Update on England

So the last two weeks I've done a lot, but because I've done so much, I haven't had time to write about much of it. I probably won't until the flight home, so here's a little bit.

Last weekend, I did a bunch of tourist things. Saturday I went to Westminster Abbey and then did the Tour of Buckingham Palace that you can only do in August. On Sunday, I went to the Tower of London and then walked back about 4 miles along the Thames.

During the week, I was mostly writing a 3,000 word essay that was due on Friday. I went to a casino for the first time and won 100 pounds, so that was cool.

On Friday, I took a bus from London to Amsterdam overnight including getting off on a ferry from England to France and got into Amsterdam on Saturday morning around 9 am. I spent the day in Amsterdam and we stayed a hotel outside Amsterdam. On Sunday, we went to a Dutch farm that makes Clogs and cheese. I volunteered for the clog making demonstration and got to make a clog. Instead of cutting of the extra wood, the guy left it on so it can be used to hold my iPhone on my night stand. His wife was American and her cousins are on the Cal football team. After that we drove for 3 hours to Bruges, in Belgium. It was a really cool city and we walked around for 2 hours, got some food, and got back on the bus. We drove for another 1.5 hours, went through French and English customs and took a ferry again. Then we drove for 2 more hours before getting back to London a little past midnight.

This week I'm focusing on my final which is on Friday at noon. I'm focused on just appreciating everything and the environment this last week, rather than trying rush a bunch of extra sightseeing in.

I might go see some other things, but nothing is definite. My flight home is at 4:15 PM on Saturday and I get into LAX at 7:30 Pacific time Saturday night.

I hope this Professor likes me...

Yesterday when I walk into my discussion section:

TA: Warren, did you ask Torun (Professor) a question about Political Economy?
Me: Uhm, probably
TA: He asked me if you were in my class. He was very impressed with your question.

I never told the Professor my name. He had looked it up on the class website where there is a student profile with a picture of each student.

Today in lecture:

Prof: Who has heard of this idea of focal points?
I raise my hand. (The only one out of 50 people in the room).
Prof: Where have you seen this?
Me: It was in the assigned reading 2 days ago.
Prof: I didn't think that summer school students did the assigned reading.

Advice for People that need things (or that want to tell me about Jesus)

Disclaimer: Sorry for all of these little blurbs that are not exciting and not relevant to traveling, but I've been busy with school (my second class is much harder than the first) and I don't have time to write up big stories.

Anyways, I spent the morning in the library today because my 3 hour morning lecture was cancelled today because our midterm essays are due tomorrow. (First session I had a day off after my midterm, so a day off is not crazy out of the ordinary.) I still had discussion/tutorial/section/whatever you want to call it for an hour in the afternoon. So I left the library (after 5 hours) about 15 minutes before my class was to start at 3 PM. Since there's no real central campus, the walk is along a big street in London.

It's not uncommon here or in Berkeley for people to stop me when I'm walking to class and ask me for directions or something like that. So today as I was walking someone stopped me and seemed like the needed something.

Him: Excuse me
Me: Yes...
Him: "Hi, we're from a Christian Fellowship and..."
Me(interrupting): "Sorry, I have to go to class. I don't have time."

As I walked away I felt kind of bad. I guess that he could have been saying "We're from a Christian Fellowship and we got lost and need directions" or "We're from a Christian Fellowship and there's a man chasing us with a knife," but I'm so used to people coming up to tell me about Christianity when I don't have time that I assumed that they were going to tell me about the bible.

So here's a lesson in either case:

For missionaries: Don't come up to people walking on the street. They're going somewhere and probably won't listen to you.

For people that need something: Don't lead the conversation with "We're from a Christian Fellowship..."

It finally happened

I finally got a british lingo word that shocked me and made me double take.  Apparently British people (and Australians I found out too), only call some friends "Mate." They have another word for their best friends that would not fly in America. I'm not going to write it out, but let's just say it starts with a 'C' and it rhymes with "Punt."

Socialism

For those of you that don't know, I decided that I didn't like Econ last semester. That was kind of a problem since I was an Econ major. I decided I wanted to be a social welfare major. But, because my Econ degree was already half done and no one outside of communist Russia would ever hire a social welfare major from Berkeley, I'm sticking it out and doing a double major.

As more time goes on, I realize I dislike econ more and more. In writing a 20 page paper on collective action and cooperation I figured out why.

Econ: I could help you. You could help me. We would both be better of. But I don't trust you so I won't help you because the worst possible thing that could happen is for me to help you and then you not to help me. Instead, neither of us will help the other and neither of us will be better of.

Social Welfare: I could help you. You will be better off if I help you. So I am going to help you. If you decide to help me, that's awesome. If you don't, at least one of us is better off.

Econ is about minimizing personal losses. Social welfare is about maximizing collective gains.


Basically I'm a socialist. And it only took 6 weeks in Europe (or 2 years in Berkeley)

LSE Game Theory Example

Proffessor: "imagine there is a prime minister who likes young ladies. The young lady prefers to go to Tiffany's before she goes to bed with the prime minister"