Kaulapi World

Still stuck in the middle of my finals month, week 2 of 4, I’d like to say. Drawing from past semesters I thought I’d use this journal as a source of taking mental breaks from here and there. We’ll see how far this goes from here on out – and how often I’ll actually do it.

Another part of the dream I was calmly walking in an crescent shaped atrium with large glass windows worried that my cover had been blown, I knew I was being pursued by a young military officer. He was tailing close that I figured he probably knew something was up. As I turned around the bend I jumped maybe 60 feet in the air and wedged myself between the archways on the ceiling and the glass panel. When he passed I descended down only to see him reaching for his sidearm. What happens next was a little fuzzy, but I overpowered him with a jiu-jitsu arm lock and ran off with his weapon. I’m not sure if this part of the dream precluded the dinner meeting or came after.

November is winding down and my seasonal finals hell is looming again. I’ve been under the gun for about a month with my day job work so again I find myself in a semi-continuous adrenaline rush 24/7 trying to find time for everything at once. There is a silver lining to the stress though in the form of overall productivity since I seem to perform pretty good under trial by fire situations. I guess I’m still a scrapper after all.

Meanwhile I’ve been keeping tabs on the ongoing economic meltdown, watching my stocks and retirement accounts get whacked every other day, only to rally up again the next day. Slowly but surely the overall balance is on a downward slope. Its very frustrating and I can’t help but feel helpless to do anything about it really other than recalibrate the contribution schedule and check the balance again the next day. Almost everyone I talk to is optimistic that 2009 will be a better year economically, I’m much more cautious about any calls for a bottom. I’ve read up a bit on Japan’s deflationary lost decade and Argentina’s economic crisis and wonder which model the US will be following. Neither look good, that is for sure.

Got read the riot act so to speak at a bar prep meeting on Friday. Pretty much ruined my looking forward to the weekend, but I guess I needed it with a few months left of the semester, and pre-pre-bar activities coming up around the corner. In some sense it seems like its the usual scare speech for the sleep deprived evening students in the room, but then again it was very necessary to hear the level of work and time commitments that we’ll be embarking on very shortly. My one comment is that I think a lot of this information probably would’ve been helpful like 1, 2, 3 years ago. I guess in some respect many of us would’ve just brushed it off, but still it might’ve been helpful to hear this with some advanced notice instead of all at once on a Friday evening.

Oh well, back to the books. And back to work tomorrow morning. And on to class in the evening.

The fall season is progressing along, been busy at work and at school. For the most part I’m enjoying my classes, my unincorporated business organizations course is giving me more perspectives on the operations of small businesses and partnerships. Definitely opens your eyes to what kind of responsibilities, legal and financial headaches, really, owning your own business has. In my Remedies class we’re covering the bottom line of a lot of cases that we flew over in con law, property, and contracts, mostly going to the most central question of all, that is after all is said and done, after the plaintiff wins his case, how does the court proscribe the appropriate remedy to make the plaintiff whole again? And more tricky, when, if at all does the Defendant need additional punishment for the wrong?

Been keeping a wary eye on the market, it’s getting pretty depressing watching it rocket up and down. Since the brutal crashes from a few weeks ago, the market has seen drastic ups and downs, close to 9% swings, heavy volatility all around. It’s become a sick ritual getting up at 4am, getting ready for work, only to see the London stock exchange futures way down, and the Asian markets wrapping up another down day of trading. Been spending a lot of time it seems, sitting in my cubicle at work and getting distracted by the DOW and S&P way down in the red, highly caffeinated talking heads talking about investment strategies, screaming at times, for calm in the markets. Meanwhile a lot of small investors are quickly taking their life savings out of the market, apparently deciding its too dangerous to play at all.

Then a few days later, a crazy rally, usually as a result of some optimistically spun economic report, or announcement from the government that there will be another bailout. It’s really hard to tell what is up and what is down, what and who to believe really.

