Shanghai Bob

Detail of mosaic in lower right of previous photo:

With Chinese, I’m still at the rote memorization stage.  I was talking with Manny last night about techniques for learning dialogues by heart, and thinking about the long road from here to fluency.  How do you know when you are fluent in a language?  Many people answer that question by saying, “When you start dreaming in it.”  Can that be the right answer?

I’ve had dreams in which I can fly, but I don’t think that means that I really can fly, or even that I know what it would feel like to be a bird or Superman.  That’s part of the magic of dreams, you can have the feeling of doing something without the reality of it.

I have a stronger reason to doubt the dream hypothesis:  I’ve dreamt that I could speak Ancient Greek.  After six years of study, I can read Homer and the early Platonic dialogues with not much effort, but I can’t speak Ancient Greek.  And I had just started studying Greek in a summer intensive program when I had this dream, so I couldn’t even read that much without a dictionary.

I think that dreaming in a language is an indication that you are immersed in the language, but isn’t necessarily a sign of fluency.  I also think that you probably gain fluency in different domains more quickly.  Many gaijin are fluent in “Taxi Japanese”, and can get home from any part of the city, but many of them have no other Japanese language competence.

I began to suspect that I was gaining general fluency in Japanese the day I got on the train at Shinjuku station, then immediately jumped off when the conductor announced that it would be an express train (which skips my station).  I didn’t have time to reflect on or translate the announcement — I reacted to the words subconsciously.

In France, I met an apple farmer during a bike ride to Mont-Saint-Michel.  After some minutes of conversation, he asked if I were Breton.  No one would mistake me for French (there are not many 6′4″ blond Frenchmen), but to be mistaken for the Celtic minority of Bretagne made me realize my studying had paid off.

In Germany, a good comeback made me feel like I had reached a degree of fluency in everyday conversation.  I was in the student cafeteria (the Mensa), testing bottles of soda to find a cold one.  I finally took one from the back of the rack, and the server scolded me in German:  ”They are all the same!”  I replied without thinking, also in German:  ”Then it doesn’t matter which one I take, does it?”

Since all of my time is currently free time, I’ve been spending a lot of it in parks and pubs, and “measuring out my life with coffee spoons” in cafes.  Sometimes, I get to talk to strangers.

I was in the Crown and Anchor, writing in my journal, when I noticed a scruffy but pretty girl drinking a beer and reading Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy.  I assumed she was a philosophy student (as I was myself once).  She asked me to watch her stuff for a minute, and when she got back I asked her if she was carrying that heavy tome for self-defense on the mean streets of London, or if it was for a course.  It turns out she’s doing a philosophy degree at UCL.

It may be that reading technique has declined since I was a student:  hers involved moving her head side-to-side as if she were watching a miniature tennis match taking place on the pages of her book.  I got the impression from this that the book was a little bit for show, and that she was absorbing more Beck’s than Bertrand.  Philosophy students weren’t pretentious back in my day, oh no.

For laughs, I was tempted to ask, “What are you going to do with a degree in philosophy?”  I didn’t, as I know from experience how annoying that question can be.  Instead, I confessed that I had done a degree in philosophy, followed shortly by another.  I should have added, “And now I’m unemployed.”

I’m reading The Undercover Economist (which itself struggles with pretension); it had this analysis of the value of philosophy degrees:

Spence himself first used his insight to show why students might choose to pursue a degree in philosophy, which is difficult but does not lead to specific career opportunities, like an economics degree or a marketing degree.  Assume that employers would like to hire smart, diligent workers but can’t tell from an interview who is smart or diligent.  Assume also that everyone has to work hard to obtain a philosophy degree, but lazy, dumb people find it particularly troublesome.

Spence then shows that smart, diligent people can prove they’re smart and diligent by going to the trouble of getting a philosophy degree.  It’s not that lazy, dumb people can’t get that degree but that they wouldn’t want to:  employers will pay philosophy graduates enough to compensate them for the trouble but not enough to persuade lazy, dumb people to bother.  The employers are willing to do this despite the fact that the philosophy degree itself does not improve the candidate’s productivity at all.  It is merely a credible signal, because a philosophy degree is too much trouble for lazy, dumb people to acquire.

Is this an accurate analysis?  A friend of mine was studying for a mid-term in a course called Gemstones and Gemology.  I said, “Are you really going to get college credit for a course on jewelry?”  She came back with, “What are you studying?  Aristotle?  What use is that to anybody?”  So I bet her that I could take the practice exam she was working on and that Aristotle would help me do better than she had after three months of lectures on the subject.

