Life is like a box of chocolates

I haven't written for a couple days. Been pretty busy studying for midterms. Anyway, there was a discussion panel with 4 professors yesterday about Tibet and China controversy. They said some interesting stuff, but I was pretty bored for the most part. There were a lot of Chinese grad students in the audience, and they talked way too much. I felt bad for the other Chinese, cause they probably felt embarrassed.

On May 4th, there's gonna be a big demonstration from Chinese in NYC. It's gonna be huge. Ottawa, Dublin, Melbourne each had Chinese demonstrations, with about 5000 people each. NYC is WAY bigger, so i'm guessing maybe 10,000 people will show up. Possibly way more. I can only hope they don't make themselves look bad, but probably they will. Patriotism and loyalty to your homeland is a great thing i think, but blind pride is a dangerous thing.

Anyway, the main purpose of this post is to express my amazement about how unexpected, and wild life is, and how beautiful life is because of that quality. I had originally been hoping for a summer internship working at one of the well known investment banks. Turns out, financial market goes into disaster, and it suddenly becomes very difficult to find jobs. At first I was really depressed and disillusioned, and I literally panicked. I didn't know what I would do, without finding a good job.

So, based largely on luck, I ended up joining as a summer analyst a nanotechnology and emerging technology focused investment bank, called Livingston Group through Axiom Capital. This is not what I would've asked for, but turns out, could really turn out much better than getting the jobs at the famous companies. There's 3 big reasons to happy.

1) I had always been interested in innovative and revolutionary technology. I greatly admired entrepreneurial technology companies. This job will give me a lot of exposure to these types of companies, the ones that will be the center of the world's economy for years to come.

2)The job is in manhattan and I found a place near Columbia. The manager allows me to work from home sometimes, so I plan on attending Columbia summer school classes! At Penn, all i do is take Wharton business classes that bore me to death. I have a great passion for intellectual topics, and i'll be able to sit in on some good lectures at Columbia.

3) This company turned out to be very flexible. So I asked them for an early start date, so I could have the rest of the summer to go to the Olympics! So that's exactly my plan. I'm gonna finish the internship, then go to the Olympics, and possibly witness a key moment in the history of China's rise into the modern world.

Life truly is like a box of chocolates. There are tons of surprises, that will have big impact on your life. The lesson to take away is, don't be too stressed out or depressed about sticking to some set plan. Life is not something you can map out, and expect a perfect stairway leading to success and happiness. Great things will happen to everyone, that may appear as setbacks. Life is crazy, and surprisingly, and that very quality is what makes it such a beautiful thing.