A Pig’s Pilgrimage in Greece - Discovering Heroes

Prologue: In K-12 years, I was quite chubby and lazy, and thus won a cute nick name “piggy Shen” amongst the friends’ circle. Grown up in cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai, New York and Boston, my impressions of a pig have various versions - money boxes, cartoon animation, and the movie “Babe” - A little pig goes a long way.

First day arriving Delphi’s Lower Sanctuary of Athena Pronaea, our alumni group and the professor were eager to look for the Kastalia Spring, where prayers purify themselves before they see the Oracle in ancient times. On the way, we bumped into a huge pink pig, in her own grace. Knowing little how fortunate she was to wander this sacred land, she seemed innocent and happy in her own territory.

Brad, our alumni association representative, fled by and jokingly asked, “Where is our swan for dinner instead of this fatty animal?” “All swans belong to the Queen in England. I prefer eating pork in any case, as simple as it gets. ” My Londoner answer probably did not qualify for the American Ivy League entertaining standards. Having observed him and being taken good care of in the past few days, I esteem Brad as the “Charioteer of Delphi” –eternal energy, victory symbol, and divine love. Later on when we went out dinner at Dakos, Brad picked pork amongst all the fancy Cretan food dishes. We had a good laugh.

Nafplio, the capital of the prefecture, is my favorite place during the week-long Classical Greece alumni group study tour. It has neoclassic houses, picturesque streets, the central Constitution (Syntagma) Square with fascinating mosques and outdoor café tables just like a fairy land. We got Greek traditional sweets to take away. Certainly the best Baklavas I ever had and shared as we sat on the side bench of the Square. Drinking oozo two nights in a row in this funky bar called Mistake, we fantasized like Dionysius.

The fairy tale world continued as a few of us climbed the 857 steps to the Venetian fortress of Palamidi crowning the city. We wandered round the battlements of Acronafplia (14^th c.) and popped over to the fortified islet Bourtzi (15^th c.), afloat in the middle of the bay. A new sight or sensation kept coming across our path. As the last two in the group, Elliot and I tried hard to avoid running out of breath while shooting each other with bullet questions. Elliot, the Silicon Valley boy, is a director for product management at Linked-In with lots of interesting stories. Our battle conversations went much faster than our speed of climbing, almost as if we were doing the Minoan Youth Boxing – Who are the heroes?

Brad, as usual, almost flew all the way to the top, capturing scenes and precious moments along the way. His big camera rarely got any rest with the poetic space around just like his non-stop 10 years of athletic coaching career before he became an alumni association officer. On this “flaming red Argive earth” celebrated by the poet and the photographer, “where the poppy flames still brighter”, are heard the most sublime voices of the Greek land – Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles. We had to touch the gigantic slabs in order to comprehend the deep sense of security they offered the Mycenaean. We entered the acropolis through the Lion Gate, the oldest sample of monumental sculpture in Europe. Mycenae was the most powerful city-state in Greece up to 1100 BC when it was destroyed by fire. Centuries later, the tragic poets Aeschylus and Sophocles brought the city back to life with the magic of their verses.

The grace and elegance of the ancient Greek theatre at Epidaurus is mixed paradoxically with its almost overwhelming power. I entered the theater as a spectator, fellow alums like Dave, Jose, Alina and Catherine entered as singers, actors, and poets. Dave morphed into Apollo with the lyre and laurel reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets. Jose, in his crouches at the centre, played Agamemnon, confronting an audience of thousands with his feet on the earth and his eyes closed facing the sun – a primitive experience that took us back to the very beginning of the theatre. Although well over 2000 years passed since the theatre was built, I can strong feel the presence of those who created and beautified it, perhaps because the work they bequeathed us remain vital and timeless as our alums brought it into live.

The presence is catalytic. Mythical heroes and gods, ancient poets and citizens have become as one with the marbles. They breathe, embrace, inspire… even an illiterate pig. Today in the Acropolis, the Parthenon is alive – with cranes dancing and saws singing. Great lives were captured – the heroes of the past and the present.

A Chinese in Bombay

"Nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time." (Rushdie) I took a nap while our airplane was on the way to Bombay. When my eyes re-opened after 7pm, I was eager to catch my first scene of the city through the plane window. Not trying to match Manhattan treasury island’s glamour, Bombay gleamed at its own charm. I saw its unique shape as a piece of wildly decorative necklace. Days later when we drove by Marine Drive, I heard her nick name--Queens’ necklace again. Though the views were very different, I was satisfied with my Bombay dream.

