes says.