Day Six: Stockholm Design Tour continues

Plan to go to Ikea. According to Time Out City Guide, there is a free shuttle bus to Ikea store from Regeringsgatan 13 every one hour from 11am to 5pm daily. Arrive at the bus stop a couple of minutes before 11am. No bus comes. I may have missed one. So I wait for the midday bus by visiting an Åhlens store in front of the bus stop. It does sell some tempting products like napkins with nice patterns. It also tells me about the best colour combination for my bathroom. Muji is also here, and I find colourful and transparent bath soap bars (in yellow, blue, organge, and green) and tissue boxes which are surprisingly rare in Sweden. It's a good idea to open a store like this in front of the bus stop for Ikea.

Midday approaches. A girl speaking American English asks me if the bus to Ikea is operating on Sunday. The bus stop has a sign: "går alla vardagar." The electronic dictionary I bought yesterday doesn't help me at all. It does not have an entry for any of these words. Actually the dictionary has only 20,000 words in total. Since it translates into 29 different languages, it boasts 580,000 words on the package. A pocket Swedish-English dictionary on sale in a bookstore contains 32,000 words! What's the point of an electronic dictionary then? I'll definitely return this dictionary. It's called 29L Global Translator. Never ever buy this.

Several minutes later, the girl, coming out of the Åhlens store, speaks to me: There is no Ikea bus on weekends.

Changing today's plan, visit NK department store, probably the Swedish counterpart of UK Harrods. Its lower ground floor is another temptation for design addicts. In addition to Design House Stockholm, Bookbinders, Ording & Reda, and Kosta Boda (see yesterday), it also has Granit, which is a bit like Muji but offers products either in white, black, or the mixture of both. Find a tempting shower curtain (last night I found that the shower curtain already furnished in my flat allows water to spill out) and a black laundry bag. At Ording & Reda, I buy paper clips of black and white stripes.

Time Out recommends NK's bookstore as it offers books in English. But to me it's not very useful. Where can I buy Monocle magazine here in Stockholm?

After having lunch at the NK canteen, I stop by at Clas Ohlson in Gallerian (see yesterday) and buy a measure tape. I need this to know what size of furniture I need to buy before going to Ikea etc.

Then I head for R.O.O.M., yet another furniture store in Kungsholmen of western Stockholm. It displays quite a few living room furniture suggestions, which is enlightening to learn what colour and texture combination looks great. The store is very large, and also has a small item section. Find a tempting soap dish here.

On the way home, stop by at my office in the Institute. Log on to Tyda, an excellent online Swedish-English dictionary. It's better than Lexin, which everyone seems to recommend, in terms of the speed of translation. I check what "går alla vardagar" at the Ikea shuttle bus stop means; "går" means run, "alla" every, and "vardagar" weekdays. I'll definitely return the stupid 29L Global Translator.

I also track my UPS boxes online. It's not updated over this weekend; so I don't know whether they will deliver tomorrow. I need to call them up tomorrow's morning.

Day Five: Stockholm Design Store Tour

*** You may need to change your browser's language encoding to properly display Swedish alphabets (å, ä, and ö). ***

As UPS is off duty over weekends, I take a tour of design stores in Stockholm all day. As most stores in Stockholm close by 4pm on Saturday (and often all day on Sunday), I leave home by 11am when most stores open.

The tour starts at Stadion tunnelbana station. Walk down on Sibyllegatan street takes you first to Jacksons, recommended by Wallpaper* City Guide. It's a classy atmosphere with expensive chairs and glass and ceramic bases. Not my taste.

Next Asplund, both Time Out and Wallpaper* recommendation. A very cool store with cool music in the background. Find a stylish beige pepper mill. And a white designer globe without latitude and longitude lines, reminding me of why every globe has such lines which are rarely important, aren't they?

Further down on Sibyllegatan is Modernity, another Wallpaper* recommendation. Well, it sells furniture and bases which are not my taste.

Now I'm on Östermalmstorg square, where a stylish outdoor cafe/bar/restaurant called Lisapatorget is found. Outdoor cafes tend to be boring, but this one is different. Next time I will try.

Now walk down on Nybrogatan street. Time Out's recommendation, Nordiska Galleriet on the west side and a branch of DesignTorget on the east side, both of which turn out to be very interesting and even enlightening. Nordiska displays a wide range of light, chairs and sofas, and tables for living rooms. This branch of DesignTorget, unlike the one I visited last Thursday, is full of temptation. A black oven mit, pop art alarm clocks, a toilet roll stand with an eye, a designer door mat, and a mouse-shaped socket extension cover cloth.

Walk further south to the sea, and visit Carl Malmsten and Svenskt Tenn on Strandvägen street. Not my taste. The latter is recommended by almost all Stockholm city guides, but its focus on bright flowery patterns is not my cup of tea.

Now walk up northwest on Birger Jarlsgatan. Find a store called Kartell (which appears to be Italian judging from its website address) specializing in pop art style lighting and chairs. Then an amazing Orrefors and Kosta Boda (both in the same store), recommended by Wallpaper*. This store is for very stylish glasswares, and the price is not that high.

Turn left and turn left again after one block. Norrlandsgatan street has three interesting stores. First, Bookbinders, a stationery store. Then Pause, an audio-visual store with its display very elaborate. Finally, Salming, a stylish underwear maker's store. Turn left on Smålandsgatan and there is Design House Stockholm. Although neither Time Out nor Wallpaper* mentions this store, it does offer quality design furniture. The display presentation is also good here. I'm tempted to buy black doughnut-shaped ceramic salt & papper containers with a rectangular wooden tray.

One block south runs Hamngatan street. Walk to the west and opposite to Stockholm's top class department store NK is The One furniture store. Again neither Time Out nor Wallpaper* recommends it, but it's a very distinctive store because its theme on the ground floor display is Gothic. Shop attendants wear a red T-shirt with a white cross, acting like an emergency helper. The store display teaches me that I may want to buy olive green bed sheets.

Further to the west is Gallerian shopping mall. It is rather like those London boring shopping malls, but go upstairs and there is Clas Ohlson, a recommendation by "Sato memo", a Stockholm city guide written by Japanese medical researchers living here. This store lacks in style, but its range of products is amazing, almost everything you need in daily life (e.g. socket extensions, screw drivers). Customers are much more male-dominated than the stores I visited so far. :) I ask the shop assistant if they have a socket converter. I need several of them to use electric appliances that I brought from London. He tells me a surprising fact: socket converters are BANNED in Sweden. As stupid Americans moving to Sweden who are unaware that different countries adopt different voltages, often used a socket converter without changing electricity voltage, I'm told, the Swedish government decided to ban it for the safety reason. A bad example of having a big government.

Next door is another branch of Teknik Magazinet. I ask for the electronic dictionary translating Swedish to several foreign languages, the one I saw last Thursday. The shop assistant is friendly enough to allow me to use it for a while. I now realize that one of the foreign languages is Japanese. And it can be used as, say, a Japanese-Arabic dictionary as well. I decide to buy it. It's less than 500 krona (about 20 pounds).

Now I'm hungry. Have a light lunch at Coppola Caffe on the ground floor of Gallerian. Its sweet bread (winerbröd) is excellent. But mozzallera and tomato salad is mediocre. Mozzallera doesn't do a job at all. By the way, you can take bread for free here. Is this a Swedish way?

Walk further to the west and arrive at Åhlens department store, a Swedish equivalent of UK's Selfridge's in my opinion. The second floor has a reputable homeware section. Design House Stockholm (see above) and Japan's Muji are part of it. A stylish kettle I saw elsewhere sells at a cheaper price here. And it also sells another cool kettle. Sleek bathroom scales are on sale as well. The lower ground has a stationery section where Bookbinders (see above), Ordning & Reda, and again Muji are part of it. I buy a Muji pen which I will use in the kitchen to take note of what to buy next time I go to a supermarket.

Now walk up to the north on Drottninggatan street to visit Pub department store partly because I want to use a toilet. Five krona (about 30 pence) is required for using it. Another reason to visit this rather boring department store is to take photos of my face at a photoshop for the forthcoming ID card application. Once I obtain my personal identification number from the Tax Agency (see 23 August), I can get this ID card from a bank or a post office which can be used for the identification purpose in Sweden. Six passport size photos cost 159 krona (12 pounds). It's expensive, but given that I don't understand Swedish, having someone (who of course speaks English) take photo is easier for me.

