I just finished four days on the Inka Trail where I made my way over the Andean mountains and descended into Machu Picchu by the Sun Gate. I now sit in an internet café in Cusco 2000m above sea level. It smells vaguely of urine. The owner is playing Red Hot Chili Peppers and Reggaeton. Outside the rain pours and the streets turn to mud. There is something strangely romantic about all this.

My guide offered me a job as a guide on the Inka Trail. He mentioned that Peru and China were about to sign a trade deal and he expected a lot more Chinese tourists. The offer is tempting especially as I recall the majesty of the four nights I spent trekking through the Andean passes, from temperate climes to jungle environments, from 2000m to 4300m above sea level, and from sunny days to rainy nights.

On the first day on the Trail, majestic mountains undulated before my eyes, crowned by marshmallow clouds and rising on all four sides. Its majesty paradoxically dwarfed me and made me feel bigger than ever. Running through the trail, I felt like collapsing at times from my breathlessness. But the thought of seeing what comes next kept propelling me over pass after pass.

On the second day, I climbed up and down Dead Women´s pass under the pouring rain. Sitting in a wet tent, at 4 degrees Celsius, keeps one awake and gives time to think. The ingenuity of Incan architecture and agriculture were things I dwelled on. But more importantly, I wondered how the Incan myths shape modern Peru. Talking to my guide, I witnessed a culture partly reconstructed around nostalgia and suffering: the glory of a lost empire destroyed and defiled by invaders, combined with their present impoverishment, leads to a dream of a time more pleasant and prouder for present-day Peruvians.

(Puno, Peru) Singing the goodbye song

I have been spending a lot of time in China this time round meeting with Chinese academics. It is a very different experience from my time here in 2007, and it is definitely a very insightful experience to be part of the academic gossip mill here in China and to engage in hearty discussions on Chinese policies. In private, some of the people I met talk about how their colleagues were demoted because they were too outspoken about government policies. One of them mentioned how a colleague used to spend half the class criticizing the government, and halfway through, he pointed at some people in the classroom and said “I know you are not my students!” They were sent to observe him.

Anyway, I will be taking up a Fellowship at Yale’s Center for East Asian Studies for the academic year 2009-2010. The money is great and it will be a great environment for me to pursue studies in a broad range of topics before specializing in my PhD. Plus it feels like I will actually complete the “Huntsman” education I embarked upon at Penn but never completed (a semester in China and studies in my target region). I am also grateful for the other great universities that offered me a place in their program.

While the other people I met were less colorful, they still left quite an impression on me. The first person who stopped me was a guy who made and sold bracelets on the streets. We struck up a conversation and he explained how he made his bracelets and where he was from. Shortly after that, on another street, I took some pictures of a family and they started posing for me. The lady of the house asked her daughter to buy a bottle of soda for me. They handed it to a very happy Oikono, who walked away touched by the warmness of their hearts.

After my run in with F (see previous post), I walked further down the street and a shopowner told me to watch my camera (again). I started chatting with him and several of his friends in Spanish, guessing 90 percent of the conversation. He turned to me and said “Cervaza?” I accepted and his friend ran down the streets to grab a couple of glasses and a bottle of beer. We stood out there on the sunny streets sharing a glass of beer before I bid my friends adieu.

My other encounters, which were countless, largely involved Peruvian guys stopping me on the streets, mouthing the word “Chicas” and pointing at random girls, indicating that I should take a picture.

I spent a day in Lima, capital of Peru, and I immediately regretted not scheduling more time for this fascinating city. As I stayed in a really nice and cheap hostel in the rougher part of town (i.e. the city center), I had my share of run-ins with strange and friendly characters.

“Francesco” definitely was the highlight of the evening. As I walked through one of the shadier parts of the city center, a rather fit young man who was squatting by the wall stopped me and told me to watch my camera. He said “There are thieves around!”

I was about to walk on when I thought the area would make a great picture, and lingered to take a shot. I strike up a conversation with F, and he gave me advice on how to avoid being cheated at clubs. When I told him that I was heading to Cuzco, he also had a fair bit of advice on how to avoid being ripped off at restaurants. He claimed that he was a former Muay Thai representative of Peru and that he had been to Thailand. Looking at his build, I could believe him.

I suspected F was the neighborhood drug dealer. As he lingered on the sidewalk, someone came up and handed him some money. F turned away and placed a satchel of white powder (wrapped in rubber) in the palm of the person and shooed him away, telling him not to disturb me. F spoke the best English of anyone I have met in Lima, and he seems to go against the stereotype of “drug dealers” as unkempt and uneducated ruffians. Perhaps if he grew up in another environment, he would have a very different shot at life.

As I walked away, F reminded me again to watch my camera. “There are thieves around,” he cautioned.

A friend’s sister was admitted to Penn (Wharton). I gave some thoughts on the education there and thought future readers might find it helpful. Just a caveat: my view is that of one person on the school and different people have different experiences based on their personalities and interests, so you might want to ask other people. I was not involved in Greek Life and I started out in the Huntsman program, but eventually went single degree at Wharton.

My biggest issue with Wharton is that I’m not 100% sure I want to do business, so I’m afraid it would be a bad choice. Then again, I really don’t know what I want to do; there isn’t one subject that stands out as me as an obvious major in an Arts and Sciences school.

If you have the interest and the motivation, you can definitely explore other majors in the College and would not be confined to Wharton. That said, there is peer pressure in Wharton to focus on business/finance/consulting tracks.

Did you and everyone else at Wharton know they wanted to do business and have career goals in mind from the start?

No. Most people don’t and I suspect a lot of people still don’t know what they want to do when they graduate. I would try to explore but again, there is a lot of peer pressure to pursue investment banking/consulting - you start measuring your self-worth by the bank you work for. That said, there might be a similar problem in other Ivy League schools, especially in the economics department.

Also, what were your favorite and least favorite parts of Wharton?

The best: Small faculty-student ratio for the most part, opportunities to get involved in research (since few others are interested) and analytical nature of quite a number of classes. Name recognition and relative ease in getting a job (in banking and consulting)
The worst: Culture of school tends to be geared too much towards getting a job, which I feel detracts from what a college should be.

Did you find courses like Finance and Accounting dry?

Surprisingly, finance was quite interesting. Accounting was not too bad too. Really depends on your interest - I never took much finance/accounting beyond the mandatory classes.

I’ve heard that Wharton is very cutthroat; is that true?

Wharton is competitive but I don’t think the competition is cutthroat. Then again, could be my peer circle of friends. You would find people who study hard just to get a grade, not out of interest, but then again, I believe this could be the case at other schools. If you don’t like group projects, Wharton is a bad place since I know many people who had to cope with terrible project mates and this made their experience at school worse.

What was your concentration in Wharton? Did you double major or minor in other schools at Penn?

I ended up dropping Huntsman program for an individualized single degree studying Business and Development interactions at Wharton