Posted 7:50 PM by Andy
Time for another update. Let’s start with more book reviews.

Square Peg. Written by Senator Orrin Hatch, this book delves into the legislative process and gives a defense on some of his positions on issues. A good example of a bipartisan approach to public service.

Mozart and the Fighter Pilot. Written by a medical surgeon, it presents ways to improve the efficiency of our brains. Most of our brain capacity lies dormant, so various techniques can be employed to make more neuronal connections. Besides the usual reading prodigiously and solving math problems which I am fairly proficient at, there are ways to improve spatial-visualization and memory skills. One recommendation is while you’re standing in line waiting for something, instead of letting your brain wander, focus on your surroundings and try to memorize the minutest details. Close your eyes, then picture them in your mind’s eye. Then compare that mental picture with reality and see how you’ve done. This way you constantly keep the brain engaged and build on your memory skills. A lot of the advice is common sense like getting good rest and listening to classical music, but it’s amazing to know that we’re capable of learning anything. Even sports is the repetitive programming of our brains to effectuate our motor movements that produces consistent and triumphant results.

Jimmy Carter. The most beleaguered president but best ex-president in United States history. He grew up in Georgia on a farm, poor but industrious. He served in the Navy with distinction and diligence. His rapid rise to national prominence is unprecedented. As a one-term Senator he ran for Governor and vehemently contested the results of a close race that signaled his defeat. For his efforts a recount was granted and he ascended to the governorship. After one term, he won the presidency in 1976, rising like a phoenix out of the ashes because nobody knew who he was. He is the most intellectual of all presidents and sought to under the implications behind all policy proposals. Besieged by all sides in Congress, facing stagflation and high unemployment, the OPEC oil crisis, he stuck to his religious principles and refused to make deals or cater to special interests. He was the least political of politicians but agonized the most over the moral consequences of his decisions. His administration was marred by the Iranian hostage crisis as the Ayatollah of Iran refused to release American hostages until Reagan assumed office. His greatest achievement was brokering the peace accord between Israel and Egypt at Camp David by using his personal persuasion and religious convictions to forge an alliance between Begin and Sadat. As a former president, he followed his heart and championed human rights issues around the world in areas like building democratic societies and public health. For all his service, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize recently. Not bad for a peanut farmer from the South.

Nehru. Biography of the first and best prime minister of India. Chronicles his birth in an upper-middle class caste in India to his education in Cambridge and his growing identification with political independence from Britain. Many personal relationships are highlighted with contemporaries like Gandhi and viceroys from the British Raj. His agitations for an independent republic of India and his constant battles against self-determination of Pakistan and Kashmir are also related. His cultivation of his daughter Indira to succeed him is given a lengthy treatment.

Dragon Syndicates. The global phenomenon of the Chinese triads is the subtitle and sums up the contents of this expose. Everywhere there is a Chinese community, there are Chinese secret societies. Their origin as industrial guilds and evolution into organized crime syndicates are interlaced with historical accounts of the most notorious leaders of various factions. Vice is alive and flourishing. With modernization, the triads have also adopted more sophisticated methods to extort and launder money, traffick in drugs and other contraband, and always exact a profit. The nefarious intermingling of business, politics, and organized crime seems to be inevitable. It sheds light on the motivations behind men who join and live as a Triad member. Years ago when I hung out with JW, he would sometimes drop gang allusions like “I’m with the Wah Ching. Don’t f**k with me.” He was a poser, but I can understand the machismo front he was attempting to erect. It’s more sad for the millions of poor young men who are easily recruited into the brotherhood because there is no better alternative for them.

Havel. I wanted to find a biography of the dictator of Czechoslovakia who instigated the “Velvet Revolution” but the Torrance library didn’t have one. Oh well, I hope to learn more about him in my “Transition to Democracy” class in the spring.

The Dangerous Duty of Delight. Piper’s message of Christian Hedonism is truncated and presented in a more concise format. The main point is still God’s glory and our pleasure is intertwined and in harmony with each other. When we delight in God alone, it fulfills our duty to give Him glory and love each other. Worship, missions, and service all emanate from having and experiencing that joy in Christ. You don’t kiss your wife in order to fulfill a duty. You do it because you delight in her. The same is true for our devotion and passion for Christ.

Thanksgiving. Met PL, JH, DK, and MC for dinner in Brea. Discussed homosexuality in Christian men and how so many guys feel constrained to share their struggles. PL mentioned Henri Nouwen, the renowned Catholic theologian, is gay. He also posits the statistic that half of the Catholic clergy struggle with this sin. I don’t know about the validity of those numbers, but the root causes of sexual sin is the same and can arise from identity issues like low self-esteem. When I asked PL how I should best take advantage of my time in policy school, his thoughts were, “Study a lot, but not too much. Be number one in your class. Focus on relationships. Get to know one or two professors really well. Connect to a church. Get healthy before you go.” So young, yet so wise. PL then prayed for my journey out to New York next month. Hung out with my sister and my bro-in-law LC for 4 days. Played Guillotine, a card game based on the French Revolution, and Galaxian(?), a board game loosely modeled on Trivial Pursuit with interactive challenges, tongue twisters, and riddles with my cousins. Things were normal all the way until Saturday afternoon. After my family and I ate some Indonesian snacks at my aunt’s place, escorting us out the door, my aunt’s husband asks a seemingly innocuous question to L. That was the fuse that lit a conflagration under my sister that extended from their porch, through the car ride, all the way back home. My sister wanted my mom to ask her relatives to stop asking those questions because she felt they were hurtful. My mom insisted the question was not formed out of malice but was a natural pattern of relating in the Chinese culture. Issues of cultural differences were raised as I, my dad and L sat around the living room, unwilling supporters in the maelstrom. After two hours of wrenching confrontation, the conclusion was they hold different values and it will be difficult to ask anyone to change, especially someone in the older generation. I realized perceptions and expectations have as much to do with pain than any overt action. Whether it’s personal or on a national level like the grievances between Jews and Palestinians, the history of assault and damage often hinders progress and true reconciliation. I appreciate negotiated truces that much more after this session.

