3/31

Six or seven days prior, I read on the internet that the only way to become a good writer is to write every day for a predetermined amount of words, by which I have since subliminally abided. I have been thinking why ever would I write without audience, and without even giving the deplorably few who attempt to read a chance to get to know me more in an unabridged way. The former I have no answer, the latter I presumed, is too depriving, therefore I embedded my contact info in the page's source code. (P: Contact info has been removed from the source code on 10/17/2015, and has been placed in the copyright notice instead.) I also read on the internet that many who write have the sole motivation of being read - I never have such belief because I do not consider my writing fit for either literary or casual reader - I'm in the middle, putting bullshit and something thoughtful alongside each other, and often intertwined.

There's a hurricane passing by the Bremen region today. I noticed it when I got out of the bed for bathroom during the night. The wind was howling past the open window, creating a screeching noise sufficiently stable and loud as to not wake up anyone. I sat on the toilet imagining to pee in the hurricane outside - my stream scatters over my pants and a pair of shivering legs and flutter into the wind and into the dark and dancing with rain, to the terribly long and blaring trill of the Beethoven. As all German people are asleep, all lights turned off and all bleats fainted, I pee, in a hurricane forty thousand kilometers away from home, and before long I finished peeing - to me the act of going to bathroom is more symbolic than biological, as I refuse to accept that I'm potentially insomniac. And I sturdily rose up and intoned, bloody hurricane, and shut the window as firmly as possible, leaving muted clusters of trees reveling riotously outside. Inside the building, it was as usual notoriously tranquil. My mirtazapine-dosed roommate lurked behind his door, lying on the bed singular and mildly convulsive. His four-year-old laptop was installed right beside him, screen off - no Reddit, no Funny GIFs and unconscious. Furtively and without flushing the toilet, I sneaked back into my room, raising my feet so the slippers don't stutter, and returned to my drunk, unthinkingly rubber-stamped sleep, hoping she is not awakened by my mischief.

I woke up again in the morning. And my girlfriend was already up and trudging into her computer. It was the sound of her Apple computer starting up that had disrupted my sleep. I looked at her, and smiled weakly seeing the morning has descended once again - the canvas of the sky was painted in a perfect white, perfect for being lightly repressed, not RGB 225, but RGB 224, and fell back to sleep. My mind was bare. And I occasionally opened my eyes for visual signals to help swallow my saliva, murmur, murmur, murmur, each time, loud and remote.

Then I woke up at 1 PM. My roommate knocked on the door and I wasn't ready to answer it. He promptly gave up and went down for lunch. In less than 20 minutes I went as well, taking trays of dried bread back up to subsist my body. I listen and see, with lucid ears and clear eyes - the wind blowing through the windows, the sun shining through the clouds, and classical music, tense and graceful emotionalist piano pieces. Yet behind the whooping-it-up of the day, every once in a while the noise would quiet - for in the mirror was a soul whose feature is bland, and voice monotonic. The music blasting out from my Beats by Dr. Dre comes from Chopin, Liszt and Schumann, who once played piano but are dead and whose piano played by myriad other people as if it's their own but unaltered and invariable. I sit on the chair, intoxicated, repeatedly, when it is considered from the perspective of the entire humanity.

And I sing, a slender song, that I did not compose and no one composed. Night shall fall soon, on us all, and morning will come. For I don't have the strength to balk at such absurdity, I smile, anxiously and impatient, to that sobbing of whistler from afar, and to the soul I was given to hear it.

3/30

I slept at 2:20 AM and woke up at 12:50 PM, more than ten hours of sleep. I felt it more agreeable for me to spend these hours playing computer games, browsing the web for Grand Theft Auto V news and modifying the code of my website for a printer-friendly page. And not after a wink do I realize that I have done, all the things I can think of doing. Now I sit, placing my feet on the half-opened drawer of the cabinet, staring at the Microsoft Word with gunk seemingly in both of my eyes, and reading the email from Varun stating that the email I sent from last semester led Rai into academic probation. Rai failed all the courses for last semester, and did not at all contribute to our Society and Economy presentation. And I recall that he is a parliamentarian of the Undergraduate Student Government. The day I was elected as a member of the financial committee, the only time I showed up for the USG meeting, he questioned me how I can contribute to the USG. I said, no, I cannot. And he abstained in vote.

Chinese hackers are engaging in a DDoS attack against GitHub, the largest in the site's history. The attack redirects unsuspecting website visitors to the two pages of GitHub that contain the source code of a mirroring site and offer translation of the blocked New York Times articles. I am a participant. Every time I went to the pirate e-book site, there will be the notice "Warning: the site contains malicious JavaScript" roughly every two seconds, each meaning my traffic has been redirected to GitHub once. So I closed the page and secretly vowed never to use Baidu's service again, whose statistic engine is the origin of the attack. Although I know that vow won't be kept for long - from time to time I still have to use Pan to offline-download torrents. Not only me, to be truthful, but also several friends of mine who find the Pan quite useful in a quasi-legitimate way. I have always had an often-violated principle of only using sites that are censored by the Great Firewall, because it indicates dignity to someone who's neither a dissident nor wholly agrees to the Chinese government.

Curious though, the more I contemplate about my insistences - keeping writing despite the absence of inspiration, making the blog almost dilapidated but pragmatic, listening to piano and metal punk at the same time, visiting only websites blocked by the Chinese government, suing PayPal for a self-supposed unethical conduct, the more I feel a fictional importance exhibited by the preoccupations and disillusionments that are my reality. If human history is known for the aristocracy and its derived commiseration for the anonymous, palaces and grandiose constructions to testify the aspirations of the few, then mine is the resignation of the commiserated, and the ruins and shadows of the un-archeological, of the crude and of the ephemeral. Out there are only my once-existent footsteps on the once-real path of my university, of the cracking floor of my apartment, of the bike lane along the once polluted river of my middle school, and of a progressively unthankful present of the past. I move chronically along, chronically past things that are destined to over-last me in a reserved, un-uttering way. And I'm merely their decoration.

I'm endowed, amongst everyone else, an interesting ability to deify my own emotions, and at the same time to diminish them when they are ordinated amongst those of the others, such that when I am frightened, by staring into the darkness or by not having the capability to steer the future, I instantly un-frighten myself on the contemptible epiphany of other people being frightened in the same way. I pity those whose life is mundane and real and whose dream is probable and near. For unlike those whose life is extraordinary and whose dream is remote and improbable, the disappointment for the sagacious is more tenable. And at the same time I pity myself.

The sun went out briefly as I took a bathroom break to pee, leaving behind a blue, crystallized sky. My girlfriend, who was watching Chinese entertainment show, took a picture of the landscape to send to her mom. I, who neither has a will of taking any picture, nor, if I actually took one, want to send it to my mom, resumed typing on my laptop, and possibly, only possibly, apply for a room next semester in the southern side of the College Nordmetall building, facing the sun.
-

Daylight Saving Time has already started for two days. Yet the clock still appears more credible than my sense of the time elapsing. The majority of my day was spent, unsurprisingly, hugging with girlfriend and killing around in the Battlefield 4 game - I successfully amassed more than a hundred kills with less than thirty deaths, and won the "Speed Killer" title multiple times, but my level count has merely progressed for one. The amount of labor and depression I've taken, compared to the actual reward I received, truly testified how shallow my way of living is. It is a shallowness both contracted and enlarged by the amount of people who have the level 140 instead of my 38. The world, at least the virtual gaming world, moves laterally. It is now near the day's end. During the day I was disappointed about being neither shocked by the news of a war breaking out, nor dumbfounded at a new scientific achievement - both of these take time to actually materialize, yet information age has engineered me in such a way that I am accustomed to, and even anticipate, bizarre and grotesque occurrence on a daily basis. During the night I'm no longer disappointed. I went to the kitchen for some fried paprika and tomato egg soup by my girlfriend, and returned to immerse in the new update announcements by DICE LA. Solving no problem, creating no prospect, gaining no weight nor losing any, drinking multivitamin tablet and disgusting girlfriend over persisting but trivial issues, I proudly declare the day in vain and wipe my ass and take my shower.

3/29

Yesterday I went to the law firm Ahlers & Vogel, 15 minutes of walk south of the central station, in the brownstone district of Bremen, a region unknown to me and almost forgettable. It's behind the blatantly built Sparda Bank eG building. And I had to ask from six locals for directions, two of them middle-aged ladies sitting at the table outside of a cafe, two younger men, notably both well-off and well-bred, and the other two who eventually led me to the right place. Not to my surprise, the firm is closed because of the Easter holiday. Me and my girlfriend, who was feeling not particularly well due to the time of the month, went around the building, trying to find a way in, or at least a computer on screen saver, of no avail.

It was for an unlikely battle between me and PayPal, which had reversed more than 500 euro of payments from my account. However, now I think, I was forced to resort to legal proceedings not because PayPal destroyed a business which I had considered feasible, nor because I have lost 500 euro and it is a lot of money, but simply because I am frustrated at PayPal. Yes, frustration of me at PayPal, in no way resembles the frustration from PayPal at me. PayPal doesn't even need to be frustrated, perhaps a couple of customer service employees were, because I sounded so domineering on the phone (I was usually keen in realizing that customer service staffs do not represent the corporation, and they, like me, simply want to squeeze some money off the job and make a living), but not more - I have clicked to agree to their Terms of Services which absolutely no one will read, hence PayPal becomes legally entitled to do anything within it. My frustration is a powerless one. I am an individual, a foreign student in Germany without an EU citizenship, none of the people in my family own a company and therefore none of them can threaten to forego PayPal as a payment method, with which I presume, in a large enough scale, will surely make it concede. So far what I have done, is sitting in front of the computer with Online Mahnantrag that curiously cannot be translated by Google, trying to fill out the ever-so-perplexing form, and opting instead to find a lawyer that can manage it for me. I phoned the Bremen government - it was a police issue; I phone the police - it was an civil affair; and I phoned my mom because it's already more than a month and I need 500 euro hard to payback my credit card bill. And of course, as I arbitrarily declare PayPal's business conduct problematic and sever all the connections I previously had with them, I will outright have trouble renewing my domain and buy games, and they will outright never care.

On the way back, my girlfriend retrieved 10 euro with a 3.99 euro withdrawal fee from the ATM machine and bought me from the Chinese fast-food restaurant a plate of fried rice with beef that costs 6 euro. I wanted to buy her some drinks as well. But the apple-flavored soft drink is 1.8 euro per beer bottle, she thought it's too expensive and let it go. As her discomfort was made worse by the windy climate of Bremen that she lost her appetite for even a spoonful of rice. To my relief, when I finished, she ate the last remaining slice of beef in the plate. Then we walked back to the central station, and got the train back to the university.

The spring break won't officially start until next Monday. However, nearly everyone I knew has gone to some other places. Alin went back to Romania for the first time since he came here; Varun will be flying to London on Monday to celebrate his cousin or nephew's first birthday; nearly all of the Chinese my girlfriend knows either went home or went travelling, some to Spain, some to Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium. But I don't plan to go out. For just in these few days, I will start marketing Persian sculpture in China and hopefully get the @billie Twitter handle from Alin which I had always desired. Again, I'm entirely unconfident if it will work out or will blunder like the iTunes Gift Cards, internship applications and campus job applications. But I'm doing it regardless.

3/26

This is a drowsy afternoon in northern Germany, maybe a tinge irregular because the sun is shining. Through the clouds of an indefinite height, it pours down to the earth like it has ever done before I even came here. If I watch closer, the tips of those barren but sprouting trees are wavering - some from the perching birds, other caressed by the gentle wind. Although I cannot feel. To save energy during the winter, the closure of my thick glass windows is air-tight. In door, there's only sound of my girlfriend playing Chinese entertainment shows on her laptop, and vaguely the sound of Chopin's complete Nocturne from my headphones, which I enjoy but barely notice - unless or until the pianist went frenetic with a few notes especially striking. And I cannot hear the sound from outside. Though in a moist corner of my muscular corpse there's still desire to check it out, to open the window, the slumber of having to move my ass deters any effort. Outside are regular diaries. On the lanes where neither Axe nor Sniper dwell, sporty German people, often dull, middle aged man, and occasionally young girls in their super-short panties, walked their dogs. And farther out, slicing the planet at an angle approximating thirty degrees, same people are depilating dogs of the same breed with boiling water - pulling out typical hindrances of guts, blood, teeth and bowel with their oily, but conceited hands of having to make a living. And to the south, people are looking for pieces of bread I just threw out this afternoon. For to me, when the beef slices have been consumed, the point of finishing the bread is a debatable one.

My crossed legs are in desperate need of exfoliation. I love the exactness of the word exfoliation as opposed to foot-scrubbing, which I performed quite substantially, with a scissor whose handles are covered in pink, likely polystyrene plastic, and often of no avail. Exfoliation, like ablation, insinuates a surgical biochemistry of an unyielding radicalism to the ailed body. The effectiveness of such a treatment is unknown to me, and any time soon I don't see myself actually going to a foot spa. However, the notion of remedying a supposedly irreversibly dead beautiful foot intrigues me. Yet for now I'm leaving it alone. For in the chant of despair, with my hands joined and voice soothed, I teach myself how much the lust of the attaining falls short of the attained.

Her laptop, moments ago still blasting out voices of Cantonese/Mandarin/English speaking gaming show participants, now is dormant, with its Apple logo bizarrely facing me instead of facing her. In fear of waking her up, I gently took of my headphones and placed them by her laptop. The world of Chopin all of sudden loses its appeal simply because it is un-silent. On the background I can hear the noise coming out of the heater - all other heaters in this residential college do not make such a noise, but I take it for granted for the calming white noise. In the first day I set my feet in this room, I placed all my belonging in a grid, with the power cord going through the hole at the upper-left corner of the desk. Now my laptop is on the bedside cabinet, with the cord coming from the Chinese-made Bull power adapter, traversing the part of floor strewn with dirt, hair and several drops of chocolate stuffing from yesterday after the German class, and ascending along the cliff to another hole of my computer - it gives my computer power upon which it relies to give me the pleasure of having Battlefield game to play and a keyboard to type on. I was supposed to bring my laptop to the Stats class. It is the only class for me on Thursdays. I didn't go there because my distaste of having to go to a tedious Stats class outweighs even my utilitarian concern of maintaining a decent grade point average. Most of the people in that class share my opinion, except a few, imaginably, African and German students that like to excel themselves regardless of how trivial the opportunity is. And so I can sit here having nothing to do. I have even devised a noun for my current philosophy of life, Alinism. Alinist approach to life, surely, is how my Romanian friend Alin lives a life, which, according to Husain, is eating everything, regretting nothing, and being serious only once, or maximally, twice in a month - sehr perfekt encapsulation of my current state of mind.