Walk further up north on Drottinggatan, and there's another branch of Ordning & Reda. Find a cool mouse pad. It seems that these design stores probably limit its product range on display on purpose in branches housed in department stores like Åhlens.

Further north on the same street. Find a store called Eden. It's not that cool, but its range of products on offer is diverse including probably all the toiletries available on the market. An instant shoe shine, a wooden chopping board, and a designer toilet brush are tempting.

Next door is Bo Concept, an expensive furniture store.

Then turn right towards Japanese foods shops (mentioned in the Sato memo) on Tegnergatan street. Turns out that both are closed. They are open on Monday to Friday from 10 to 18, Saturday from 10 to 14, and closed all day on Sunday. They are NOT Japanese! :)

On the way back to a tunnelbana station, find a supermarket chain Coop Konsum. Finally I manage to buy wheat flour as there is a shop assistant to ask in front of the shelf. I also find tagliatelle which is not available on the nearest grocery store to my place.

I'm worn out when I'm back at home. But it was a pleasant journey. It's just amazing that an enormous number of interior goods stores is on offer here. And I haven't visited Södermalm, where another cluster of such shops can be found, or the world's famous Ikea store.

Day Four

*** If you haven't read, please start reading from the 21 August post.***

Wait for UPS to come all day. As I can't go out, I think of how to make my flat look nicer. Put the television set and an uninspiring carpet into the wardrobe. Move the bed sofa to create a space for quality speakers that I plan to buy. Move the dinning table in the living room to use it as a desk. Think of what color should define each room of the flat, given the colour of the wall and the furniture already provided. It's just fun.

UPS doesn't show up by 6pm. Giving up, go to the ICA grocery store (and still unable to buy wheat flour), cook dinner, and go to the Institute to use the Internet.

Starting a new life in a foreign country is not that easy.

Day Three

Meet Christina at Slussen tunnelbana station at 9am. She takes me to the Tax Agency where I apply for my personnummer, or my personal identification number. Without this number, you can't open a bank account, set up a phoneline, etc. I'm told it will take a couple of weeks. Christina says, "That's quicker than the average."

Go to the Institute. Unpack one of the boxes shipped from London. Change my email address for email alert of top 5 economics journals.

The lunch bell rings. Have lunch at a restaurant by taking a 10 minute walk in the middle of nowhere to the east with Torsten, John, Harry, Christina, and two more people whose name I don't remember. Sweet chili salmon (85 krona) is not too bad. I'm asked whether my PhD thesis defense will be public. In Sweden, I'm told, the viva is conducted in public, where any participant can ask the doctorate candidate.

Come back to the Institute. When I'm about to leave around 3pm, David, a PhD student at the Institute, drops by, inviting me to a drink this evening.

Take Tunnelbana to T-Centralen. Visit Kartcentrum, a map store, and buy Pocket Street Map. In the end, there seems to be no A to Z map in Stockholm. This pocket map covers a very small area of Stockholm. But other maps in the book format covering larger areas are too big to carry around.

Then I visit Teknik Magasinet for electronic Swedish-English dictionaries, because a shop assistant at another electric appliances store told me to visit this store yesterday. It's a tiny shop where customers cannot browse products unless they ask a shop attendant at the counter who appears to be knowledgeable of all the products they sell. He introduces me to a large pen-shaped device which scans words in print and shows translation. But this one only translates from English to Swedish. He then shows me another flat device, just like all those Japanese electronic dictionaries, which translates 66,700 Swedish words and phrases into more than 10 other languages including English. But he doesn't know what dictionary this device uses. I can't decide to buy this one as reliability is doubtful...

As I'm in the city centre, my tour of Stockholm design stores begins. First Lagerhaus. They have a wide range of stationery, bathroom items, and kitchenwares.

Then Visit DesignTorget. I find this place just eclectic and selling mainly fun stuff.

Go home once, and find a card from UPS. They came to deliver my personal belongings from London today even though the web tracking yesterday said the delivery was scheduled to be tomorrow. What's worse, I don't understand what the card says (all in Swedish)...

Go shopping at ICA, the nearest grocery store. Want to buy wheat flour, but can't find one on the shelf. Today there is only one shop attendant who is busy handling customers queuing at the till. Ask a couple of other customers. Turns out that they are not Swedish and have no idea. Seems like people living in this area are mostly foreign students... Go home without flour and cook dinner.

Beef tastes better here than in London. Beef burger that I cooked yesterday was excellent. Today I simply cook a thinly sliced beef steak, and it's just juicy. Milk is also tasty here. Another relief from London.

Go to a bar David told me. Meet Katrin, a classmate of mine at LSE who also just moved to Stockholm, and several PhD students both from the School and the Institute. I ask one of them what the UPS card says. It says, "We are coming at the same time tomorrow." Great.

We then move to Tranan bar/restaurant. As I can't drink anymore but didn't have vegetables when I cooked dinner at home, I end up having an expensive goat cheese salad (120 krona, or 9 pounds), which is not too bad.

Go home around midnight.

Day Two

Go to the Institute. It's a 10 minute walk from my flat. For the first time since my primary school days, I commute by walk, something almost impossible in Tokyo and London. (I commuted to secondary school and university by taking one-hour train ride in Tokyo.)

Visit Christina. After briefing basic things at the Institute, she takes me around to see people at the Institute who are already back from holidays.

Following the lunch bell at 11:30am, have lunch with Christina, Mats, and Harry at a university restaurant. At the Institute, someone rings the bell at 11:30 to invite colleagues to lunch.

Go to the city centre by Tunnelbana (Stockholm's underground) to look for an electronic Swedish-English dictionary and a Swedish equivalenet of A to Z map to carry on. I end up finding several interesting shops for interior goods, including Bang & Olufsen for designer speakers, Village (at Kungsgatan 27) for household accessories, and Stockhome for household goods.

As several creative-type friends of mine in London told me, Stockholm appears to be an interesting city for those into design.

Day One

Move to Stockholm exactly five years after I arrived in London.

Fly with SAS from London City Airport. Unlike Ryanair, SAS allowed me to check in online smoothly. Unlike any other London airports, boarding on the aircraft at London City is very smooth. I'll definitely book a flight arriving in London City next time I come to London.

Yumiko-san kindly comes to the airport to see me off with a piece of quiche she baked. This is very helpful as having dinner on the first day of your stay in a foreign city can be very difficult. (I ended up at McDonald's five years ago.)

The airplane arrives at Stockholm Arlanda Airport on time. The passport control is easy to pass without being asked anything, after I pass my passport with the work permit page shown. My check-in luggage returns to me without any difficulty.

My apartment keys were sent to the airport bagport by Christina, the Institute's super-secretary. ("The Institute" refers to my new workplace hereafter.) After learning where it is at the information desk, I pick up my keys at the bagport by paying 30 krona (about 2 quid) in cash (I bought a large amount of Swedish krona in cash at M&S in Convent Garden, London, yesterday. With your passport shown, you can buy foreign currencies by debit card).

Now start feeling hungry. Stop by at a Seven Eleven store in the arrival lounge and order mezewrap. It's surprisingly tasty. I'm delighted by the fact that I no longer need to suffer from stupid London sandwitch shops.

Then I take a taxi to the apartment. By reading a Stockholm travel guide obtained in the SAS aircraft, I've learned Taxi Stockholm and Taxi 020 (so named because its contact number is 020 20 20 20) are the most reliable. I find a Taxi Stockholm taxi. I notice that minor taxi company cars imitate Taxi Stockholm car's appearance.

About half an hour, I arrive at the apartment building. It first looks like a London's council flat building. When I enter, it smells of smoke as there was a fire in the basement last week. My apartment is on the first floor, but I don't know whether Sweden follows the British or American convention of numbering floors. On the ground floor, there is no door indicating my name. Walking upstairs, I find my apartment. The smoke smell continues.

Opening the door, I learn what my new place to live looks like. The spacious entrance hall has got three wardrobes. On the right, the door to the compact kitchen. In front, the door to the spacious living room with a very comfy sofa. Next to the living room is a bed room with two single beds and a study desk. Between the bedroom and the kitchen lies the bathroom. At the centre of the flat is one more wardrobe.

Read through the apartment instruction provided by University Accommodation Center. Learn that while the standard voltage in Sweden is 230 volt, bathroom sockets must be 110 volt by regulation.

