O Harvard, fair Harvard!

I did miss you. Your red-bricked, fake colonial-style dorms, your terrible housing but endearing House spirit. Your American students, always energetic, intense, motivated during the week time, loud and drunk during the weekend. And never asleep.

Harvard Hall

Your food, always terrible, but always abundant and endless. Your free and speedy wireless, highly welcome after a year-long expensive cable ridiculousness of Todai. 

Senior Common Room Dinner

Only after a year- long absence does one have a chance to re-appreciate you with the excitement of a freshman, but without the cluelessness part.

The highlight of the course-load for the senior fall was definitely CS50 by our very best David J. Malan the shining young celebrity of the Harvard Faculty, famous along with Sandel, Mankiw & Co. His lectures in the Sanders Theatre, always spiked with humor and youtube clips and techno music, inserted in between the flying  programming code, rang like a show time. The CS50 Fair that crowned the course was nothing short of an incredible festival with cupcakes, balloons, balloons, high-tech screens and Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft or Apple recruiters lurking around, ready to land you an internship interview. Oh and forget not the raffle of Wii, Xboxes and other devices of merriment.

Faculty Dinner with D.J. Malan

The other highlights of the Senior Fall include the sold-out Leveret Winter Formal at the Top of the Hub (thanks to the depression, Boston fanciness suddenly became affordable!), grunge dorm or dining hall party hopping that sometimes ended in one or another of the final clubs and finally a wonderful creative time with Snowflakes Stories (first time I actually both wrote and illustrated my book). 

All of these experienced in the companion of the undefeated Dunsteries shaking booty.

Top of the Hub

Dunster Winter Formal

A random, grunge Mather dorm Party

Oh and forget not the a-cappela concerts by the H Krokodiloes and H Gin&Tonic. Those well-dressed gentlemen with beautiful voices and utter sarcasm stole my heart away.

The Harvard Krokodiloes

Harvard Square, gorgeous on a warm autumn day.

Another amazing summer in Japan, feat. Tokyo

This year’s summer adventure in Tokyo was a surprisingly turbulent alas quite an exciting one. With a move to corporate housing which followed the start of my internship at this golden bank of America, my dwelling location was shifted from the shabby, small, ugly little dorm room in Komaba to the unnecessarily luxurious and over-the-top, will-never-be-able-to-afford-until-I’m-30 kind of apartment with swimming pool and SPA, located at the heart of Roppongi. And since locations changed, so did the people and the lifestyle.

Ark Hills! Oh I miss the corporate housing.

Instead of European traveler-students, it was time to meet some good old American comrades at the firm, who turned out to be some awesome kids indeed. And finally, I didn’t have to struggle to use slower or simpler English, fearing that otherwise my accented European friend might get very confused. It was now all good American English flowing in and out.

My own handcraft! (not all of it, more like 1 fish ;))

GS interns at Community Work Project

GS Interns sweetest deal :)

Work was equivalent to end of the indolent days at Todai. No more waking up at noon (which used to happen only if Ben text messaged with the immortal question “have you eaten yet?”), no more skipping classes and lazing off at (and exploring) some random location in Tokyo, no more random nomikai in the middle of the week. Instead, mornings started with a “crap, did I iron that shirt?” rush and days passed by in front of computer screens on a 48th floor of the spider tower, accented only with nice lunches oftentimes graciously paid for by working sempais.  Dinners were always reserved for friends or other significant individuals. Evenings became suddenly extremely short, and I found myself in bed most of the time before midnight, with occasional exceptions.

And of course Roppongi, the cursed Roppongi, the essence of my summer. Proximity of it also meant more escapades to the myriad clubs around – this summer Vanity on the 15th floor seemed like the no. 1 popular dwelling spot for traders and others in the finance world.  That also tended to result in quite a few instances of fair headaches in the mornings or a rather unexpected Swiss discovery that spiked the rest of the summer.

With GS intern buddy at Warehouse.

On the way to Ageha.

Warehouse.

It was also a very nice summer of precious visits. Elizabeth came in and swooped me away to Korea. Once back, she went off exploring Kyoto and other spots deemed as tourist attraction. Dung also dropped by, and that afforded yet another string of crazy and heavily sleep deprived escapades, Yokohama fireworks, black-sand beaches or revisits of the Air club, which as the legend claims, was featured in “Lost in Translation.” (my doubts and brows highly raised). At the very end of this summer break, parents also decided they might as well see that weird land of Japan, and so the 3 of stormed on me right before the end of the internship, bringing in quite a tornado of events, farewell parties, ad hoc trips to Hakone, (which unfortunately didn't yield any breathtaking views of Mt Fuji simply because of all the fog, Mt Fuji is actually visible only once a year) etc.

