X'mas party, Little Tokyo Restaurant

To be honest, sometimes I feel I get confused that I am studying in the US or in Japan. Since I like Japan so much already and now I have so many good Japanese friends, it's not surprising that I always eat Japanese food. One of our favorite sushi place near Claremont is Little Tokyo. It's about 10 mins by car from Claremont. The Chef Tomy San is a kind, interesting, experienced sushi chef.

Today, "Little Tokyo" restaurant had their X'mas party. They prepared buffet style Japanese food and 太鼓 performance, which is really interesting to see in the US.
I went to the party with Michie and Ryo. We ate unbelievably tremendous food and enjoyed talking with Tomy San, drinking with huge sake cup, and great unlimited sushi. Looking around the party, I saw Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese, and American. Everyone enjoyed and was friendly. I am really grateful that I can stay in such a mixed-culture places so that I can meet so many different people who understand and respect each culture and opinion. Although it's just a X'mas party in a small Japanese restaurant, the experience made me feel I really learned a lot here. 

Anyway, we ate and drank a lot. Next year, probably we will come again with more people. haha~

(Sorry to everyone that could not come with us. Next time, let's go together!)

International Fellows Program Graduation Day

Since I started school in June, I have been learning English from four kind professors in IF program. I met many kind and intelligent Asian people, who are from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China. We learned together, drink together, poker together, and now celebrate the program graduation together.

Yesterday, 15 of us finally graduated from this language program. In the beginning of the summer, we were so afraid of talking in English, and were so new to here that everyone was busy settling everything. Now, we worked so well. Even in OB class, comparing with American students, our presentation skill, analysis ability, and participation were all beyond the average. Of course, we need to thank IF program for the progress and all the help they offered.

I really appreciated IF program and I believe it is really a helpful program for international students. Of course, without it, we can still survive, learn, and perform, but it's like a buffer for me. After almost two years empty(military + school application), I was very close-minded and even stupid. However, during the two months in summer, IF program was so intense and the instructors were so aggressively demanding hard-working from us. I was totally recovered in the summer and prepared for the fall semester.

In short, thank to every great member in IF program, including faculty, staff, Drucker staff, and of course, my favorite classmates. Because of you, I gained a ton of great memories and improvements. Thank you all and let's cheer to our future!

看到哲瑋姿伶結婚的照片了...

真希望自己在場

無法想像他們兩個結婚時我竟然不在場

那麼多的照片中我竟然沒有出現在任何一張...

看著照片中的老友們

感慨萬千... 想想高中 大學 當兵 哪一段大家沒有聚在一起?

現在 他們兩個結婚了 我人卻在千里之外 隔著電話 心中情緒激昂卻又無以言表

會不會我畢業前恰吉也結婚 乃倫也結婚 凱晏也結婚了?

拜託晚一點結 我不想再錯過好朋有的婚禮了呀!!

話說這兩人一路走到現在

說風風雨雨 說跌跌撞撞 也算是吧 感覺就是註定在一起 大家也不意外吧

這種牽絆 怎麼說呢... 真是不可思議

總之

再次祝福兩位 希望早日見到你們可以當面說恭喜!

The message.

Sometimes, I feel life is delivering some messages to me, and in order to let me really understand, it expresses its ideas by different people's words and attitude. 

In college, I realized the importance of open-minded from Chinese Medical class, Mathematical logic, and a very good American teacher, Steve Wallace. These classes and people did not tell me, "You should be more open-minded," but they inspired me through the power of open-minded attitude.

Yesterday, I talked with one friend and we discussed about my future career a lot. By his experience, the glory of getting into "marketing devision" may not be necessary a good thing. Since everyone has the pride of being a part of the most competitive devision, in his experience, working there reduced his life quality a lot. He suggested that if he got into some "top-ranking" MBA school, he may feel high pressure and can not really make good relationship with people because everyone thinks they are the best.

When I applied MBA schools, I did try to apply by ranking on major magazines. However, I really felt I was wrong. I somehow feel this is my fate to come to Drucker, although it does not even attend most of the rankings because of small size and short history. 

Since I was in Taiwan, one of my high school friends has strongly suggested me to choose Claremont because of the location and small size. At that time, I worried about the ranking and reputation of school, so I could not easily decide to come here. Now, I know she was right. 