“You look Indian!” –the best comment that I ever heard from a shop assistant.

I smiled at the mirror when looking at myself in churidar with mixed feelings. Last day last stop for my Bombay tour was this clothing shop run by local Indians. It was recommended by Anthony, my taxi driver, who made my day. I had dreams for Bombay hoping to share the venture with an Indian friend but Anthony accidentally became this Indian friend, a Roman Catholic.

Our day started with lavish color—an Indian way.

Mahalaxmi Temple, one of the busiest Hindu temples, welcomed us with pink roof embellished by orange and yellow flowers, red carpets, and women in splendid saris. I was enchanted before noticing my bare feet burning under the brilliant sunshine. While waiting in queue for the worship, I had the leisure to enjoy a closer look at the saris worn by the locals: cotton, silk, and synthetic. Under the pink roof, the face-to-face conversation between a Chinese and an Indian woman started without any hesitation. With a lotus flower in hand, she excitedly pointed to me her husband and sons in the other queue. This was the first Saturday of the month when the family came and worshiped their goddess of wealth, Mahalaxmi.

Before I fully soaked myself in Indian scents, I smelled fish when Anthony and I walked along the bank by the Gateway of India. Looking afar into Mumbai Harbor and glancing back at the majestic Taj Mahal Palace, for a moment, I was confused whether this was India or China, precisely Mumbai or Shanghai?

History might be able to explain this. Barely a stone's throw from the Gateway of India was the Prince of Wales Museum. Anthony still took his car along to the southern end of the Mahatma Gandhi Road. I was immediately intrigued by the structure of the "Crescent Site" crowned by a sparkling white dome—a confluence of Gothic and Moorish styles. The nature of embracing diversity was even more obvious inside—from ancient Indus Valley artifacts, Buddhist tankha scrolls, Tibetan bronzes to European paintings. I was more attracted to miniature paintings from various art schools of India—they are colorful windows to watch India while listening to Gulzar’s poetry.

Anthony understood me well when I asked for a visit to a local bookstore. I was led to Crossword, the largest bookstore in the city. Though it was one tenth of the size of a typical Barnes & Nobles, Crossword carried similar popular titles. Language was not a barrier, unlike Chinese. I fell in love with the corner shelves where the Indian literatures were waiting to be picked up. “If you lose touch with nature, you lose touch with humanity…. You carry a gun for ‘sport.’” I was first shocked by Krishnamurti’s precise analogy but later relieved with confidence. Since 1962, India and China have sported no more and I hope that they can become allies.

Since cricket tournament was out of town, I decided to overlook some impromptu match along Marine Drive. Very quickly, I discovered that it was more fun to play in the field. Cricket is an Indian men’s game. Being a Chinese woman, I was not afraid to walk into the field, becoming the batswoman. The Indian boys were excited, becoming bowlers. When the pink balls were thrown at me, I felt the heat on my cheek reflecting the color of the red sand field. I did not miss hitting the balls while Anthony cheered for me on the side. Two hours later, I walked back into his yellow and black car with a green covered cricket bat on my shoulder. He smiled at me blissfully so that I couldn’t find his eyes on his bronze face. At that moment, I knew that religion, ethnicity and language can only enhance the color of our lives.

Sleepless in Accra

Howard (’06) and I were eating dinner in Jazztone when the music was interrupted by the electricity shortage, which we were both used to. It would have been a perfect candle light dinner for Howard and Emily, his fiancée had she not caught malaria. In the darkness and silence, a to-be consultant and an ex-investment banker’s conversation became more engaged in Accra, the Capital of Ghana in West Africa.

“I don’t think I worked as hard in Sloan as I did in Ghana. Everyday in Temale, if I just push myself a bit harder, the impact carries further.” As Howard unfolded his challenges with Safe Household Water, a water and sanitation project started by an MIT professor, I firmed my decision not to hedge myself in New York or Hong Kong for the summer. When fighting malaria mosquitoes, taking cold bucket showers, Howard had his mission in mind and enjoyed living closer with the locals. Nonetheless, ,many things kept him awake: The rural communities could not afford the water filtering system his NGO targeted to provide while the official beneficiaries were the rich banks and international NGOs. How could he encourage more real jobs among Ghanaians while International NGOs with much higher salary levels were perceived a golden career in many Ghanaian’s minds?. The path less traveled brought the two Sloanies together and took some African dreams away late into the night.

