Three sleepless nights did not exhaust me. After four o'clock last Thursday, I finally finished my presentation on the effect of transition from ERM to EMU on German's wage setting behaviour. It took me less than 25 minutes to go through the empirical findings, nevertheless, I spent so much time preparing for it. 

 

This experience inspires me a lot. First, when I am going to say goodbye to my undergraduate study, I find out so little I know and so much I do not know. The extent of my unknown is so much that I feel scared. I am not a hardworking person who concentrate a lot on the textbooks, but I am a serious student. The feeling is so frustrating that I nearly gave up my presentation. What about the models that I went through as a second year student? What about the thirty something papers I went through this term? What about the numerous concepts I come across throughout the last three years? All of these efforts seem to be so trivial compared with the colossal quantities of questions that extend from these. 

 

Second, albeit my belief that my undergraduate training is solid, the progress I have made is really limited. The burden of a one-hour presentation is as heavy as a Challenger 2 tank. During the process, I was anxious, nervous, frustrating, and uncooperative. When I look back, the information we actually delivered in the presentation is not as much as we thought it would be. I cannot imagine how my professors prepare their own lectures. 

 

Indeed, this reveals what I was really touched this week. After a few months' impatient waiting, H received an unconditional offer from a great university in America. I was behaving in such an excited way that as if I was the one who was going to read a PhD. A doctor degree is not easy and especially for economics students, who are so accustomed to thinking of opportunity cost, i.e., you have to sacrifice a lot potential opportunities during the five-year study period. These arguments are too important to ignored. But my own presentation experience indicates that it is simply impossible to teach a wonderful lesson without true expertise and solid foundation knowledge. Teaching, especially in university level is a profession that requires so much experience and expertise that it is simply impossible to start as a fresher. So a PhD is not just a studying process for a student, but also a process to get experience and expertise which is usually only obtainable in a working environment. Therefore the identity of a PhD reader is not just a student, but also a potential lecturer or professor under training.

 

But are these academicians' study and work well paid off? This reminds me of the debate, and the only debate I went to this term on the emotion if we should support the lecturers' demonstration to raise wages. Compared with their American peers, British academicians got a much slimmer purse. But simply raising their wages without clear motivation and supervision system will do Britain no good. The huge increase in NHS already made British doctors the second richest in its profession in the world just next to American doctors. While at the same time, the productivity of NHS has decreased dramatically. Will this happen again in the UK's higher education system again?

 

But without significant pay rise, the current lecturers may decided to quit the job and the potential candidates may simply do not enter this job at all. Although it is hard for the lecturers to justify their demonstration now, the relative pay indeed decides the long term equilibrium. Have we got the balance right?

 

I find myself not productive recently at all. The exams are approaching, but I am even not intended to start revision yet. Also I have not written anything on my blog either. About the blog, I am having some doubts. A lot of people around me have already giving up this last year’s trendy hobby. What do I really want it to be? A personal journal to reflect my thinking or simply a place that keeps my diary so that I can read them myself twenty years later if it is not shown to my own children how their mother had a solitary life abroad?

 

This of course should be part of the purpose of my writing here. But when I first started, I chose English. First, Chinese typing is troublesome. Second, I want to practise my English writing anyway. Surprisingly as a university student, I did not have much opportunity to write essays or dissertations. So it would be great to oblige myself to write something.

 

Without celebrating the first anniversary of my blog, I realized that the original plan did not go well. The problems are obvious. The first concern is that my Chinese expression and knowledge is deteriorating rapidly. The last chance to use Chinese is the letter to my father and that is more than a year ago. When I face questions from foreigners about history, many well-known Chinese names just escape my mind. The second concern is that despite my effort, my English writing is not improved much. My vocabulary is small and my expressions are repeated over and over. All of this makes me to rethink if the direction I am going is correct. As a Chinese, I am losing my advantage quickly due to westernisation and at the same time the extent of westernisation, at least in linguistic terms is limited. After all, I will never be a westerner, but the danger of not being a traditional Chinese is so great that it cannot simply be ignored.

 

Apart from all the above nonsense, the fact remains clear and that is my blog is going nowhere. Maybe blog itself simply is such a device that it limits its significance. The argument is reflected in an article in FT weekend magazine. According to Trevor Butterworth (Time for the last post/Feb 18), blogging brings us to the spectre haunting the blogosphere-tedium. If the pornography of opinion doesn’t leave you longing for an eroticism of fact, the vast wasteland of verbiage produced by the relentless nature of blogging is the single greatest impediment to its seriousness as a medium.

