Ugh, Busy!

It is 6:00 pm. The sun has set and the streets are ablaze with the lights of a metropolitan city. It is the night before the first final exam of the semester. In 20 hours you will be asked to analyze and spot issues involving bargaining misconduct in contract formation, non-performance of contractual duty, breach of contracts, the Uniformed Commercial Code, and a host of other issues. It is all closed book, no notes will be provided. You have a mountainous amount of material to memorize and regurgitate on demand. You have to learn and comprehend nuances within contract law. You now have less than 20 hours...

*cue scenario*


A student is hunkered down in the basement of a library. Copious amounts of notes and electronic devices are spread across the table of his cubicle. His mouth is rapidly moving as he mouths the the rules of the 2nd Restatement of Contracts to himself. "The elements of unilateral mistake are..." Every passing minute amplifies the growing anxiety. Will he be able to comprehend all of the material? Will he have it memorized well enough to walk into the exam room with confidence?

*cue reality*


A round of applause is heard. The room falls to a deadening silence as the speaker at the podium prepares to speak. Waiters and waitresses buzz around delivering succulent entrée dishes of salmon to the 70 different tables that dot the ball room. Lawyers and members of the legal community, ranging from law firms like Bingham McCutchen and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe to the Human Rights Commission of San Francisco, wait with palpable anticipation for the speaker. Steve Li begins to speak...

April 29th was a very busy night for me. Faced with the daunting prospect of taking a Contracts exam on the 30th, I had the choice to either stay in the library and try to prepare as much as humanly possible, or, I could fulfill a months-long obligation and attend the Asian Law Caucus' 39th Annual Event dinner.

I decided to do both.

- Hey! That name and face looks eerily familiar...

During the beginning of my 1L spring semester, I had managed to get onto the 2011 Annual Event Committee that was planning and organizing the Asian Law Caucus' 39th Annual Event dinner. (Thank you, yet again, Mr. Vu!) At the time I did not know that the dinner would fall on the day before my contracts final. Had I known, I might have opted out?

Having experienced the committee process as well as having attended and assisted at the dinner, I ultimately believe I made the right decision despite the perilous nature of an exam the next day. [Insert contractual disclaimer to this statement if the exam results do not turn out as I hope -- ahhhh! Contracts, I can not escape you]. Sometimes you just have to have faith and confidence that the copious preparation beforehand was adequate. And if you are not 100% sure... you can always bring your contracts outline to the dinner. :)

Despite trying to salvage every possible second to study during the course of the event, I still had ample opportunity to meet and engage with several of the lawyers there. Many of the individuals I spoke with I had met on a previous occasion - some I had met before at APILO or Hastings legal clinics and others I had known from being on the committee or recent law clerk interviews. (Hello PG&E legal department!) Of note were two individuals that related to my upcoming experience in Hong Kong this summer.

One person I met noted that she would be in Hong Kong this summer as well and had generously offered to take me on a "food adventure." Anytime you combine the words "food" and "adventure" into a sentence, I am unequivocally enticed. Where do I sign my soul away?

Another individual I met, an alumni of Golden Gate University's LLM program, got his J.D. degree from my hometown and had also gone through Santa Clara University's Hong Kong program. A fellow GGU student, roots in Sacramento, and went through the exact same program I did... Hard to imagine a more closely matched meeting. Oh, he's also an immigration lawyer of many years, an area of law I have been exposed to recently due to my presence at low-income, legal clinics in the Bay. Hello Bruce, a.k.a. mirror.

Occasions like these reinforce my belief that the Latin phrase carpe diem should be employed whenever and wherever possible. The dinner was a huge success and raised over $100,000 for the Asian Law Caucus. I was proud and happy for the organization despite my minuscule part in the grand scheme of things. In hindsight, even if I could have done marginally better on the exam at the expense of contributing to the dinner planning, I don't think I would have. Even if I had not possessed a prior commitment to the Caucus, even if the cause championed by the Caucus was not great and noble, and even if I was not guaranteed to meet so many fantastic individuals at the dinner event, it was not in my personality to not challenge myself and forgo studying or the dinner.

