tyger

On reflection 2007 was an okay year, but not a vintage year. I don't know what the prognosis for 2008 is, but it seems a little scary.

So I went and bought a cactus. Despite my best efforts, I am sure it will survive.

And then, there is this from Salman Rushdie: "Writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things – childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves – that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.”

Finally, why does every Economist article about the LTTE quote Blake?

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1794

back in beantown

Back in boston after a gruelling 30 hour journey. Why is the east coast so far away from Asia?Things of note: of course theheadlines in Frankfurt, Singapore and the US was the Obama win in Iowa, and what looks like a New Hampshire win, after which he'll be unstoppable to the primaries. I've always been hesitant about endorsing Obama, because it seems so unlikely but that is not reason enough. An email I wrote six months ago when I had the chance to meet him for an all-too-brief but incandescent second, says this: This man will be president, I just don't know when.

On another note, my family and I met a budding author with a book to be published in April 2008, called Love Marriage about diaspora Lankan tamils. I will wait for the book to write comments.

Was met at the airport by C who had received Cold Comfort Farm from me for his birthday and was still laughing a week later to the irritation of his spouse. Its always good to have friends. Crashed into bed after such such travel, (excerpt from nytimes.com on skymall: " Also, you will find the SKYMALL CATALOG, from which you may order a product called “Poop Freeze,” described as a spray refrigerant that “chills animal waste to -62°F, creating an outer ‘crust’ that enables you to quickly place in a bag and dispose.” Feel free to spend the remainder of the flight trying to process this information.). It was however mitigated by Singapore Airlines, in homage to racial harmony screened marudhamalai an absolutely abysmal Tamil film saved only by starring arjun. (At moments like this, I am hugely impressed with Singapore politics).

Woke up this morning at 630am, spent a few hours jobless, chatting on the phone. Then went to the supermarket for some MAJOR shopping. A 166 dollars later, I was cooking black bean chicken with sugarsnap peas and green peppers, lemon roasted beans, red onions with walnuts and jasmine rice. Opened a bottle of bordeaux, promptly downed a glass, chomped away watching A Preacher's Wife and now I am heading to bed and its only 2pm. Still have a infrastructure paper to write on British Water, and a memo for class tomorrow, but slowly slowly does it. Oh bed!!

Live Life

On this eve of another end to a semester, I am reminded of what happened exactly a year ago, in one particular class, in its last lecture. All are direct quotes

There are three conceptions of an "economist" self.

a) The Developing Country is my White Man's Burden (i am solving their poverty)

b) I am a Greek/Arthurian hero: A Dragon Slayer (slaying poverty)

c) I am a Nietzchean Hero: Self-Expression (solving poverty is about me)

whatever it is, I cannot be your therapist. But here it is; make your mark. Leave a Legacy. And live life as an epic adventure.

paralysis

A Call to Action for all friends and and even former acquaintances:


I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MY LIFE.

Business School vs. Policy School

A Day In The Life Of

A Business School Student (quotes taken from the business school website)

5:40am: Alarm goes off. I quickly debate whether I should call my trainer, Joe at Shad Gym and tell him I can't make it.

8:39:50am- The doors close, silence falls, and class begins at 8:40am on the dot

10:00am: I go to the gift store (the Coop) to see if they have screen protectors for my new high tech cell phone

11:40am: I feel actual angst over whether to join the sushi or the pasta line. Oh the decisions we MBA students must make!

1:00pm: Yay! Its a two case day, which means naptime. Sleep is precious!

3:00pm: Back in my cosy corner room, I check email- no urgent communication with potential employers. I will try to get through the LCA ase before 4pm when Tony Robbins speaks in Burden.

4:00pm: Like the Swiss Railway system, the Tony Robbins presentation starts on time. Before I know it, he has us hugging, jumping, yelling and cheering. An hour well spent.

7:30pm: I head across campus and reach the Grille at Spangler within three minutes. The food is great! Jenny, one of the friendly chefs, humourously greets me in Chinese and prepares my usual meal.

