Articles by mgedwards

A recap of events

I won’t lie.  This has been a difficult week for me.  It seems as if my Pusan trip set me back a few days, and I spent the entire week at work trying to catch up.  I got back to the office, and by Tuesday my other colleagues left.  Someone new is working with me now, but they are still orienting themselves to the office.  I was the only veteran staff member in the office this week.  As a result, I worked until after 9 p.m. on Thursday.  On Friday evening I also left late for work.  Our job portfolios also changed, and I started working on my new assignment and had to train the new person on what I was doing before.  It’s a pseudo-promotion that makes me backup supervisor, but it also means that I won’t be out of the office visiting Americans as much as I was.  At work it seemed as if every couple minutes or so I was handed a new, critical task to complete, and I could only finish them every 5-10 minutes, meaning the tasks continued to pile up.  Metaphorically, it feels like shoveling mud in a collapsing ditch or draining water from a sink boat.
To make matters worse, I’ve also been busy as chair of our community association trying to settle some vexing problems.  We’ve been trying to land a new cafeteria vendor for months, and this week we finally found a couple of great candidates.  Unfortunately, another vendor suddenly abandoned their location.  Their contract was up for renewal, and I had thought we had successfully negotiated a follow-on agreement.  However, I was astounded when they let the lease lapse without renewing.  We had no choice but to lock them out, and now I have the very unpleasant task of extricating ourselves from this vendor.  Not only does the association stand to lose out on substantial revenues, but the divorce could be messy.  We may have to call in the legal eagles to take care of the situation.  Plus, we have to go through the arduous task of finding a new vendor to take over the site.  This is not the start I wanted to have as chair.  If I can get through the next six months and take care of these vendor problems, I’ll consider my job a success.  It will get done, somehow.
On Friday, after I got home from work, I passed on writing my nightly blog entry and crashed for the night.  Saturday morning I went for two more negotiations, one with a potential cafeteria vendor and the other for a new business center for our community.  These negotiations were fruitful.  In the afternoon, I took my family for Korean food, and we enjoyed a Columbus Day parade and festivities (yes, the Armed Forces in Korea still celebrate Columbus Day).  The cover band performed a medley of Tina Turner classics; the singer sounded just like Tina Turner.  We rested at home yesterday evening.  Today, we met up with a good friend we met while we were in Virginia.  He lives in Taiwan and had come to visit his Korean girlfriend.  She joined us, along with another friend from Taiwan.  We ate Mexican food for lunch (they said they can’t find good Mexican food in Taiwan) and spent a few hours at our home talking and drinking soju and Bailey’s Irish Cream.  It was delectable.  Later, I dropped our friends off in Insadong.  They suggested we come for a visit to Taiwan.  It apparently only costs about $300 by air from Seoul to Taipei, and we would have a free place to stay.  After this week, their offer sounds tempting!
Fortunately, tomorrow I have the day off and am planning a guy’s night out with a few people tomorrow night.  If I don’t post a blog entry tomorrow night, you’ll know why.

Kudos from “The Economist”

I received an E-mail newsletter today from my alma mater, the University of Washington (UW).  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the University of Washington, based in Seattle, is considered one of the world’s top universities by British-based magazine The Economist.  In its September 8 edition, the magazine listed the university as one of the best insitutions of higher education in the world.  As The Economist is the premier English-language business and economics magazine, that is high praise indeed.  In a survey published by Jiaotong University in Shanghai, China, cited by The Economist, the UW ranks #20 in the list of top 20 universities in the world based on "academic and research performance, including Nobel prizes and articles in respected publications."  Here is the complete list of schools (ranked in order):
  1. Harvard University
  2. Stanford University
  3. University of Cambridge
  4. University of California, Berkeley
  5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  6. Californai Institute of Technology
  7. Princeton University
  8. University of Oxford
  9. Columbia University
  10. University of Chicago
  11. Yale University
  12. Cornell University
  13. University of Californa, San Diego
  14. Tokyo University
  15. University of Pennsylvania
  16. University of California, Los Angeles
  17. University of California, San Francisco
  18. University of Wisconsin
  19. University of Michigan
  20. University of Washington

Among the top 20 schools, only Cambridge (Britain), Oxford (Britain), and Tokyo (Japan) are outside the United States.  The article, which can be found at http://www.economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=4339960, candidly states that the U.S. system of higher education is a model for higher education and that other nations can learn from the U.S. model.  This high praise does not extend to American elementary and secondary education, unfortunately.  Still, I am proud that America’s colleges and universities are among the best in the world.  Granted, The Economist and Jiaotong University provide only one academic ranking.  There are many other university rankings, such as the one that U.S. News & World Report publishes annually (U.S. News ranked the UW #45 nationally).  I also noted that some universities I thought should be on the list are absent, most notably, McGill University and Queen’s University, both Canadian schools, and the University of Melbourne in Australia.  There are many other outstanding universities not listed in this ranking.

Nevertheless, I am very proud to have attended a great university.  Many Americans consider the East Coast to be the premier college destination, but the West Coast also has many excellent schools.  Note that seven of the top 20 schools on the list are located on the U.S. West Coast.  The UW’s secret is that its medical center, along with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, share the honor of being the preeminent medical research and healthcare universities in the United States.  Its engineering programs are also top-notch.  The UW School of Law is highly regarded, and the Business School, where I completed my MBA, is ranked #18 nationally and on the rise.  Perhaps most of all, the UW retains top academics who turn down offers move to more elite schools because they love living in the Pacific Northwest and teaching at the UW.  If you’re looking at colleges, check out the UW.  Not only is it a great school, but you can’t beat living in Seattle.

Still at work, heading home

Lately I’ve spent longer hours working in the office.  I just finished going through my full E-mail inbox, clearing out old E-mails and closing out a few pressing issues.  There is always too much to do.  Have you ever had a day or days where you were given action items, one after one after, with no time to do them?  I left a lot of action items unfinished, but I feel much better having cleared out my inbox.  You wouldn’t believe how much you can get done when you have a little peace and quiet and time to focus on getting the job done.  The unfortunate trade-off is that I’m not even home to say goodnight to my son and to spend a little quiet time before coming back to work again tomorrow.  If you are doing what I’m doing–working long hours, I salute you for you working so hard.  But please try to find some time to go home early and have a rest.  For me, thank God tomorrow is the eve of a three-day weekend (Columbus Day).  I can’t wait.  It makes staying in the office just a little easier to handle.