And this instruction tells me where the nearest grocery shop is. After eating Yumiko-san's delicious quiche, I visit the shop. Three surprises. First, when I want to buy salt, pepper, or butter, it's hard to tell which one I should buy. I can't tell the difference between different types of, say, salt as the package description is in Swedish only. Second, there is a machine accepting used cans. It appears that you will get a receipt after returning cans and get refunded. Finally, plastic shopping bags cost 1.5 krona (about 10 pence) each!

Staring a new life in a foreign country may be tough, but it's also full of stimulation for curiosity.

Beware of Ryanair's online checkin system

I booked a Ryanair flight to Italy a month ago. By paying a bit more money (4 pounds), I opted for online check-in (and priority boarding).

Two days before the departure, I got email reminding me of the online check-in.

Then I realized that the online check-in system is only available for passengers with an European passport who are NOT travelling from Italy to UK.

Well, I still enjoy the priority boarding, but I feel like I was cheated...

PhD Thesis Submitted

I submitted my PhD thesis today. In economcis, the PhD thesis is rather a formality. The effective examination of your thesis is already done during the job market process. But, I don't know why, I feel more strongly today than when I got a job offer that I have done something. Formality does have some meaning, maybe.

Joshi Puroresu Diary Launched

By the way, I have launched Joshi Puroresu Diary even though I have been supposed to be very busy writing up my PhD thesis. :-)

The aim is to organize joshi puroresu YouTube videos (which are increasingly uploaded during the past one year by presumably mad American fans of joshi puroresu) by date and wrestlers.

I believe that joshi puroresu is the last hidden gem in Japan. With help of YouTube and all those YouTube users who upload joshi puroresu videos, I can finally promote this to a wider audience.

Anyway, so far the best match is Momoe Nakanishi vs Ayako Hamada. Try watching this.

Am I an Alpha Blogger? :-)

I have found that some posts on this blog are cited by a couple of websites.

I have already mentioned that my review on Ping Pong restaurant is featured in the restaurant's own website.

My review on Menelik restaurant appears in Ethiopianrestaurant.com.

Now my review on Budapest Festival Orchestra's performance at BBC Prom last year is featured in the orchestra's own website.

What's next? :-)

Where Am I Going?

In case you still don't know where I'm going from next academic year on (especially for one reader in New Haven---I'm sorry I ignored your request until today), I'm moving to the world's 8th most livable city on 21 August.

Proof of Impossibility Theorem: Step 1

A couple of years ago, I was mad about this girl. The encounter with her made my life a lot easier. I even used a deformed version of her name as my login password for various websites.

But I didn't understand the nature of her job. She was like a fisherman. No matter how long you work, you won't earn any money on a day when there is no fish in the sea. The more you work, the more you earn on a day when there are tons of fish in the sea (assuming that the price of fish is constant no matter how much you sell them ... I apologize for my economist self). Working 8 hours everyday does not maximize your income. You need to work hard when you are lucky. You don't need to work at all when you are unlucky. Which will be the case tomorrow is uncertain, out of your control.

But I didn't understand this simple thing. I demanded a constant, steady flow of interactions with her everyday, which must have annoyed her a lot. If she reads this, I want to belatedly tell her that I'm very sorry for my immaturity.

If I'm asked, "If I met her today, then would I behave differently?" my answer is unfortunately no. To start a relationship, I need to have a sizable amount of time to stay together initially. Then we will learn about each other. Once I go through this period, then no matter how busy my partner is, I can trust this person and endure loneliness. If, from the beginning, we can't stay together at all, I can't go anywhere with this person.

Given that my life will be pretty much busy for the next six years, and given that I like a woman who is busy doing her work, this proves, at least partly, the impossibility that I will meet somebody soon.

This series "Proof of Impossibility Theorem" will continue irregularly.

Acknowledgement: This post is inspired by a blog post in Japanese on 7 July 2007 by Professor Fumio Ohtake, a labor economist at Osaka University.

D-Fix plus Takaco vs Kansai, Eagle, and Devil

I've learned that I can use YouTube to promote what I love in Japan: old-skool visual-kei rock and women's pro-wrestling. Here's an example of the latter:


Watch out for 4'10'' when Kaoru did swanton from the balcony. Also Kansai's Splash Mountain at 7'30''.

Get Addicted? Here's the last half of the match.

Enjoy another Japanese world.

Econoclasm Travel Guide vol.1: Tokyo

Last month's issue of Monocle magazine ranks Tokyo as the world's 4th most livable city (see the magazine article via International Herald Tribune's website).

American cities including New York are all out of top 20 (except for Honolulu) because crime rates are high. London is out, too, because of its infamous public transportation and due to the absence of bars after midnight.

To celebrate this, I make public my own travel guide for anyone planning (or longing) to visit Tokyo. Enjoy! (Adobe Reader required.)

S.K.I.N.

Imagine you are NOT from an Anglo-Saxon country. So rock musicians from your country are never famous world-wide.

Then two of the best rock stars for you back in school days, each the leader of a hugely popular rock band in your country, form a new group more than 10 years on, play the first gig, not in your home country but in Los Angeles, in front of screaming American fans.

How would you feel?

Well, this happened to me:


And it's not just rock music but also pianos, violin, and shamisen (a Japanese traditional guitar).

This is the final answer from Japan's rock music to the world. And here's more information on S.K.I.N. from a blog run by an American Japan's rock music fan.

In case you know the term "visualkei" by reading French Vogue or watching a German tv program, they are the best "visualkei" rock musicians.

Commix - Strictly (Metalheadz)

Commix has produced a couple of wicked tunes recently. This is one of them. His album is forthcoming from Metalheadz, Goldie's imprint. Watch this space.

This is a test post. As drum & bass tunes are of high quality these days, I should do something to let this be known to a wider audience. With the help of Blogmusik, I will start a music blog dedicated to drum & bass. If you click the above embedded music player, you will hear the tune, recorded from BBC Radio 1 programme hosted by Fabio on 23 June 2007. So it contains a couple of jingles of BBC Radio 1. This may be annoying, but this should be enough for you to appreciate the music and to buy drum & bass tracks.

A Sunny Day in London

Leave home around 10:30am, when the voice of a flatmate's girlfriend upstairs starts depressing me. Hop on a double-decker, heading for Shoreditch, the edgy area of East London. Getting off, walk towards Macondo, my favorite cafe on Hoxton Square. Find funky railings on a backstreet building on the way.



Arriving at Macondo, order seafood paella and chicken salad with mixed berries yogurt smoothie. Start reading an article on the June issue of Monocle, interviewing a Russian opposition PR woman. The smoothie comes first, which could have been colder on such a sunny day. But the paella and the chicken salad are gorgeous, a rarity in London.

Tired of reading Monocle, leave Macondo and enter Hoxton Square park. Following other Londoners, lie down on a lawn in the sun. With my iRiver MP3 player---a resistance to iPod dominance---start listening to the music London gave birth to: drum and bass.

Fabio's liquid funk mix and London's rare sunshine make me drowse a while. Waking up, notice that people keep visiting the White Cube gallery, which is usually closed on Sundays. With my headphone still on my ears, visit the gallery only to find it's the exhibition of latest works by Damien Hirst, probably the most popular contemporary artist in UK. Without being moved at all, leave the gallery and think about where to go next.

Walk down to Old Street tube. Find a graffiti of high quality beside rubbish bins.



Take the Northern Line to London Bridge. From the station, walk towards the City Hall. Realize that the City Hall has a really strange shape, with the Tower Bridge aside.



Walk along the Themes to the west, heading for the Tate Modern museum. Quite a few, but not an overwhelming number of, tourists.

Arriving at the museum, enter the Level 2 gallery, which is in my view the best gallery in Tate Modern. Like Anselm Reyle's works. Futuristic because he uses silver foil, neon colors, and mirrors. And stylish because for contemporary art works, they don't depress viewers. Wish I would have money in the future to buy his works to decorate a large, inorganic room for playing back music.

Getting out of the museum, see St Paul's dome looms across the river.



Turn back and head for Southwark tube station by following orange lamp posts. Take the Jubilee line to Green Park because there is an M&S above the station, where I can buy decent whole milk (I can't stand British milk on the usual supermarket shelf).

