Kaulapi World

2 Finals down, 2 to go. Well, one more final, and a paper, same smell more or less. The nature of the study of law has blurred the intensity of test prep and papers that I don’t know which one I prefer anymore. Once upon a time I used to enjoy writing papers, even the more challenging and academic ones. Now it seems like its such a labor intensive and detail oriented process that seems like a mountain of work before you start and it just keeps piling on and on. Don’t get me wrong, I really do enjoy doing all this research, I find it very insightful and enlightening, its just that with a full 8-6 work schedule, after three or so years now I actually have begun to value sleep and downtime as a valuable commodity as well as education.

This exam was definitely a tough one. I could tell partly by the questions and the format itself, have to give props to my prof for designing a challenging final exam. Also I noticed that only 1 or 2 of my classmates left before the 3.5 hours time was up, that is out of at least 60 of us in the class. Also hardly anyone decided to take a piss break. This may seem like a trivial point, but when you’re really hunkered down in cranking out some legal IRAC analysis you just hold that shi-shi for the love of god, your grade depends on it. Unfortunately for me I was drinking Pepsi max the whole time so about 3.1 hours in I had to give in and take a whiz break. The look on some of my classmates as I was walking out the door was a mixture of irritation to sheer panic, maybe because they thought for a moment, I’m sure, that I was done already.

Without sounding like a broken record from a few days ago, I have no idea how I did, other than I was able to make what I think was a good hard effort and it more or less reflected that I went to just about every class and was pretty good about keeping up with the reading, which believe me is a feat in itself, going at night. I can also say that I enjoyed the class overall, and learned quite a bit. That means I’ll probably get a C or a B. Oh well. Again the curve seems to maybe be in my favor, I wasn’t the only one who thought it was a tough exam. Oh well, that all pau, on to the next exam.

Strange/insightful dream again last night, it seems like during my finals prep my subconscious is especially active nocturnally. This dream I was visiting Madison, Wisconsin, on either some kind of fellowship or sabbatical. I had become some kind of academic professor of law or something like that and I was visiting my old alma mater. I went to the union and noticed a bunch of changes to the layout and the old haunts I used to frequent many years ago. Out of sheer coincidence, I learned that Akiko was in town as well, visiting from Japan, and I was in touch with her over phone and blackberry to meet up later that evening. To kill time in the meantime, I went walking along lake mendota, which now had become a rough lake, with waves crashing on the shoreline. I thought to myself that it reminded me a lot like Hawaii, and noticed the amount of sand that had accumulated on what used to be the Union terrace. The water was green and dirty looking, churning with microbiotic life, yet there were a lot of people jumping in, playing in the water.

One Final done, 3 more to go. The first one always is the hardest one to get through in terms of the prep, review, and all the motions. As always, I’m not quite sure how I did. The good news is that going through it quickly I was able to recognize everything and immediately tie the questions to material that we had covered over the semester. Usually that means that I did OK. As I tell Hana, I’m confident that I passed. . . but passing could mean an A, B, or a C. If grades were any function of how much one learned from a course, then this should be my highest grade, it definitely opened up some perspectives and caused some re-evaluating of political philosophies for sure. Of course in law school your grade is solely determined on your ability to articulate your knowledge in clear, concise legal arguments, in proper IRAC form in a single exam at the end of the semester (or year). There’s no credit for participation or recognition for the process by which you learn the law. I’m wondering if the X-factor on this first exam was that this was a class I took during the day division - I would think this would stack things against me as the lone evening student competing with classmate who well, have ample time to prepare, but a good chunk of these day students happen to be graduating this semester.

Either way, what’s done is done, its on to the next one. Back to camping out in coffee shops and subway. Looking forward to getting this stuff done.

In the past I’ve noted times when I’m sitting around, doing something usually very ordinary, but then I have a sudden realization that I’ve dreamt about the exact moment down to the very minor detail. In the past I’ve called it de ja vu, but maybe I should call it more like a moment of clarity or realization, an epiphany maybe. It almost always is some random and meaningless moment, like looking out a window of a car and noticing the detailed reflection of my shirt print, or sneezing on my way to work. But when it happens I feel a sense of calm, sort of a reassurance that I’m on the right track in life, that everything up until that point in my life has been for a reason. Trying to rationalize it psychologically, I have wondered if its a self-talking mechanism in times of my life when there is some self-doubt, or questioning of life in general. However I’ve noticed that this has happened in relatively frequency in both good and bad times in the past.