8:50pm: It has been a full day. I shower and look over my notes for tomorrow.

A Public Policy School Student (taken from anecdotal and personal experience)

5:40am: Go to sleep. Wake up five minutes later after a nightmare about a monstrous p value and thank god I have three more hours of sleep. What's Shad?

8:39:50am: I conduct a cost benefit analysis of waking up and conclude costs outweigh benefits.

10:15am: Slide into seat, five minutes late for class. Wince in pain upon remembering that I didn't do the reading on detainee interrogation in Guantanamo bay today. Open Facebook. Raise hand in class to talk about how a democracy cannot support capital punishment instead.

11:40am: Consider buying lunch, but remember I'm broke. Instead I hover near the table outside Executive Education classroom, trying to pounce on pastries and fruit when no one is looking.

1:00pm: Spend ten extra minutes getting to class because of traffic jam on Littauer Steps. Democratic Caucus students and Republican Caucus students are going at it on Huckabee. Stop by cafeteria anyway due to excess acid from excess coffee. Dry Chicken Wrap or Wet Chicken Salad Wrap? Dry.

3:00pm: Back in my cozy Forum couch, I check email. No communication with potential employers. I will try to get through my first reading of the day before 4pm when some motivational speaker guy talks about stuff across the river. Free coffee there.

4:00pm. Like Amtrak, I show up 20 minutes late to the speaker as my cheap shoes can't handle the ice, only to realize that I would rather shoot myself in the head than work in the private sector.

7:30pm. I read some blogs. Then I start a response paper due at 9pm on human rights in Iraq.

8:50pm: Start reading 200 pages and plot downfall of nemeses before heading to the computer lab to print out work. Thwarted by a group of ping pong enthusiasts in Taubman. End up at 11pm in Tommy Doyle's after the the third cost benefit analysis of the day leads me to join in.

May we

live in interesting times.

I think I can safely say that there have been ups, there have been downs, but there's never been steady and that I have always lived, in interesting times.

More interaction with men who call me ma'am (in an 'un-old' way).

The question was posed today: What would you do if you have 2 million dollars to spend in New Orleans post-Katrina? Would it go to housing, or charter schools, or primary care for the uninsured, or at-risk youth programs, or job regeneration programs, or small business incubation?

My answer: I would spend 2 million dollars, finding out what the people of New Orleans wanted, from top to bottom, across racial lines and across class lines. Not what we think they need, but what their demand is, which is entirely different. Then I would see where those demands are aligned, and then I would be able to map potential coalitions and get a consensus around a plan of recovery, and especially from getting some of that 180 billion dollars assigned to Gulf Coast recovery.

On another note, more talking about fantasy/extremist ideology: The heart has been fed on fantasies, the heart has grown brutal from its fare. Its so dangerous and so compelling to accept some kind of all or nothing in life.

And the last note: I have made a major discovery about myself: I would be rather happy than be accomplished.

hubris

my fatal flaw is I am a sucker for men who can reproduce dialogue like this in email banter/verbal conversation/non-verbal cues.

Jules: And what's Fonzie like? Come on, Yolanda! What's Fonzie like?
Yolanda: Cool?
Jules: What?
Yolanda: He's cool
Jules: Correctamundo! And that's what we're gonna be. We're gonna be cool.

Pulp Fiction

And ma'am. I'm a sucker for any man who calls me "ma'am". As in "Yes, ma'am".

minus 8 degrees celsius

I am officially gloved, booted, mufflered, hatted, pouffy-coated and jobless.

bachelorette

Let me say that, having seen a male stripper now, taking everything off, that it just was not appealing in any way. On a second note, bachelorette parties down South are an entirely different event from the tamer "hen" parties of England and elsewhere. There was nothing remotely "hennish" about this one, replete with bridal veils, tiaras, sashes and sceptres and a whole lotta alcohol, pole dancing and a mechanical bull (don't even ask). And not to mention the private stripper. A whole new educational frontier was busted. I, in true fashion, was hovering near the bathroom, ready to lock myself in should this person even come 1 metre near my vicinity. Oh dear.