I sent an email to my mom days ago asking her for 2800 RMB which I had used to buy Apple iTunes Gift Cards from Taobao. She hasn't replied yet. And now I'm concerned because I used a credit card for those purchases and I don't want that affair to affect my credit report - though I'm yet to be in a litigation against PayPal regarding that 500 euro. I fancied she might have gone out because there happens to be another incident of my grandmother, or simply the internet at home had broken down again for no reason.

3/25

I've written plenty lately, but they are not the works I produced - they're my failure to produce them.

I once lamented that I spent too much time doing things that are ultimately useless, playing Planetside 2 or Battlefield 4 non-stop, and writing to quell or justify my guilt of being rebellious. Yet now I have lost interest in gaming, and only write because I feel like having a heritage. I skip classes mostly, crease applying for any internship, write 500-word essay in 20 minutes so I can have some time to look for something that interests me. I don't know how to categorize this, and I doubt such a life is even worthy of being categorized.

I was quite athletic back in high school. Every Sunday afternoon I would bring a Spalding basketball and practice shooting at the far end of the playground. I established a sort of preference of only playing basketball there, though not because I was unsociable that I want to stay away from the building cluster, but for the particular noise of a basket I make when I shoot the ball at a slimmer angle. I went there mostly at 1 PM, and people would start coming and join me from 2 PM. We would eventually have a crowd big enough for a 3-versus-3-versus-3 competitive match, taking turn for every 3 points, with a 3 pointer accounting for 2 points and the regular one 1 point. It was the same group most of the time, and I was so notorious for finishing the match with two 3 pointers that they eventually changed the rule, making a 3 pointer only 1 point. For a time I was pretty satirical about the fact. Later I shot 3 pointers less and less, and eventually stopped altogether. At the end of the first year, students were divided into two groups to ready for the College Entrance Exam. The group of people I usually played with ended up in a different class from mine. Although we still play basketball from time to time, even in the rainstorm and I always feel eager for the court after a day's class, our frequency of actually playing it decreased - it was that time when I cultivated this habit of going to school as late as possible on Sundays. I seemed to avoid the school and consequently, the basketball. They seemed to be avoiding them too. And by the time I quitted school, I had long stopped playing basketball.

Now if I recall, my entire past 4 years has a curve of decreasing enthusiasm. My tremendous speed of acquainting with things and an equally tremendous boredom afterwards make everything less glaring than they are supposed to be. My grandmother's stroke, and the subsequent bone fractures, moving to my apartment for care, reached me in a form of a flow almost incessant, yet I adapted to those news as fast as I adapt to updates on Skimmin iPhone app I reply on and check nearly every day. Bundled with instant noodles in the freezer long eaten by my mother, the six dozens of chicken meat stick I bought online, and the sixth-floor windowsill I sat on with the windows I could close but couldn't lock because of the internet cable, my presence in the past, or the former me who I consider better encapsulates myself than the present version, is looming away, beyond the horizon of my current window, which I have learned to always lock from September, to prevent the giant mosquitoes that might or might not bite from entering.

I video-chat with my family every week on Saturday at 1 PM, and I have forgotten about it almost two weeks in the row. Because when I wake up to the mornings, each of them reminds me of how distant and alien a soul I am from I was, and I could only stand as long as no one ever is interfering with my business of an aimless ambition. But my family are always the concerning type.

Mine, to the end, is a history long gone. Although I still listen to Nocturne In E Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 2 in the bathroom, the exact same piece from iTunes Radio and a Japanese porn I used to watch back home. It kept me up when I was preparing for the exams; in front of it, I have masturbated, cried, whined and sworn; my fingers moved over pencils, keyboards, phone screens, my footsteps through China, Singapore and Germany, from countries to countries, bathrooms to bathrooms, relentlessly I listened, and relentlessly I carried on.
-

Varun Jotwani complained today during dinner that my jokes are getting a little repetitive. I had been known by him as a Chinese who feels too embarrassed about his nation that he shunned topics about it. And later I was dubbed as someone who's hyper-intelligent, but often chooses to appear dumb as not to intimidate people. Neither of his statements are correct. I'm usually overly critical about my nation and almost certainly not an intelligent figure, let alone an overly intelligent one. But I have always adored watching him trying to make sense, of me being too observational, politically incorrect, sensitive to different English accents and good at telling jokes that dumbfound people rather than amuse them. He bid farewell soon after like he did at noon, he has a German class at 7 PM, and work to do afterwards. I realized that, his life, at its own unique superficiality and blandness, is what I have yearned for - he's one of a particular type of people who always appear unthreatening, and therefore agreeable to get along with.

Long after my encounter with him, when I was sitting in the toilet, a buzzing sound that resembled the civil defense siren rang from the east of my location. Albeit that common sense dictates there won't be any such thing as Russian or Chinese military invasion taking place on German territory, I posted about it on our Dinner Squad Facebook group chat - it's a group formed during the winter break to cope with boredom with an occasionally expanding membership, and the name came from me, and has since been a quasi-official self-designation amongst us group members. Few had read the messages, and even fewer had replied. Varun was one of them, explaining that he just opened his window, and speculating that it might be the siren of an ambulance. And hence my most memorable episode of the day.

3/19

Our professor for the course Social Entrepreneurship always claims to be a Brit - most of the jokes he made during the class are either originated from Britain or intended against it. But he is not. He was born and raised in Berlin and then moved to Britain for his university. According to one of my German friends, Bela, his accent is distinctly Berliner. According to him, such accent sounds markedly more proletarian than those spoken at the Bremen region. My friend would laugh at the statement while I sat along perplexed - I just got a dire 2.33 grade for the first quiz of my German A1.2 class, in no way am I expected to understand anything they are talking about. Professor once said, get used to it. For God's sake I even changed my name from Billie to Steven in exchange for a 1.0 from his course - although I'm usually not infuriated and would still laugh when those speaking German have laughed.

His course is the most fun and interactive thus far I have encountered at Jacobs University. But it is the fact that he is leaving after this semester for the software engineering field that he dared to play it light - once kicking down a chair in class because he was forcibly moved out of D-Forge (It is called Bremen Design Thinking Forge in full and is owned by Prof. Lattemann who taught me International Business during the first semester) without being given advanced notice, once dancing to a folk song because this current generation of youth just won't get what rock n' roll means for those born during the 1970s. I have long been dubbing myself as the champion for rock spirit, with my favorite line of quote from Green Day lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong "I'm not fucking Justin Bieber you motherfuckers" as one of my mottos for life - I have never heard of any of those songs he was dancing to.

On Friday mornings that precede Social Entrepreneurship, I also attend another of his class called Public Policy and Management, from which a lot of jokes he used at Social Entrepreneurship come from and on which a lot of jokes from Social Entrepreneurship is reused. He is evidently aware of this fact, and would tell the students who attend both courses try to fake a smile so that other students won't be overly embarrassed. He himself is a political scientist working for European Union agencies for years, and is extremely prone to make fun of his fellow political scientists for their de facto ability to analyze everything and their ante facto inability to predict anything, and that such a fact makes him an old cynic afraid of the new waves of what he consider the intelligently superior human beings. I wouldn't say that I love the professor. As a university student, I have no reason to love someone who will abandon his professorship for software engineering. However, I do think he possesses certain aspects worth imitating when I transcend the horizon of what is merely a university, a grad school, a company or a career.

On his last week's Social Entrepreneurship class I also met with a start-up entrepreneur named Anton, who came to our class to introduce us to what is important for starting a business, and ended up, with his mildly classic British accent, talking about the importance of building a habit, and how it changes everything - a TEDx talk show abridged of self-introduction, reasoning process, and humor. With a standalone version of his conclusion, I still delightedly composed an email for an internship position at his company during the summer, because although I don't agree with his self-elevation in class, I do agree with his courage to actually start a company. However, after the class when I had the small chat with him, he told me what he aspires is an Elon Musk style of changing the world. "This is got to be bad. I don't want to change the world, I just like to fix it, and make some money off of it." And then he told me to send him an email to continue to the conversation, and moved back to staring at his computer screen. Now it's almost a week I still haven't sent him my email, I haven't even drafted - because I never had that kind of vision to change the society for the better, I only sought to prevent it from getting worse. I'd still write him an email though, because I don't want to apply for a job at the dish washing industry during the summer - there are already too many university students for it.

Essay Archive

"MBTI - My Type

Table of Contents
1. My Personality
1.1 MBTI Overview
1.1.1 INTJ (Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging)
1.1.2 INTP (Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving)
1.1.3 INFJ (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judging)
1.1.4 INFP (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Perceiving)
1.1.5 Critical Evaluation
1.1.6 Preferred Style
1.2 Emotional Intelligence (EI)
2. Personality, Culture and International Business
Reference

1. My Personality

1.1 MBTI Overview
Judging by the result of an MBTI assessment, Jung Typology Test™, my personality type appears to oscillate among INTJ, INTP, INFJ, and INFP according to the time of the day when I take the test, the emotional status I am in, and the language in which the test is offered. While it calls into question the scientific validity of the test, and incurs confusion to my understanding of the implications of the fluid personality types, I have nevertheless been able to retrieve some useful information from it. In the essay I will try to analyze myself according to the results posed by the MBTI test, and then I will critically evaluate my personality, style of functioning, and some limitations of this MBTI test and the Jungian Type Theory.

The MBTI test attempts to address four scales of personality traits in a bipolar dimensions (Steven & Jayne, 1993) , energy source, mode of perception, decision making, and the orientation to the outside (IT Maturity Services, n.d.). In these four aforementioned scales, it seems that I have fairly stable results for the first two – I am an introvert and my primary mode of perception is through intuition. For the last two scales, however, my results vary between thinking and feeling, and between judging and perceiving - it fundamentally contradicts the core assumption upon which the Myers-Briggs Type Indication test is based (Ryckman. R., 2012, p. 54). Therefore it becomes outstandingly difficult for me to characterize myself in the Jungian Cognitive Functions ordering. To overcome this hurdle, I try to focus on the interlinks and interferences between my static, non-changing personality types (e.g. introvert, intuition) and those at the margin (e.g., thinking vs. feeling, judging vs. perceiving), instead of elaborating in-depth on each of the four dichotomous personality scales.

1.1.1 INTJ (Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging)
People of the INTJ type accounts for roughly 2.1% of world's population (Myers Briggs Type Indicator, n.d.), but their capability in contingency planning are above the majority of the others (Kiersy et al., 1984). That means, INTJs are thinkers and planners. They tend to focus inward and have a close-knit circle of true friends rather than reaching out for large amount of acquaintances. They are, to some extent obsessed with their inner thoughts and are also enthusiastic in putting their thoughts into utilization in an organized and systematic fashion. However, their lack of attentiveness to details and reluctance to relate to other people's thoughts and concerns can sometimes hinder their opportunity for greater achievement. INTJs are born leaders, although they prefer to stay behind the crowd until they are truly needed, when they do takeover, their insightfulness of thinking, effectiveness of acting, and the unique capacity to see the entire picture objectively enables them to put resource into optimal use. From a career perspective, INTJs are often the most competent and successful, and possess every personality trait that would lead to a rewarding and fulfilling life. Famous people like Karl Max, Mark Zuckerberg, John Keynes, and John Adams are all of the INTJ type. (Retrieved from http://www.celebritytypes.com/intj.php)

1.1.2 INTP (Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving)
INTPs accounts for 3.3% of world's population, and it is often a type found in thinkers and philosophers. They live internally with a strong sense of logic and an urge to cope with things rationally. They are always compelled to seek answers to every question and truth to every mystery, and this tendency might lead to a personal sense of obligation to turn world into a better place, since they are always contemplating about possibilities and alternative realities where things can be changed or improved. INTPs do not like to take leadership positions and are usually reserved about their true opinions unless one of their principles are violated. Just like INTJs, INTPs are not fond of attending to other people's thoughts and concerns – they have difficulties giving out warmth. They prefer to work alone in a quiet, undisturbed place, and they are capable of coming out with extraordinary ideas and inventions that help move our word forward. They're the pioneers of our society. Famous people of this type include Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Adam Smith, Abraham Lincoln, and the founder of Google Inc. Larry Page.

1.1.3 INFJ (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judging)
INFJs are the rarest of all amongst the 16 types present in the Jungian Type Theory, making up a total of 1.5% of the global population. The most noticeable aspect of people of INFJ type are their feelings. They have a unique way of perceiving the outside world and sometimes their perception is so fierce that it might appear uncanny to people of the other types. INFJs are sophisticated and warm. They try to be as kind as possible to those close to them, and so they often hold a special place in the hearts of people around them. INFJs also tend to believe in their own feelings more than objective facts or what things look like. Therefore they might appear stubborn and engraved in their own opinions. INFJs are also perfectionists – they do not compromise their ideologies.

1.1.4 INFP (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Perceiving)
Like the three personality types included above, INFPs focus internally. They dedicate themselves to making the world a better place. And when their attempt is not successful they dwell themselves into the world of literature. They generally lack sense of surrounding might make them appear careless in some respect, but they are always perfectionistic when it comes to the work they do or the cause they devote themselves to. INFPs often have their own explanations and unique understandings of the things happening around them, thus making it easier for people of this type to think outside the box. Their novel thoughts and caring personality makes them charismatic idealists. But due to this fact, they sometimes have problems adapting to tasks that requires an impersonal and objective judgments. Famous people of this type include John Milton, William Shakespeare, and George R. R. Martin, who are all prominent figures in the literary world.