I took the test.  Not only did I beat my friend’s score, I got everything right.  Why?  Aristotle is the foundation of western science.  If you understand Aristotle, you understand how scientific problems are formulated.  In addition, since he started the tradition and his disciples continue it, much of scientific terminology is in Greek or Latin.  I don’t have to take a class to tell me what “anisotropic” means — the word itself tells me, and I can guess from it (for example) that anisotropic gems split light in different directions.  (This sort of thing is why it’s still worth studying Greek*, even for the pragmatically minded.)  Finally, as the founder of syllogistic logic, Aristotle gives insight into contradictions that allow a test-taker to eliminate incorrect options and to see how questions later in the exam illuminate earlier ones.

This is a roundabout way of objecting to the assertion that philosophy “does not improve the candidate’s productivity”.  I think philosophy, like mathematics or other problem-solving disciplines, does increase productivity by giving students tools to analyze problems and to accelerate learning.  And I doubt that most students who study philosophy choose the degree to signal diligence and brains to potential employers — there are more direct ways of doing this, and most philosophy students don’t think about future employment at all**.  Being able to do your coursework in the pub is probably a much more important factor.

*  I was flipping through a book called something like The Smartest Guy in the World in an airport bookstore, about someone who read everything he could to be a success on the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.  I put it down when he confessed that the multiple-choice question he missed was, “What are red blood cells called?”  One of the answers, erythrocyte, means “red cell” in Greek.  Can’t be that smart.

** A friend of mine wrote a comic that I thought was funny at university:  A guy is standing behind a cash register and the customer asks, “Where’s my change?”  The guy answers, “True change comes from within.”  The caption is, “Why philosophy majors have trouble finding a job.”

It seems obvious when you say it, but you meet a different set of people wandering around London during the day than you do working in a bank.

Yesterday, I walked from Covent Garden to Primrose Hill to see the view.  The most prominent part of the southern horizon was the nest of mechanical cranes on almost every building.  I counted 54 of them.

Since it was Monday morning, there were just a few moms out with their kids, an older, perhaps retired, couple, and me…and a community police officer (or at least a guy dressed like one).

I was reading my book on one of the benches when the officer sat down at the other end of it.  All the other benches in the park were empty, but he sat next to me and started talking about the weather, the relative absence of people in the park, and how he likes to have fun at work, “because otherwise, what’s the point?”  He asked my name, I told him, and he said, “Ah, like Robert Redford.  And you have his same golden hair and good looks.”  Was a cop hitting on me?  I wonder what the residents of Primrose Hill would think about the kind of fun in the park their council taxes are supporting.

On the way home I saw again the guy who stands on the corner of Garrick Street calling out, “If you are lost or need information”.  I wanted to ask him something to see what he was up to (performance art? an entrepreneur? a shy person trying to become bolder?), but all I could think to ask were questions that would sound facetious (e.g., Where is the nearest undiscovered horde of Roman coins?).

“If you need information”, is a very open-ended offer, however, and if I see him again I will definitely find out what he is up to.  Maybe he is exploiting the Pareto Principle and asking for a fee from the 80% who want to find Covent Garden, the British Museum, or the tube station.  For the rest, he can just say he doesn’t know.  If that’s the game, I’ve missed an opportunity by helping all those lost people for free.

Today is the start of my third week of freedom, and I woke up again before 7:00a.  Why so early?  I think it’s because I feel like the “pipeline” is still full.

I will license the following metaphor to the first management guru to write in:  As an employee, you are an avalanche victim — you are buried in snow (work), and your job is to dig your way out.  Part of what you are paid for is to prioritize correctly — there’s always more to do than one person can accomplish.  You need to pick the correct direction (up, or at least upward), the right tools, and the right technique to make progress while the snow continues to accumulate above you.  If you dig deeper, or dig upward but try to make the hole bigger than necessary, or if you use your hands when you have tools, you won’t make enough progress.  You don’t have to shovel all the snow, just enough to get up to the surface.  (OK, maybe this metaphor needs some work.)  Anyway, I wake up every morning ready to dig, even though the things I still have to arrange before I leave should take less than a week.  All the pressure of work waiting to be done is more or less imaginary.

My friends who have taken sabbaticals have not been encouraging:  they say it takes four months to stop feeling like that.

Eine is one of the local Hackney street artists/vandals.  He writes his nom de guerre on buildings and airbrushes letters of the alphabet on shop shutters.

