Hi Politics in DC!

Today is Vivian’s birthday; Siobhan and Naomi are also celebrating their birthday. Yesterday 16 of us went to a Thai restaurant in Georgetown to celebrate two girls’ birthday. It’s Tim that picked and reserved the restaurant; he said that he has the best Pad-Thai here since he arrived at DC. The restaurant is called Bangkok Bistro if I am right, hiding itself on Prospect Street. The dinner was fabulous. We are divided into 2 groups because we were 16. I sat with Manu, Everaldo, Christiane, Zhu Jing, Paul from Australia, Niels, and Naomi. We decided to have a family style meal so we ordered 6 dishes together. The sharing and the passing of the dishes are very funny and Naomi said that friends from another table watched us with curiosity. The Pad-Thai was really nice and we had a lot of shrimps and fish. I love seafood so I couldn’t stop eating. Yummy! After the dinner, it came to the birthday song time and the gifts. I prepared a set of CDs from Herbert von Karayan and a bookmark from T...

On 27th January 2006, the Spanish Embassy invited a Spanish pianist to do a piano solo for this day. Eva, Christiane, Naomi and I went to the Inter-American Development Bank’s little concert hall to admire his talent. The pianist is called Ivan Martin. The program is divided into 2 parts. The first part is for you: Fantasia in d minor, KV 397 and Sonata in b flat major, KV 333. His touch is very soft. From where we sat, we could see clearly his hand movement. He fingers moved very fast and yet he is very adroit. I am so clumsy that I always admire people who play well the piano. However, we could still feel he is not very suitable for your songs. In the second part, he performed Chopin’s sonata in b flat minor nr. 2 Op. 35 and he did quite well in “marche funebre” (funeral march). I liked the emotion he expressed in a quicker rhythm. Finally, he gave us Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody nr. 6 in d flat major. This is the best piece that he performed tonight. Christiane said that she wanted to...

Almost the whole international relations field did not anticipate successfully the end of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall fell and the collapse of the Soviet Union happened within a few months. The failure to predict this huge development does make people disappointed, but does this mean these theories are useless? In this essay, I will examine this core question after assessing the book by M. Mitchell Waldrop. Does this book have any relation to the international politics? Does this story offer a new view to the studies of international affairs? At the beginning, I did not understand the reason why we should read Complexity. On the surface, it deals with a man and his intellectual interaction with other friends. The first few chapters truly confused me because I thought there was nothing to do with the world politics. The economist Brian Arthur discovered the Santa Fe Institute’s new way to simulate the economic development. However, as I continued to read, I think there is some common ...

During the oil pricing negotiation, one of my teammates is more persuasive than me at the beginning. He made the analysis for us and soon became the leader of our group. I am not used to taking the lead when my teammates have a stronger character than I do. Moreover, I know that the decision-making process is based on the consensus among the members. It would be better that we have a harmony immediately after the first discussion. Hence, I was glad that he wanted to be the opinion leader and I did not fight for it. Although I had a different opinion at first during the discussion, we soon formed our negotiation strategy based on what our leader assumed. To avoid the risk, we keep a rather conservative initial price. On the second thought, to maintain the harmony within the group might lead to a wrong decision. The decision making could be misled by a too homogeneous group or a leader with a very strong bias. This kind of decision making might jeopardize the negotiation. Next time, the ...

This is an instance of what? James Rosenau is a very famous scholar in the international relations. I think that he is perhaps one of the most reputed professors that we have in Elliott School. Harry Harding is not at Elliott this year; he is also very famous. They are one of the reasons why I chose GWU last year. This semester I have Professor Rosenau every Tuesday, tackling the turbulence in world politics. As he explained the syllabus, every student is quite astonished because one needs to write two book assessments and 12 5-7 page papers. It means that students would literally write 14 papers and that it’s one paper per week. Although the assignment seems to be tough, there are still around 20 students who stay the following week. He is a very old professor and he is on the motorized wheel chair at the moment. He is, however, full of zeal and energy. For the first class, he gave us a sentence to think about every little thing. “Of what is this an instance?” When we think of everyth...

21 janvier 2006 At the beginning of the my first semester at Elliott School of International Affairs, Ambassador Inderfurth told us there are five books that we could read during the semester. I always want to share with my friends because I think reading is very interesting and necessary for us.  The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States  The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman is also a must.  The Elements of Style by Strunk and White  Speak Up with Confidence by Jack Valenti.  Inside a U.S. Embassy: How the Foreign Service Works for America by Shawn Dorman Professor Inderfurth also said that Colin Powell’s My American Journey is worth reading. Fog of war is also recommended. He mentioned that we should read newspapers and that we should pay attention to NY Times’ headlines. After his speech, I borrowed The World is Flat and I really like it. Wish this semester I can read more and learn more.