1.1.5 Critical Evaluation
In general, the MBTI test has proven to be the best mainstream assessment method for non-psychiatric populations (Capraro, 2002). At the meantime, the test is not without its limitations. Authors of the MBTI assessment also possess reserved attitudes towards the validity of the test, that they have drawn observations on the inconsistency between statistical data and the Jungian Type Theory (Pittenger, 1993). A study (Sipps et al., 1985) designed to verify the item veracity of the MBTI test using large scale samples has found that differences in the individual students largely cannot be properly accounted for by the four different personality type as are indicated in the test result. The study has also found 6 different factors in influencing the personality traits, as is opposed to the only four bipolar characterizations in the MBTI. Scholarly perception of if the MBTI assessment is authentic or not, the use of the test can cause more realistic problems that might be in immediate proximity to people's lives. For example, because of the simplicity of how the test is designed, human resource managers at a given company will naturally be inclined to use the test to evaluate whether a candidate seeking for a position is recruitable, thus risking the potential of overgeneralizing people and missing important opportunities to acquaint with the candidate more individually. The extensive use of the test also poses a risk of making the test result and the recipients of the test fall into a loop of self-prophecy, where the test taker attribute their own behavior and personality traits to the MBTI test results, ignoring the contextual elements that might be crucial in determining various actions they might take in an event. Test taker also tend to develop an expectation that they subconsciously and reactively conform to the categorizations offered in the MBTI personality types (Pittenger, 1993). Meanwhile the radically bipolar division method between extraversion and introversion, sensing and intuition, thinking and feeling, judging and perceiving fail to provide answer of practical value to individuals of the type In between and at the margin. In my test result, I do not at all have clear inclination towards thinking and feeling, or judging and perceiving. However, the explanation of my personality type has provided me with incompatible statements like "You are a natural leader" and "You are not good at taking leadership position". The MBTI test is also in a way similar to astrology, which contains vague and sometimes ambiguous insinuations readily translated into different and opposing understandings.

The validity of MBTI test is very difficult to measure due to the innate subjectivity of how we understand personalities and the unique scale that makes it difficult to compare the test to other standardized psychology tests. Though in order to give references to measure the MBTI test, different substitute assessing tools have been designed, but often in the results generated by these tools two contradictory interpretations are provided – one in support for the MBTI test and the other calls it into question. This is a sign that the test is at least in some way flawed enough to allow subjective and illogical explanations.

1.1.6 Preferred Style
Aside from providing an overview of one's personality type, the MBTI assessment also indicates on the style of communication, leadership, work environment, decision making (MyType Instructions, n.d.) etc., and suggestion for later improvement that are relevant to people of a particular personality type. For me as someone who has four different personality types, it thus becomes crucial to recognize that in me there are both advantages and disadvantages associated with each personality type. This is partly evidenced by my unique style in engaging in social activities – I usually prefer to spend my leisure time alone and conduct my work in a quiet and undisturbed environment, because I feel talking to people for the mere purpose of socializing is the sign of unconstructive time management, therefore I try my best to minimize my circle to a handful of close friends, all of whom are intellectually appealing and trustworthy. However, in case of formulaic daily conversation, group meetings and discussions that are essential to academic study, I appear to be talkative (sometimes even exorbitantly so), humorous, and most of all, willing to socialize. I have the ability to turn preliminary conjectures into concrete step-by-step procedures, and ideas into convincing but not didactic argument. In preparing for case summary reports, presentations, I'm usually the one to lay out the basic framework, but at the same time I'm capable of attending to and addressing some more trivial problems, e.g., the phrasing of sentence, the stylish design of a slide. Because of the characteristics above, sometimes I take lead in the projects naturally without other people even realizing it, but I'm troubled whenever my leading role is recognized and expected. This is the main reason that I have suggested flat hierarchy in every team I've worked in. Although I have preference for quieter places when I am working, I generally do not have trouble focusing and simultaneously maintaining efficacy when working in other, less desirable environments. In making decisions, I usually reply upon analysis and reason above all else, with several exceptions. For example, when making decisions on encompassing questions of my life, like should I go to university, should I be a celibate, should I adopt a hermit lifestyle, and should my attitude towards humanity and the world of an observer's or of an participant's, I go with my guts no matter how different an answer my rational thinking tells me.

It is not without tradeoffs however, that I have such fluid personality. Often but not seldom I found myself amidst a neither-nor situation where I lose the interest in engaging conversation with other people and at the same time unable to cope with the sense of solitude and isolation resulting from being alone. I might also lose interest in participating in a project altogether because I lose track of both the general and trivial aspects. I might seem like in a chronic chaotic state with no rhythm to be caught, and no one trait to be elaborated on. Fortunately, I devote myself to work on these problems and so far has made satisfactory results.

1.2 Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Far from being mutually contradictory terms, emotional intelligence constructs have actually played a part in the traditional intelligence field, for it examines various subfields of human life of physiological, cognitive, empirical aspects (Salovey et al., 1989). It is a comprehensive measurement of different attributes of human behavior – self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skill (Emotional Intelligence – A Primer, n.d.). Emotional intelligence is of crucial importance in that it is an indicator of a person's general skill of engaging in social activities and that is should be recognized in corporate affairs that the employees of different emotional intelligence should be treated accordingly. By understanding one's emotional intelligence, one would have a more deep understanding of one's advantages and disadvantages. According to the Queendom Emotional Intelligence Quotient Test (Queedom, 2014) I have obtained a score of 96%, which is a pretty impressive result.

2. Personality, Culture and International Business

The major hurdle in conducting international business is the lack of, and difficulty of obtaining market knowledge in international operations, that the internationalization decisions have an incremental characters due to the lack of such knowledge and the uncertainty occasioned thereby (Johanson et al., 1977). Therefore it's necessary to recognize the important role cultural adaptability plays in international business, because the primary barrier of gaining understandings in the international business is the difficulty encountered in diverse cultures and sometimes completely contradictory values. According to my results in the MBTI result and emotional intelligence quotient, I seem perfect fit for international business, that I'm able to cope with varied environments associated with different cultures, different communication paradigms, different ways of taking leadership positions in a given group, and above all, due to my fluid personality, I don't have problem with acquiring, retaining, and interpreting various types of information and experiences (Earley, P. C. et al., 2004). Therefore I can be categorized as a cultural chameleon, with sufficient cultural intelligence and adaptability to deal with issues that arise from conducting international business.

Reference

Girelli, S. A., & Stake, J. E. (1993). Bipolarity in Jungian Type Theory and the Myers--Briggs Type Indicator. Journal of Personality Assessment, 60(2), 290-301.
Ryckman, R. (2012). Theories of personality. Cengage Learning.
Keirsey, D., & Bates, M. M. (1984). Please understand me.
Capraro, R. M., & Capraro, M. M. (2002). Myers-briggs type indicator score reliability acrs: Studies a meta-analytic reliability generalization study. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 62(4), 590602.
Pittenger, D. J. (1993). Measuring the MBTI… and coming up short. Journal of Career Planning and Employment, 54(1), 48-52.
Sipps, G. J., Alexander, R. A., & Friedt, L. (1985). Item analysis of the Myers-Briggs type indicator. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 45(4), 789-796.
Pittenger, D. J. (1993). The utility of the Myers-Briggs type indicator. Review of Educational Research, 63(4), 467-488.
Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1989). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, cognition and personality, 9(3), 185-211.
Johanson, J., & Vahlne, J. E. (1977). The internationalization process of the firm-a model of knowledge development and increasing foreign market commitments. Journal of international business studies, 2332.
Earley, P. C., & Peterson, R. S. (2004). The elusive cultural chameleon: Cultural intelligence as a new approach to intercultural training for the global manager. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 3(1), 100-115."
-

"Book Review - Piketty, T (2014). Income and Capital. Capital in the 21st Century.

Piketty doesn't divert too much from what the book, Capital in the 21st Century is centering on in this chapter – rising inequality. It focuses primarily on two main concepts, income, which is a flow with fluid character, and capital, which is a stock used interchangeably with wealth, excluding. Piketty reaffirms his core idea of this book by claiming that although the majority of the population, relatively poor, is able to catch up with the wealthy people in terms of knowledge, skill, and accessibility of information (as is made possible by the advent of the internet age), but they will never be able to reach the same level in wealth property.

While it's certain that this book is superbly written and deserves credit for its attempt to delve deep into the good old social inequality problem, it nevertheless has some obvious impertinency that can be readily interpreted. Veracity of the content aside, judging by the title of the book, Capital in the 21st Century and of the chapter which this book review is concerned, Income and Output, it is evident that Piketty has made a classical Marxian mistake by violating two of the scientific principles simultaneously – organized skepticism and disinterestedness, let alone the fundamental laws and other frequent deterministic claims he made in his book. It is however, important to recognize Piketty's unique approach in conducting research offers a more subjective, and therefore, more valuable, at least in certain respect, understanding of inequality because it stretches beyond the mere summary of information and accounting of phenomenon.

In the chapter to which this book review is related, Piketty notes that the income inequality has increased since late 1970s after the middle-class society of the years following the World War II – this is backed by factual data, but things get tricky when he tries to identify the cause for such increase in inequality. He assumes that it is the high salaries and income that contribute to the increase, rather than the higher rate of return in capital. He does not proceed with explaining this assumption in detail nor has he provided any statistical data, instead, he seems to move on to the discussion on wealth distributions – that he think there's an inevitable trend for the growth of capital stock of the wealthy to outpace the growth of the economy as a whole, and therefore, if remains uncheck, our society risks turn into a patrimonial hierarchy with few very rich at the top receiving drastic gains at almost no expense and the vast majority of the society exploited for their labor and intelligence. One fundamental premise of such claim is that the accumulation of wealth is a continuous process. And since human dies, inheritance becomes the means to ensure the process. I see, however, misconceptions originated from academic shortsightedness – Piketty is doubtless a brilliant economist, but as a specialist he fails to consider some other aspects of human life that can steer the society – in the end, the macro-economic landscape we are seeing now from statistical data and survey results is a manifestation of countless human interaction at an individual level, and humans, regardless, have something in common – the pursuit of interest. But the reason for the pursuit of interest is the pursuit of happiness. And the measurement of happiness is more related to the portion of a person's income spent than to the nominal amount of that income. Say, for a person born and raised at a very rich family, normally perceived luxury consumptions like iPhones, fancy laptops, cars and garments become insufficient to fulfill his desire for happiness – only racing cars, mansions, huge investment and the earning of money for the sake of money can do the job - for luxury goods like those, the price/cost ratio is much higher than 1, which means, as long as that person consumes, he is essentially losing money, thus redistributing his surplus to the rest of the society. Another interesting observation I've made, the return on regular investment for the very rich tends to confirm to that of the rest of the society. And since seeing huge return on their investment is an incentive for the rich people, they tend to invest in those with higher return – which leads to high risk, essentially making them no different from the rest of the society in terms of how much more money they can make with what they have.

It is true that somehow we've seen fluctuation in inequality for the past century – from the decrease in inequality after the restructuring force of WWII, and the increase of inequality in the 1970s due to the imposition of more liberal fiscal policy. But from my perspective the root of such fluctuation lies not in whether the normative checking power of the government intervention is in place, but the inequality in the access of knowledge, education, and information, the positivist ways with which people invest and make money – in this case society acts like a magnifying glass, widening the miniscule disparity between individuals to the disheartening contrast of rich and poor. But with the advent of the internet age, and the popularity of free higher education, people are inevitable getting closer, and therefore less different in the way they handle money, which mean less difference in the proportion of the money they make. Society might be lagging behind at first, because the rich still have money before they spend it out with cost inefficient goods, and it takes some time for the gradual change in how people interact turns into paradigm shift of the society, but the collectively momentum is there, pushing the society forward – maybe we can't see, but it's moving.

Piketty said everything about why while poor can have knowledge they can't have the comparative level of wealth. He just neglects, the poor are not catching up simply because they're not having the knowledge yet."
-

"Social Problems Are What People Think They Are

Despite the huge amount of academic resources available on this topic, the definition of social problem still largely eludes us.

Several attempts thus far are noteworthy for placing the definition of social problem under a quantifiable, objective and categorized framework, such as the suggestion by Lauer (1976), whose notion of what is a social problem lies under the measurement of the quality of life rather than the purported perception by a certain population segment when they claim that the reality is deviating from a cherished social norm. Lauer also provides several entry points of the evaluation process for the public opinion and policy makers, so that by enumerating conditions which potentially hinder the progress on the quality of life, policy makers can identify which of them might be the constituents of a particular social problem. Eitzen et al. (2013) also propose that there exists certain condition in a society that is detrimental under any circumstance, e.g. military conflict, malnutrition, sexism, racism, and poverty. Because these conditions cause universal physical and mental suffering and are recognized under consensus as being problematic. Since they possess objective characteristics that ail the well-being and self-actualization of members of a society, they can be defined as social problems regardless of different backgrounds, perspectives, ideologies and institutions. Researchers and policymakers generally do not baffle with the definition of these problems and can instead be solely involved in the solution proposition and implementation process. What's more convenient is that because such social problems have an objective definition as of what are the contributing conditions, the evaluation process of the respective policy performance also appears clear cut, as the elimination of those conditions testifies the efficacy of the policy, and vice versa.

However, what is usually more prevalent and troublesome are social problems that do not fit into the above category. Due to lack of the formulation of the problem, and non-uniform standard in evaluating the solutions put into place, these problems are better addressed as "wicked problems". In these problems, the biggest hurdle is subjectivity (Henriques, 1984). From the beginning of selecting abnormalities to study, to the gathering of information, to what is extracted from the information, to what is perceived as abnormal, to how to propose solution, and to which solution to execute and how to evaluate its performance, there's not a single objective reference frame – everything is relative and subject to change when either ambient factors or temporal order has changed, and our current research on these issues are abductive if not entirely conjectured.