Preparations for grad school. Since all my correspondence forms with Syracuse have been submitted, all I have to do is await my financial aid award, figure out housing, and buy any necessary items for the East Coast lifestyle. Since the weather average 0 degrees this week in upstate New York, I will have to bring my snow gear with boots and scarf. I bought a heavy duty laptop backpack. I will wait to buy little things like a laundry hamper until I’m there. I planned out my tentative class schedule. I’ll be taking four classes, each meets for about 3 hours each week, on international relations theory, quantitative political analysis, public finance in developing countries, and transition to democracy.

Mapping out my life for the next 18 months and 4 ½ years. Now that the rough outline of my next 18 months is set, I started planning out the finer details of where I want to explore in that duration and also beyond. I’ll be taking a European tour over Christmas and New Year’s which will hit five cities including London and Paris. Then it’s up to SF for a friend’s wedding and visiting my old haunts. During my time as a grad student, I’ll be in Syracuse, hope to visit Philly during spring break, intern in Washington DC or Geneva over the summer, study in DC and visit Boston in the fall, and finish up at Syracuse spring 2004. I want to take weekend trips to Manhattan and Niagara Falls, about 3 to 4 hours from campus. LA and SF will be where I spend my downtime and catch up on the sunrays. After school, I will have an interesting decision point. I’ll be either starting a new career in Asia or DC most likely, or entering another program for the fall. I agonized over the choice between business and law. Intellectually the law offers the most unparalleled scope and training for any field of future service. There was about a week I was determined to study for the LSAT again to gear up for a law school run at a shot at Yale. It’s the equivalent of making the NBA for the basketball junkie. However, the fervor subsided as I considered how my real inclinations are for business. So I reverted back to business school as the third leg in the academic trifecta to complement my training in engineering and international relations. Every other night I would wake up at 3 a.m. and lie there in bed projecting future scenarios for my life, falling back into slumber having exercised every contingency in a new direction. However, I encountered this verse the other day, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” Proverbs 16:9. Enough said.

Chinese language training. Since the 21st century is the Chinese century, I have pledged to hone my language skills to its peak potential. I started learning 7 or 8 characters and 7 or 8 idioms a day. At that rate I will learn 100 new words and phrases in two weeks. I have enough material to last me through next February. For the words I am focused on learning their meanings and practicing writing them for retention. For the idioms I am just learning their meanings for comprehension. As an added incentive to enhance my oratorical skills in Chinese, I’m crashing the Bread of Life mandarin choir practice tonight. They are meeting for dinner beforehand and I hope to use that forum to refine my speaking abilities.

Kobe vs. TMac. I have followed both of these guys’ careers closely, and ever since the mid-nineties like everyone else I have been looking for the next MJ to take the reins of the NBA. It is a most difficult debate to argue because both are all-world players and will undoubtedly enter the Hall of Fame when they hang up the laces. I have to say I like Tracy better as a basketball purist. I like his story better because he came out of obscurity and burst onto the national scene at a Nike summer camp his senior year in high school, toiled in the shadow of the talented but maligned Vince Carter in Toronto, then laid claim to be the best player in the league during his run with Orlando. Kobe has been groomed for success. TMac has that nasty physique and spring that evokes the power of a flush about to be unfurled on anybody latent beneath the sleepy-eyed exterior. Kobe has a more sleek frame and finesse game to match. TMac has the edge in a one-on-one matchup slightly. As a player, I’d take McGrady to be on my team, who bested his idol Penny a couple seasons back. As a general manager, I’d pick Kobe because he has the rings to prove he has the mettle to prevail in the clutch. I watched some footage of Kobe during the Lakers dynasty run the last 3 years, and he clearly has the most striking resemblance to MJ’s competitiveness and fearlessness. Sure, he threw up a few airballs in his first couple campaigns, but those are signs of courage undaunted by the prospect of failure. In the destiny years he repeatedly hit clutch baskets against worthy foes, often demanding the rock in late game situations. The most recent rendition came at the expense of the Dallas Mavericks as the Lakers pulled off the largest comeback in franchise history last Friday night, erasing a 30-point deficit in the fourth quarter by hitting a spinning jumper in the lane. No wonder SLAM’s latest cover has Kobe decked out in retro black with the trophies prominently displayed in the foreground. Don’t hate.

For the rest of December before my world tour, I hope to catch up with and keep track of JW and AL here, DP in Africa, those returning from China like AH and HS, those returning from school like EY, and talk to all the Bay area folks in January.

On the Shelf: More Than Words, Yancey; The Invisible Hand, Sproul; Profiles in Courage for Modern Times; The Future of Ideas; Drake’s Fortune; Gladstone.