The only other reasoning I can think of is that I’ve noticed the frequency of these feelings increases right before some kind of an world event or personal crossroads in life comes up. The creepy thing is that like the feeling, I don’t even see it coming until after it happens. So if I’m some kind of a clairvoyant, my forward viewing devise is way out of focus.

So the reason why I mention all of this now is that it happened a few weeks ago, for the first time I think in at least a couple of years, on my work trip down in the hotel down in Orlando. I was up late doing research for one of my classes and kind of thinking how out of synch it is trying to study away from home. Then the feeling hit me, down to the smallest detail, the shape of the room, the furniture, this funky laptop tray that came with the hotel, the fact that my extension chord barely reached the outlet, the coverage on the news about the pope visiting America.

For what its worth, I thought I’d make it a point to make more regular posts at least for my crazy finals prep week(s) It sort of allows a mental break from reading case law. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a few days advanced leave from work due to my trip going over the weekend. I usually plan to take some leave around this time of year months in advance, but it seems like more often than any extra time to prepare is welcomed.

Looking back to my political compass and mindset from the last presidential election a couple things haven’t changed at all. I’m still looking for a truly anti-war candidate, pro-civil liberties, and pro-fiscal responsibility and pro-social responsibility. What has changed since 2004 is my opinion on the way to achieve populist goals, and to what extent the “noise” in the political discussion has confused us to which party or which ideology promotes the values that I believe in. Sometimes its better to keep a healthy level of skepticism whenever ideas are reduced to sound bites and one-liners. The party who speaks about limited government in actuality becomes the big government spenders, the party of civil liberties becomes the party of pro-war party, and the party of warrant-less domestic spying.

Late April, and the finals crunch is here again. Been MIA from this journal for almost two months total now this year, its been hard to keep up with the posts with everything going on. Aside from getting flooded this past weekend, I also got to do some work travel, headed up to Philadelphia and Orlando for a few days. Had a chance to have dinner with my cousin and her husband at a place called Monk’s in downtown Philly, they had a variety of belgian beers, pretty tasty burgers, and a bunch of steamed mussel pots. Have to say that I was pretty impressed with how vibrant the downtown area was even on a weeknight, it kind of seemed like a scene in between NY and DC.

When I was on break from the conference I walked around the mall that was adjacent to the hotel. During lunch I got a good cuban plate at the food court, it was a no brainer to go there instead of the McDonalds, Panda Express and all the other standard food court fare. Happened to check out a surf shop that had a lot of brands from Hawaii, the kind that I used to check out a lot growing up. After a few minutes walking around I happened to glance at my reflection in one of the mirrors of myself wearing a coat and tie with the surfboards and racks of boardshorts behind me.

Feel like I’ve been running on empty getting back from my work trip. Landed at Dulles at about noon Sunday, to save some money I rode the shuttle and train back home, dropped my stuff off and headed out to catch up on some studying that I couldn’t finish while on travel. Sitting at potbelly’s I noticed that it was pouring outside and the street was turning into a river pretty quickly. After about an hour of this I thought better to go home and check on the apartment - too late, half of the main room had flooded.

Spent the rest of the afternoon and evening clearing out the water, hanging up the rugs, and throwing out stuff. Luckily way back I had the foresight to try and keep everything raised on shelfs especially all electrical outlets raised off the floor to avoid an electric shock.  The only real loses were a bunch of rugs from linens and things and IKEA, no big deal. In retrospect it made for an impromptu spring cleaning.

The downside is that I lost an afternoon and evening which could’ve been invested in studying, and of course its back to work the next day. Back to the grindstone.

Raining all day, this morning, afternoon, and tonight in the district, it seems like this time of year we’re stuck right in the middle in between winter and spring, and its really hard to tell whether its going to snow or rain. Its really too warm for ice, but cold enough to make you shiver on your way home late at night. Either way its soggy and humid, be sure to pack an umbrella and watch your step. In the meantime the sakura are blooming all around with a reminder that spring is just around the corner, and then theres the heat of summer to look forward to.