Then stop by at a Caffe Nero at the corner with Dover Street, ordering Frappe Latte with an extra espresso shot. Sit at a table outside, watching red double deckers and red bendy buses passing on Piccadilly, which makes me look back at the past five years of my life in London.

I could have visited Dover Street Market, Rei Kawakubo's revolutionary brand clothes store. But prefer not being reassured that any good-looking clothes in London are not affordable. Go back to Green Park tube station, taking Piccadilly and Central Lines to get home with Monocle at hand and earplugs inside my ears to silence the sound made by the clunky train carriages.

Tip for copy-and-past

I've long been grumpy about copy-and-pasting. When you want to copy and past some text on a webpage to, say, your Word file, not only letters but also the font format, which is different from your Word file text font format, is also copy-and-pasted. I finally understand how to avoid this. See this webpage.

A moving quote

"Don't discount Africa. The giant has woken up. You can feel it. I tell you because I travel in Africa a lot. You can see the pride in people's eyes. ... We are awake now. It is coming." ---Titus Naikuni, CEO of Kenya Airways (Monocle, Issue 03, May 2007, p.69)

Nigeria

During the past few weeks, the British media (ie. FT and The Economist) has produced revealing articles on Nigeria.

Andrew Jack of Financial Times reports Nigeria's war on fake drugs.

By the turn of the millennium, Nigerians had become among the world’s most frequent victims of fake drugs.

The Economist reports, two weeks in a row, how Nigerian politicians rig elections:

In Anambra state, most people could not vote at all. They turned up at the voting stations, but often INEC's officials [that is, electoral commission officials] simply did not arrive. When a polling station did open, usually about six hours late, the officials did not have enough materials, notably a register, to let voting begin. On a tour of a dozen voting stations in the state capital, Awka, on the afternoon of polling, your correspondent did not see a single vote being cast, just angry mobs of frustrated would-be voters saying they had been “disenfranchised”. Barely any polling stations were provided with a results-sheet, on which officials and party agents are supposed to record the number of votes cast for each party; presumably these were being filled in elsewhere. ("How to steal yet another election" The Economist, 21th April, 2007)

On the day of the presidential election money-politics could be seen in action in central Kano, the dusty, dilapidated industrial capital of the north. There, in the local government area of Fagge, the PDP had budgeted 35m naira for political “mobilisation” and the main opposition party, the All Nigerian Peoples' Party (ANPP), 40m naira. In one ward, Fagge A, the PDP, according to one of its operatives, had budgeted 594,000 naira ($4,650) for 21,000 registered voters and 35 ballot boxes. Thus each “independent” presiding officer at the polling station was given 3,000 naira and his clerk 2,000 naira. Each policeman was getting 1,000 naira. That left payments of about 200 naira ($1.57) per voter—whose votes, far from being secret, were inked with a thumb on the ballot in front of party agents. Multiple voters, who will have registered several times with sympathetic election officials, might vote ten times, at a reduced bulk rate of 100 naira—still picking up a tidy 1,000 naira each. The friendly officials are paid for a variety of services, one of which is not to scrutinise the register too closely. Hasia, for example, had just voted with the registration card of her mother, who had already voted herself. Hasia had the second of her mother's two cards. She has probably not even reached the legal voting age of 18. Her card clearly identified its owner as being 60 years old, but this had not proved a problem with the right official. ("Big men, big fraud and big trouble", The Economist, 28th April 2007)

But there are pockets of the bright side as well. The war on fake drugs starts paying off.

Recent studies suggest that the proportion of fake and unregistered medicines in Nigeria has dropped to less than 20 per cent over the past six years.

Foudeh Darwish, the Lebanese managing director of Afrab-Chem, a manufacturer of antibiotics and other drugs based in Lagos, ... shows me the plans for his new ₤2m factory set to open later this year in compliance with international quality manufacturing standards. "Two years ago, this would not have been possible," he says. The investment is a sign both of new demand within Nigeria for high-quality medicines, and a reduced threat that genuine regulated products will be undermined by fake alternatives.("Lethal Doses", FT Magazine, 7 April, 2007)

Cross Rivers, one of the 36 states of Nigeria, has a good state governor:

In the state capital, Calabar, the streets have no pot-holes. According to the state government, every village is connected to the national grid and everyone has access to clean water. ... Cross Rivers has no oil wealth. [State Governor Donald Duke] has achieved all this on a fraction of the money available to his neighbours. Instead, he has frozen official salaries, cleverly exploited existing resources and taken on debt. In partnership with private investors, he is also responsible for Tinapa, the largest retail and business development in west Africa. It contains several new giant studios to grab a large slice of the $200m-300m a year "Nollywood" film industry, which churns out, by some estimates, more films than either of its rivals in Los Angeles or Bombay.

You've never heard about Nollywood? The Economist already reported it last July:

IT ALL started by accident in 1992, when Kenneth Nnebue, a Nigerian trader based in Onitsha, was trying to sell a large stock of blank videocassettes he had bought from Taiwan. He decided that they would sell better with something recorded on them, so he shot a film called "Living in Bondage" about a man who achieves power and wealth by killing his wife in a ritualistic murder, only to repent later when she haunts him. The film sold more than 750,000 copies, and prompted legions of imitators. Nollywood, as Nigeria's film industry is known, now makes over 2,000 low-budget films a year, about two-thirds of them in English. ("Nollywood dreams", The Economist, 27th July 2006)

I'm rather impressed by Nigeria's potential both in the right and wrong directions.

DNB in Week 15 of 2007

Fabio's BBC Radio One show last night played several excellent stylish liquid funk tunes (artist name(s), title in quotes, and record label name in parentheses, followed by my comment):

High Contrast featuring Diane Charlemagne "If We Ever" (White) --- An old skool flava with High Contrast's upperclass sophistication.

Unknown artist "Piece Of Heaven" (Zinc Remix) (Bingo) --- This is exactly what drum & bass heads call a BAD TUNE. The bassline is really bad. It's so imcompatible with soulful, smooth female vocal that the result is a perfect match.

Calibre "Dirty Mind (VIP remix)" (Signature) --- minimalist summer cosiness.

Insight "No Love" (Progress) --- Listen to a MP3 sample provided by Juno Record.

Tidal feat Olivia "So Sexy" (White) --- A summer liquid funk featuring female vocal from a new drum & bass talent.

Total Science "Divided We Stand" (White) --- Another BAD bassline.

A.I. "Desperado" (Liquid V) --- A masterpiece. One of the tunes that established, back in 2004, the current popularity of liquid funk. Listen to a MP3 sample provided by Juno Record.

The Nature of Cell Science

Check out this music video clip by Dirk Pacholsky.

Robert Mugabe

The Economist article on the Zimbabwean President this week gives you a slightly different view on Mugabe: giving lessons to staff in the government, working punishing hours, frugal, teetotal, faithful to his wife...

Distillery District

The Distillery District is what Toronto can boast about to the rest of the world. The former booze factory buildings, dating back to the 19th century, are all preserved in outer appearance while their inside is occupied by trendy boutiques, design furniture shops, stylish cafes, spacious contemporary art galleries, and so forth. What impresses me is I can't tell what's inside until I open the door. Shop signs are all discreet, preserving the distillery atmosphere.


Shopping experiences in high streets are usually tiring because you are exposed to too many showy advertisements. Contemporary art galleries are often located in scruffy streets because rents are cheap in such areas. Here in the Distillery District you can enjoy shopping and art viewing in style. I like the whole concept behind this complex. A must see when you visit Toronto.

FT columnists

I terribly miss Tyler Brule's column on FT Weekend everytime I read the very first sentence of the column by Chrystia Freeland, who succeeded Brule as a columnist for the last page of FT Weekend at the beginning of this year.

This week, her column begins with the following sentence:

When Nancy Pelosi celebrated her swearing in as speaker of the House this year...

I actually stop reading before reaching the end of the first sentence of the column. Freeland, FT's US managing editor, keeps writing about America. That's already a cliche. Ordinary intellectuals love writing about USA because the country offers many mainstream polemical issues. Last week, Freeland began her column with:

Whenever the FT runs a picture of Hillary Clinton...

I then stop reading it. I don't care about Hillary Clinton. Intellectuals who love talking about USA always try to talk about some social or political issue triggered by some incident taking place in the State. It's so predictable. Absolute nothing beyond my expectation.