Gio, me, Marco at our lovely tofu dinner.

With Dung, in Air Club.

Yokohama Fireworks

Juggling work, friends, family and others left me dead exhausted at the very end of my year-long journey, so the return to academic circles at Harvard in September was probably the best conclusion to all of it. Time to calm down (or so I thought…).

But what an incredible summer it was – third time in my life was I convinced that while youth, health, lack of personal commitments and a certain degree financial flexibility allowed, one should always pursue the global explorations whenever possible. A good excuse to enjoy hedonism of life ;).

Short Korean visit across the Sea.

Well, the blog has been screaming to be resolved. This post and the next one were written a good few months after the events they feature,but as the Polish proverb says, better late than never.

After Okinawa trip came the ultimate time for the Korean visit. In a sense I wished it happened 2 years before, when I actually learned how to speak that language (unfortunately, I took the language class for some rather embarrassing reasons). Nonetheless, blessed with an angel of a travel companion, Elizabeth, the two of us went off to be your silly, fabulous, American tourists in Seoul and Busan :).

My first impression of Busan – it smelled heavily of fish, everywhere. Sorry Elizabeth, I know you loved it, but I’m afraid it’s because you and your positive personality tend to love almost everything.Or because you haven't been to Okinawa ;). To me, that was a rather small tactical mishap – I should not have gone anywhere close to beaches or seaside right after Okinawa, at least not until the paradise effect from that trip wore off. Brushing apart the fishy first impression, Busan did indeed provide some scenic highlights – a really beautiful Yonggungsa temple by the seaside, 

night view to the bridge and street music or some nicely packed, definitely post-military service hunks, playing at the Haeundae beach, shirtless, under the sunset. He was with a lovely silly girl, who refused to go close to waves because she didn’t want to get her feet wet (what a brilliant idea...). I decided, for the sake of my own gratification, that she was definitely only his “sister”, much to Elizabeth’s amusement. 

Seoul on the other hand was more a memory of delicious Korean BBQ restaurants off the street and nice markets of randomness than of sights. Of course we did hit the main attractions, Royal Palaces and gardens included. Lots of visible Chinese influence in the “traditional” sector. Even one of our tour guides lectured us in Chinese (as we didn’t want to wait another hour and a half for an English speaking tour guide). 

We enjoyed lots of delicious street snacks under the scorching sun and had the most delightful time counting and betting on the number of couples in matching T-shirts we could spot.  Neither of us won – our estimates were way too low (30+ was the end result for 2 days of counting), and we couldn’t decide whether a whole family with matching clothes should count as well. The question remains: what’s up with this shirt matching obsession?

We also afforded a visit to an amusement and waterpark, which was probably one of the best choices we made. I tried the wave surfing attraction (the only one without an onerous queue) whereas Elizabeth enjoyed being splashed by a gigantic amount of water that could easily rip off any scanty Victoria Secret bikinis.

 My lovely chicken, Elizabeth, adamant at refusing to ride any scary rollercoasters, was eventually coaxed (read “cheated”) into one by my small white lies like  “there are no loops in this one, I swear!” At least she had enough fun not to kill me for that lie. Seoul’s amusement park called “Everland” (could anyone come up with a more kitsch name? Barely any step from M. Jackson’s “Neverland”) had this funny proclivity for and ridiculous imagination of European cities. I was therefore highly amused to suddenly see bright-colored land of Holland, wooden villages of Swiss Alps, or excessively pink and red rose gardens of Victorian England, all in the middle of boiling Korea, witnessed by me as I ran through all of them with my mind set on conquering some more adrenaline-positive attractions (read: more loops and speed).

But as a girl raised on Disney fairy tales, I was, am and will always be a complete sucker for colorful parades and beautiful multi-media shows, toppled with a breathtaking fireworks display, which nicely concluded our little trip at Everland. Indeed, memories made forever and ever.

Perfect Blue Paradise.