On the other note, I am absolutely beat and it is the weariness that sleep just isn't going to solve and one which needs 2-3 weeks in a coma. Thank god that is only ten days away for I really have reached the end of my tether.

NB. Should any of my friends organize a stripper for me in any occasion, I will suffer permanent trauma.

om shanti om

Mayhem. Utter mayhem. Is what happens when four subcontinent born graduate students decide to see a 10pm show of Om Shanti Om in Times Square New York. One of these people should have been safely back in Boston a long time ago instead of hanging out in New York inviting disaster. More mayhem when the only people in the theatre are these self-same four people and hooliganism begins by shouting: TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF SHAH RUKH!!!! to see his six pack and dancing in the aisles to the songs and the women come onscreen and the boys faint. An utter nonsensical farce which had us falling off our chairs laughing at Quick Gun Murugan and Shah Rukh Khan going "Yenna!!!" at every possible random moment in time. Mayhem exacerbated by going out drinking at the end of the movie from 2am to 6am at a college undergraduate bar where the main song of the night is Sweet Child of Mine (my ex ringtone) and the lingua franca a bizarre mix of Bengali-Tamil-Hindi-English. Nail in the coffin is when Boston-bound subcontinental individual goes from bar to train with no sleep and from train to class where quite promptly her body shuts down. Utter mayhem. And now I have work coming out of every orifice.

enchanted

just came back from watching Enchanted and couldn't help but make an enthusiastic plug for it! It's an absurd confection, which bizarrely reminded me of Bollywood (especially a song and dance routine in Central Park with ensemble choreographed dances and all), and the manichean view of good and evil and love and happily ever after and surprisingly, or not so surprisingly for one who is a Bollywood fan, it worked rather well, with James Marsden, Patrick Dempsey (who does rather well) and Susan Sarandon. It was one of a few movies, where the mainly adult audience clapped, enchanted, at the end.

a day in the life of

The day started off with a negotiations case on the Good Friday Agreements in Northern Ireland between the Ulster unionists, the Taoiseach Prime Minister, Blair and of course the republicans and Sinn Fein. The important thing I learned from that, as I look towards my own country so fractured and bloodied, was that the negotiated agreement/settlement is only the beginning and that negotiations can never produce social justice and that 99% of an agreement in its implementation. At best, it can be a functioning machinery, an explication of a commitment to a Road Map, a la Camp David. Finally, one cannot include every party, but marginalizing the smaller parties radicalizes their responses- in Northern Ireland it led to more bombings, but one that was surprisingly condemned and not condoned by Sinn Fein. I think I finally understand the bare bones of the Irish Peace Process, though I am still unclear as to why Britain wants to be unified with Northern Ireland. It makes me wonder what I am doing with my life when all these battles are yet to be fought and won, in our generation.

Next I talked to C, who has the flu, before he flies out to DC for final round interviews. C is a prime example of one who crossed the aisle, working with both the Carter Institute and IRI and now viewed with suspicion by all myopic Dcites.

Next I changed my flight to come back home early and had a meeting to craft our negotiation exercise on two “stan” countries that have a water conflict and are bombing the hell out of each other.

Then I had a meeting about the conference and our 22 panels and shaping them into tracks of giving, institutions, governance, services and innovation. (I know how innovative). We might bring in jazz musicians from New Orleans to play some compositions about the storm.

Next I had class on valuing a Brazilian state owned power distribution company and how the bankers (as usual) wanted to value it as low as possible (as they were representing international bidders) and the crazy assumptions on the discounted cash flow models they were using. Thank god I am no longer doing that every day of my life.

Next I had a meeting with my thesis advisor. We are writing a group thesis with ACCION, the largest microfinance provider in terms of asset valuation, about formulating a new code of conduct for equity investments in international MFIs. We think we might be able to travel to Paris in January for “research”. AHAHHAHAA.

Next I had office hours and tutored students on foreign exchange and forward contracts. I didn’t realize I actually knew something about this until I realized everyone else knew less than me.