The favorite Ghanaian hand shakes kept me awake and wiped my frowns off. I chose my summer internship in Africa and in financial services because my expertise in banking allowed me to make full contribution in a short time frame. While I felt frustrated on many manual processes, such as filling trade orders on white boards in the Ghana Stock exchange, my heart was closer to the community every time our palms touched and fingers clicked. At Databank Accra office, I shook hands with Ghanaian colleagues dozens of times a day. Late Monday nights, I offered my Ghanaian hand shakes before my best friend, Paa Nii, walked into live studio interviews for TV3. Early Tuesday mornings, we each showed up with our bright smiles palm touching and finger clicking with everybody else. We belonged to the Friday night office club enjoying each other’s accompany through MSN when electricity was off and computers ran on a back-up generator. The nights with less sleep were the ones with much concordance.

Role modeling from Paa Nii, I learned the smiley way to deal with the bank’s challenges—participation, patience, and persistence. Having lost much sleep over the strategies on the 13 subsidiaries’ operations in four West African countries, I set my mind to build capacity for the bank. From simple things like running Excel workshop, demonstrating portfolio optimization models, to evaluating HR performance measurement, I found myself spending more time with my colleagues during the day while working on my strategy report late at night. My colleagues thought I wanted to build a new Wall Street career in West Africa deal making with ministers and Ghana Club 100 (equivalent of Fortune 500), I smiled again because I knew that I was pushing my own limit to the heart of the African challenges as they did to themselves. Those sleepless nights were definitely more real than dancing with the elephants in the Mole National Park.

Almost to the verge of being work alcoholic, I managed to take half day off to visit my KSG classmate Makoto, a volunteer for Children Better Way, in Budaburam, the Liberia refugee camp in Ghana. Surprisingly, the camp looked quite similar to some Accra communities with 40,000 Liberians living peacefully in packaged houses since 1991. As he and I walked down the dirt road with our nose filled with the diesel smell, Makoto confessed that he wanted to run away in his first week in Budaburam. Before KSG, not only did he work for the ministry in Tokyo, Makoto was a world traveler backpacked by himself in India and Tibet. Therefore, lack of running water or electricity was not the real reason. It was the bareness of history, content and intellectual curiosity in a frozen hourglass.

I saw many exciting post-conflict national rebuilding projects in Monrovia, Capital of Liberia but Liberians in Budaburam did not see and seemed not even thinking about going back to their home country. As I was puzzled walking by the soccer field, Mokoto was all of sudden crowded and cheered by a team of teenager soccer players. Makoto was their hero!!!

The Ghanaian life tastes like Fufu, a local dish made of plantains and cassava—plain and fulfilling. I raised the rod pounding in rhythm while my partner rolled the dough smiling. Our sweat went together into the Fufu and made it a special taste.

Farewell to the Dubai Magic

I have realized how short my venture in Dubai was in the past seven weeks. Professionally, it was a privilege to get to know such a unique group of people and share their experiences. Listening to their aspirations and challenges was inspirational. More importantly, they made me understand how Dubai can make dreams into reality: the wonder bus, henna shop, bookstore, entrepreneur diploma program, strategic investment fund, business and investment banking, and many more.
In the blue warehouse where the future super market modeling is to be done, my colleagues and I played video games, badminton, foosball, and darts as if they were all yesterday. I could feel the energy surrounding me and was motivated when I walked into the SME office every morning. We share the same entrepreneurial spirit and care about the local community. I appreciate all the invitation, encouragement, bestowment, and everything else. It has been such a rewarding experience to me, professional, culturally, and socially.

Hugging moon at the tip of an abra in the Dubai Creek, punching palms in Scarlett’s cheering for the goals, splashing vinegars on fried haddock at Chippy’s, I was drunk before I finished my first beer in Chin-chin. My Dubai life gradually opened like an extravagant peacock tail because of the group of friends that I hung out with. English, French, Palestinian, Portuguese, Spanish, American and Chinese, we had so much fun with soccer cup watching, cocktail mixing, paella cooking, and pool side gossiping.

We were the dream team rallying over the sun set by Dusit Dubai Hotel, breaking waves at the Sharjah beach, and sharing Indian curries at the Hatta bus station. You are the genie out of Aladdin’s lamp making elegant power point slides within your finger moves. I am already missing you, and our laughter along with Mr. Mitsubishi’s speeding lullaby. It was all wicked.

Thank you for all the magic, Dubai!

Accepting a Splendid Torch

I stopped crying for Sue’s pass away as her laughter is still at my earshot. Sue burned her torch as bright as possible before she handed it over to each of us.