When I first moved to the neighborhood, I took the letters as a kind of treasure hunt, first trying to find all the letters of my name, then trying to find the “hard” letters like Q, X, and Z.  It was a good way to get to know the area, wandering through all the streets when the shops were closed to try to find a new letter.  A lot of websites discuss Eine and his alphabet, but not a single one mentions the thing that I think explains their appeal:  these letters on square shutters look like children’s alphabet blocks.

I’ve been off work for the past two weeks, but today is officially my last day.  Not going into the office was surprisingly easy to get used to, but not getting paid is probably going to take more adjustment.

I decided to take a sabbatical to do some traveling before moving to Shanghai to study Chinese.  Since I announced my decision, I’ve received a lot of kind notes and encouragement from friends and even relative strangers.  Many of them say that it is a brave thing to do.  Is that code for “foolhardy”?

Signals

However much I love this company, the signals all point in the same direction:

• I have been here for over seven years (in three different offices, sure, but that’s a long time relative both to my working life and to my age).
• I have just wrapped up the current project I moved from Tokyo to accomplish.
• The person I hired and trained as my successor is more than ready for the role.
• I had a number in mind when I started this job, and I hit it last November.
• I want to take a year off to travel at some point in my life.
• The opportunity cost is relatively low:  my salary is only going to get higher (making a year off in the future more expensive), and the credit crunch is likely to affect our bonuses (making this year the best one to miss a bonus, if I have to pick one).
• The business team I work with is essentially the same as when I started — a change will be refreshing.
• Moving to a new internal role would mean a 2-3 year commitment in order to make a real difference, which is a long time to wait if I do want to take a sabbatical.
• I’m more likely to get my next big increase in responsibility by moving externally than by moving internally.
• I’ve got a big birthday in November, and would rather mark this year than subsequent ones.
• I am ready for a new adventure.

Charts

There is yet another good reason to move.  I don’t think folks in technology give this much thought, but their trajectory is different from that of the business team (this applies mainly to the “partnerships” we develop in finance — if I were working for a technology firm, the following wouldn’t be as relevant).  The IT “earning curve” starts off much higher than that of the typical business team member, but is flatter, which means that at some point, after more or less time being more valuable (as measured by compensation), technology is left in the dust.  Here’s the chart:

This graph is based on real data, but I obscured the actual numbers.  The first jump in the business line is moving from graduate to FTE.  The jump in both lines between -3 and -2 is promotion to principal/vice president.  The last data point for both series is just a continuation of the previous year’s progression to make the trend more visible.  The red dot marks now, where the difference in values is currently just 2.3%.

What this chart shows is that I have exactly this year captured the last of the alpha to be gained from opting for a career in technology.  In the next year or so my business counterparts will outpace me significantly and continue to accelerate.  Saving “turnabout is fair play” and “swings and roundabouts” for a future discussion, there are two possible responses if I want to avoid this:

• Stay on the same curve but increase my y-coordinate (e.g. by changing firms, which usually entails an increase in responsibility and compensation).
• Look for a new curve (e.g., by moving to a business team or joining a technology company where I can contribute directly to the bottom line).

What is consistent in both alternatives is the need for a move.

Signs

Finally, there’s the omen.  The day after I handed in my resignation, I talked to a friend of mine on the trading desk in Tokyo.  He said, “You’ll never guess what I did.  I resigned!  And you’ll NEVER guess what I’m GOING to do.  I’m moving to Shanghai to study Chinese!”

Trying to time the market is a fool’s game, but when your signals, your charts, and your buddy all tell you it’s time to take a risk, it would be more foolish not to listen.

I’ve been lucky to have a number of good friends who are eager to teach me to say and do things the proper English way.  I’ve learned to invite my “mates” back to my “gaff” (invite my homies back to my crib, yo) and to pronounce Bethnal Green like the locals do (Beffnal Green).  Both are good for a laugh coming from an American.

I get lessons from strangers, too.  Today as I was walking through the West End, I stopped by Fortnum and Mason to get a snack to eat in the park.  I settled on a pork pie, and asked the clerk if he could heat it up, to which he replied, “The pork pie likes to be eaten cold, sir.”  I thought this was a pleasantly indirect way of telling me how to act (a lesson in itself!).  I said, “OK, let’s do what the pork pie wants.”

I got my new passport today — the US Embassy in London was very efficient, the UK post office less so, but I finally got it.  The old one hadn’t expired yet, but it didn’t have any more blank pages even though I had added a new sheaf while I was in Tokyo.

The Royal Post Office may be antiquated, inefficient, and staffed by trolls, but the Deposit Protection Service here in the UK is marvelous.  I got my housing deposit back with just a few clicks, and I even earned interest on the money.