This year, April was surprisingly cold in Tokyo. In such a freeze, it was quite a wonder how all these cherry blossoms could even bother to bloom. But the Japanese, loyal to their traditions and impervious to weather caprices, uniformly held the hanami (花見 – flower viewing) picnics under the trees all across Tokyo's cherry blossom's spots.

Since I'm very easily bored with monotonous weather, 5 months of coldness was getting way too weary. Given that, what else was there to do than just run away from ugly cold Tokyo and head straight to the most southern end of Japan – to a tiny little island in the Okinawa prefecture, that is closer to Taiwan than Japan.


I gambled a lot, choosing to go in early May – it is supposedly the beginning of the Okinawa rainy season. But luck was with me, and I got four consecutive days of nice weather without a drop of rain.

The moment I landed at Miyako island's airport, the first thing that hit me was how different things are from Tokyo. The perspective definitely shrank – everything was tiny, small, very old-looking, and there were barely any people. Instead there were endless fields of sugar cane. Not much infrastructure (definitely no tourist infrastructure), not much of a vibrant life. Simply speaking such a countryside that I have long not witnessed. It was really hard to imagine that people can actually live is such remote and isolated areas. Well, only proves how much of a city girl I (unfortunately?) am.


But I didn't get away from Tokyo just to go to another big city. The point was to end up on a delightful beach, with ravishing sea view and do absolutely nothing – and I think I got it. Miyako island has several beautiful beaches, but my absolute number one was Maehama beach with pearly white and absolutely soft sand. Add to that the coral-reef-clear water, where you can enjoy snorkeling or breathtaking views of perfect blue gradients. It was the most gorgeous seaside I have ever seen in my life.

It had to be the laziest (and most blissful) 4 days of my life. I did not imagine myself capable of simply lying on one beach and doing absolutely nothing but sleeping with occasional plunges into the splendidly clear sea. I always thought I would go insane if I had to idle for hours in one place – but apparently I was wrong. I guess paradise does have that kind of effect on people – indolence and daydreaming in front of the sparkling sea finally became a pleasure. Hmm, so happiness is that simple, I thought - just put me on a captivating beach and the joys come flowing quite naturally. And in the background of my memories, the all-famous Okinawan folk song Shima Uta (島歌 – Island's song) played. Oh the happy life of a lazy bum.


Now back in Tokyo, with rainy and cold weather again. Can't believe it's almost June! I already miss Okinawa so much.

Pray for Poland.

The news hit me hard, just like it did to any other Pole. Last time I was this emotional was when the Pope passed away in 2005. But back then, it was a bit different - the Pope was ailing and it was a matter of time. This time, it hit from just utterly nowhere.

There were so many things that went through my mind over the past couple of days. However, there are a couple of moments during this turbulence that engraved themselves very deeply into my consciousness.

1. The irony and cruelty of history. I take the liberty to quote a friend of mine, Karol Malik.

"Trzy rozbiory. Dwie wojny światowe. Dwie masakry w lesie Katyńskim.

Polska, czyli kraina wielokrotnie powtarzanych tragedii."

Cf. Milan Kundera -- Nieznośna lekkość bytu, rozdział pierwszy, część pierwsza.

And his English translation:

"Three partitions. Two World Wars. Two massacres in the Katyn' Forest.

Poland, i.e. the land of repeated tragedies."

Cf. Milan Kundera -- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Chapter 1, Part 1.

May I also add to the list: Nazism, Holocaust and then Soviet totalitarianism.

2. The hope.

Here, I cite the most beautiful and moving pieces I have read in a long time. An op-ed in New York Times, titled "The Glory of Poland".

It is too early to say where Warsaw-Moscow relations are headed but not too early to say that 96 lost souls would be dishonored if Polish and Russian leaders do not make of this tragedy a solemn bond. As Tusk told Putin, “A word of truth can mobilize two peoples looking for the road to reconciliation. Are we capable of transforming a lie into reconciliation? We must believe we can.

(...)

It is this Poland that is now at peace with its neighbors and stable. It is this Poland that has joined Germany in the European Union. It is this Poland that has just seen the very symbols of its tumultuous history (including the Gdansk dock worker Anna Walentynowicz and former president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski) go down in a Soviet-made jet and responded with dignity, according to the rule of law.

So do not tell me that cruel history cannot be overcome. Do not tell me that Israelis and Palestinians can never make peace. Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever.

Ask the Poles. They know.