In other news, Badgers get upset by the cinderella and crowd favorite of the tournament, Davidson behind a hot shooting Curry. I watched most of the sweet 16 game and was very impressed with the intensity that Davidson brought to the court. Pretty bummed that they weren’t able to keep it going against Kansas after beating Wisconsin pretty handily. Now we’re left with a first time ever 4 top seeded final four. Blah, boring. I guess theres always next year to look forward.

Close to the end of March and things are picking up as usual, both on the school and work ends. Looking like I’ll be attending a few conferences for work in the upcoming months, should be good to get out of the office for a change. On the school front I’m coming up on my last push month before finals, looking like it’ll be pretty busy from here on out. Doing some independent research on my own, have to say that I enjoy it a lot more than classes, although it is a lot more challenging since a lot of its well, independently driven. I think maybe after so many semesters of being force fed law its a different change of pace trying to find different angles and theoretical solutions to legal problems. In doing the literature review I’ve been pretty impressed with the level of legal analysis and arguments that have already been made and been published, a lot of them show the amount of time and effort that was probably put into coming up with them.

This has been a tough reminder about the costs and benefits of working on a degree during the evening while holding a full time job. I’ve gotten the full dose of the argument that getting real-world experience simultaneously is irreplaceable, but I think its every once in a while I get more than 4 hours of sleep I wonder whether it puts you in a position of being too stretched out. The main factor that has made me convinced that this has been all worth it is the financial situation and forecast, I’ll be coming out of school well below the average debt load, both the reported average and some of the estimates I’ve heard anecdotally. I don’t envision that I’ll be bound by any golden handcuffs so to speak, no 6 figure debt estimates like I’ve heard from some old classmates that decided to go into other fields like academia or medicine.

Knowing that these plans worked out more or less is worth some peace of mind, or relatively speaking at least. I’ve been keeping a cautious eye on the state of the financial markets and housing bubble/crash ever since moving out here back in 2004 when the market was really taking off and everyone I knew was saying buy, buy, buy before you get priced out. partly out of the reality of my situation, being right out of school, with little savings to boot, other part of my sense of the situation that it isn’t smart to take on interest-only, adjustable rate loans on a $600,000 condo or $900,000 3 bedroom townhouse, no matter what the expected appreciation rate was, and no matter the assurances from an industry expert that I could qualify with current credit and modest government salary. After crunching some numbers, I decided it was better to rent, save, and wait to see what happened. My gut said that the prices would eventually have to come down, at least to a historical average, although I had no idea when it would happen. I also reasoned that the low interest rates were temporary, as with any monetary cycle, and then when they did increase, the shocks to the holder of the mortgage would be pretty steep. an increase from 2% to 4% would represent a doubling of a monthly interest only payment, and unless my income was likely to double on a monthly basis, this was a very stupid financial deal to accept. In the meantime I reasoned that if prices didn’t come down, then the new reality is that nobody can afford to own without continue to rent and save until a combination of our salary and savings would increase to a point that we could buy something outright, or with at least a hefty down payment.

Somewhere around 2006 I starting coming across various blogs and websites that are out there that were offering an alternate opinion to what I was hearing in the main stream media about all the middle class, self-made tycoons of real estate investments, more along the lines of what I was thinking, that all of the appreciation and speculation was imaginary, and doomed to fall eventually, and maybe fall hard. They were all really good about poking holes in what were mostly absolute statements, and raising good questions about the economics of these business transactions, many of which were never raised by the mainstream media.

Now the latest trend in news stories revolve the ongoing proposals to bail out people who are stuck in depreciating real estate assets and resetting mortgages despite all of the paper-success of recent memory. I often feel like I’m in Econ 101 again reading about the pitfalls of moral hazards and individuals ignorant of their own risk curves, many of the recent news reports have talked about “average” Americans who are finding themselves suddenly in hard times financially in the recent downturn. There are a few things that are similar in each of these stories, first is that the individuals are living paycheck to paycheck, even making a salary that is well above the national average when some event comes along (sickness, layoff, mortgage reset) and they are unable to cope because of their lack of any savings whatsoever. Secondly there is this inability or unwillingness to face the shitty reality of the situation and make some tough financial decisions (sell the house, get another job, go on a budget), and finally there is always this call to the government to bail them out, as if they had no control over the situation.