Take Global Warming as an example. Coordinated efforts for science communities all over the world have monitored the global temperature level, amassed a huge amount of data and concluded that the temperature increase will bring negative effects to earth's natural and ecological systems, and bring long-lasting, large-scale, and abrupt impact to our environment (Smith et al., 2009). And because of the polar ice melting, especially for small islands and mega deltas, the rising sea level might bring catastrophic consequences such as habitat inundation, and as a result, homelessness, statelessness, and infrastructure disruption (Mimura et al., 2007). So far, various responses have been devised to solve the problem, including mitigation (Edenhofer, O. et al., n.d.), adaptation (Smit et al., 2001) and climate engineering (Keller et al, 2014). Both the scale and the depth of these efforts led us to believe that Global Warming is a social problem that is well known and clearly defined. However, taking in the perspective of people living closer to the poles, rise in temperate might not necessarily mean a bad thing – for example, the melting of frozen soil means more arable lands, more liquid water, and a moderate climate, which in turn, mean positive socioeconomic changes to those populations. For members of those populations, thus, Global Warming actually denotes a positive change. From this regard, the complexity of defining and solving social problems is evident.

Social problems can also be divided roughly into 2 categories, the first being norm violation and the second being social conditions (Eitzen et al., 2009). While both of these 2 facets can be considered as symptoms of a social problem, the process to determine the true villain to blame is still plagued by uncertainty. In the end, a generally accepted approximation would be, when people are sensing that the desired state is deviating from the actual state, and that such deviation is causing an unpleasant discrepancy, researchers should consider the existence of a social problem.

Think, for example, a typical middle-class family investing in huge time and effort to nurture their only child, seeking the best education, the best affordable living standard, yet the child, after graduating from college, is unable to secure a job from the job market or to find a romantic partner from the romance market, even when he plays computer games, he is a perennial noob. In light of such dire situation, his parents' are perceiving a huge difference between what they want their child to be and what their child actually is. To the researchers, therefore, it is appropriate to start to look into the problem. They might say that the structural deficiency in the way economy functions is causing inadequate allocation of human resources, and that the country's female citizens have an innate preference for Caucasians because they are easily associated with higher social status, and that nowadays there are too many cheaters in the online gaming community. It can be note that however unreasonable and sprightly their approach and explanation to the social problem is, as long as it is founded upon logic, such interpretation can be considered a viable and legitimate characterization of a particular social problem.

Another interesting example would be racial and social desegregation policy utilized in Germany. Compared to policies in other European Union member nations, which often take more indirect and subtle approach of housing mix, the policy implemented in Germany is much more proactive. By imposing moving-in bans or quotas on the amount of foreigners in a particular city block, as is according to the German Anti-discrimination law. It can be categorized in the end, as a successful model in tackling ethnic segregation issue in Germany. However, such policy brings huge and sometimes unpleasant influence to the housing market. For in a shrinking population, such a move implies that the weakest remaining group of the majority will be in charge with the new arrivals' integration (Bautz 2007, p. 64). And also in fear of tension arising due to different ethnic background, housing providers often actively avoid such a mix (Planerladen, 2006). And sometimes, as in the case with Frankfurt neighborhood Gallus, the housing mix policy is virtually ineffective because people simply refuse to move in to dwellings in immigrant dense quarter (Bartelheimer, 1998). Although the trend of implementing a progressively multiculturalist policy in Europe persists, concomitant problems should not be neglected.

Social problems, as are illustrated in this essay, are definable only to a certain population, and the significance of such definition relies upon interpretation perspective, and applied solutions may bring about equal or larger amount of new problems. This rather is troublesome. The only thing researchers can safely conclude is that social problems arise when the general population or certain population segment perceives a norm deviation or social condition that is not expected, and begin to define, interpret and address them. Therefore, social problems are what people think they are.

Reference

Lauer, R. H., & Lauer, J. C. (1998). Social problems and the quality of life. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Eitzen, D. S., Zinn, M. B., & Smith, K. E. (2013). Social problems. Pearson Higher Ed.
Henriques, J. (Ed.). (1984). Changing the subject: Psychology, social regulation, and subjectivity. Psychology Press.
Smith, J. B., Schneider, S. H., Oppenheimer, M., Yohe, G. W., Hare, W., Mastrandrea, M. D., Patwardhan, A., Burton, I., Corfee-Morlot, J., Magadza, C. H. D., Füssel, H.-M., Pittock, A. B., Rahman, A., Suarez, A., & van Ypersele, J.-P. (17 March 2009). "Assessing dangerous climate change through an update of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 'reasons for concern'". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(11): 4133–7.
Mimura, N., et al. (2007). "Executive summary". In Parry, M.L., et al. (eds.). Chapter 16: Small Islands. Climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability: contribution of Working Group II to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Edenhofer, O., et al. (2001). TS.3.1.3: Costs, investments and burden sharing. Technical Summary
Smit et al. (2001). Chapter 18: Adaptation to Climate Change in the Context of Sustainable Development and Equity. Section 18.2.3: Adaptation Types and Forms, in IPCC TAR WG2 2001.
P. Keller, David, Feng, Ellias Y., Oschlies, & Andreas (January 2014). "Potential climate engineering effectiveness and side effects during a high carbon dioxide-emission scenario".
Eitzen et al. (2009). Social Problems. (11th Ed.) Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Münch, S. (2009). “It’s all in the mix”: constructing ethnic segregation as a social problem in Germany. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 24(4), 441-455.
Bautz, W. (2007). Schrumpfende Regionen—schrumpfende Integration. Die Integration von Zuwandernden in Brandenburg. In F. Meyer (Ed.). Wohnen—Arbeit—Zuwanderung. Stand und Perspektiven der Segregationsforschung (pp. 59–72). Berlin: LIT.
Planerladen. (2006). Migranten auf dem Wohnungsmarkt: Befragung von Wohnungsunternehmen zu „Migranten als Mieter, Käufer, Kunden”. Ergebnisse der nachfassenden Telefonbefragung zu Belegungsstrategien. Dortmund: Planerladen.
Bartelheimer, P. (1998). Durchmischen oder stabilisieren?—Plädoyer für eine Wohnungspolitik diesseits der “sozialen Durchmischung”. In G. de Bruyn (Ed.). Öffentliche Wohnungsbestände im Widerstreit der Interessen: Markt—Stadtplanung—Sozialpolitik. Werkstattbericht zum wohnungspolitischen Kolloquium (pp. 8–21). Darmstadt: Schader-Stiftung."
-

"Social Entrepreneurship Presentation Group Steve-O Report

Blended Value Proposition:
As is evident from the explanations above, there truly exists an artificial dichotomy between doing good and doing well. However, such dichotomy can be avoided with the blended value proposition. Proposed only recently, the blended value proposition is the antecessor for a concept called the triple bottom line. That is, an enterprise should seek much more than just financial profitability, but also the well-being of society and the sustainability of environment. Within the theoretical framework of the blended value proposition, an enterprise combines the aspects of both financial and social good, and recognizes that achieving financial good doesn't mean the cost of a society.

Taking in consideration of different types of institution. The blended value proposition also includes the so-called five silos from different perspectives. They're, respectively, social enterprise, impactful investing, strategic philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and sustainable development policy.

Social enterprise can be better characterized as a business model. Such as when an enterprise is set up specifically to tackle certain social problem. As opposed to the traditional enterprises, which prioritize financial earnings, return of investment(ROI), social enterprises have their primary objective as doing social goods, e.g. salvaging poverty, eradicating diseases, and conflict prevention, that is, social return on investment(SROI). That doesn't mean that social enterprises forego all of their financial possibilities, they do, still, maintain a profit level that makes the entity long-lasting.

Impactful investing focuses on the capital market. It encourages investors to make their investment in such a way that it also promotes social change, including financial, social and environmental returns. Impactful investing ensures social enterprises wade through problems and achieve success.

The third silo is strategic philanthropy. It is similar to impactful investing by providing capital and assets to social enterprises. However, they're different in the sense that strategic philanthropy does not presume or expect return of the money given out. It is, essentially, grant. Notable examples include Bill Gates.

Corporate Social responsibility has a much more limited scope than the previously mentioned three. It is implemented mainly in established, profit-seeking enterprises who consciously integrate social factors into their business practices. Socially responsible businesses seek to maximize the social goods they produced, and minimize the amount of harm they commit to environment and society.

Sustainable development policy is a government oriented strategy. Governments adopting this philosophy devise policies that not only facilitate economic prosperity, but improve social conditions, and contain environment degradation. It also functions as an overseer of the other four silo so that the overall conditions of business conducts in a given nation, do not trespass certain bottom line and are generally benign to the society in the long run.

As can be seen from above, by combining the two different values into one single, measurable framework, the blended value encourages businesses to take a much more encompassing perspective than just monetary profit. It is, however, not without challenges that the blended value is implemented.

Conclusion:
Although, combining traditionally contradictory values of doing well and doing good, the Blended Value Proposition is a relatively new concept, it provides an more encompassing perspective on a quantifiable, traceable and categorized business performance evaluation - including not only financial and economic factors, but also the environment and the society as a whole. Surely, there are still challenges ahead of actually implementing the BVP. But we can definitely see that it provides business managers and policymakers with more advantages than shortcoming, and we're entitled to say, the future of the BVP is a practical one."
-

"Waste Management Market Failures: Electronic Waste in China

Introduction:
Electronic waste is a serious environmental problem worldwide. Various mitigation attempts have been put into place by national governments and intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations treaty Basel Convention, and the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (commonly known as the WEEE Directive) proposed and implemented within the European Union community. However, these existing approaches either have their limitation, especially regarding to the scope and efficacy of application, or are disregarded by various national government because they are not ratified. In help recognize, define, and address the electronic waste issue, this paper will be focusing on China, which is the typical example of a country plagued by e-waste problem and where a large amount of electronic wastes are not only generated, but also imported, improperly disposed and/or informally recycled (Robinson, 2009). It is roughly estimated that more than 70% of the world's electronic waste eventually ends up in China (Retrieved
from http://www.china.org.cn/environment/2012-05/24/content_25461996.htm), and that more than 60% of the electronic wastes in the country pass down to private, unregulated recyclers that lack a defined, systematized procedure in processing those electronic wastes. Consequentially, China has to deal with the environmental damages and health concerns caused by the large amount of waste (Martin et al, 2004). This paper also utilizes the FOCUS model in finding, clarifying (Kaiyu Chen), understanding (Maximilian Mansfield), evaluating existing solutions (Lijiao Yuan), proposing revised solutions for future reference (Varun Jotwani), and conclusion (Kaiyu Chen).

Conclusion:
Aside from the necessity for the Chinese government to establish a regulatory framework, the survey results also highlight an urgent need for the government and educational facilities to raise public awareness regarding on the harm of electronic waste and the proper ways to dispose of them after their uses have sufficed.

The electronic waste issue in China, though has brought tremendous environmental and human welfare damages, is gradually being mitigated through the advancing understanding of the nature of the issue, various countermeasures implemented, including effective international treaties and a collective effort by the national and regional governments, and the identification of what is in the core of this issue - the lack of managerial framework and public awareness. Both of these solutions take time to materialize, and the government can particularly benefit from the construction of large scale recycling facilities in the most affected region, Guiyu, additional media coverage on the consequences of the informal procedures utilized there would also be very helpful, including images of children whose lungs are damaged, and the atmosphere which is filled with toxic gas, since the people outside of Guiyu are hardly aware of its deteriorating effects.

Reference

Robinson, Brett H. (2009). "E-waste: An assessment of global production and environmental impacts". Science of the Total Environment 408 (2): 183–91.
Martin, Eugster; Hongjun, Fu (August 18, 2004). E-Waste Assessment in P.R. China. Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology."
-

"Disability Synthesis for Public Policy and Management Group Ney Me A River Report

The most instrumental aspect of incorporating the disabled and the sick into the labor market lies in the fulfillment of many facets. The first and the often the most implemented as of current is the top-down approach that exits in the form of benefits, grants and affirmative actions. The other, more dynamic, flexible and adapted approach is the button-up strategy in resolving the disability issue, namely it involves the cooperative work from different parties and stakeholders as to transform the disability benefit into instrument that facilitates the employment rate of those affected.

In this case study of the disability policy-making strategies published by the OECD research, we are going to examine the above-mentioned two methods in removing the barriers for the disabled people, assess their respective advantages and disadvantages and propose potential revisions to the existent policies to make up for those flaws. Since most of the disability policies are structured in the top-down manner, we are going to take a look at it first. What many OECD nations use is a comprehensive unemployment and social assistance scheme, which typically includes monetary mitigation in the form of benefit. It takes up a relative portion of the GDP, and is quite effective in ensuring the minimum life standard of those disabled. However, the problem is equally protruding, since such an investment is almost always a one-way street, meaning that the population segment which receives such a benefit seldom forsake it for an opportunity to enter the labor market and contribute to the growth of the economy. And if they opt out of one benefit scheme, they're highly likely to progress to another benefit scheme. And such a situation burdens the entire economy, and the situation is made particularly derogatory due to the recent economic downturn in growth. Such a top-down approach, though with it many problems, is not entirely deprived of advantages - the most noteworthy one, is its ease of administering. Since the aid comes concerns the simply procedure of getting sufficient funds disseminate them via cash transaction, there are not many parties involved, and the beneficiary has a relative clear idea on how to take advantage of it. And it depends of individual health workers to locate and assist the disabled people. Although the potential of powerful abuse in the top-down approach is not substantial, it is necessary to set up an easy-to-use complaint mechanism should there arise issues. And if the overall economy is performing stably and well, the dragging effect of the one-way input might not constitute much of an issue. In typical OECD countries, for example, the benefit scheme usually takes up 2% of a nation's GDP. Yet for northern European countries, such as Norway and Netherlands, and Sweden, it can take up to 5% of a nation's GDP without affecting economy in a significant way.