Last winter solstice, Sue quoted Marianne Williamson, “as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” This was my first impression on her in December 2004. As the MPA program director, she spoke critically that her program was not for everyone while actively listened to many participants’ career aspirations. Her wisdom was beyond an academic program but life enlightening advice.

In the fall, I embraced her caring just like my mom’s—though distanced but with deep trust. From paper writing tips, speed reading techniques, to leadership skills, she had them all before I even asked. She was always there for me, and not only me. Her smiles had the magic to empower me with the confidence to deal with whatever difficulties that I had to face.

Then it was her time to encounter the test for life. Having walked the thin line myself eight years ago, I believed that Sue would have to but thrive just like Lance Armstrong. As Dean Ellwood put it, “Sue represented the heart and soul of the Kennedy School.” We could not afford the fall of a shining star. I organized the Blue Book project collecting our classmates’ notes and pictures to support Sue’s fighting for cancer. When I handed over the blue book last day before I left Cambridge, I envisioned Sue rejoining our MPA seminar for good drinks and conversations…

It all happened so soon. Reading notes and pictures again from those who could not physically contribute to the Blue Book, I share their love for Sue from Romania, Venezuela, Laos and etc. Now, how I wish that I could be in Cambridge, closer to Sue. No more tears in desert for sailboat_97. I shine with Sue’s light and I accept the splendid torch Sue has passed on.

A French Date

Time: 8pm, Thursday, May 25, 2006
Location: Blue Bar, Novotel Hotel, Dubai, UAE
Date: Vianney, KSG Classmate Luc’s close college friend in France

After some aerobics in the French swimming pool, I forced myself on heavy make-up and a futuristic patterned dress. Fashionably late, I was confident with my smell of Light Blue down the elevator. Vianney was waiting in his French casual, matching well with the white sofa just outside the bar. We picked the Kriek, first on the drink list. Vianney proposed Blue Bar because he used to stay in this French hotel and I stay here. Blue bar is not French but fusion, famous for its live Jazz music and unique selection of Belgium beers, such as Kriek.

I have never been to France nor Vianney to China but both of us have worked in South East Asia and Middle East. Vianney roamed on Arabian Peninsula for the past 18 months while I beached in Israel last summer. We both thumbed up on the best Singapore Sling at Raffle’s Hotel. Gradually, culture became a focus of our conversation. Vianney joked that wives were important assets here because they had priorities in performing civil duties. Otherwise, men had to queue in long lines with 65% Indians and Pakistanis in this country. Islamic marriage allows males to have up to four wives as long as they are treated equally. “Men are privileged.” Vianney had a sway of his head. “Or, women are disadvantaged.” This time he nodded.

After 9:30pm, the Jazz music was on and it got so loud that even though we bumped our noses we couldn’t hear each other. We started walking out while the cherry fermented beer hit my head strongly. Barely balancing myself, I still recognized his French humor on his Dubai experience. We kept on talking in Café Cream as time passed by until my eye lids were getting heavy. His farewell cheek kisses certainly woke me up—“I apologize for being French.”

Meeting Ali, a Banker Entrepreneur

Meeting Ali was an exciting opportunity not only because he is a UAE national with his bachelor’s education in Boston, but also because he is a part-time entrepreneur and a full-time banker. Walking from the parking lot towards the back door of his office, I was immediately reminded of the Duck Tour on Charles River by the full cover of an amphibious bus on Dubai Creek. Al’s business is called Wonder Bus Tour.

His voice was very soft and his hands were always on his laps—nowhere close to a banker, nor an entrepreneur. His marketing manager, a big white man in black suit sitting three feet away, was a sharp contrast to Ali in his traditional white dishdasha—no sign of Americanization. “There are a lot of hours after my banking job 7:30am-2:30pm that I can work on Wonder Bus, and plus weekends… My bank job allows me to support myself without putting any salary burden on the start-up.” Leveraging his finance skill, Ali arranged the 2nd round financing all by himself. Banker Entrepreneur Ali got his perfect match.

I left my banking career in New York because my director and I both believe that MIT Sloan is the place to nurture my entrepreneurial spirit. Nonetheless, I failed on my first attempt. Laughably, I was worried about no financing, and couldn’t resist other temptations. Ali failed several entrepreneurial endeavors as well but this time he succeeded in Wonder Bus. I admire his conviction, which was almost buried in his banker’s job and soft voice. Ali is also an achieved branch manager for the local bank.

Meeting Ali is not a mere case interview behind hundreds of pages that I studied, but a lesson from a real-life entrepreneur: One’s conviction can drive him to integrate different parts of his experience for the Wonder.