Instead, I have recently discovered an intriguing columnist on FT Magazine: Mrs Monneypenny. She's funny because her views often conflict with mainstream ones in Western society. This week, she writes: "I am not sure why we need lists of endangered species." She defends her position by referring to Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest theory. "If species are not fit enough to survive, then surely they should be allowed to become extinct?" It's so hilarious.

Her view on childbearing is also provocative to many in the West. Two weeks ago, she wrote: "I generally believe in sending [children] to boarding school as soon as possible after they start eating solid food." She refers to her three kids as Cost Center #1, Cost Center #2, and Cost Center #3. (I still don't fully understand what "cost center" really means. I know it's a term from accounting. Anybody willing to post a comment on this?)

Now you know my taste. This is why I tend to be quiet in front of people and keep blogging. :-)

How to Write a Press Release of Your Empirical Economics Research

Based on my analysis of a successful example of RES Media Briefings. (Her research was featured in many major UK newspapers.)

1. The first paragraph begins with a general sentence on the main finding of the research, followed by another sentence repeating the same finding but in a more specific way. The first paragraph must be self-contained: "if you took away all the paragraphs except the first, the press release should still make sense." (Romesh Vaitilingam, RES Media Consultant)

2. The second paragraph states additional important findings.

3. The third paragraph introduces a bit of details on the data used (e.g. what survey is used, who answers the survey, when the survey is conducted, how many respondents the survey obtain) and what you actually investigate. But do not describe these too precisely. Keep the paragraph short.

4. Then restate the main finding with details including the magnitude of the effect, for whom the effect is larger, etc.

5. Restate the additional important findings mentioned in the second paragraph. Introduce some less important (but still interesting) findings.

6. Mention some theoretical arguments explaining the results, if any.

7. Mention the methodological innovation (ie. identification strategy) in an accessible way.

8. Conclude with a couple of policy implications of your findings.

Also see Mankiw's writing guideline.

Libor Novacek

My second-to-last lunchtime concert at LSE is a performance by a Czech pianist Libor Novacek.

Mozart: Rondo in D, K485

For the first time ever in my life, I enjoy Mozart. Libor Novacek juxtapose various expressions within this piece of music, sometimes even at the same time by playing the piano in one way by one hand and in the other way by the other hand. Libor reveals his sutble, but generous and embracing touch on keys. I would get bored if somebody else plays this piece, as the music itself, as usual for Mozart, is rather simply structured. But with Libor's hands, it sounds totally different.

Mozart: Rondo in A minor, K511

The same comments as above. I have heard some of the melodies in this piece.

Janacek: In the Mists (1912)

An intersting and sleepy piece. Towards the end, I nearly fall asleep, not because I get bored. It is because I'm pleased with Libor's play.

Brahms: Sonata No.2 in F sharp minor Op.2

A theatric, Christian Lacroix-ish piece. Again I easily imagine myself being bored if someone else plays this piece. But Libor plays it in a pleasant way. Towards the end, my mind is truly refreshed.

------

Another thing that deserves a mention: the Steinway piano, recently bought by LSE, sounds superb. Part of the reason I enjoyed Matan Porat two weeks ago, I now notice, is also owing to this piano.

Pierre Victoire

Have dinner with Yumiko-san at Pierre Victoire, London's affordable French restaurant.

We have duck in red wine sauce and baby chicken in tomato and basil sauce. Both main dishes are excellent. Bread and olives are excellent as well.

However, service and comfortability is not excellent. Waiters keep kicking Yumiko-san's chair. It takes five minutes to have a bill after asking for it. The place is packed with tables. Our private zone is rather limited. Plus, customers are amazingly noisy here.

I guess this restaurant is affordable despite its excellent food, because it's not that comfortable. If you only need good French foods, it's highly recommended. If you look for a place to relax, never go to this place.

Flatmate Hunting

On the day I decided my future, my landlord asked me to move out in a month's time (see 20 February).

Talking to my landlord revealed that she wanted me (and my flatmate) to move out because she got fed up with finding a tenant for each single room in our house and wanted to rent our house as a whole. (One of our flatmates moved out recently.)

Then I suggested to her that I look for a new tenant to our house. She liked the idea. It also made sense to me because if you're on the supply side of the market, you don't need to travel around in London to view flats and houses or to make many calls to ask questions and arrange viewings. It would be less stressful and less harassing.

I was right. In five days, I managed to find a new flatmate! Plus, I learned a couple of things from this flatmate-hunting experience.

The biggest puzzle to me was why nearly all flat advertisements provide incomplete information on the specification of a room/house. Part of the reason is that the advertisement media limits the number of letters you can use in your ad. But this doesn't explain why all the advertisements at Gumtree.com (this is a nice website for Londoners though it's a bit chaotic) are also incomplete, because you can write your ad as long as possible on this website.

You want to minimize the number of viewers. You want to screen out those not really interested in your property. Otherwise your precious time will be consumed by those who won't take your room.

So in my ad at Gumtree.com, I put every piece of information on the room and the house, including photos of the room, the kitchen, and the garden.

I browsed a real estate agent's brochure to learn how to take a good picture of your rooms. A room picture can be quite tricky. It can make the room look smaller than it actually is. You can end up screening out those who are otherwise interested. I noticed one basic rule among the room pictures on the brochure: take a picture at the corner of a room and make sure that the opposite corner of the room comes at the one-third of the length of the photograph. This makes the room look spacious in a photograph (Lesson 1). See my learning outcomes: a double room and a single room.

On the Gumtree.com ad, I didn't put my phone number. One reason is to avoid receiving calls after you found a flatmate. I also wanted to control the whole process rather than being disturbed every time you get a call. Initially, my landlord kindly created an ad on the gumtree.com with my mobile number on it. Literally a few minutes later, I started receiving calls and texts including unsolicited sales pitches. I hurriedly deleted the ad once. I also didn't want to be distracted by callers who just wanted to ask questions on the room.

Instead I put an email address which is NOT my usual address. I created a Hotmail account for this purpose. This not only prevents spammers from picking up your address but also allows you to shelter your private messages from flatmate-hunting messages.

I learned that Hotmail is quite annoying (Lesson 2). I usually use Gmail (called Google Mail in UK due to the trademark issue). Gmail automatically refreshes the screen when a new message arrives. Hotmail doesn't. You need to click "Inbox" many times. Gmail cleverly screens out spams. Hotmail very often misclassifies junk mails. Finally, Gmail does not have conspicuous advertisements on the screen. Hotmail does.

In addition to the ad at Gumtree.com, I also created an original webpage for the room advertisement by using Blogger. Then selectively email those who have placed an ad at the "Room Wanted" section of Gumtree.com by mentioning the address of this webpage.

Whenever I received a message to my Hotmail account, I called up the sender to arrange a viewing. On Sunday afternoon, I scheduled five viewings. The first viewer, Caroline, didn't come on time because she got our house number wrong. She didn't look impressed by our house after viewing, telling me she would call me after she visited other places as well. The second viewer, Faisal, didn't come one hour after the scheduled time. Neither did Alex, the third viewer. I wanted to make sure if I needed to wait for them. So I called Faisal. He sounded like he overslept. We rescheduled the viewing in the evening. I then called Alex. She got lost. Alex finally came 30 minutes later. Her reaction while viewing the house was Meditteranean: "Fantastic!" But she wasn't Meditteranean when I said no to her question of whether we have the TV. She said she would call me after viewing another flat.

I learned one thing from Alex. She liked the high ceiling of the room. Which I didn't realize when I wrote an ad. Now the biggest puzzle was solved. The reason why flat advertisements tend to be incomplete is that advertisers have incomplete information on what flat-hunters are looking for (Lesson 3). People have different preferences. Unless you are an experienced flat advertiser, you certainly fail to specify important aspects of your room/house.

On Sunday evening, Faisal was supposed to come, but he texted me saying, "Sorry, I can't come. Bye." Another viewer, Eva, never came and never called or texted me. The final viewer of the day, Andrew, didn't come, either. One hour after the scheduled time, he texted me to ask if there is a living room in our house, without a single word of "Sorry" or whatsoever. I didn't reply to him as he wouldn't be a good flatmate.

Some people in London are quite nasty (Lesson 4). Well, I already knew this anyway.

On Monday morning, Caroline texted me, saying she decided to take another place. She's such a nice person. Alex, on the other hand, never contacted me again.

