DAY5-8: Google, Boston, Harvard, and pitifully snowy day for MIT

Google is the company on which my greatest admiration was placed; It was my dream company I thought I’d work in. I studied the company a bit by reading a book: Google, and its laws of success. The interesting book taught me how the nine-year-old company overran Yahoo, MSN, and other once-dominant corporations, earning a trophy from the league of internet and also how it still kept its promise: not to do evil while making money. There are so many cases of how it achieved its goals, but let me just tell one. Google’s multi-billion dollar worth of stocks were sold in a quite bizarre way for Wall Street tradition. Google wanted to avoid Wall Street’s corrupt IBs (Investment Banks) taking advantage of its IPO in the name of commission. Furthermore, the youngster company wanted democracy to walk along with its IPO: it wanted to protect the rights of the small-scale investors who were often taken away the “rights” to buy its stocks. Takers? If you want an answer, watch the movie titled “Boiler Room;” answers are there. Let me tell you a secret how they do bad to the so-called “ants.” The XXXX street people (Warning: not Sesame) actually earn most of their money from their “Premier Clients,” who often are qualified with two conditions: having lots of money and intending to wholesale the stocks. Oh, and one more: Keeping the secrets with XXXX street gentlemen!! With those special clients, the “Streeters” earn a great amount of money by selling a lot and getting commission, and the so-called ants, or small-scale investors, are left with not many stocks to purchase. The Premier clients take immense profits by selling stocks when possible, which is some time later the IPO’s actual commencement when the price rises unnaturally: mission accomplished for PCs, aspiring for short-term profits; both Streeters and clients with golden hands smile, promising to cooperate again later in the future. Google did not want this. The firm wanted the natural demand and supply to be perfectly applied to its IPO process; the firm wanted ants to be guaranteed with the rights, the same rights the giants had; it wanted to set every player on the same starting line at the start of the race. But this was going against tradition, one that XXXX Street jumbos have set and kept on; it called for an anomaly way, innovation, “rebellion” to break the “wall.” Fortunately, however, the company’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, did have the wall-breaker: Dutch Auction method. The century’s attention was set to the massive IPO, the one rare for a .com company since the great breakdown of such corps took place in 1990s. And despite some potentially perilous bombs in the way, Google successfully concluded its very first IPO, setting an examplar for future adopters of Dutch Auction method.  So can you see? The silicon valley company did good and also, succeeded in its IPO. Great company, if not the best, wouldn’t you agree?

Boston– seen here, done that, heard it before. I just knew what would happen here, which simply matched my expectations.

MIT– snowed a lot and the lecture we planned to take was a goner. Foggy weather impeded us from viewing the beautiful building called Simons Hall. I spent quite boring hours walking around the museum, which made me restless. Covered by drowsiness and fatigue from jet lag, I sleepily moved around as if I were dead. Weather in Boston isn’t one anyone would become fond of unless he’s some kind of a depressed person or something like that.

Much to write about Harvard. So I decided that I’d separate the section for the college.

DAY 4 of the Journey – Stanford University, FACEBOOK, and two men from Harvard

  Sky was cloudy, probably due to the prayers of Berkeley graduates, who were complaining about the weather being cloudy yesterday when they were guiding us around the campus. We got out of the hotel pretty early and headed directly to Batiq office, which was placed near to a possible rival company called “Compu Mentors.” Joking about how Compu Mentors might have set up its first Compu Scholarship Trip for students and all that, we climbed the stairs and arrived at a neat, wide office which belonged to a fabulous company that made everything possible for us so far. Going inside, we met a man who was little bit taller than me but was full of passion. He introduced himeself to us and then, full of interest in his eyes, he asked us what we wanted to major in. When each of us told him the answer, he articulately gave his ideas so that we would make a wiser pick, try in some creative ways to successfully manage to enter our dream colleges and succeed later on even after our college years. For me, I told him I wanted to major in economics and psychology, explaining I have an interest in human minds and also think of economics as the modern tool to changing Homo Modernicus (ok, ok, I made the term and it sucks– it just means, obviously, modern people). I also added that I was motivated by the works of Jang Ha Joon, a professor at Camebridge University, who wrote nominated books such as “Bad Samaritans” to criticize western countries’ chaining underdeveloped nations with the neoliberalistic theories of economics. He told me what I should do with those ideas that I found interest on — to make an online cafe or publish a magazine dealing with those topics. A point of epiphany banged my head, as if it were waking me from shaking air of darkness. Cool, I thought, how old sayin’s right: a good man is a man of wisdom that lights up your void candle. Getting out of Batiq office, we hurriedly boarded on a train with Halle and Katie, leaving Taeho behind in San Francisco. Traveling on a train was quite a decent experience, if not for the cloudy weather, it would have been better but it was ok. Over many clouds and raindrops I think I saw Dennis’ face, grinning maybe.