 

George Orwell is pathologically productive. Being Orwell, nothing he wrote is quite without value and unexpected gems keep popping up. But in effect how awful Orwell would have been as a blogger and how he would fall into boredom.

 

The point is any writer of talent needs the time and peace to produce work that has a chance of enduring. To Orwell with the influential literary magazines he co-edited, Horizon, a publication that gave Orwell the chance to write some of his most memorable essays.

 

As for Marx and Engels, journalism was trivial-an impediment to serious, memorable and above all influential work. ‘Mere potboiling,’ wrote Engels of the more than 500 articles he and Marx wrote for the New York Daily Tribune, ‘It doesn’t matter if they are never read again.’

 

China is usually regarded as a country full of Internet censorship, but this does not affect the enthusiasm of its celebrities. Film stars, models and writers are clustering together to publish their own blogs. Among them, I find the name of Yu Qiu Yu. The volume of visitors of his blog and the comments he receives is beyond my expectation of my own humble blog. But the quality of the articles is not too far to reach. Indeed, blog as a phenomenon has expanded to a wider dimension than expressing personal opinion. It is about commercial promotion and public relation, not to mention other numerous clever uses. But if my narrowness of seeing it as a medium of opinion is excused, I see even the great intellectuals cannot escape the trap that they set up themselves.

 

Interestingly, I went to KFC tonight, the first time during my four-year stay here. The food tastes terrible. Is the fast food a snap of what is happening in blogging as a culture in a similar way? I surely can resist fast food, but can I refuse the temptation of fast culture?

 

The colour of this Sunday is black. I am lost in my own world again. I have been trying very hard to avoid this instability, but I am fatigue and lose this battle. My faith in the usefulness of economics has not faded, but economics is useless in this hour. I should have studied more psychology so that I can stabilize myself emotionally better. 

 

So I endeavour to distract myself from my concerns and helpless conditions. I think about the documentaries I have watched this weekend.

 

The new series released in 2005 is ‘故宫’, or Forbidden City Palace. You surely have noticed the difference in the translation. To be loyal to the literary meanings, the equivalent English will be ‘the former palace’. Indeed, the TV series is about the objects or antiques in the former palace, the politics of the Ming and Qing Dynasty and the lives of the emperors. It is worthwhile to prize the documentary for its high quality pictures. The Forbidden City palace looks magnificent and marvellous. Especially wonderful is the view of the day of ‘冬至’, the shortest day of the year. The sunshine is so low that it can reach the darkest palace inside the Forbidden City and with time passing, the shadow moves along, leaving the golden-brick floor blindly shining.

 

But that is not what I really intend to say.  No matter how good the quality of the pictures is, it is still too weak to cover the fact that the content of the documentary is poor. It is not fundamentally fraud. It will be almost impossible to expect that a documentary advised by a handful of experts in Chinese history and art makes ridiculous mistakes as Emperor Qianlong did in appreciating ancient paintings, nevertheless, after watching the whole twelve episodes, I still feel a lack of impact that is supposed to be existent in this unique palace that has so much to shock its audience.

 

So what is the problem then? If I describe this documentary as a graduate project, I will mark it D. The lack of argument and interviews makes the documentary look as an auction house category with limited number of items (porcelain, paintings and jade antiques), or a wild history of lives of the royal family of the last two dynasties. The work is obviously lack of integrity.

 

But still even this is not the biggest problem. I feel the materials are organized in such a way that prejudice is apparent. First, in the first two episodes, the documentary reconstructed the history of the palace, including the details how the first emperors of the Ming Dynasty built the palace, how the three most important buildings were burnt down, and how the next rulers rebuilt and expanded the palace. But one important historical event is omitted on purpose. It is well argued in the first few years of the establishment of new Chinese government that it is essential to keep the original structure of the palace and Beijing as a whole. But this suggestion from the academicians was ignored by Mao’s government and instead we now have the biggest square in the world in the place where the original palace gates stand. The complaint of the loss is loud among many scholars even today, but this simple fact was left out maliciously in this documentary. It will not be a surprise that the producers of it are used to the authorized environment in China and there is no space for argument or grey area.