3. The activism of my Polish friends at Harvard.

Harvard Polish Society has produced a wonderful summary of meaning of this tragedy to inform and educate the Harvard, MIT, broader Cambridge-Boston community and anyone unfamiliar with Polish history.

4. My own visit.

I was very lost for the first few hours after the news hit the media - all by myself, in the far-away Japan, knowing hardly any Poles around me. But as soon as I saw the emails flooding my inbox from my Harvard friends, encouraged, I decided I just want to honour the the Dead by myself. I made my quick visit to the Polish Embassy in Tokyo to give my prayers and sign in the book of condolence, but what I witnessed there was so overwhelming, I had a hard time withholding my tears. The black-and-white pictures of the dead displayed everywhere, the overflowing sight and smell of white flowers, Chopin in the background and solemn-faced people dressed in white kimono or black suits.

I felt exhausted and unable to do anything for the rest of the day.

I just wonder what it was that perturbed me so deeply? I wasn't a fan of the President when he was alive. I didn't know much about the other victims apart of their roles in the government. I never met any of the dead. So why was I in tears the moment I stepped into that room?, I kept asking myself on the way back.

Maybe because I identify myself with this nation, so mercilessly afflicted by history with suffering. Because I admire and am proud of Poland's heroism and bravery. Because my loved ones are Polish. Maybe, because I am Polish so anything that touches Poland, touches me as well?

Sakura Tales.

Long before I came to Japan, I had already heard of the legendary cherry-blossoms (sakura). To me, Japanese sakura, were as integral to and iconic of Japan's traditional culture as the images of Geisha, Kabuki Theater, Sumo Games or the Tea Ceremony. However, only after having come to Japan and experiencing sakura for myself, did I discover this absolutely unique trait about them – something other elements of this beautiful culture do not have – and that is the recurring seasonal ardor. Japanese cherry-blossoms start out suddenly, bloom violently and passionately, and vanish just as abruptly as they came. And they do it every single year, annum after annum, eternally.

The intensity, almost vehemency of this however ephemeral life, juxtaposed against the graceful delicacy of flowers and the royalty to the season, has irreversibly captured my heart for good.

I wonder, when was the first time I ever drew a tree. I definitely cannot recall it. But I can bet, the first time I did it, the color I chose was green. Later, after I moved to Poland, my tree portraitures started to include red, brow, yellow or orange – all shades of warm colors that have been added into my color spectrum after my first autumn experiences. But it had never crossed my mind to ever color a tree pink. Leaves don't turn pink, I learned. Pink is for flowers.
Now, how about a tree without leaves but full of flowers?

If I had grown up in Japan, I would have been able to draw pink trees. Delightfully and stunningly pink trees. But these trees turn pink only once a year, for only as short as two weeks. They are like Japanese nature Cinderellas. In the winter, they are unsightly, dressed in gray branches, devoid of any color or attention. But in almost overnight, as if under a stroke of magic, they suddenly turn into the most splendid and charming things on earth capturing everyone's eye – from a busy office-worker on his hurried way to work,who just can't help but halt for a second to quickly snap a shot with his mobile phone, to professional photographers, pointing and shooting with their high-tech Japanese cameras for hours. Yes, sakuras are like Cinderella during the ball – everyone is watching them, everyone's in awe. And then, in a blink of eye, they're gone.

But that was all just my own imagination.

Historically actually, Japan has regarded sakura as a symbol of Samurai. “Sakura, these delicate flowers? Symbol of a belligerent warrior, who dies in violent battles? Where's the connection?” was my ignorant question, to which Ms. Kazuko Narui patiently answered: “It is because they are the symbol of loyalty and immutability. They come back every year, always at the same time. The Samurai, to whom nothing was more important than honor and loyalty, regarded the incessant return of sakura as symbolic of their own return to the Master whenever called upon. And the hope was, that they, the warriors, would also return from the war, just like sakura returns the next year, even if it fades away in less than 2 weeks. That was their prayer for survival. And that is why you see so many sakura in the temples and shrines.”

In my everyday life, I appear as a rather down-to-earth, occasionally sarcastic person, very much a realist and pragmatist.Then why, I wonder, is it that, just as soon as these pink flowers started blooming, my hopeless romanticism resurfaced and all I wanted was to sit or lay there and stare, endlessly, at these flowers against the blue sky, imagining all the stories I have recounted above. If there is a time most suitable for one to be a romantic, I think it is the sakura time.