Secondly, we are going to take a look at the bottom-up approach in helping the sick and the disabled. It is imperative to be aware that the bottom-up is not exclusive to the existent top-down approach, and should be used in parallel with the top-down approach in practice. The focus, of the bottom-up approach, lies in the reintegration of the disabled people into the labor market, and demands that the financial resources used originally for passive benefits be diverted into active encouraging such an integration. It should, also, provide incentives for the disabled to seek for a job, and for the employer to hire them. In reality, however, it is not that easy. Thanks to the clarity and accessibility of passive benefits, the money used to indirectly reintegrate remains comparative low in proportion - in most OECD country the number is 5%, in Sweden, Norway and German, the number is 10%, and both are small if not relative dismal. And realization of the top-down approach, lies in the cooperation of various social parties involved, and extends beyond a mere financial endeavor. Such as that, for the beneficiaries, it must be rewarding to remain in work, seek job or increase work effect; for the employers, it must be rewarding to retain those affected, or secure them other jobs, and it potentially involves governmental subsidies to help the employers help combat the innate inefficiency of such a work force; for the social benefit authorities, it must be rewarding to identify, assess and take advantage of people's work capacity more rigorously, hence avoiding using only the passive benefit as the only resort simply because it is the easier to implement and directly efficacious; and for the benefit providers, it must, as well be rewarding to help reintegrate their clients into the regular labor force at a significant level; it, overall, involves a mutual understanding, expectation and the notion from all those concerning parties that it is ultimately superior a solution to reintegrate the disabled and the sick back into the labor force - it cuts government spending and fully uses the human resources those affected can provide and are most often neglected. However, its disadvantages are equally many in relation to its advantages, since, such an indirect method, does not seem to address the problems promptly, and it takes time for the disabled to be able to grasp the opportunity in the labor market, if there's ever is one. And in the window in between, they risk both not receiving any benefit and not being able to work. And the decision power of if or not they should hire the disabled and sick, lies in the hands of the employers. And hence, they have a very high potential in abusing such power and still get the governmental subsidies unjustly. It is a trade-off between the benefit of the local knowledge and potential power abuse. Therefore, mitigation measures should be put into place when the bottom-up approach is used. The government, and various interested bodies should establish a supervisory board, and its primary responsibility should be to ensure those deserved are never denied. The public awareness, of the need of integration should be raised accordingly, and a feedback mechanism, likewise, should be put into place to allow for a constantly tweaked, and adaptive policy."
-

"What are the strengths and weaknesses of the concept of "blended value"?

INTRODUCTION
For many years, especially the majority of the twentieth century, the primary objective of a business is to make monetary profit. By providing goods and services, undertaking contracted works, making investment in the capital markets, enterprises make profit with the margin between their income and expenses. Whether or not a business can be considered successful and worthwhile, is largely determined by their ability to make profit at the minimum cost - due to such an underlying expectation by the investors and the customers alike, business whose profit margin is higher is more likely to thrive; and those whose profit margin is relatively low might as well face problems in an increasing amount for the future. Such a for-profit value that our society upholds is not entirely monopolistic, though. There have been other forms of social entities, most noteworthy ones being the Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs), that aim to use the profit, or surplus, to further engage in its goal, rather than to distribute it to the company's directors and employees in the form of dividends or profit. This practice is known as the distribution constraint. (Hansmann, 1980). NPOs usually receive their funding from the government, the regulator of a specific area, and the affected stakeholders in an issue to identify, investigate and alleviate or facilitate certain pre-existent conditions. However, the potency of the NGOs are, in some respect, largely limited. Due to the fact that they operate on the basis of endowments and donations, that lack in general routines revenue generating activities to ensure their sustainability, that the workers in such organizations are usually voluntary, and receive little or nominal compensation, NPOs might not have sufficient power or innate incentive to achieve their goals. (Drucker, 1989) Such a split, of for-profit and non-profit entity, has the potential of hindering the objectives of both. With regards to for-profit entities, by defining their primary goal as profit, they might risk overly aggressive expansion that is profitable in the short-term but appears derogatory in the long-run, such as sabotaging the environment for the sake the economic gains, and exploit workers and engage in illicit activities. As for non-profit entities, their dependency on the intangibles, such as the amount of donations they receive and the so call worker conscience to contribute even if the prospect of getting anything in returns is infinitesimal, greatly limit their effectiveness, and may end up unable to ensure their own very existence.

Fortunately, starting from the end of the 20th century, the dichotomy began to blur. With the introduction and acceptance of the social value in addition to financial value, e.g. triple bottom line, social entrepreneurship and the rise of environmentalism, companies, aspiring entrepreneurs, and government started to implement the measurement of the added social value into the evaluation of business performances. Managements in the for-profit organization realizes the importance of sustainability and the value of social welfare and environmental quality, that they began to actively incorporate those activities into company's practice scheme, either with no expectation of increasing the monetary revenue in turn or with a marketing aim in mind. And Non-profit organizations, seeing the defects of their operation model, reach out to seek for-profit activities to equip themselves with the financial capacity of fulfilling their goals instead of relying solely on the well-meaning of third-parties. This, factoring into consideration both the monetary and the non-monetary value in running a business, is called the "blended value". And this paper, is mainly concerned with elaborating on what is the blended value, and assessing its strengths and weaknesses.

BLENDED VALUE
Blended value refers to a theoretical framework in which NPOs, businesses and investment are evaluated based on their ability to generate financial, social as well as environmental value alongside each other. It is often used, interchangeably, with the term "triple bottom line" (abbreviated as BL or 3BL), which many enterprises have adopted for performance evaluation in a broader context by finding applicable data and standard to measure societal and environmental impact. (Slaper, 2011)

The blended value has been the most visible amongst the five sectors, which refer to five types of organizations and their way of implementing the blended value. They are, social enterprises, impact investment, strategic philanthropy, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and sustainable development. In these, social enterprises can be considered a type of business model that is developed specifically with the blended value proposition in mind. Social enterprises use the entrepreneurial skills and concepts to achieve a meaningful social impact, or those conditions that are conducive to it. And impact investment, concerning mainly with the capital market, stresses the need to look beyond the strict Return on Investment (ROI) into Social Return on Investment (SROI), and making investment that not only brings the maximum financial return, but also doesn't sacrifice the society and environment for the sake of it. (Anthony, 2011) Strategic philanthropy is a type of philanthropy that is not only charitable in its nature but also seeks to achieve social sense. CSR is applicable to existing profit-seeking businesses. It requires them to refrain from subtracting from the value of the society and the environment for its own gains. For the damages caused to society and environment will eventually be paid for by someone else. And sustainable development is a directing philosophy for government agencies and regulating bodies to ensure that the business does minimal harm to the society and the environment.

The blended value is a brilliant, encompassing concept that involves financial, societal and environmental aspects and suits the roles of different industries. It has very obvious advantages to the dichotomous for-profit non-profit model that is still mainstream at the present. However it is not without the downsides. The next parts of the paper will analyze the blended value propositions in more details.

STRENGTHS
The biggest strength of the blended value proposition, as opposed to the traditional model, is that it attempts to recognize the nature of what is the value businesses by engaging in activities, and what is the nature of return. In today's world, as has been mentioned earlier, value is confined to the sole extent of the amount of financial gain obtained, and return is a simple calculation of the portion of return of the investment. Blended value proposition, however, extends beyond merely those - it includes societal and environmental factors, and defines value as an aggregate measure in which monetary term is only a part of.

To exemplify the advantage, an apparel company seeking monetary success will do so by outsourcing their production activities to developing counties where workers often lack appropriate institutional protections and government doesn't have a stringent environmental protection scheme, thus enabling them to exploit the inexpensive labor capital and the inefficiently low cost of discharging waste into the environment. This company, when considered in the traditional dichotomous model, can be considered successful in the financial aspect, in the sense that although it is not doing well, it is doing good, offering decent return on investment (ROI) to the investors and disproportionately high benefit to cost ratio. Investors, governmental officials, company management, when taking the financial perspective, will not realize the problem at all, and thus will not possess incentive to improve the production condition. However, with the introduction of the blended value proposition, impact on the society and environment is evaluated quantitatively alongside the financial one. Doing damages to the society or to the environment subtracts from the amount of financial gains the company obtains. And therefore it constitutes an alert sign for those involved, that this company is actually profiting at the cost of the society and the environment.

Blended value proposition as a multi-layer, polycentric approach of assessing the overall impact of a company, is then pursuant to the long-term sustainability of its production activity and ensures a sturdy ROI in the long run. By looking at what the blended value proposition assessment provides, government officials and NGO workers can thus take actions accordingly by rewarding those doing well with subsidies and tax reductions, and penalizing those non-compliant with fees and charges, and public disclosure. With used alongside regular environmental and societal control instrument, e.g. economic incentives and command and control scheme, the blended value proposition proves to serve quite usefully.

WEAKNESSES
It is not, however, with its drawbacks, to use the blended value proposition in practice. The one that is most notable, is the measurement of societal and environmental value alongside financial value. Unlike that of the financial value, which is quantitative and has a clear-cut standard definition, the measurement of societal and environmental value is much vaguer in that their evaluation is much vaguer and involves many terms whose meanings vary with time, space, and the perspective of the auditor. Mostly, the tool used in such evaluation is deliberative, consisting of only a bunch of arguments without being backed-up by solid data. Yet recently, due to the emergence of multiple indirect valuation methods, notably, the reverting behavior, the hedonic pricing and the travel cost methods, providing societal and environmental value with a quantifiable standard is more realistic.

The biggest trouble, however, lies in the nature of what is value and what is gain. It involves ambiguities in the blended value proposition itself, by aligning societal and environmental value alongside the financial value, it is inevitable that many principles crucial to the determination of financial value shall also be used, such as, the discounting of the future, incentives, and measurement in monetary terms. It is these ambiguities that make confirming the societal and environmental value particularly laborious - even if we have the right instrument to measure those values very precisely, we might not be able to be entirely certain that the underlying assumptions we have made for the measurement is correct.

CONCLUSION
The blended value proposition, beside its innate drawbacks, prints a very nice picture of the future of how our economy is viewed with the addition of the considerations for the environmental and societal value. It extends our once-narrow vision of seeing everything in a pair of myopic eyes towards the humane and the sustainable. Many problems are still out there, of course, however, the general trend of the increasing adoption of the blended value proposition is ineluctable. What we are supposed to be, is bringing new add-ins to the existent blended value proposition framework, to make it more relevant in utilization and more precise and reliable in performance.

Reference
Hansmann, R. B. (1980). The role of nonprofit enterprise. Yale Law Journal. 835-901.
Drucker, Peter (1989). "What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits". Harvard Business Review. 1–7.
Emerson, Jed. "Maximizing Blended Value– Building Beyond the Blended Value Map to Sustainable Investing, Philanthropy and Organizations"
Slaper, Timothy F. and Hall, Tanya J. (2011). "The Triple Bottom Line: What Is It and How Does It Work?" Indiana Business Review. Spring 2011, Volume 86, No. 1.
Bugg-Levine, Anthony (2011). Impact Investing. Jossey-Bass."
-

"Evaluative State

INTRODUCTION
Ever since the emergence of the concept of nations, the rulers have been resolutely engaged in various attempts to contemplate and define the costs and benefits of policy schemes, asking themselves questions like, how the policy should be devised to address a particular issue, is such a policy effective, at what cost is it effective and what is the benefit compared to the alternatives, and what are the changes the policy have made unto the society. With the arrival of modern society beginning in the 20th century, nations can be further categorized as evaluative states, where not only different policy instruments are used, but also sophisticated assessment tools are used and constantly revised to encompass more facets of a given issue.

In this essay, we will be examining the history of how the notion of the evaluative state comes into being, the purpose of evaluative modes and instruments with their respective historical perspectives, and use two case studies, China's Open-Up policies and how the evaluation of its success leads to further liberalization, and the US National Security Agency data surveillance scandal, one for the advantages of a evaluative states, and the other for when the evaluative state goes to too great an extent.

HISTORY
Firstly, the term "evaluative state" has been coined in an analysis of developments in higher education during the late 1980s (Neave, 1988). However, to assert that evaluative state only starts to exit during 1980s will be fallacious. Before the formation of nation and its jurisdiction, people cooperate on the basis on collusion, that is, by conforming to a set of rules, either explicit or implicit, to attain the results of a collective choice, implementation, monitoring, and conflict resolution. For example, in primitive tribes, men are usually assigned with the task of hunting, and women are responsible for the search and attainment of fruits and other edible vegetation. Such a divide of tasks, and the distribution of gains require a mechanism to achieve, and it should be able to effectively provide ways in which people can collaborate to gather enough food, measurement of whether the amount is sufficient, accommodation of the shortage or the surplus, and a reward-and-sanction scheme for those who contribute more and those who tend to free-ride on the work of others. It is these simple rules, that are written into the form of laws, policies, regulations once the group gets larger and the community is transformed into a society when the collaboration, distribution and monitoring become too complex to be understood by every member.

Until the emergence of modernity, however, the means of evaluation is more confined to the determination of efficacy, rather than to allow for a dynamic adjustment structure. It is, mostly due to the fact that human doesn't possess the instruments and venues to gather large enough amount of information, and even if gathered, is not able to process the information to provide policy significance. In the 20th century, a steep rise in computational power has been witnessed, and various methods in relation to data processing and interpretation receive extended academic and practical attention, thus, countries all over the world have been well-equipped to revisit policy evaluation. And the specific tools and instruments that are used will be covered in greater detail in the next part of the essay.

INSTRUMENT
The instruments, or rather, the instrumentality of the evaluative state, that is, the institutional and technical aspects of the evaluation, are what distinguish the modern evaluative states from the older ones. In the classical time, the fundamental purpose of the evaluation is to verify and maintain the effectiveness of a policy implanted (Neave, 1998). Because the change of the shape and nature of the society is gradual and piecemeal, and feedback time and discretion of the evaluation and have significant variance amongst each other and still be able to appear efficient for policy makers to make changes that are necessary.

In the modern time, the role of the evaluation shifted. Instead of serving merely as a tool for determining if a particular policy works, it opts instead to provide insights and suggestions to major policy changes, and even to help in the construction of a drastically new policy to be implemented. It is proven successful, especially, in the implementation of the open-up policy in China. Yet, due to the rapid advancement in science and technology, the means of evaluation is sometimes too comprehensive that nations risk the abuse of power if it is overly used, as is in the case of NSA which will be discussed later.