 

Second, there is upper bias in the views of the achievement of Kang, Yong, Qian. It is true that during the rule of these three emperors the lives of people in China are better. They enjoyed peace and prosperity. Nevertheless, we are only comparing the situation with the past of China. But what about the relative progress of China during that period compared with the rest of the world? Why we witnessed the rapid upraise of west Europe while China missed out the golden opportunity? Are there already institutional problems back then? If the assumption of natural growth rate is positive is realistic, and then it is only the relative performance that really counts. (This is also my response to the answer of the mayor of Gaoxiong who simply cannot distinguish these two performances or rather choose to ignore the fact that Gaoxiong is losing its status as one of the most important ports in the world). It should be admitted that the later emperors did a poorer job in securing the huge country, but it may not be fair to say that the earlier emperors have done an excellent job in securing a bright future. The drastic downturn of the Qing dynasty is no accident and even the great three emperors should not be escaped from the blame.

 

In one word the documentary is far from perfect. The authoritative tune and no argument at all throughout the series make me feel passive and stupid. But in an age like today, we can no longer assume that the audience is simply information absorbers. If we are not strong enough to change the media environment yet, we are on the way to sculpture a new model of media interaction platform. Yu Qiu Yu’s latest book on his own experience during Culture Revolution is a breakthrough even though the book is poorly accepted in mainland. His afterwards quietness might be a compromise to pressure, but his determination to publish it is great enough to raise some culture thinking of our own ugly past. My eager to have something more objective to watch and read hopefully will find million other similar voices.

 

Thank goodness, the time is near 10:15 and I finally calm down myself a little bit. Waiting me ahead is another intense week. Oh, dear.

 

 

Two exciting discoveries for me in a rainy week. First, I find out a full transcript of Parkinson interview of last Sunday. The new series of Parkinson, a talk show hold by Micheal Parkinson, featured with a great evening with Tony Blair, the UK prime minister and Kevin Spacey. This is a great start, but unfortunately I missed it, as a result of being misled by the Telegraph(Saturday Telegraph is a misleading newspaper, so my experience is that never trust its TV advices). The transcripts does make up a little. When FT is attacking that David Cameron is too posh to be the next PM, Tony revealed his humble bringing up. Even without his Edwardian accent and charming interview styles, the dialog is moving and humerus. Nevertheless, it is probably inevitable that we begin to say goodbye to this charismatic politician. The decisions are made and they are wrong decisions. This is war that we are talking about. Right now, the leaflets of next demonstration against war on Iran and retreat from Iraq are flying in my campus. Poor Tony, history does not judge a politician only by his charm.

 

The second discovery is that Martin Wolf, chief economist of Financial Times finally started his online blog. Martin writes a lot, a column on Wednesday and sometimes Friday as well. Such productivity is something an undergraduate like me would not even attempt to dream about. The blog is more important in terms of getting feedback and different opinions from academicians, rather than publish his views, which should be repeated in the papers. My disappointment comes from the lack of commentators from UCL. Our provost is running a campaign to promote UCL's profile as an internationally outstanding institution, but surely he seems to miss out economics as a strong discipline. Indeed, UCL is such a huge institution with many strong subjects. Therefore, its economics department is always shadowed by its other more scientific field studies. The branding of UCL is difficult. Different from chief executives for mammoth companies, our provost actually cannot form a strategy to focus on strategic disciplines and cut out the less competitive courses that are now on offer to students. The result is that even though its economics department has a 5* ranking, every time I am asked 'You are an LSE student?'. If there is anything that UCL should learn from LSE, it must be the latter's ambition to get famous. After all, everything gets easier and more funding comes in with celebrity (sort of), thus a better circulation begins.

 

So that is my two new discoveries by simply surfing online. But more exciting is outside the virtual world. I have reserved one place for our Provost's lecture next week, and I am looking forward to it.

 

This Monday started terribly. I had a monstrous headache, a third in a row in one week, which frightened me a bit. Maybe after all I have been thinking too much about death and illness during the weekend.

