Forget all the healthy diet and life style. After two weeks’ good discipline, which was featured with no junk food, I was feeling lower than ever. So at the weekend, I fed myself no thing but yoghurts and crisps. The consequence could not be better. I am feeling so great that even though it rained all day, the misery of chill and bleak was tolerable and thus cannot deter my high spirit. 

But it probably imputed to the greatness of the novel by Jane Austin that I read more than what I ate. I am puzzled how come I have tried so many times to finish the book. Pride and Prejudice is an easy read this time. Actually I love it so much that I read it all day long without cease until I finished the whole book. Even though I have always enjoyed the TV series by BBC, compared with the original book, I prefer the latter. I am eventually able to escape the trap of numerous tea parties and balls and manage to get what is behind the scenes. I reckon that the descriptions of these occasions were my original obstacles to continue the reading. How impatient am I. But what marvellous observations they are now. The story is as dramatic as a good story can be. The character of Darcy is charming; nevertheless, too ideal to be found in real life, lest I really believe in the power of love that how much it can alter one person. The more memorable and impressive is Elizabeth. Different from Jane, who is too innocent and kind to understand the ugliness of human being, Lissy has good perspectives backed by reasoning and rationality. Even though the story entails that she was WRONG about Darcy and her opinion was prejudiced, she did form her opinion not without reasonable reasoning. This is particularly true when she read the letter from Darcy. And Darcy did not only appear to be different at the beginning, but also indeed he was a different person per se. My admiration and inclination to Lissy is more than any other in the novel. The greatness of the book is that it gives statues of women of being liberal and independent both mentally and intellectually rather than the women in modern works who although fall in love with men but actually are often also victimized by love.

More interestingly is that it seems to me that Austin writes in a totally different language, a hallmark that differs her from other writers. Hers is unlike Dickens who starts his stories with memorable bits as contrast as ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.’ But after all it is pleasant to read. It can be the intimate confession of Lissy; it can also be the formality of Mr. Collins; it can also be the gainful and dramatic performance of Mrs. Bennet. How much does these reveal and reflect these people’s thought is beyond imagination.

The same can be said about the power of word as a whole. While I am writing this entry, I am at the same time watching the BAFTA award ceremony. Different from its American peers, British academy entertains its audience with nothing but words. While I enjoy myself with the presenting of Steven Fry who is definitely good at wording, I know that words go far beyond being just witty and entertaining.   

Besides for those have had enough with their strict diet, we can spoil ourselves once or twice a month, but not that much more. The evidence of bad eating habit is so apparent that I can hide no more. If you see me tomorrow with half a dozen red spots on my face, do not ask me why impertinently.

This is my final reading week. The beginning was not great, but I am pleased that at the end I started to feel great, which was unexpected and given all the events during the week, it was irrational to have great expectations. This is surely against my nature after three years’ study that is based on rationality.

Monday would be exciting if I could catch the lecture or speech by Ma Yin Jiu, the incumbent Kuomintang chairman, who happened to be in London. It was such a shame that the organizer failed to realize how popular he was among overseas Chinese students. The originally planned lecture was too small. But even when the organisers decided to move to the Old Theatre, loads of people like me failed to get in. I phoned afterwards to my friends complaining my disappointment. What I discovered from this usual phone though is something rather unusual. As my friend suggested, the popularity of Ma lays in his smart actually star-quality outlook rather than his political opinion. Is this a joke? Nevertheless, it is pretty true that even for politicians, good looking is a great asset.

Then came Tuesday. After four weeks absence from my German evening class, I decided to turn up on this Valentine’s Day. Whence you have missed so many classes, it is getting more and more difficult to suddenly turn up, facing the wired and shocking look projected from classmates and teacher. But at least I chose to turn up on a day that I reckoned few would determine to spend the golden romantic hours in a boring classroom. This would at least partly offset my lazy impression given by my absence, I calculated. What a miscalculation it turned out to be. This evening class had never been fuller in this term. Well, people do not necessarily behave that rationally, do they? Anyway, I had a good time in that class and this inspires my passion for German again. Also thanks to F, I had two more hours’ personal tutoring on German this Friday, which boosted my confidence again. I promise here that I will attend all the rest German class and spend at least three hours on its coursework each week.