Katie was very excited arriving at her alma mater. Though under a cloudy weather, the huge campus with somewhat ancient feeling was surely intimidating enough to wake us from our jet lags (or just my jet lag lol) All the buildings were huge and the distance between them were far. Golden arches around the buildings were beautiful and students riding bikes seemed to be happy, despite busy-ness they seemed to be encountering. We took a campus tour program called Discover Stanford Tour and at the end of the fabulous tour of the enormous campus, listened to a presentation that Admission Officer offered. To be honest, I can’t remember anything PARTICULARLY great about Stanford — everything was just too great to be specially stored in my brain, tagged especially great. The interdisciplinary curriculum, famous professors, guest speakers, beautiful campus with palm trees around, prestigious programs, and most majors ranked atop — I cannot but say the school’s at the level of near-perfection. Having visited both Berkeley and Stanford, apparently the best schools in the west coast, I have concluded is that XXXXXXXX is better than the other one. (It’s both 8 letters you know lol)

 Visiting Facebook also left a deep impression on my mind. First, I was very amazed about the drawings around the building, elevator and even the walls by the stairways. They seemed artistic enough to stimulate engineers’ mind who might lose their emotional sensibility, buried by tons of workloads they are burdened with, mostly math or programming codes. Nextly I was surprised by the neat snack bar which contained all kinds of snacks and drinks. Also, the game room with newest videogame gears and dvd players took me to the tip of making me an engineer. And the last but not least — it’s the most actually — I saw engineers smiling to a completely alien tourists, saying hi without any ice, and all of them were kind and funny, being like families almost. My foolish expectations of overloaded workaholics and gloomy math-guys were all broken at a sight of those new, somewhat fresh view of engineers in Facebook. The three employees of the firm never lost their smile till the end of the tour. The tour was one big breakdown of my prejudice for engineers and math-lovers.  Thanks to them, I have lost another chain that has bound me; I have become free from one of many sleep masks that blinds my eyes. 

Hurrying back to Stanford to listen to a lecture which later was found out to be not as exciting as I presumed, I met one of two brilliant people I met today: Jon. He and the other guy we met later, James, were both roomates of Taeho, our leader who was guiding us during the whole trip. After the lecture session was over, we went to Jon and James’ house, where they will be staying for 2years of graduate school education. Sadly, I did not get to speak to Jon much after I got into the house, but I certainly did to James, whom I think is the one of the most amazing people I met. James listened to my thoughts about MalcolmX and other things I told him with great attention. His reaction to my speech was surprisingly enthusiastic. It seemed that he was really interested what I was talking about and his replies, filled with excitement, made me feel as if I told him something fascinating. But he wasn’t playing any as-if games; his interest was genuine: I could read it from his face; his honest emotions were inscribed there. He was a great listener and a true person and I was so profoundly impressed to meet a person like him. Lucky Taeho. I hope I am alloted a room with a person like James. I wish I meet someone like him at least once in my lifetime.

It was great, Day4 of the trip: I have grown so much, learned so much from today. Tomorrow, we will be visiting Google and fly to the eastern coast.

Ah I’m so excited since I plan to attend a college in the ZZZZern coast. (I never, never said it’s eastern or western so I leave it to your imagination) Well this is it. Over.

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