Carpe diem meet Hong Kong. Hong Kong, be wary of carpe diem.

[carpe diem: seize the day]

Hello, Liberty Chambers

- Hi!

When classes at Hong Kong University ends, I will be here for a couple weeks. Just confirmed it. I am excited and hoping it will be an engaging and fulfilling experience!

A Girl, A Book, A Quote, A Question and Misery?

I enjoy leisure reading and, in my opinion, this is regrettably a dying passion in a world filled with the ease of electronic media. Nowadays, reading subtitles is enough for you to stake claim to the title "reader." Good literature is often relegated to collecting dust on shelves, or, if we are lucky, made into a blockbuster movie that ultimately fails to deliver the poetry of the written word.

Therefore, I would like to introduce one of my all time favorite "classics," which is represented by this girl:

- bonus points if you can figure out what book she is from!

So what prompted the appearance of this cover girl? It started off with a personal Contracts-final-exam review session that lasted a good 12 hours (Professor Chuang, I hope you are reading this!!), with about a 3 hour break in between that consisted of back-to-back Civil Procedure classes (Professor Kibel I hope you are reading this as well!!). Needless to say, by the time 10 pm rolled around, my brain started to wander, as it often does when over-caffeinated, sleep deprived, and just overall numb I was so energized by 15 hours of contracts review and civil procedure discussion, that I thought about re-reading Victor Hugo's 1200+ pages masterpiece!

After staring at my contracts book for a good half-a-day, somewhere, somehow, in the darkest recesses of my mind, my thoughts turned to a quote that seemed apt for the moment at hand:

- Gchat status > Facebook Status updates

Which in turn prompted this conversation:

- No, it is not a song

To summarize the conversation, the quote is from the novel Les Miserables and, translated, it means "books are cold but safe friends." The author, Victor Hugo, had an immense appreciation for the written word and this idea, embodied by the quote, stated that books might be indifferent and cold objects, but they serve as safe friends that will protect you from despair. Maybe thinking of this quote was my brain's subconscious way of telling me that I too can develop an appreciation for the written word found in a Contracts textbook... maybe.

I then realized that the quixotic quote was extracted from a novel titled Les Miserables, which translates to The Miserables, or The Wretched Ones. So basically, my brain was not really subconsciously encouraging me to keep at it, but really consciously mocking the miserable and wretched state I found myself in after an entire day of reviewing Contracts. (Professor Chuang, I hope you are not reading this!!).

So how in the world does this relate to Hong Kong or the preparation for Hong Kong? I don't know, but somehow omitting the fact that I have to prepare for finals before I leave seemed woefully unfair. <insert gratuitous self-pat on the back>

A Visa for... North Korea?

As many travelers are aware, one of the first "checklist" tasks to take care of when visiting a foreign country is to ensure your visa status is all sorted out. Forgetting to do so would be akin to forgetting your keys: you don't have your car key so you can't go where you need to go [rejection of entry into foreign country] and you don't have your house key so you can't go home [arrest in foreign country].

Heeding this well-traveled advice (lame pun intended), I looked at the US State Department's website to find out what, if anything, must be done prior to my travels.

Luckily for me, Hong Kong has a very liberal tourism policy. If you are from the USA and you are staying in Hong Kong for less than 90 days, which I am, no visa is required.

I had to admit, I was a little disappointed. I wanted to get a visa of some sort! Usually I loathe bureaucratic red-tape, loopholes and [pointless] forms that must be filled out in order to get a government to act (i.e. the Treasury Department form: Authorization Agreement for Preauthorized Payments. Apparently you have to agree to authorize preauthorized payments -- ha! Think about that one for a second).

Having just completely destroyed your train of thought, allow me to elaborate why I was disappointed and wanted a visa stamp. A visa stamp on your passport is in many instances a badge of honor. It is the middle ground between the permanent nature of a tattoo on your body and the fleeting nature of a gold star sticker from a kindergarten teacher (which, in the past, I would re-use by sticking them onto my parents' clothing). If I am going to spend nearly 3 months in a foreign country, I wanted either a visa stamp, a tattoo or a gold star sticker! The latter two were not feasible because it would unleash a hell-storm of parental fury and because Mrs. Vandervert, my elementary school teacher, is not a tattoo artist...