Another exploration made by me this week is my first lecture in Royal Statistics Society. I expected to find a magnificent building in the City. But it is anything but grand. Actually it looks rather like a residential building. It is so unnoticeable that I missed it twice. I was so late that I missed the beginning of a lecture given by a senior consultant in Deloitte. Anyway, her presentation is boring and business oriented. But the next presenter is more satisfying. James Bank is a researcher in UCL. He presented a study by Fiscal Study Institute on longevity and wealth distribution in England. This is much more my preferred academic style. What I liked most from his presentation is how his team designed the survey they used for collecting the data on English households. To get more precise data and to improve response rate, they designed a series of questions on asset income. Therefore, if people have no idea how much that is or decline to answer, the questionnaire moves to a truncated range of income. This then continues four times until the closest range is obtained. I think this is really a great design that force people to give answer to something they are reluctant to say. The rest of the afternoon is not much inspiring. The presentation from DWP is so boring that I formed a really negative impression on government agencies in the UK. But since my experience of RSS is not as great as I expected, I am wondering how good Royal Society of Economics is. 

The rest of the week really had not much to tell. All that is left is bad news. I applied for shop assistant in Gap. Then only two days later I got rejection letter from its website, telling me I could not apply for another six months. My goodness! A website auto-generated rejection without an interview. Well, let me be honest. I am really not a fashion fan, but do I really need to portrait myself to be one just to be working as one worker tidying up in a shop, which bears a brand that is really not at the high-fashion end? Life is not only full of surprise, but also sometimes, not lack of disappointment either.

The exception to the above disappointment is probably my academic life. I finished four essays on Europe institutions on education and corporate finance. Also I finished reading the whole book (not one chapter) by Rajan and Zingles on ‘Saving Capitalism from capitalist’. I find it interesting because it gave me the background of capitalism development in the last century, or even longer. The discussions on the origin of finance go back to the time of feudality. Indeed, some of the arguments are very convincing because they overcome the narrowness of economics explanations, but they explore the reasons behind in a wider horizon of politics and sociology. Even though I have found economics is surpassing other subjects in terms of my views and my way of understanding the world, I still believe the best combination of degree study that is available to British students is the PPE (in case you do not know, it stands for politics, philosophy and economics) undergraduate study in Oxford.

Another exception is my attempt to read Pride and Prejudice. Not again! I have not found the book exciting. I failed finish reading the book numerous times. But this time I downloaded it from Internet, so hopefully the electrical form will speed up me and complete my final attempt. The other downloads include Great Expectations and Hard Times from Dickens. I suspect I will have time to read any one of them. But somehow I did find Dickens House Museum in Bloomsbury. The house is a typical three-storey London house. It is not magnificent so I decided not to go in that day. It is located in a quiet but nice street that is now mainly occupied by professional consultants and accountants. It may sound odd, but think about the quantity of Dickens’s works, he surely sees writing a hardworking profession, or at least he started so. So today’s use of the street is well defined and reflected.

The more I grow up; I find myself more like a five-year-old kid. I need something to grab my attention; otherwise, I will get so bored that I become anxious and upset. According to my current status, it is safe to conclude that I am bored at the end of the reading week.

The start of the reading week was good for me. On Saturday morning, I went to Natural History Museum in South Kensington for a rare Chinese painting in Qing Dynasty. Really? It did sound weird not only for me, but also for the staff in NHM when I tried to inquire about the special exhibition. (Are you sure? This is NHM, not VA, you know). But it turned out that I was right. But the notion of rare Chinese paintings is not that precise. Actually I joined a group tour into the rare book room, part of the library and archive of Natural History Museum. The collection we looked at is part of the John Reeve zoology drawings in 1700s when he was a member of East India Company. He commissioned the drawings of animals and plants mainly for his own interest though some of them go to British Museum. This I guess was at the start period of modern zoology even though the ancient history could go back to as early as Rome or Greek time. The styles of the paintings are extremely versatile. I was expecting some thing really traditional Chinese, but the collection definitely does not lack western and the mixed drawing skills. Most of the drawings are executed by indigenous Chinese painters under the instructions of Reeve. To achieve scientific accuracy, the drawings need to be precisely as close to real subjects as possible. This is so against Chinese painting, which emphasizes the spirit, or Yijing. Therefore, you get the mixed styles as the Chinese painters preserve their own interpretations in the western commissions. I would describe this a very pleasant tour.