On Monday evening, I had two viewers. Nordine, the first viewer, said he would like to take the room, immediately after he finished viewing the house. Brett, the second viewer, said he was very interested but wanted to see another place as well before his decision. He said he would call me by lunchtime the following day.

Today, Brett didn't call me by lunchtime. I called him to learn that he was waiting for a call from another place he visited. Which suggested that he didn't like our place the most. Nordine becomes our new flatmate.

(In case you wonder, although the ad says there are two rooms available, my landlord says she's happy with just one new tenant. I just wanted to increase the probability of finding flatmates by attracting those looking for a room with a friend of theirs.)

Mankiw's Advice for New Junior Faculty

I learn that Greg Mankiw, probably the most popular economist blogger, advises new assistant professors NOT to start a blog:

Avoid activities that will distract you from research. Whatever you do, do not start a blog. That will only establish your lack of seriousness as a scholar. ("Advice For New Junior Faculty," Feb 24, 2007)

What if a new assistant professor has already started a blog?



I know, I know this is a stupid question.

So the bottom line is ...




Econoclasm's days are numbered (as my days in London are).

Education in Poor Countries

Two new pieces of development economics research on what improves education in poor countries were presented at LSE recently.

Andrabi, Das, and Khwaja (2007) focus on the supply side of education, and find that, in Pakistani districts, private schools are more likely to be set up if public secondary schools are already there. They argue that this is because public secondary schools increase the number of educated women who can become teachers. It suggests the importance of the supply of teachers to expand access to school.

Bjorkman (2007), on the other hand, looks at the demand side. She finds that gender gap in primary school enrolment in rural areas of Uganda shrinks when it rains more than usual (I think Figure 9 in the paper is a nice presentation of this finding). Ugandan farmers grow banana or coffee, both of which are rain-fed. Her finding indicates that poverty is the main driver of gender gap in school attendance, often found in developing countries.

MUSIC@LSE Lunchtime Concert Series: Matan Porat

Now I have time to attend LSE's lunchtime concert series. This week's guest is Matan Porat, a pianist.

Bach: Partita No.1 in Bb Major

Boring. I keep thinking something else. Porat's staccato style of playing the piano doesn't sound fit for this piece of music.

Schumann: Davidsbundlertanze Op.6

Porak shows incredible subtlety during the quite part of this piece. The same motif repeats towards the end, and the way he moves on from there to the last part of extravaganza with a sensitive coda firmly grips my attention.

Bartok: "Out of Door" Suite (1926)

This is an amazing piece of contemporary music. It must have influenced progressive rock musicians in the 1970s. The piece begins with unusually intensive use of bass keys, which is a nice logical progression from the end of the previous piece played.

Porak again shows his incredible subtlety in the quiet part of the piece, but his more aggresive side gets along very well with Bartok, too. I learn that this pianist is amazing with this sort of music in which dynamism and stasis create a stark contrast.

Looking for a flat

My job search is over today. I thought now I could get relieved from all the stress.

No, I can't.

This morning a letter from my landlord arrives, asking me to move out in a month's time. I only need to stay in London for six months more (until the end of August). I will negotiate with my landlord, but chances are slim.

So I'm still too busy to update this blog. If you live in London and have a bedroom available or know someone looking for a tenant/flatmate, please let me know. This is an absolute headache as I'm rather picky: I need broadband, a rice cooker, a washing machine and a dryer, a spacious kitchen, a supermarket nearby with decent whole milk on sale, less than 40 minutes from LSE, and a nightbus from central London (to enjoy the last six months in London). Given my experience of student flat hunting a few years ago, this is a tall order. The current place has these all except for decent milk nearby.

You may want to know what my new job is. No I won't tell you. I will start a retrospective job-search blog after I move, without telling you the final outcome. So you will experience the whole uncertainty that I faced by reading it. Isn't this a good idea?

Millie's Cookies

A mental note. DO NOT BUY COFFEE AT MILLIE'S COOKIES. Their coffee is horrible. And I suffer from it twice in two weeks, first at Victoria Station and this time at Euston Station. Their coffee makes your journey away from London miserable. Beware of it.

Takacs Quartet

This is a very hilarious article written by the first violinist of the Takacs Quartet on how the Quartet copes with a member change, does rehearsing, travels by air, and prepares for a concert.

LSE Catering Service Survey

LSE's Catering Services emailed students to ask for completing online surveys on LSE catering and eating habits.

The prize for cooperation is ...

"a free meal in The Garrick or Brunch Bowl"

I don't need that! (The Garrick and Brunch Bowl are the names of LSE student canteens.)

As I'm grumpy a lot about LSE's catering outlets (so I almost never use them in favour of other school canteens near the campus), I'm willing to participate in this survey anyway, expecting that I'm allowed to give a comment on LSE catering services in sentences.

But the survey only asks multiple choice questions, not allowing the respondent to provide any opinions freely.

I wanted to say, "Why does a bowl of salad with dressing cost nearly 2 pounds?" or "LSE canteens may be above the average in UK universities, but they are certainly below the average by non-UK standards."

So LSE Catering Services do not seriously take into consideration the views from students. No hope for much improvement in the future.

Well, it doesn't matter to me as I leave LSE this autumn. But I'm sorry for LSE students to continue suffering from LSE canteens.

Sushisamba Rio

I choose Sushisamba Rio as the place for the last dinner in Chicago.

An unlikely fusion of Japanese, Brazilian, and Peruvian cuisine is the theme of this restaurant. (Actually, it's not unlikely. For example, Peruvian seviche originates in sashimi brought by Japanese immigrants to Peru.)

For a starter, I take King Salmon Sashimi Seviche. Slices of salmon only the surface of which is grilled are served with salad and basil sauce. One word. Fantastic!

For the main, I have seared beef maki. Grilled scallions and thinly-cut carrots wrapped with thinly-sliced beef are served with teriyaki sauce. I often cook this at home, but it's still delicious. Coconut rice ordered as a side dish is also great.

The decor at this place is a truly unlikely fusion of Japanese modesty and Latin American boldness. The plates are also stylish. Plus, the music on play is very cool.

Yet another excellent restaurant in Chicago.

Signature Lounge in John Hancock Tower

After the whole schedule of job interviews is over, I meet up with Yamada-kun. We have delicious spare ribs at a restaurant whose name I don't remember. Then he takes me to Signature Lounge on the 96th floor of the John Hancock Center. The weather is stormy when we arrive. The windows through which we are supposed to see a spectacular night view of Chicago only show raindrops heading towards us. Half an hour later, however, the storm goes away and what I see is this (you see some raindrops on the window):



Honestly speaking, it is not as spectacular as Damascus. But Chicago has its own geometric beauty.

Wave

I have dinner at the Wave restaurant, serving Meditteranean cuisine, on my fourth evening in Chicago, after being quite exhausted from a series of job interviews yesterday and today.

The entrance looks a bit like a cheesy nightclub, but the inside is a very sleek lounge bar and dining room. (Upstairs is W Hotel.)

The menu is a tapas style: various small plates to share. I have a "grilled octopus salad" for a starter. The vinaigrette is Arabic-flavoured, reminding me of foods I had in Damascus. Together with radicchio, it is slightly bitter. But the bitterness adds depth to the whole taste of the salad. I'm very impressed.

Then I have a "sugar & salt pork tenderloin" for the main and a mushroom risotto as a side dish. The pork is okay, but the risotto is marvelous. It's not that easy to serve an excellent risotto.

With an excellent service and a cool interior, I have an enjoyable dinner.

Mambo Grill

Mambo Grill is a Latin American restaurant in Chicago. Highly recommended.

For a starter, I have "Ensalada de Aguacate y Mango Avocado." It is a green salad with ripe mango slices and a vinaigrette made of lime, lemon, organge juice, and (if I remember correctly) a hint of tequila. I didn't know the taste of chuncky mango slices fits very well with lime and orange juice (though I still believe that mango juice shouldn't be mixed with organge juice).

The main dish is "Coconut-Curried Tilapia." I don't know what kind of fish tilapia is. But I still give it a try. Then a perfectly-cooked tilapia steak is served with excellent coconut milk and curry sauce.

The service is also perfect. Next time I come to Chicago, I'll definitely come here again.

Solicitation no.2

Post the application packet for Oxford postdoc.

Email my supervisor about yesterday's solicitation of my job application from IIES.

Start preparing my mock job talk which is scheduled next Monday. Planning the introduction takes the whole afternoon. Cox (2000) helps a lot.