Whatever gains I had preserved about a year ago due to some luckily placed re-allocations in my stock holdings are quickly dwindling, percentage-wise. For the time being I’m glad that I’m gainfully employed, and not involved in any variable rate debt or consumer debt. Due to this insane housing market we’ve been seeing for the past few years, I held off on saddling down a mortgage, a decision that I’ve come to appreciate again and again. There is a matter of some student loans, but I was able to lock about half of it at a very low interest rate through consolidation about a year ago. I have been keeping a wary eye on our finances, planning out different scenarios and what we would do. For now there doesn’t really seem like there’s anything we can do. Just sit and suffer.

In the meantime I’ve been keeping an unofficial log of spare change I’ve been coming across walking around the city. I’ve been tracking it down loosely on my paper calendar at work. It’s pretty surprising how much change people leave lying around. So far in the past month I’ve found at least a few pennies a day, with the occasional dime or quarter. I’ve also found a $5 bill, and a metrocard with $20 on it. I guess when times are tough, you try to do what you can.

The markets have been in turmoil this week, the two biggest drops in the DOW since 9-11 for the most part coinciding with massive, unprecedented bailouts of major investment banks and companies tied to mortgages and other debt securities. You know its bad when you can hear the water cooler talk, especially the older co-workers talk about huge losses on the year to their retirement accounts. There is a somber, anomic mood overall, a sort of helplessness, much like there is nothing that can be done. The younger folks on the other hand, so far have been largely silent, maybe due to the confidence that they all have many years ahead to make up for the losses. Maybe because many of us don’t have much of a stake in the market yet, or another possibility is that much like the rest of the country right now, we have no assets at all and are drowning in debt.

Been having a a recurring dream lately about riding a train, I’m headed either to or from work. Sometimes the train is crowded, other times there is an old friend, often its someone that I was once close with but lost touch over the years. The one recurring detail however has been that I overshoot my destination and get off onto the platform and have to double back and wait for the train going in the opposite direction. The most recent one I run into a friend on the platform who convinces me to go to a nearby izakaya instead of heading to my original destination. It’s a refreshing change of pace, whenI realize that despite passing through the station on the train many times before, I’ve never actually stopped to get off and look around. The izakaya itself is located on the side of a busy street, inside a sort of shopping arcade near the station. When we get there my friend starts talking to the waitress in Japanese, and despite my limited proficiency, for some reason I am able to understand almost all of it. The dream ends there after we’ve placed our order.

4th of July weekend, supposed to thunderstorm for most of the evening. Looking to duck the rain and the crowds, get some reading done, probably watch the fireworks on TV. Found a seafood market in the area, picked up some jumbo shrimp and littleneck clams, might cook up a pot with bay seasoning or something east coast style.

Otherwise its just a mellow break before the finals push comes again. Can’t believe the summer session is wrapping up already.

Done with my last final exam for the semester, its a good feeling to get it off my back, now its time to work on this paper. Should be a good change of pace, although there’s still a good amount of work to be done for sure. Have to say that this third exam was kind of in between, it was difficult enough for it to get my respect, but open ended enough to make me think outside of the box a bit. That can be tricky though, since the study of law is so in the box. who knows, who cares, I’m officially pau with 6/8 semesters, and am officially a 4E now. kind of scary thought.

Pretty beat tonight, but since DC is under a flood watch I think it probably makes more sense to stay up and keep an eye on the drain to make sure it doesn’t overflow. Don’t want a repeat of a few weeks ago. Its an afterthought by now, but I wonder how the earth boxes are doing. I just planted a bunch of seedlings and hope they aren’t getting too drenched. Really can’t complain about the rain when other parts of the country are getting hit with tornados. Opps I spoke too soon, I hear the water pooling outside the door, time to clear the drain. Looks like I’ll be up at least a few more hours tonight.

Going back into work tomorrow to finalize some details on my work travel trip for next week, which seems to be changing on a daily basis. Without going into too much detail, its looking like an interesting trip coming up, probably riding a lot of trains to and from meetings, something that isn’t totally ideal, but like everything else, I’m willing to roll with it. For me it’ll be a good excuse to see a different part of the country for a change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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