OPEN-UP POLICY
People's Republic of China prior to the year of 1978 is a country of craze and shadiness, not only is it incomprehensible in the eyes of foreigners, the memories of those who lived at that time are often also ambiguous and obfuscated. The Korean War and the notion of Mao Zedong that the county needs more men to enroll in the military to compete against the so called American imperialism made the Chinese population growing two-fold in the course of thirty years; Heavily polluting industries are promoted regardless of the fact that agricultural capacity is insufficient to meet the demand of a growing population, leading to the starvation of tens of millions. The education people received and ideologies people possess are so eccentric as to deny the importance of practice in testifying a claim. In 1978, however, Deng Xiaoping almost single-handedly proposed and implemented the Open-Up policy, which stipulates that the country should be economically open towards the outside world and remain primarily socialist in its political systems, because then the suspicion and opposition of such a liberal policy is still very strong. The government devised plan to propose macro-projects that last for 5 years, and tweak their policy based on the carried out evaluation result. From the beginning of the 1980s, every goal has been achieved and the policy overall has been characterized as a drastic success. Yet, underlying the embrace of a more liberal system by the general population alongside the policy makers is the evaluation of the implementation of the policy. Without the evaluation, people will not have the opportunity to adapt their mindsets and attitudes accordingly. Due to the overall strategy by the central government to collect as much information as possible, mistakes are avoided in their buds, and problems and issues are detected and addressed at the very early stage. Although usually a contested subject, the state's internet censorship and blockade program, and aggressive attitude in resolving ethnic conflicts do indeed ensures a steady environment that is conducive to economic growth. Recently, thanks to the already achieved prosperity and a solid financial foundation, the government loosens the ties on many previously restricted subjects, such as the one-child policy has been effectively abolished, the wide-spread use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) amongst the educated, pornographies, and criticism of the government. Though, with so much information the government has gathered, it is still struggling with lack of accuracy, and economic and corruption reports are often at the center of such controversy. As more and better instruments for evaluation are developed and acquired, the government will be at a better position to use the data collected to people's good. Similarly, it will face the incentive to abuse the data used, like what has happened in the United States. Therefore, precautionary countermeasures should be put into place ahead of time

NSA DATA SURVEILLANCE
The US National Security Agency is at the center of the recent surveillance scandal, in particular, the PRISM program launched in 2001, because NSA considered the conventional surveillance method outdated for the digital age. It harbors an "extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information", such as on Instant Messengers, VoIP services, and emails (Glenn, 2013). By collecting these data, the NSA attempts to act in response to domestic terrorism and take preemptive measures to prevent it from happening. However, it is subjected to a major privacy controversy. It has caused vast public outcries as well as resistance from a consortium of technology companies. And recent courting ruling by the US Court of Appeals has deemed one of its surveillance technique, the collection of phone records illegal. The fear, of the evaluative state becoming a technocratic policing country is, of course, well-founded. One of the most notable work in this field comes from the literature - George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four lays out the devastating power of a state that abuses its evaluative power. The scenes depicted in the book is fantasized, nonetheless in reality we are able to see traces of power abuse that is less severe, but hinders our enjoyment of the private life. Under the existent legal framework it is very difficult to regulate these new-form evaluative powers, because they are new. And thus it requires a major reform in the regulatory structure to enable a more swift response to the fast changes in today's society.

CONCLUSION
Evaluative state, a concept with it roots dating far back into the human history, gained its popularity again in the 20th century. Various data are collected, processed, and formatted into advices that contributes to the policy making process. It is, on the bright side, conducive to positive social changes. It is a very powerful tool for the state to make sure that what it is doing is correct. On the dark side, however, the overuse and mishandling of data causes privacy concerns and might fall under the interest of the few, thus sabotaging the principles of the evaluative state and of the modern society. Therefore, it is imperative that, while the techniques for data collection and processing is improved and perfected, legislative efforts to contain the evil side of the power should also be advanced. Such as that, society gains the advantage of a better policy thanks to the power of an evaluative state, yet at the same time remain unharmed by its drawbacks.

The concept of an evaluative state can also extend beyond the national level. If used properly at the provincial or even municipal level, it can provide helpful, localized insights of a better decision making. It can also be adopted by the corporations, industries, and academic, to track, measure, and propel the progress. In the future, for certain we are going to see countries all over the world getting increasingly evaluative, whether its outcome will be the one that we want to see remains unknown. What can we do now, instead, is to maximize its benefit and at the same time be aware of the dark side it also possesses.

Reference
Neave, G. (1988) On the Cultivation of Quality, Efficiency and Enterprise: An Overview of Recent Trends in Higher Education in Western Europe 1986 - 1988. European Journal of Education. 23, pp. 7-23.
Neave, G. (1998). The Evaluative State Reconsidered. European Journal of Education. 265-284.
Greenwald, Glenn; MacAskill, Ewen (June 6, 2013)."NSA Taps in to Internet Giants' Systems to Mine User Data, Secret Files Reveal – Top-Secret Prism Program Claims Direct Access to Servers of Firms Including Google, Apple and Facebook – Companies Deny Any Knowledge of Program in Operation Since 2007 – Obama Orders US to Draw Up Overseas Target List for Cyber-Attacks". The Guardian."
-

"Fuse - just a different level of ease

Executive Summary
FUSE is made possible by us, a group of college students who cast fundamental doubt upon the way money is paid, received, stored and transferred offline. We consider the physical nature of paper currency as well as debit/credit cards an obsolete, even potentially adverse redundancy, and we feel confident that the current consumer technology and its prevalence allow for a change with negligible implementation requirement and enormous social outcome. In today’s business world, we have noted an increasing disparity between online and offline infrastructure. Sophisticated tools are used to gather, analyze and interpret swarms of data online, with Google documenting and dissecting every single search query. Yet we're largely helpless when we left our luggage on a taxi, or lost the receipt for the aftershave we mean to return, or found an unpaid bill in the mailbox one hour until payment deadline. We think these things are obscenely ridiculous, and that's why we come up with FUSE.

Business Description
FUSE is first and foremost a payment method that utilizes a secure, auto-updating paycode with which transactions are authorized, verified, and completed. It has three prerequisites, which, either have already been met, or demand only minor software modification - a display on which the paycode can be shown, a reader to capture the code, and a connection to the internet, where via a highly encrypted server different payment methods, e.g. PayPal, Skrill, credit card, debit card, checking account, vendor-specific cash card or gift card, can be used or combined. It is also possible, for users to enter and save promotion/discount codes that upon checkout, will be applied automatically.

However, the potential scope of FUSE extends much beyond just the major retailers. It endows small vendors who otherwise cannot bear the cost of accepting card payment with a wide array of payment options made possible by FUSE. By registering with FUSE and providing information detailing the legitimacy of their business, small vendors are able to receive payment with FUSE, and therefore all the payment methods aggregated by FUSE, on their smartphone. Taxi drivers, fest event participants, movable food/juice stand owners can benefit particularly from FUSE. FUSE also enables payment by scanning a barcode, such as the one printed on a mail.

Social aspect is an integral part of FUSE. Aside from face-to-face money transfer among friends, FUSE also features “split”. With “split”, restaurant and party goers can pay for their share in an order by creating and entering a group session, where a specific person completes the entire payment process with FUSE, and the fees will be deducted accordingly from each participating FUSE account. Such groups can be permanent or temporary. Optionally, FUSE can track order details and store them for future reference, thus expediting the technical support or refund/repair process. Users can also share an item they’ve bought offline on social media sites. Because supermarkets can index items in FUSE, users can create wish lists which can be seen and paid by their friends. They can also ask a friend to pay for their purchase during checkout. Friends are also able to purchase an item beforehand and gift that item to a specific account.

We are also exploring possibilities to incorporate FUSE into more aspects of the consumption process. Such examples include, picking table, ordering dishes and checking-out within FUSE; automated vending machines, ticket machines, ATMs; mail/civil alert; monetary/financial options; ticket booking for cinema, transportation, and park; charity; etc.

Milestones
We have divided our development strategy into three milestone categories:
1. Preparation
During this phase, our main objective would be developing an app that delivers reliable functionality. We will also find an office, ideally on-campus, to facilitate team collaboration, establish essential hardware infrastructure, recruit technical staff, and look for potential sponsors and partners.

2. Trial
During this phase, we shall have our own usable website and the Fuse app available for internal testers within Jacobs University. Aside from constantly maintaining and improving our services, we will also begin the legal process of incorporating. We will be streamlining our contract signing, and tax, business as well as commercial registration procedures. We will seek professional bookkeeping. Intensive marketing and connecting will also be conducted.

3. Launch
During this phase, we will push our service to the general public. We will be setting up, tweaking, and customizing our payment system for participating merchants. We will be extensively involved in patenting and trademarking our service. We will be looking for investors, startup accelerators, venture capitals and business angels. At this time, we also will begin our formal staffing process.

Marketing
Generally we haven’t found anything of our sort in Europe yet. Existing solutions like Apple Pay require major hardware changes, allow vendors little control over flexibility and implementation, and do not venture to the realm outside of retail payment. Therefore we have solid reason to find FUSE superior. Although, we are convinced that FUSE has the potential to reach high level of market permeation, not to be ignored is the fact that we as a small startup company possess little initial credibility. To address this problem, we will try to maximize the resources accessible to us, e.g. the university and the founding team. We are considering getting in touch with professors who might connect us to the management of potential adopters, especially EDEKA, the Bremen/federal government, and the banks.

We believe, partnerships with established companies will boost our credibility tremendously. And trial adoption from any major retailer will be sufficient to demonstrate the outstanding usability of our service. We remain responsibly optimistic about our market prospect."
-

"Email to Pulse Express Management

Dear Pulse Management,

My name is Billie Chan and I am writing on behalf of the entire founding team of Fuse regarding the implementation of our product at Pulse Express.

Fuse is a barcode-based payment system that allows offline transactions to utilize online payment methods, which, in the case of Pulse Express, would mean PayPal. It works like this, during the checkout process, instead of paying with cash or cards, the customer unlocks a PIN protected barcode in our app, and the cashier then scans the barcode with either the store scanner or a smartphone, thus authorizing an instant payment made possible by PayPal billing agreement. The nominal payment amount, the actual amount received with the PayPal commission fees deducted, and the corresponding order details will be stored in our server. And with an agreed-upon interval between us and Pulse Express management, we will release the money received and the order details to Pulse in the form of electronic cash transfer.

Compared with traditional payments, Fuse can be advantageous in the following regards:

1. Fast and error free
No more 1 cent, 2 cent, 3 cent moment, all payments are handled electronically. The risk of miscounting money or receiving counterfeit currency is eliminated.

2. Implementation and maintenance cost
In order to accept card payments at Pulse, a card reader and paper rolls for receipt print-outs are required. If the card reader unexpectedly goes out of order, it often takes a few days, if not weeks, for it to be repaired. During this window, Pulse Express risks losing valuable customers who don't have an alternative payment method. And Fuse, being itself only an app or software, will never run into hardware issues that cannot be expeditiously addressed.

3. Types of accepted payment methods
PayPal, being an often-used payment methods worldwide, is able to accept many different payment options that would not be possible under normal conditions. It is also able to receive country-specific payment methods, especially savings account from different countries, to provide immediate currency exchanges, and to swiftly deliver the funds to our account. With PayPal integrated in our app, Pulse Express will be able to enjoy the benefit and convenience put forth by PayPal

4. Flexible and automated inclusion of commission fees
One major disadvantage of cards is their often high and changeable transaction fees. With Fuse, such transaction fees will be calculated accordingly and applied to the orders placed.

In previous communication between us and Pulse Express, three main issues have been raised. They concern security, benefit for Pulse, and implementation. And we are confident that we can address these concerns properly.

For security. The crucial part in our barcode payment process is the barcode itself. In order to ensure security, users need to enter a PIN on their smartphone before accessing the barcode, hence preventing unauthorized uses. Furthermore, the barcode updates every minute and expires once the payment is finalized. Information transmitted during this process is highly encrypted.

For benefit. Pulse Express gains most directly from the convenience of Fuse. With an easy-to-use and streamlined payment process, and a wide array of accepted payment methods, Pulse Express can expect a heightened transaction volume without the need to worry about calculating the transaction fees. Also, with Fuse being a novelty product, it is beyond doubt that our fellow Jacobs University students will be more than eager to try it out.

For implementation. We are exploring and comparing different options in this aspect. We might enable the existing scanner at Pulse to work with our barcodes directly; we might setup a separate scanner; we might advise the cashier to install our app on his phone to scan the barcode; we might integrate the barcode generation into Pulse infrastructure so that customers, instead of Pulse, scan the code to complete a payment. However, none of the abovementioned implementation methods will incur any additional cost to Pulse. We'll bear the cost of setting up, maintaining and improving the functionality of Fuse.

Fuse is made by a group of talented, ambitious students. Pulse Express is the beginning of a journey that we firmly believe to be wonderful. We genuinely hope that the management at Pulse can support us in this awesome project, and in our life's great venture. We hope that we will be able to install Fuse in Pulse Express as soon as possible.

Sincerely,
Billie Chan
On behalf of Fuse founding team"
-

"Fuse Icon Description

The icon should be the corner of a folded letter, lithe, elegant, and perversely unbending. It should endow the viewer with a sense of vividness that is well-worn and unsounded - sensibly expressional yet in no way intimidating. Its blue should calm rather than arouse; its size should flow rather than protrude; Its lines turn rather than twist; and its presence cleanse rather than efface. It should be an abstraction that never reminds but always relates. It should just be a triangle. Like the one over here, but smarter and more upright, simpler and more containing.

Approximately the shape of this thing.