Bump into my supervisor in the Sticerd kitchen area. He looks happy. :)

Back up my data files used for the job market paper. Last week, someone's desktop PC was stolen from CEP (another research centre at LSE, STICERD's neighbour downstairs). You never know.

Receive scam phone call to my mobile, perhaps because I post my number on my CV on the web for the job market purpose... Googling the caller's phone number takes me to this discussion thread.

Receive email from the LSE Economics Department's job placement director, saying that the recruiting chair at Penn State solicited my application. I already posted the packet to them last Monday. In such case, he says, I don't need to do anything.

Start preparing answers to "Expected Frequently Asked Questions" during my job talk. A job market guide says, "Draft your answers to expected questions."

Applications continue, and 1st solicitation!

Check the November issue of JOE, finding that some schools I want to apply for now have job openings.

Email Sue and Leila to additionally send reference letters to these schools. In response to Leila's request, I create a new Excel file containing the addresses of these schools (rather than adding these addresses to the previous Excel files sent to Leila). As Sue and Leila deal with references differently, I need to tailor my request to each one's need.

Finish online application for Caltech. Only after the submission, you will know the email address to which recommendation letters can be sent. I already asked Sue and Leila to send them via post.

Start dealing with the application for Oxford University Nuffield College's prestigious Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (PRF). Their application requirement is the most demanding. Not only CV and JMP but also a one-page description of your current research, a one-page description of the research you would plan to undertake as a PRF, and an additional research paper.

Receive a couple of email replies from LSE faculty members in response to the invitation to my mock job talk. Some cannot come but others say they will. Reply immediately to thank them.

I learn that even if schools accept applications via email, their pre-formatted application form is often difficult to fill in electronically because they provide it in the PDF format. With my PC setting, I cannot fill in the PDF form. As these schools prefer email application. I try transforming the PDF file into a Word file to fill in the form electronically, but this file type transformation destroys the layout of the form. I end up printing the PDF form out and fill in by hand-writing and send it by post, which is actually much easier.

Find that application to Essex requires a cover letter including "how you meet the requirements of the post". Need to think about it...

Leila tells me that all the reference letters except for those from Robin are ready for the first batch of schools. Robin already told me he might be late in writing letters. I tell Leila to send the letters today. This is when asking four references helps as one job market guide suggests. But I also think that as long as my application arrives in time, they will wait for references (this is what administrators in Toronto told me when I called them).

Start writing cover letters for the next batch of schools to apply. While writing one for IIES, receive email from Torsten, soliciting my application to IIES. According to the Harvard job market guide, if a school has requested your packet you will want to change the cover letter and state clearly that your materials were solicited. So I do.

Bump into Raja in STICERD. He asks me to send my job market paper. So I email him the address at which to download the paper. I also tell him references on ethnic identify I talked about yesterday.

Back to writing cover letters. Find that Pompeu Fabra has a weird application requirement: list of courses taken. Why not transcripts?

After going home and having dinner, resume writing cover letters. Now I realize that I'm writing cover letters for schools whose deadline is 30 November. I come to think that most reference letters that are now scheduled to post on 14 November can actually be delayed one week. Which is better for me because I plan to do the final revision of the job market paper from 14 November, after my mock job talk. Email Leila if she's happy with this change of my mind...

Write up one-page descriptions of current and future research for Oxford postdoc applications (see above) and then go to bed.

How to market yourself, dinner with faculty, and applications

Online application with CV uploaded for Columbia Business School. But you still need to send CV and job market paper (JMP) by post.

Torsten stops by. Invite him to my mock job talk next Monday. He gives me a positive answer.

Talk to Tim. His advice includes:

1. Do not drop the measurement of democracy part. The literature is moving in that direction though many have not noticed it. If I drop it, my paper is a public health paper, which few economists have interest in. I need to interest anyone interested in political economy.

2. Begin with Africa is not a good idea. It narrows down the scope of the paper too much. I don't want to sell myself as an Africa expert, do I? Begin with the question of whether democracy improves the quality of government, policy-making, and the lives of people. Previous studies exploit country-level data with democracy scores. My contribution is two fold. Using micro data. Measuring democracy in a precise way.

3. Political economy of development is a niche in the market of economists. Development people need someone in this field. Political economy people want to have someone familiar with development. But sell myself as a development economist interested in political economy, not the other way around. Economics departments like to hire development economists while many think of political economy as luxury.

4. Leave the latest version of the paper into Tim's mail box in Sticerd by Monday morning. He will read it and attend my mock job talk and give me feedbacks.

5. When the paper is finalized, ready for circulation, send it to Tim with two lists of schools I apply. One list includes schools with openings in development (and in political economy, if any). The other includes schools with any field. Based on these lists, he will email his friends in schools listed to recommend me.

6. Change the title of my job market paper. "Mother fixed effects" sound too nerdy. It takes time for the reader to think what that means. "Evidence from Micro Data" is better as it provokes interest. People will be like "How do you do that?"

Following his advice, revise my paper, rewriting the abstract and changing the title of the paper accordingly.

Post 25 application packets via LSE Post Room. The department will pay the postage. Realize that my cover letter includes the title of my paper, which is no longer accurate. Let's forget it.

Send application packets via email to University of Arizona and University College of Dublin. Fill the online application form and email CV and the paper to University of New South Wales.

Receive email from Simon Fraser University, saying that they receive my online application.

Receive email from Arizona, asking to complete application by clicking the link provided, which requires login.

Finish online application for University of Toronto, uploading CV and JMP. The final screen says that I can update my CV and JMP by clicking the link emailed shortly. I wanted to know this beforehand...

Dinner with today's seminar speaker (see 3 November), my supervisor, Oriana, Raja, and Daniel. I can't talk anything as the topics of conversation are the salary of economics professors, episodes of data manipulation by scientists, the weirdness of Oxbridge... But talking to Raja is productive. I ask him what the job market for him was like. "Not everyone is nice." "People ask the same question. The challenge is how you motivate yourself in giving the same answers many times." He shows an interest in my second paper. I manage to tell him about a couple of case studies by political scientists for his theoretical work.

After dinner, come back to my desk in Sticerd. Oriana tells me, "The first time at dinner with economists is always like that. You don't know what to talk. In five year's time, you will get used to it. Don't feel bad."

Online application for Caltech requires not only uploading CV and JMP but also a letter of application describing my current research in the PDF copy. Once I'm ready for that, fill in online application form, finding out that I need to describe my research interest in 50 words. After a glass of wine, I can't think hard about this. Let's do this tomorrow.

Email some LSE faculty members to invite them to my mock job talk next Monday. Let's see how it goes. They should have learned something about me as the faculty meeting on job market candidates was held at the end of last month. If my supervisor and/or Tim pushes me well at the meeting, they would be interested in coming to my talk. Fingers crossed.

How to use MS Word Mail Merge

By browsing the Internet, I learn that the top 5 business schools are Harvard, Stanford, Warton (Penn), Kellogg (Northwestern), and Sloan (MIT). The top 7 include Chicago and Columbia. Duke and NYU are ranked in top 10 or top 15. Europe's top 3 are Insead, LBS, IMD, perhaps ranked in top 20 in the US. Since some development economists are in business schools, I plan to apply to business schools as well.

Buy 90 C4 manilla envelopes (A4 size) at Ryman, 10 minute walk from LSE. Costs 12.48 pounds. Sounds expensive, but don't have time to check other stores. LSE Student Union shop does not sell envelopes in bunches.

Finish writing cover letters. Here's how to efficiently write cover letters by using MS Word mail merge.
1. Create address lists in Excel. The top row should be "First Name", "Company", "Address 1", "Address 2", "City", "State", "Post Code", and "Country". This will facilitates the matching of fields.
2. Save it and close it.
3. Open MS Word and select "Tools -> Letters and Mailings -> Mail Merge..."
4. (Step 1 of 6) Choose "Letters" and click Next.
5. (Step 2 of 6) Click Next unless you already have a template letter.
6. (Step 3 of 6) Click "Browse" and choose the Excel file created in steps 1-2. Then click Next.
7. (Step 4 of 6) Write a template cover letter. Click a location where you want to put the address. Click "More items..." Choose a field you want to put. Click "Insert". Repeat this until all the fields show up. Then click Next.
8. (Step 5 of 6) By clicking ">>" or "<<", choose the address of the school. Click Next.
9. (Step 6 of 6) Click "Edit individual letters..." and edit the template. Save it.
10. Click "Previous" to go back to step 5 of 6. And repeat 8 to 10 until all the letters are completed and saved.