This brings us to the point of this post. Having assuaged myself about any potential visa issues in Hong Kong, I next looked to mainland China. Hong Kong is literally a few hours, if not minutes, away from the mainland. (HK is a special administrative region [SAR] so they have different border policies, despite being a part of the country of China). Naturally it made sense to see how I could procure a visa, if one was needed, in order to visit the mainland.

The gargantuan leap in restrictions was mind boggling. The details of which would be preserved for a future post, where I can adequately set aside time to mock, rant and poke fun at the policy in place.

I decided to do a little comparative analysis of the restrictions in place for China and other regions in the area. Since North Korea has long-held the perception of being one of the, if not the most, inclusive regime in the world, it made for a fitting comparison. The liberal border policies of Hong Kong and the extreme nature of North Korea, allows for a comprehensive spectrum to be developed. Where exactly would China fall within this spectrum?

I am going to preface this short analysis with what I consider to be an entertaining, yet thought-provoking video that was featured in magazines like TIME. (TIME Magazine article link: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/17/watch-how-one-man-caught-secret-video-inside-north-korea-and-lived/)

Steve Gong is a photojournalist that had risked his personal safety to create, in my humble opinion, a revelatory and startling media piece about North Korea. It was clearly done through the visionary lens of an artist, but you could not help but be constantly reminded of the real and subtle danger that lurked around every single frame shot. Check it out!

- that use to be my old haircut!

Notable quotes from the US State Department's travel advisory for North Korea:

- [You] may be arrested, detained, or expelled for ... interaction with the local population.

- Are we suppose to interact with the foreign population that is almost non-existent in the country? Ahh, perhaps North Korea promotes an introspective line of thinking by asking you to talk with yourself?

- Security personnel may also view any unauthorized attempt you make to talk to a North Korean citizen as espionage.

- Check. Theory confirmed.

Maybe China's policy isn't so bad afterall... maybe. You can decide when that topic is brought up in a later post.

Captain Kirk ... sigh

You have let me down :(

- despite your rhyming pizazz, your negotiation skills can kiss my ***

Priceline.com is one of the most used internet travel agency sites (Google told me so!) and like its competitors, Travelocity, Orbitz, etc., they offer a somewhat comprehensive listing of airline tickets, hotel options, car rentals and other travel-related goodies.

Anyways, point being, they have this really enticing-sounding service called "Name Your Own Price," which apparently will save you up to 40% on your travel bills. I mean, how could I resist?! I'm Chinese, haggling is in my blood. :) When you combine that with the embarrassment-avoiding anonymity of the internet, hook-line-and-sinker.

What is deceptive about this practice, however, is that you don't really "name your own price." It is more like, "name your own price, and if it matches or exceeds how much priceline paid for the tickets, they will take your price, thereby guaranteeing a profit for them -- oh and there are no refunds, you are given flight times no one wants to have, and you won't get any information about the actual flight until your credit card has been charged. AND they deny you airline mileages you would otherwise normally get!!!"

(I can hear my contract professor's voice in my head right now, "Where are the promissory conditions in this agreement? Where is the procedural and substantive unconscionability?!?) Naturally, you can imagine what I did after I learned how dubious this entire "Name Your Own Price" process was -- I named my own price!

The following resulted:

Times like these, you dig deep and find the gallows humor in the situation.

After being thoroughly rejected by the "Naming my Own Price" service (as seen above!), I decided to find the cheapest listing that was given to me by Priceline and go straight to the airline to buy the ticket. This would in essence deny Priceline the middleman fees it would normally collect from the airlines. (I swear, there was no vindictive motivation behind this move. I just wanted to save an additional $20... I swear!)

As fate would have it, the airline price listing was a good 20% higher than the lowest Priceline listing. (Collusion alert!) I tucked tail and went back to Priceline for the ticket in the end. (as seen above!)

My one claim at a Pyhrric victory stems from Priceline's inability to gouge me into paying more for a ticket than it was worth... (despite my many attempts to let them).

Moral of the Story: The Pacific Ocean needs a bridge so I can drive across.