Then I went to trade class, looking at free trade agreements and the cotton case brought by Brazil against the US to the WTO dispute settlement system. Suffice it to say that as usual I did none of the reading and was at sea, so finished reading about Northern Ireland.

Next I met with my co chair on our conference in our weekly meeting. We talked about creating a blog on our site for incubating future enterprises as well as further tired ideas.

After that with my team from MIT, two doctoral students in mechanical engineering and I are involved in a business plan to provide advertising/media access to rural villages for our developmental entrepreneurship class.

Then a brief pitstop at the gym while dwelling on how four days of food at New Orleans can seem like heaven with hell to pay for. Watched a James Bond movie onscreen. Bumped into a whole lot of people and found that one friend was dating another friend. OMG!

Then out for dinner and drinks with the crew who I haven’t seen for a WHOLE week since I’ve been in New Orleans. Besides catching up with the usual gossip, I think we crafted an idea for me to do a reading and research study next semester instead of a class on doing a negotiation analysis of why the Sri Lanka negotiation talks failed (and will fail).

Then back home, thinking that I had a few minutes to throw laundry and whizz around cleaning the room, but instead my room mate had broken up with her boyfriend so 2 hours went into a post-mortem. Suffice it to say that I have become a pro at all of this.

Finally, catching up on email at 1am, researching flights to Asheville, NC for a wedding in january, changing my flight to go back home to Singapore early, calling Singapore and Oz, and waiting to put my laundry into the dryer so I can legitimately fall into a dead faint.

NB. This is just for my records and for posterity, for it to feel like that my day wasn't entirely taken up by pace, but by substance too and that the incessant activity might have actually been productive, and not just a submission to the tyranny of the urgent.

New Orleans

2 years later and still the neighbourhoods of New Orleans are ravaged, prey to the same government paralysis, infrastructure breakdown and inertia that characterized the post-tsunami aftermath. And yet there is an extraordinary resilience and spirit to the people here who lost everything, from the Fats Domino, to Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu who had to get on a boat and rescue people from stranded rooftops when his state system broke down. The great debates of Katrina revolve around racial inequality and extreme poverty, that the storm (as it is referred to around here) flashlighted. (There are t-shirts here with the following headline: FEMA’s Evacuation Warning: Run Bitch, Run).

The rest of the US may have forgotten two years later, exactly how and why the levees broke, and why there is an extraordinary amount of buck-passing aroundabouts here, but the people of New Orleans themselves haven’t forgotten. The jazz is still here, whether at Preservation Hall, or elsewhere and this is of course the home of Buddy Bolden, subject of a novella by Ondaatje called Coming through Slaughter.

We went to a jazz club, owned by the legendary Antoinette Doe (an ex-Ikette with Tina and Ike Turner). Her husband, K-Doe was a one hit wonder way back in the 60s I think, and then turned to drink and died shortly afterwards. She had a life-size wax replica made of K-Doe her husband, clothed him in his trademark red velvet jacket and white crisp cravat, and put him in a wheelchair and takes him everywhere she goes, in a black hearse. They dine together at respectable places and the waiters serve him as though he was real and all of New Orleans knows about it. Can I tell you that this is who I want to be in my old age (and have every likelihood of becoming?!) We also went to Dooky Chase, an old establishment of around 50 years, home to the plotting of the early civil rights movement and the early jazz musicians. Ray Charles was served there!.

I also met John Thompson at a dinner. John spent 18 years on death row, with one capital punishment sentence and 49 years of another life sentence, for two murder counts. After 18 years, DNA found him to be wrongfully convicted on both counts and he was released. He has now founded Resurrection After Exoneration, a transitional home for ex cons and exonerees, to overcome the pull of recidivism and start a new life. A sweet black man, he had spent most of his life to date in jail. 40 days after he got out, he got married to a) over come deprivation!!! (in his own words) and b) lock himself into a life so he wouldn't feel the urge of "institutionalization". He went through seven execution dates, and always got a stay of execution at the last minute. He was led to the chair seven times, and thought he was going to die seven times. How does one come out of that alive? with hope and strength and conviction? How does one overcome the fact that 18 years of one's life are spent in a prison cell? I don't know but John is testament to hope not in institutions, but in human beings. He was convicted at the age of 22, when he was involved in drug dealing and had sold the murder victim coke right before someone killed her. As he said: that judge could have slapped ten life sentences on me and I wasn't going to open my mouth. i was a black man with an all white jury in Louisiana in the 80s. They could have blamed Kennedy's assassination on me. What a travesty of injustice.