Then I went to Hyde Park for a walk. The winter of England comes far later compared with China. The trees were still green when I last visited it in January, but now every tree is bald with the only exception of roses if you can call them trees. Strange that you can see the pale pink roses smile in the less rosier winter. Another peculiarity is that yesterday was my first time to spot more than half a dozen wild rabbits. They are not the white lovely ones as you often see in family gardens raised for the amusement of young children. These rabbits are rather grey and brownish. They move slowly not agile at all. Maybe it is winter, so their fat-storing bodies are not as light as in warmer seasons or maybe they are just too concentrated with their food. In my opinion, they really set up a model role for the British people. The rabbits eat no white bread, which some walkers are very keen to feed the rabbits, but eat the natural productions only. So around the rabbits, you see the pigeons busy picking up the artificial feedings. That is such a nice afternoon walk.

But even just one day away, I am now already feeling so bored. Sunday is not running wild for me today. While I am typing the texts, all I can hear is the ticking of numerous raindrops falling on the transparent roof of the science library. Alas, it is just another raining day.    

This is so not me, saying something bad about other people. This is rare. Indeed, so is the advertisement, which publishes 386 names of newly promoted managing directors. I only wish that I could have withdrawn my comments, but it was too late. After all, the first golden principle in working is that you are not supposed to say anything bad about your colleagues or bosses. Unfortunately I have just broken that rule. I promise here that I shall not do that again.

Nevertheless, even though my comments are not allowed, it does not stop me thinking about what I would otherwise have said. The magnificent number clears my illusion that MDs are unique. After all, they are ordinary people and there are plenty of them. That makes life both easier and harder. It is easier because statistically that means being an MD is possible. It is also harder because the abundance of MDs reduces the significance of its benchmark of successes.

But these are not what I intend to say. What the advertisement (especially one name on the list) really reminds me are the stories of women working the same offices with men. Strong, determined women end up remaining single or marrying those who work with them day and night. Strange? Not so much in a modern world in which feminism and equality (sure we are still far away from it yet, but it is much better compared with the time our grandmas lived) are striking characteristics.

A recent BBC program tries to discuss the reality that women have to face today. The reporter goes into one top A-level school in London and asks the smart girls how they plan their future. The answer cannot be clearer. All of them agree that they want to have a great career, get married and have children.

The smiles on girls’ faces are genuine. But their answers sounds less so. These girls feel that it is such a pity if they cannot get a great job as they have received so good education. Being a housewife seems to wipe out the endeavour they put throughout the school and university years. But be honest, an intense career does not allow these women work flexibly with young children.

Are women too greedy today or they are simply unrealistic. Sure, feminists will give me plenty examples of women who have successful careers and great families. But what I am talking about are women and women only, so superwomen are not included, neither are those rich enough to afford high quality childcare. Will equal opportunity campaigns help? Well, as an economist, I doubt so. When the marginal costs exceed marginal benefits of keeping a 30-year-old mum with two little kids who was thinking what to cook tonight for dinner when she is working, it is hard to believe employers especially those small and medium size firms have enough incentives to do so. Even government regulations can hardly work if they fail to internalise the externalities of women as employees.

For me, I have not made up my mind up yet. Maybe it is time for schools to introduce education for girls to realise that they need to make compromises of their ambitions when they face a real world. But now I would just be happy to study hard and enjoy life hard. A good example is last week. I went to see two operas, La Traviata, Le Nozzi di Figaro, attended a public lecture on Chinese art in Bonham’s, saw two movies, Brokenback Mountain and Hidden and I handed in four coursework and one essay. It sounds unbelievably busy, doesn’t it? Well, nothing is impossible if you really want to do it.  

To conclude, I would like to quote one active feminist writer of the seventies. Today’s feminist ideas are not too strong if women want to be men, but they are too strong if women want to be women.