I also need to make address labels which I stick to envelopes.

How to use MS Word's mail merge to create address labels:
1. Create address lists in Excel. The top row should be "Last Name", "Company", "Address 1", "Address 2", "Address 3", "City", "State", and "Country". This will facilitates the matching of fields.
2. Save it and close it.
3. Open MS Word and select "Tools -> Letters and Mailings -> Mail Merge..."
4. (Step 1 of 6) Choose "Labels" and click Next.
5. (Step 2 of 6) Click "Label options..." and choose "8253 - Label" for product number (this works best for me). Click OK and click Next.
6. (Step 3 of 6) Click "Browse" and choose the Excel file created in steps 1-2. Then click Next.
7. (Step 4 of 6) Click "More items..." Choose a field you want to put. Click "Insert". Repeat this until all the fields show up on the address label. Then click "Update all labels". Then click Next.
8. (Step 5 of 6) Make sure that addresses appear in the way you prefer. If not, click "Previous" to go back to Step 4 of 6. If you're happy, click Next.
9. (Step 6 of 6) Click "Print" to print out address labels.

Realize I also need to make address labels for MY address as the sender.

Some schools require teaching evaluations. I create a short note on my teaching evaluation to clarify it.

Revise the CV. Revise the Introduction and Conclusions of the JMP. Go home by the last train.

Cover letter, online application

Prepare cover letters. Read Cawley's advice, only to find that I should run a draft by my primary adviser and the faculty placement director. Too late... (This description seems to disappear in the 2006 version.)

Again this drives me crazy. Not every school follows the same procedure. Some do not require a cover letter as they set up an online application form. Some require online application but still require a cover letter. Some do not require a printed copy of the cover letter as they demand email application. Some require "research and teaching statements". And so on and so forth.

If the online application does not require the uploading of my CV or my paper, I complete it today. If it needs the submission of my CV etc., I will do it tomorrow or next Monday.

There are five major patterns in application requirements:
1. Just send a cover letter, a cv, a job market paper by post.
2. 1 plus a transcript and/or teaching evaluations.
3. Apply online, and send a cv, a job market paper etc. (and the receipt of the online application) by post.
4. Apply online and upload a cv, and send a job market paper etc. by post.
5. Send a cover letter, a cv, a job market paper, etc. by email.

The job market guide for Harvard students says that cover letters for liberal arts colleges should reflect your interest in the school and teaching.

The cover letter samples provided by Georgetown and US San Diego as well as the job market guide for Harvard suggest that including a sentence like "I will be available for interviews at the ASSA meeting in Chicago next January." But this may well be avoided if you apply to universities outside the United States unless they make explicit they are going to interview at the ASSA meeting.

As busy as usual.

Get transcripts from Mark. Some universities require transcripts as part of the application documents.

Oriana offers me to join the dinner with next Monday's seminar speaker. This will be a practice "dinner with faculty during a campus visit". (See Cawley 2006, pp.40-41.)

Send a thank-you email to Iwan. Email one of the faculty members to follow up my answer to one of her questions during the seminar yesterday. I didn't manage to give a convincing answer to her yesterday. If this happens during the job talk, Cawley 2006, p.40, recommends sending email after returning home to provide the best answer you can craft.

Work on Stata to try estimations suggested yesterday. What matters is how many pathways I can exclude. First, birth spacing. The effect of democracy does not pick up the effect of longer birth spacing.

Get vitamin tablets at Holland & Barrett. Maintaining my physical conditions is very crucial.

Bump into my supervisor at the STICERD kitchen area, and he gives me some comments on my job market paper. When I talk to him about Robin's comment (be more aggressive), he doesn't agree. Which means I should see some balance. He also tells me to keep him posted on the latest development in my job market process.

Robin asks me when the first deadline is. He says his reference letter may not be on time.

Email Tim on how to revise/structure my job market paper and job talk as we will meet next Monday.

Receive email from Mark on mock job interview by LSE faculty members to be scheduled on 30 November.

Check a web discussion board where young Japanese economists hang around. One of the discussion threads is about the job market. Find a post by an assistant professor at top 20 school in US: "CV and JMP on your personal website must be the latest version because many recruiters download them from your website rather than reading the one sent via post."

Review my seminar talk yesterday. I learn that some of the questions are pointless. I should have guided questioners that their questions are not relevant. People say something without thinking deep enough. So they may be wrong. I thought any question should have had some point. I guess I was too East Asian. The source of the problem is the same for deferring questions later. I was too nice to questioners by answering their questions immediately. But it is a narrow-minded kindness: I was nice to the questioner but unfriendly to other people in the audience. I even wasn't nice to the questioner as I was lazy to point out their logic was wrong.

(Informal) Campus Visit

Go to a UK university to present my job market paper at their Labour Workshop. Iwan, the host, told me to come by midday, although the workshop would start at 1 pm. I wondered why. It turns out that there is a faculty lunch from midday every Thursday at the department of economics, and Iwan wanted me to join this. I was introduced to several faculty members. It's difficult for me to catch names when being introduced. I shouldn't be lazy about this. A job market guide says, "Try to remember who you met."

Then it's 1 pm. In front of about 20 people (I'm not sure how many of them are faculty members and how many are PhD students), I present my paper. During the introduction, the floor is quiet. But once I get into the body of the talk, questions erupt. Two parts of my presentation turn out to solicit lots of questions: the measurement of democracy and the analysis of pathways. Iwan suggests (after the seminar) deleting the measurement of democracy part. That's what Oriana also suggested. I should talk to Tim on this. For pathways, I learn that I should make it clear at the beginning of the talk that which pathway is unlikely, which is likely, and which cannot be tested. It seems I gave an impression that the only pathway is sanitation. No, that's not what I wanted to say.

When Iwan tells me that I have one minute left, I don't understand that correctly as my mobile tells me I have five minutes---my mobile clock is wrong. So I fail to jump to the conclusion, ending up having no time for the conclusion slide.

After the seminar, one faculty member comes to me, giving some comments. If the number of people wanting to talk after the seminar is an indicator for success, this is not very good.

After leaving the seminar room, Iwan takes me to the office of one of his colleagues. He gives me some comments on my work. I should have asked about his research as some job market guides suggest. I remember this when he is taking me back to Iwan's office. Too late.

Iwan gives me quite a few comments, not only the research itself but also some tips for the presentation style. I ask him, "How do you evaluate my talk today?" He says I should have deferred questions if I will cover them later. Answering all questions on the spot distorts the structure of the talk, leaving the audience into confusion.

We talk until about 3:15 pm. As Iwan needs to teach from 4 pm, we say goodbye.

I don't know if today's talk is an informal job talk as Oriana suggested. Some faculty members including Iwan asked me where I'm looking for a job. I answered anywhere in the world. I added I'm going to apply to their department (which is true anyway). But Iwan told me that his department won't go to the AEA meeting this January (like LSE) because interviewed candidates often refuse to come over to England. This suggests that what they want to know about me is whether I have intention to remain in England.

It was a valuable experience. It's kind of a practice campus-visit. (Maybe it wasn't a practice, though.) I learn loads of things about what's going to happen early next year.

I directly go home, instead of going to LSE. I should relax a bit this evening. From tomorrow, I need to revise the paper, prepare the presentation for the mock job talk a week on Monday, and start sending application packets.

Preparation for Tomorrow's talk

Winter suddenly arrives in London today.

Start preparing tomorrow's presentation for what could be an informal job talk. But my brain doesn't really work clearly...

Check if there are some faculty members at the university I'm visiting tomorrow whose work is related to my job market paper (following the advice in some job market guides). Find there are many! Two labor economists work on child health. Two development economists work on Africa. Two public economists work on how voting affects policy choice. Download these papers (all recent working papers) just in case. Maybe I can browse them on the way to the university tomorrow.

Ask Erlend to read the concluding paragraphs that I wrote last night to see if he likes it. He gives me useful feedbacks.

My brain finally starts working properly after 3 pm. I feel stupid. If I work properly from the beginning of the day, I don't need to go home late with an empty stomach and go to bed after midnight, ending up sleeping less than 8 hours.