Such is New Orleans, this crazy beautiful city of brokenness and abandonment, energy, resilience and spirit. Katrina was a storm that exposed race, poverty, corruption and inequality to America, and the City will never be the same again. As one person put it, this was one of the last strongholds for black power in America and now its gone, to be replaced by Martin Luther King's white power structure.

neruda

Poetry by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age,
Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense
pure wisdom,
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadows perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

indian clerk

After a particularly drunken rout last night, I could not emerge from my bed, as each memory came back with startling, unwelcome clarity. So, I turned to The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt. The writing was not good, particularly as it was an American voice trying to write in a British voice about a Tamil man, a century ago. Quite a feat of ventriloquism for anyone to pull off and sadly the writer was not up to the task. It has decent passages though, but rather too much descriptive detail of homosexual acts for my taste, jarring as it is interspersed in a story about an aging Cambridge don. But there is a good tone of sadness which is sustained in parts.

I also watched American Gangster a movie that aspires to greatness but does not quite reach it, let down by the lack of urgency in the narrative, the lack of exploration of right and wrong. Finally, Denzel Washington makes drug trafficking look far too attractive, and that edge of menace which was there in Training Day was missing here. And Russell Crowe, actually looked like a sweet cop, as opposed to a thuggish one. It was worth the watch though.

end

The phone began ringing off the hook yesterday as soon as I got up. Condolences, sharing, grief, worry, uncertainty from the relatives all across the world. Another key leader dead. Just one more to add to the thousands. When will it all end?

ideology

I found this on another blog, but it is acutely so.

“It doesn’t do to dwell in fantasy, which is not the same as imagination. Imagination is the power to reshape reality, to find hope where there appears to be only despair. Imagination creates signs that speak of the future and bring it closer. Fantasy is in some ways its opposite. It is a form of despair that flees from reality rather than seeking to reshape it.

‘We had fed the heart on fantasies, the heart’s grown brutal from the fare”.- W.B. Yeats

This is true of all ideology.

I don't want to know you because you may destabilize my world.

change

I feel like hiding under my desk again. Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme. (The more things change, the more they stay the same). Why do we pretend it's any different?

more

Looking over this blog recently, it looks like I have been incredibly self-absorbed, which really is not true! I came to a school of politics and think I have blogged less about politics than any other time in my life. Perhaps because I finally realize that it is true, erase all names! erase all nations! Power is the same everywhere and everywhere has the same problems with it, and every side is the same side. The anarchist is the only principled one.

Other than that, I have been watching Sports Night (when in life-related doubt, watch Sorkin) and it is his first work and it is rawer than his other work but it still shows brilliance, sentiment of the best kind and intelligence and I'll take that these days in whatever form I can get!

But the problems of the world do concern me. It just seems, so overwhelming. We flit here from event to event from The Humanitarian Crisis in Darfur to The Role of Government in Capital Markets to Natalie Portman talking about Increasing Access to Microfinance (not kidding) to Celebrate Hillary's (the Clinton I mean) 60th Birthday to Renaming the Surge in Iraq. I know I sound stupid, but I have lost the ability to translate my horror and outrage at tyranny, war, poverty and disease and all I have at that thought is a bone-deep weariness.

The guy sleeping above me (I live on the first floor of a 3 storey house) snores really loud and I can hear it through my ceiling. He doesn't seem to be getting any more action though. Small mercies.

roses

I bought red red roses on sale, because they were dying. Showy large blooms, petals blackened with age, a dozen of them are sitting in a glass of water and they look wonderful, past their youth, one last hurrah. Am debating seriously a doctorate. Oh God.