I was told by one of our Taiwanese American classmate that in top ranking schools, only the top students got the benefits. That makes sense. Who will want to hire the worst performance student in any school? Also, the huge class size of traditional top ranking MBA school leads the atmosphere not intimate and not close. These are not the qualities I am looking for in my MBA.

There is one friend, who is also working on  her MBA, told me, "it take something to make my MBA's top ranking." when I suggested her to maintain healthy life style. To be honest, I felt I am lucky to be here because Drucker School matches my priority of life choices.

To know Japanese students is also helpful for me to understand myself. It's obvious that Japanese spend more effort and time on studying and working. I really admire and respect this attitude. However, when this leads to irregular or not enough sleeping time and little time for eating, I really can not agree.

In short, there are many choices in life. People choose what they think is right. However, there indeed is nothing right or wrong. Only one thing is for sure, different decisions lead to different results. I am grateful that I chose Drucker School and I hope everyone makes the choice that he(she) really desires!

This is the one of the messages I received recently...

Watching College Basketball

Today, I went to watch the college basketball in Honda Center, Anaheim, but we got an conclusion that the basketball game was just the entertainment for the cheerleader.....ha~

I am grateful that MBA office arranged this event. Although this is not NBA and there were not so many people attended, I think it's worth to see and college basketball is exciting.

One thing that I was happy about is the quality of my camera. We sat very far from the center but I took some good photos.
Anyway, it's a good experience and I enjoyed a lot. Next time, I should go to see the Lakers! (but it's so expensive....  >.<)

Ad for Apple's iPod Touch

The interaction between the whole web page and the ad is so impressive. Also, I always love the music of Apple's ad!

Move to CGU Dorm

Finally, I moved to CGU dorm.

Since I first contacted with housing office before I got here, the information they provided has already been doubtful for me. Based on their suggestion, I did not try to register for the new dorm because of highly competitive application. However, last month I suddenly got the information that there is a one-bedroom apartment available in CGU dorm. I immediately decided to move.

The process of checking the availability is a bit troublesome, but staff in housing are in fact pretty nice people. Although the working efficiency has been always a complaint of the students, I do believe they tried their best to serve us.

Anyway, finally, I moved in.

It's great that some friends are just as near as a few steps away from my room. The short distance from school is a great benefit that I can walk or ride bike to school easily. The only problem of lacking of internet has been temporarily solved by my kind neighbor who let me use her internet for free.

I would like to thank everyone who helped me to move here.

Since the plenty of moving experience in military, I know that if there are enough people helping, the moving process can be very fast. However, usually it's very difficult to gather people. I am lucky. All the friends here are so kind and so helpful that even during the final projects weeks, Kazuma, Ryo, Hiroshi, April, Naoto, Tian, and Michie all were helping. I really really appreciate and want to say thank you again.

Now, I stay in A104 in CGU dorm. I will try to create more memories and happiness here. This is my comfortable nest in California!

My American classmates

Before coming here, most rumors about American classmates in the US are negative. It seems to be a common sense that the language barrier is not the only problem existing between international students and American students. However, my experience in Drucker School is totally different, at least in my opinion.

Since this community is so diverse and international students are almost half of the class, although we do have about 50% of American classmates, American culture does not dominating the classroom experience. There are more than ten times I have heard this, "If you ask me(American) to make a presentation in Japanese or Chinese, I definitely can not do as well as you did." Whenever I this, I really appreciate their understanding and respectful attitude.

Recently, I have a project with three other international students and one American. Although we have not presented in the class yet, I have learned a lot. I am grateful that the American classmate is so patiently explain every detail and difference in the language part. In this team, he is the only one who use English as mother language, so I believe he somehow feels like an outsider. Although everyone is kind and helpful in my team, I understand how much effort the American classmate put in our project, not even mention that he is the only one who has full-time job.

The US is  a huge country with a lot of philosophy that I can not totally agree. On the other hand, I do think we need to learn the open-minded attitude and diverse perspective. Of course, not everyone is as lucky as me and not everyone has good American team members, but there indeed is some very friendly, understanding, and helpful Americans that are trying to build positive relationship with internationals. I met a lot of them here in Claremont during this six months. 

In short, I just want to appreciate them and I wish I can be as open minded and helpful as them.