 

The last reflection comes from the Sunday Panorama. The report is on the thousands of families still paying for the long term medical care of relatives, despite a legal precedent that states the NHS should be meeting costs. As a student from China, a country where public health care is rare for serious illness, I feel no surprise that ordinary people cannot rely on public welfare system. Nevertheless, what is shocking is how much you have to pay for the medical care bill for the old. According to this programme, the bill is six hundred pounds per week for those who needs 24 hour care. This adds up to more than 2,500 pounds per month. What does this amount money achieve? The old especially those who need 24-hour care do not have much enjoyment left in their lives. With that shocking expense, they cannot dress up in fashion, nor can they taste great food, not even move freely. That is the disease of modern society. As an economist, if one day I happen to be in that appalling status, I would rather die. I am suspecting the traditional teaching of Chinese culture: saving. Indeed, if same amount money can bring me much limited utility in the future, it will be rational to splash cash in today’s pleasure, which I can still enjoy. So a big question for James Bank, who is doing the research on Ageing and Wealth studies for IFS in UCL is whether extension on life expectancy will continue for the coming twenty years? For me, the answer is clear: I would rather die early but healthily (at least suffer a relatively short period), than live long but poorly.

 

Luckily, my headache got better after five. After finishing reading Corporate Finance notes, I managed to go to a concert in SOAS. The concert was running late, typical of SOAS, a small university with only two thousand students who are famous for their leftwing opinion and active student movement, and less disciplinary. But different from its usual academic style, tonight, it is all about ‘Journey’s Home’, of Soul Music. It was a great evening. Long songs, short songs, would be songs, poems, lots of laughter and performance fatigue. Indeed, it is the aspect alive in the entity that has formed and grown into Kindred Spirit. In the group is J’Nay, a soul boy singer. His charismatic stage presence draws in audiences with a unique blend of soul and reggae tones. The music is warm and inspirational, but for me, it is more cosy and relaxing than ever, a new discovery towards black culture music. But this is not a good description. At least in London Soul music in not just for black people, it is more diverse and multicultural, a lively portrait of London, especially its Southbank community where I actually reside.

 

So good night and good luck, I hope tomorrow I will feel energetic again. 

 

 

I usually do nothing on Friday night. So was yesterday, after a longer than usual econometric lecture. The stochastic theory behind the eminent Black Shole model surely has made me no interest in any economic reading that evening.

 

I waited until 11 o'clock so that I can get the review from Newsnight on Resurrection Blues. This is the last play by Arthur Miller. I checked the category of my university library, but failed to find it. But according to the critics, it was not warmly welcomed when it was first performed in the US. Maybe it is not a coincidence that a decade later, the play received bad review again in another English speaking country, namely Britain. Even though the play in the Old Vic is directed by Robert Altman, who is going to receive an Oscar honorary award this Sunday, the play was under criticism. Even by a writer like Arthur Miller, the play conveys a vague message and fails to warn what it intends to in a modern or post-modern society. Time, it seems to me, does matter for a play.

 

So will it be a success if the play chooses a timeless topic, such as DEATH? Thirty minutes later, I watched a TV film called Wit. Academic Vivian Bearing wryly demonstrates how an insidious cancer makes her prey to the petty humiliations and degrading procedures of the medical professionals who can treat but not cure her.

 

As a scholar in literature study of John Donne, Vivian cannot be more familiar with the thinking and emotions of death that are well rooted in the sophisticated poetries. So nothing could frighten her. The reciting and recollecting her memory of literature in her life continues even in the hospital bedside. But that is pretentious. Time has not come until pains arrived suddenly and overwhelmingly. The only defence Vivian had in the humiliating hospital environment, as she said, is the inquisition of words that used by the doctors who see saving life is higher than anything. But even the last defence collapses when pain comes. Now word is meaningless, but also so meaningful. 'it' is such a small word, but how big it is.

 

So awakes our scholar. Vivian's professor visited her. The professor suggested reciting John Donne's work to comfort the terminally ill patient. But Vivian refused. What she heard then was a children's book on a running away bonnie. No words can be simpler, but everything is understood at that moment. It is time for simplicity when you are facing death, so realized Vivian.

 

Vivian is played by Emma Thompson. I was first fall in love with her performance in Edward Ends, a marvellous work and Emma, a wonderful actor. It is a great challenge to have a role like Vivian, but Emma did it out of doubt. Her background of educated as a student in English literature in Cambridge definitely shortened her distance with the role. But I always demand a little bit more: what if I see this play on stage. How strong would that impact be!

 

To end this, let me quote the dialog in the movie that was transformed from a play:

 

Death is a comma. A pause.

After all, brevity is the soul of wit.