Unfortunately it seems like too many of us have gotten so used to the assurance that a lifetime of debt is normal and sustainable both on the personal and macro levels that when it comes around and bites us in the ass it really hurts and we are unwilling to deal with it without some reflection and self sacrifice. Don’t know for sure what is around the corner, but I’m not too optimistic overall. The volume of the message that all of this is unsustainable in the long run is getting louder with each multi-bullion dollar bailout of a bank, each FED rate cut, each report of housing prices crashing and industry layoffs.

Badgers make a sweet 16 run, and are matched up with the tourney’s cinderella 10-seeded Davidson, who knocked out area favorite 2-seeded Georgetown for a shot at the elite 8, and final 4. Seems like de ja vu from the last time Wisconsin made it this far, there was talk about them lucking out playing lower seeded teams all due to a lot of upsets in the bracket.

Another busy few weeks between posts, mostly been bogged down at work wrapping up some things here and there and everywhere. I ended up trying to beat the clock showing up a few hours earlier than usual, catching the 1st or 2nd train into the city, and staying a few hours later, it became a new paradigm for me to leave and get back home in darkness. At least I’m fortunate enough to have a cubicle next to a window, otherwise I wouldn’t see the sun at all these past few weeks.

Meanwhile march madness is in full swing, Badgers are back in the big dance, after winning both the Big Ten regular season, they dominated the Big Ten tournament and got a 3 seed in the Midwest bracket of the NCAA. I have a feeling that they’ll go a lot farther this year with the big man center back in commission. Last year they were pretty tough, but had injuries down the stretch, ended up getting upset by UNLV in the second round.

Been about a month between actual entries, once again life gets busy and there hasn’t been too much time to stop and actually write something down. Had a good trip out west, will have to write about that with some pictures when I get around to it. Meanwhile life goes on I suppose, I’m getting pretty tired of the daily grind, especially when lately it seems like its much ado about nothing at all. Its an ongoing struggle seeing and learning one thing in school, and then seeing the opposite at work, sometimes vice versa, either way it can be either uplifting or discouraging. The study of law is a different animal, in some ways its hyper theoretical, studied in a vacuum, just like other ivory tower disciplines. In other ways its quite real and hard hitting, when it comes to basic procedure and due process. At the same time work has the theoretical process on how work is supposed to go, contrasted with the imperfect reality of how things play out and how people actually interact. I have to say that I’m quite proud of how I’ve been able to balance both day work and night school, so far neither has really intruded into the other one in a negative way, mostly because there has been so much overlap between the two. It is discouraging sometimes when it feels like I’m the only one that really sees it though.

There is something worth mentioning that my generation has been the beneficiary of the one of the longest bull markets, by some estimates since 1982, meaning that we’ve never had a period of economic slowdown, never had a tough period for finding jobs, never had anything major barriers to access to credit. Both have contributed to a decent and increasing quality of life, either from actual income, or more perceived quality of life from cheap credit at low interest rates. As businesses start tightening their belts and laying people off, as banks stop giving out loans without ample capital or credit ratings, this will ultimately result in a shift in the American way of life as we currently know it, a shift that I wonder we are all adequately prepared for, both financially and psychologically.

About a week back into classes and work is picking up as well. Looking like a busy spring is in store for me on many fronts. On a side note, I got a chance to make wonton, some for saimin and another batch to freeze for later. It had the flavor and feeling of home.

Still following the primaries for the upcoming 2008 presidential election, have to say that I’m still a little torn on the prospects that I’ll most likely be considering come November. I’m always amazed at how US politics has become a warped version of reality TV and a strange never ending talk show in which candidates field questions and are continuously giving speeches and smiling so hard that it hurts.

Meanwhile, AFC championship is coming up, New England v. San Diego in a rematch from last year’s divisional, this time the stakes are higher as the winner goes to the Superbowl in Glendale, AZ in a few weeks. Read an article online about how both Jr. Seau and Rodney Harrison were both former Chargers before coming to New England, but Harrison was able to get there in time to get a superbowl ring or two while Jr. is still gunning for his first in 18 years. Reading about the pursuit of perfection at a professional sports star level puts things into perspective, it shows the drive and dedication of some athletes to stick with goals for years and years. We’ll have to see how this season plays out, I have a feeling that this season will be memorable thats for sure.