Its tip should face upwards, and its bottom align perfectly with the white background upon which it dwells."
-

"Relationship Coping Strategy

Status: affection is hurdled by
1. Social constraint
2. Perceived ideological difference
3. Difficulty in geological as well as cultural recognition
4. Past mistakes and future prospect of mistakes

Solution
Premise: physical proximity and choice conformity
General guideline: seek acceptance from social circle, continuous dedication to self-improvement, study pal, sleeping together and weekly outing

Coping Strategy for Summer
1. Concreteness in speech, moderate demonstration of affection in dictation
2. Offer short-term plans, with sporadic mentioning of possible future
3. Never complain, self-constraint is of paramount importance"

P: It was written in the summer of 2015.
-

"My illicitly activated Microsoft Office Word 2013 Professional Plus had already been opened, and I swear I was about to type. And though, visibly I am typing, I now type with an unprecedented self-suspicion. It has all started with my hobby of tidying up my laptop keyboard whenever there are clots from prolonged gaming - I turned off the laptop, sprayed some iKlear polishing liquid onto the screen, which I impulse-bought for 39.99 EUR a while ago, cleaned it with the nano- and anti- bacterial side of the cloth, flipped it over, and then wiped the keyboard with the less precious side. And, briefly out of a weird and rather unproductive habit after turning my laptop back on, I navigated the Chrome browser to Facebook and ended up reading a Times Magazine essay that titles "15 Words You Need to Eliminate From Your Vocabulary" - it is listed under the category of Business, Careers & Workspace. And immediately after, all the fifteen words that I use almost obsessively have an insinuatively dark cloud above their heads: that, went, absolutely, very, really, 5 HORRIBLE HABITS YOU NEED TO STOP RIGHT NOW, no, not that one, that's an advertisement, amazing, always, never, literally, just, maybe, stuff, things, and irregardless. With the exception of the last one, which I never use because it is a contrived urban-American-youth word from a culture too great a distance from my own, I, upon retrospect, realize that those fourteen words constitute the foundation of my command of the English language. Previously when I wrote, I did occasionally used the search button to enumerate how many "that"s or "always"s have appeared and would change them to their alternatives when the repetition is too conspicuous. However, I had never gone to such an extent. Wait a minute, did I use "gone" in the last sentence, isn't it the past participle of "went"? It looks like my censorship has inadvertently lapsed. And the word "however", have I used it? Will "but" or "whereas" or "while" be of a better substitute. No, I am not even supposed to use "I", correct? This word is way too frequent, and there's "the", oh my God, I can no longer proceed."

P: The post was originally written on May 10, 2015 as a part of "5/10 - Love's Eulogy".
-

"LinkedIn Message to Sarah Hoffmann from FinLeap

Hey Sarah,

Happy New Year!

It's Billie again, and I know this is a cold message, but it might be of interest to you :-)

I came across FinLeap when I was searching for an accelerator for our startup, Fuse. And from the moment I saw FinLeap, I know that we are an excellent match.

What we have, right now, are a set of ideas that could be turned into a seamless platform that encompasses nearly all aspects of personal finance (see attached image for function overview), and a prototype of which we reasonably believe, once completed, will kick ass.

We are a quite young group of 4 with the oldest being 21, and the youngest 20, but among us, there are a serial entrepreneur, an internship guru, a big data PhD, and a guy who speaks 6 languages. So far, we have approached a range of potential adopters, like Metro AG, Kreditech and DVB. And in around two weeks we are going to meet with the management of Sparkasse through the warm introduction by Joachim from his Paderborn-Detmold branch.

But we need connections to cover a wider range of audience; we need money to hire good programmers and UX designers; we need to figure out BaFin; and most importantly, we need advice and experience from people who have been there, done that. And these are exactly what FinLeap can offer us.

We also have a pitch deck and a comprehensive business plan. If it sounds interesting, would you like to have a look at it?

Thank you very much for taking the time!

Regards,
Billie on behalf of the Fuse team"
-

"Email to Ciarán
Hey Ciarán,

I'm Billie, co-founder at Fuse. I quitted college with three other guys to make an app. We all loved school.

I'm writing because our concept might be a very achievable solution to the 2 theses of BlueYard you mentioned in the blog. "Data Liberation" is a perhaps bit far-fetched for us right now, but as a service platform our "Verified Account" has the potential leverage to promote data sharing in general.

We solve these problems:

Borrowing money from friends and lending to them;
Cards not supported by a merchant;
Cards not supported by an ATM;
Not knowing your card is stolen;
Coins
Having too many apps to install;
Insurance & utility payment bureaucracy;
Losing luggage on taxi;
Losing receipt;
Normal people don't invest;
Splitting dinner bill with friends;
Tax refund;

… and many more.

With a barcode and a chat app.

Attached are our deck & demo (functional early prototype & a bit buggy).

We are a young group of 4 with the oldest being 21 and the youngest 20. Among us, there's a serial entrepreneur, an internship guru, a big data PhD student, and a data security master's student who speaks 6 languages. We met Metro AG, Kreditech and DVB, and are about to meet with Sparkasse through the introduction of Joachim from his Paderborn-Detmold branch. They like it but we can't wait to bring it on the right track ASAP.

We are now in Bremen, but we plan to move to Berlin by the end of this month. If it all sounds interesting, please get to us. If it sounds crazy, get to us too. We won't mind flying to Berlin for a 15-min cup of coffee.

Regards,
Billie on behalf of the team"
-

"To-Do (Feb. 29, 2016)
Due to recent developments in Project Fuse, the following timelines should be set:

From Mar. 1 to Mar. 31, I shall look for other accelerator programs as well as get in touch with business angels.

If the above goal is not met, then from Apr. 1 and onward, I shall look for internship opportunities in both Germany and China. If I failed to secure an internship in Germany before Apr. 15, I shall get the airplane ticket. The flight should be set at about mid-May.

From mid-May and onward, I shall do these following things simultaneously - I shall continue to look for internships in both Germany and China; I shall start looking for a full-time job in Wuxi; and I shall start applying for other English-speaking undergraduate programs with a more affordable budget.

If all of the above have (yet again) failed by mid-July, a return flight to Jacobs University Bremen should be booked.

It is with a staunch belief in the ultimate loveliness of my future that I lay down these timelines."

P: Alternative copies are to be found in iCloud Notes.
-

"Email to Sarah Helmig at Rocket Internet
Dear Sarah,

I'm glad that my CV could intrigue you.

Regarding my transcript and work permit, I will have to apologize. Since my university account has been placed on hold due to lack of fund, I am no longer able to retrieve any result until the hold has been removed. My GPA for the first two semesters are respectively, 1.8 and 1.9, with that of the third semester still unknown to me. And for now, I don't seem to be able to find my work permit, as I have never taken up any formal employment opportunity here in Germany. It must have been left in my residence back in Bremen. I'm deeply sorry for having caused such trouble, and I shall be very thankful if you could understand. Rest assured, the work permit issue will be dealt with in the coming week.

To answer your first question:

Growing up impoverished in China, I have known and faced rather too many obstacles, but at the meantime I begin to appreciate their value.

TL;DR (Too long; didn't read): my entire life so far has been an obstacle.

My parents divorced when I was little, and filed criminal charges against each other. My mom as my custodian swiftly found a new boyfriend whose personality I had despised for 8 years until he left.

At that time I was studying as a third-year student in a little-known high school, despondent in my future. Knowing that there was only a dead-end ahead, I decided to study abroad to the objection of each and every of my family member. I worked in the local restaurant for the flights to take the SATs, and studied by myself during the day, and eventually scored better than 99.98% of all test takers. I applied to prestigious universities but couldn't afford to go there. Jacobs University in Germany was the only place I could remotely aspire.

I spent the first year there, met my girlfriend, and ran out of money by the end of spring. I returned to China for summer and was offered an internship in an education establishment, but that wasn't enough at all. I quitted after 3 days and started my own education company with my friend, made almost nine thousand euro in two months. But my girlfriend, also Chinese, having known my deplorable condition back home, decided to separate. I flew to her city, comforted her, and went back to company. Immediately after I had left, she decided to separate again. I was cherishing this relationship as my first and most heartfelt one, and ended up flying 2000 kilometers ten times to a final break-up. I was broken. Company staggered. I was out of money again.

I picked up myself in Jacobs, starting an in-campus delivery service called JExpress, which was short-lived, as I began to focus on Fuse, a financial platform. I gathered around me 3 geniuses, presumably the best in campus I could find, a 21-year-old computer PhD, an IT technician who speaks 6 languages, and a German who was experienced in corporate affairs. We made pitch deck, business plan, demo, and MVP, and attracted attention from wealthy people in Hamburg. I intended to work with them, but the group decided that they had too much influence and that we'd better do it ourselves. I acquiesced. But most of them didn't have the courage to really take the risk. I went to Berlin with only one guy and even that guy later left. I fanatically tried, and failed, tried, and failed, tried, and failed, for 2 months, non-stop, and coped with all the disappointment to no avail because I don't have a team any more.

And that's where I stand now, all of my savings drained, all of my family savings drained. I couldn't return to my university; I couldn't return to China because I got nothing out of here; I couldn't continue my startup as a loner; I couldn't bootstrap anything anymore. But I didn't give up; I didn't for a second gave up throughout. And that's why I decided to take up internships in Rocket Internet, a startup studio, where I can meet fellow strivers, engage with them, and maybe, just maybe, resume Fuse with my network and knowledge there. And Thank you very much for reading.

To answer your second question:

I have a particular sensitivity to people, and specifically to the use of people. My eloquence in speech and sincerity in desire have so far been unstoppable in convincing others to help me. From either my time in Bund Education or Fuse I have always been able to find the right people to work with, and to allocate them proper roles, to use the resources at hand to the sheer maximum. I love tech startups. I love the ups-and-downs in the journey of creating something extraordinary.

And I don't just love it. I have been doing it as long as I can remember, even though a single failure could doom me.

And at Rocket Internet I will just be doing what I have always been doing, and what I am the most good at.

Please just take me in. Above all other opportunities, the position at Rocket Internet is the most relevant for me, and is the one where my work can truly become an extension of my talent.

Regards,
Billie Chan"
-

"To-Do (Mar. 23, 2016)
Unfortunate development in recent affairs has yet again made it inevitable for me to make hard choices towards the future. Even though I attest, I have thus far made the best of all possible decisions, a clear roadmap ahead still eludes me till this day. At 4:43 AM in the morning, I come to increasingly despise my living condition in this Berlin apartment. And thus, it is with good intention and faith that I lay down this plan for the near future:

From today and onwards, I shall continue to look for internships in Germany, and anticipate interviews until mid-April Mar. 25 (no more waiting, no more bullshit).

If internship interviews are in fact scheduled, I shall participate in all of them until a position is decided. In this case, I will be staying in Germany throughout the summer, and return to Jacobs University to finish my studies.

If no interview is arranged, or a position turns out to be impossible to settle, a plane ticket back to China should be booked.

If the condition, at last, turns out to be as dire as I predict it to be. I should carefully and firmly rethink my path ahead, and choose between the following options:

Applying to German public universities and start over;

Going back to Jacobs to finish degree.

I routinely ask myself these three questions:

Have I tried hard enough?

Is life the same shit?

What can I do to revert it?

And repeatedly I have received the same answer. If there was a boundary in me through which life's mishap can never trespass, that boundary has been pushed backwards so many times that I have long lost count. I suspect, in the future I would further use the values I uphold to flatter the readers of my resume. Tens of thousands of well-thought words are being reduced to mere names of a literary writer, a student with a keen sensitivity to the written text, and a founder with tremendous affinity to the nuances in communication. If this is the purpose of which my legacy serves, I'd rather relinquish whatever that purpose represents to me, and however grandiose and decent and modern from the outside it may seem.

Arguably, arguably it is difficult, especially after leaving school, for a person to navigate life's many hurdles on his own, when he doesn't have the immediate skill to serve the society's needs better, or there are always applicants whose profiles match just a little more perfectly. But none of these shall be a reason for a betrayal, for a denigration of the sacred, faithful things. For life's majesty extends far beyond the diminutive form of a corporation.

May God bless me."
-

On April 9th, a more positive light sheds. Though ahead, things remain unpredictable, I have regained calmness in the many dealings of life.

May God bless me.
-

(Originally 3/4 written in 2015; it consists of 2 failed job applications at DMK Germany and the College Office, respectively.)
"[FW to Marketing/Sales, Mr. Michael Feller] On Expanding Market to China - Kaiyu Chen, Jacobs University Bremen

Dear Barbara Litwinski,

Please forward this email to Mr. Michael Feller at the Marketing/Sales Department who might find it useful and intriguing.
-

Mr. Michael,

My name is Kaiyu Chen, or Billie Chan, and I'm currently a first-year student at Jacobs University Bremen reaching out for an internship opportunity at your company for this summer.

According to my knowledge thus far, I would be quite useful in assisting you with the following regards:

1. Expanding market to China with minimal staffing requirement and structural effort
2. Establishing an eager and well-informed customer base there
3. Maintaining a sustainable and growing profit due to an honored, first-time-ever-to-be-renowned brand name

Although I'm still a first-year student in the academia where claims like "The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous." (Peter Drucker) are real, I'm convinced that I can have real contribution to our company, and especially, our department:

What do we need in our company?
We need profit, customers, and a conscientiously quality product line.

What can we do, for those needs, in our department?
We find customers, informing them of our products and providing them with credible venues to acquire our products; we take care of them, assume responsibility for them, and make them feel that they have got the right thing. Thus, in turn, they will be engaging a mouth-to-mouth promotion for us.

Mr. Fellar, you, as a managing officer in a big company, must have seen those statements a million times. I, however, beg you to keep reading, because I have devised practical ways to materialize those statements.

Let's first take a look at why I have chosen China as our target for the new market - this is definitely not because I'm Chinese, and I want my cousins to have good milk products - though it is one of the reasons.

1. Chinese consumers have lost confidence in milk products manufactured in China, and it's taking very long for the confidence to be restored, if at all. (Please refer to 2008 Chinese Milk Scandal on how the trust crisis has started)

In general, it is because of 3 resounding factors.
a. China as a whole country is plagued by pollution.
It involves air pollution (industry emissions, sulfuric gas, PM2.5), water pollution (sewage discharge, blue-green algae Epidemic), and land pollution (littering of poisonous substance, landfills, acidic rain). These conditions have rendered all attempts to restore confidence nearly laughable.
b. Government and NGO regulations are ineffective.
It involves a deep-rooted Chinese culture of bribery, dinner-table negotiation, and Guanxi.
c. Manufacturers are deploying a dishonest marketing strategy.
Despite all quality scandals and public concerns, nearly all major milk product manufacturers are still engaging in a self-imaging campaign in an attempt to isolate themselves from the rest. (Look here for the advertisement from Mengniu, largest milk producer in China, one of the 2008 Milk Scandal companies.)

2. Demand > Supply
a. Hong Kong has imposed a milk powder export limit.
Residents from all over Chinese mainland rush to Hong Kong to purchase imported milk products that Hong Kong government has to limit milk powder export to meet the demand of the locals.
b. Chinese students studying abroad are sending back milk products using Air Freight.
For last semester alone, I sent back home more than 8 cans of milk powder. My girlfriend has 4 large shipment packages filled with mostly baby products and her friends COMPLAINS to us that too many people are asking her to send things back from Germany that she can only say "No!" to some of them. And sending those shipments back are very risky, due to high prices, transport damages and import quotas and taxes.
c. As is evidenced by this webpage. 67045 people are giving favorable reviews to Oldenburger milk, yet so far there's no way to get this product from major shopping sites – there's not even a price for it because it was sold out long time ago and hasn't been restocked ever since.

3. Insofar organized market entries have been crippled and insufficient.
a. When people think about foreign milk products, they think about foreign milk products – there's not a single brand name they can recall.
b. Major foreign manufacturers are localizing their product in an erroneous and backward direction:
+ Moving production to China. Huge mistake because nobody trusts milk products originated in China anymore, even if the production process is really top tier, the raw materials used might be problematic – as a matter of fact, in the Chinese farming industry, using antibiotics is almost mandatory, because animals simply die if they don't receive such treatment. My father tried to reverse this process before I came here, and incurred a huge financial loss that drained our savings – that's the reason I now rely on financial aid to study in Jacobs University.
+ Selling on Amazon. In China, goods sold on Amazon have been perceived as user-hostile – people don't want to pay before they received the goods, especially something so important as milk products.
+ Selling via third-parties. Many manufacturers choose this option because it seems the most cost-efficient. However, most third parties don't have a recognized brand name themselves, and consumers often associate products to the third-party retailers because they don't know much about the product in the first place. Often, third-party retailers alter the way products are presented.
+ Setting up credit card and online banking payment methods. Nearly nobody, especially moms with a newborn, uses credit cards or online banking directly in payment. They simply don't feel safe, especially when Chinese consumers have an intuitive suspicion on nearly everything sold online.

As you can see from above, Mr. Feller, there is definitely a huge market with a huge potential in China, and nobody is doing it right. How to do it right then? The answer is surprisingly simple:

1. One dmk.de/cn page
Not dmk.cn, but dmk.de/cn. We are a western company focusing on producing quality goods, we don't have much time offering localization of website, what we have, maximally, is a translation of our existing website plus some minor catering to the Chinese audience.

2. PayPal and Alipay
Like what I said, the point of luring Chinese customers, especially those seeking to buy milk products, is not offering localizations, but rather translations. So our objective would have minimal associations with whatever comes from China, yet not to deny our customers convenient ways to acquire our products. My solution to this is Alipay. Alipay is a payment method, it's an Alibaba affiliation, which own the largest e-commerce site Taobao in the world, with more than double the transaction volume of eBay. Alipay is a copy-cat version of PayPal, with much less hassle of transactions fees and risk of payment reversals. It is surprisingly easy to set up, and surprisingly easy to cash out. But WAIT! We won't tweak our payment structures for the Chinese customers; we don't offer a big "Pay with Alipay" icon at the top of our selling pages. We put PayPal and Alipay at the end of the payment options offered to customers – with PayPal first.

3. Open a store on Tmall.com, like Apple does.
Tmall is like Taobao, owned by Alibaba, fully integrated with Taobao. Essentially, it is a section of Taobao for established companies to sell their products directly. It offers Chinese consumers with the strongest sense of safety. Simply because we don't receive the money when the customers have paid or when we have shipped their orders – Alipay withholds our money until the customer receives our good and decides that it's in good standing. Customers get to decide when we'll receive their money. Now we have our Tmall store. But WAIT! We won't play by the aesthetics of Tmall; we don't have that much time to modify the design for a website. What we do, instead, is to port our original selling website exactly to Tmall, and sell there – like Apple does.

4. WeChat public ID
Wechat is instant messaging brand by Tencent, like WhatsApp. Though it offers a lot more – it's a combination of Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter, and it also offers payment options, WePay, which many people trust and use. Today, most respected Chinese companies in China use WeChat to communicate with their customers, promote their products, and finalize orders. Our promotions reach the consumer's inbox in the form of a message, and in the same chat box they can choose to talk to one of our sales representatives, and eventually, to place an order.

5. Weibo
Chinese version of Twitter. Nearly everybody uses and relies on to get up-to-date information. And with a Weibo verified company sign, Chinese customers get to know that we are legitimate first, get to know our products first, and therefore, get to buy our products first.

6. SF Express
Best delivery service in China. But similarly, we offer SF Express as an option with DHL and UPS.

7. National Television Campaign
The best and most impactful option to get customers acquainted with us. We can shot a short film, interviewing how our products are made in Germany, from the smiling farmer in the countryside, to the smiling Quality Assurance Team member, and of course, our GPS tracking system, all of them plain and simple, and totally German. The only thing we need to do for Chinese TV is offering several lines of subtitles, no dubbing.

8. National Television Campaign too expensive? Try Youku Ads.
Youku is similar to YouTube. Everybody watches it, and its pricing for advertising is very flexible. Depending how we need our customers to get our information.

9. Many more if I get the opportunity to work as a team member in your company, and I get to know what's exactly happening inside the industry. I offered the above advice to the best of my knowledge, based on my personal experience and information gathered throughout the years.

What difficulties are we facing if we attempt the market entry?

1. Comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Germany is yet to be established. DMK, as the largest milk producer in Germany, is not one of the companies to sign a trading agreement with China. That creates difficulties in communication and understanding.
2. Chinese government is currently promoting milk products made in China in hope of re-establishing consumer confidence and boosting economy.
3. Germany and China have completely different sets of rules concerning business conducts.
4. Transportation of milk from Germany to China is a huge logistics problem.
5. Milk companies from Netherlands and New Zealand have already been in the market for quite long, and some of them have started tweaking their strategy in China to better fit consumer needs.
6. Organizational change is needed in order to open Chinese market. We need a team based in China to communicate with authority and to coordinate our products.
7. Expansion into new market requires an interdepartmental effort and strong support from the company management. Disagreement among decision makers might hinder the progress.
8. Marketing potential is shrinking as more and more people are realizing this opportunity and implementing it.

Who am I? What can I do for your team, Mr. Feller?

> Who am I?
I'm Kaiyu Chen, also called Billie Chan for the convenience of western audience. I'm 1st year student at JUB, and a financial aid recipient. My father is 68 years old and working in a restaurant as dish washer; my mom is 54 and unemployed because she has to take care of my grandmother whose stroke nearly killed her.

I have 2340 (Reading 800, Maths 780, Writing 760) in SAT, which is 99.8 percentile of the world, and 2360 (Maths Lv. 2 800, Physics 800, Chemistry 760) in SAT Subject Tests. I have 110 in TOEFL and top 1% GPA in high school. I organized an English club, ran a student union, and worked in a local restaurant as waiter. I know a little bit about everything.

My problem solving skill is tremendous. I don't know programming, and I own a domain with blogging and email services. You can find me on Facebook using http://fb.billie.co and LinkedIn using http://linkedin.billie.co. I googled everything and solved the problem.

I speak perfect Mandarin and perfect English, and Shanghai-ese, which is the local dialect in Shanghai.

In JUB I'm a financial specialist for the Undergraduate Student Government. I started searching for steady job since last September and I have got nothing so far.

> What can I do?
Consulting
+ I'm born out of a typical Chinese urban family – lower middle class, a lot of siblings, all of them have kids or will have and are unwilling to purchase Chinese milk products.
+ I have been interested in our own culture and lifestyle since a very early age.
+ I have excellent presentation skill and understand what it takes to delivery people the right message.

Communication
+ I'm a native Chinese speaker, and also a young one. I'm intuitive to different diction style of different population segments.
+ I have long-term experience in dealing with Taobao, Tmall and SF Express. I know the power of negotiation and specifically, how it should be utilized under Chinese cultural context.
+ I have connections that can be turned into a preliminary customer base. My siblings, their respective social media circles, and especially, social media groups where customers themselves exchange information.

Localization
+ I can offer translation between English and Chinese.
+ I know the balance between western and Chinese aesthetics.

Pretty much anything.

Mr. Feller, this is my first formal job application thus far. In the end, I'm a desperate Chinese guy who searches for anything to do in the summer because he can neither afford to go back, nor afford to stay. However, I'm reluctant to take anything wishfully – my idea is simple, I'm intelligent, I have something useful to offer, I'm going to put those things into use.

Regards,
Billie Chan"
-

"Dear Dr. Woebs,

My name is Kaiyu Chen, and I'm reaching out for a position in the College Nordmetall Team, for which I consider myself fully qualified.

Attached to this email is my CV encapsulating some of my highlights and achievements so far. If you need more timely and detailed information, please refer to here, which is a blog post showcasing an internship application I sent to DMK GmbH regarding expanding market to China.

I'm sending this application because I know there's problem with how in general our college office is operating with regards to students, and I'm confident that I can change this situation.

What I consider the biggest treasure of our university, is diversity, particularly, the diversity of middle class. However, so far, our university has not used this resource efficiently. What we see, instead, is an increasing segmentation of student body according to their socioeconomic background.

And I have done the part of my job to address this issue.

We have organized an event among friends called national food week, where people from different countries cook their national dishes on a weekly basis. And as of current, it is already the 4th week. The schedule is as follows:

1st week: Chinese Hotpot
2nd week: Persian Ghormeh Sabzi
3rd week: Indian Curry Chicken
4th week: Romanian Cabbage Roll with Rice
5th week: Pakistan week
6th week: Tibetan week
7th week: Nepalese week
8th week: German week

With more to come as there's no strict rule concerning this event – everybody just come and enjoy his meal.

And we also have chai session, ergo tea session nearly every day in the evening, when people I know just sit down and talk about something interesting – this might be our only opportunity in the day to engage in some non-academic activity.

I plan to extend these events beyond our circle, allowing students in our college an opportunity to meet new people in an open minded and relaxed way. And it doesn't even incur an additional cost to the university.

With a position at the college office, I'm certainly more empowered to do that.

Aside from that, what can I offer to the college office team?
1. Tremendous problem solving skill – I acquired a domain, build a blog, set up an email service without knowing anything about programming.
2. Open mindedness – I have friends from all the continents.
3. Situational keenness – I'm experience at dealing with various situations and react fast.
4. I'm an USG financial specialist, so I can serve as a bridge between college administration and the USG.
5. Kindness and conscience – I have strict ethical requirement of myself, and am able to deal with various types of people pleasantly.
6. I know a little bit about everything, and am willing to talk. So I will be able to provide help to students when they're in need.

My family is also facing a crippling financial condition. If I'm not able to get additional income, I might not be able to finish the study here.

My idea is simple, I'm intelligent, and I have something useful to offer, I'm going to put those things into use.

Regards,
Kaiyu Chen"

P: I was quite hesitant at the thought of including these two emails, as they are neither deep nor articulate. But perhaps they could serve as a milestone for the immensely tumultuous time that is the past few years, and as a reminder that I should always view myself objectively and without conceit. - August 23rd, 2016
-

I always thought life
is like walking in the snowstorm
with a pack of cigarettes.
One could either be cold and lonely,
or choose the warmth over
an occasional puff of smoke.
But these 8 months is neither.
These 8 months is my first
campfire. Hope I'll reach a city.

P: Wrap-up statement for the internship at E.ON.
-

[First Draft of the Motivation Letter for the LE Development Center]

In Dostoyevsky’s short novel the White Nights, the innocent girl Nastenka asks the protagonist: “then how have you lived, if you have no history?”

This question used to trigger me a lot when I was an uncomprehending high school student in China – what is it to live? What is it to have history? On this question I then conjured up many grand theories and shiny blueprints, which through a series of events over the course of five years, eventually led me to sit in Germany, in Munich, and in an office on the fourth floor of the Linde Office Center.

This image of me sitting in an office is what I have only vaguely had in the past – I still remember three years ago, running around from cities to cities, interviews to interviews, and internships to internships, I wrote in my diary in a Starbucks near Bremen Central Station: “like a lost child yearning for the fragrance of the homemade bread, which for him didn’t exist, I yearned for the serenity of a salaried life, which for me, likewise didn’t exist”. For that whole afternoon, I sat alone on the steel chair of that Starbucks, waiting for the ICE to Berlin where I would continue my internship at E.ON.

Now the image has become a reality – I draw things on the whiteboard, I talk with people from all walks of their lives, I take on projects that tangibly impact the workflow of the company. The finish line has become the start line. But the new race is a little different from the old one. In the new race the battle is not mine alone to fight. Linde the company, or more precisely, Linde the group of people who give me hands when I need them, give me consolation when I have none, and give me encouragement when I am mired, are fighting alongside me. Recognizing the privilege of being amongst these people and getting good work appreciated as such, I simply return in kind with what I could offer – ideas, hard work to implement them, and a smile on my face.

I was slightly surprised in early November when my manager called me into his office - he then said with his usual German reservedness: “Billie, there’s this topic called the LE Development Center. Bjoern and I have nominated you for this opportunity. I hope you can utilize this. And afterwards, we can work on your development plan.”

For the sake of the trust of the people around me, for the sake of continuing the race forward, and for the sake of looking for an answer to the age-old question, utilize it I will.

P: This draft will not be used as the formal motivation letter for the LE development center.
-

Message to Aura:

Hey Aura,

When I first saw you in the TUM cafe,
I was dazzled by your sparkling eyes.

These pencils, according to the Internet,
are the best pencils for an architect.

Through them, I wish that the sparkles
in your eyes would never taper.

Regards,
Billie 陳