Reminder: Catherine Coley invited you to join Facebook...

facebook Catherine Coley wants to be your friend on Facebook. No matter how far away you are from friends and family, Facebook can help you stay connected. Other people have asked to be your friend on Facebook. Accept this invitation to see your previous friend requests Catherine Coley UNC Accept Invitation Go to Facebook This message was sent to catherinegcoley.coco@blogger.com. If you don't want to receive these emails from Facebook in the future or have your email address used for friend suggestions, please click: unsubscribe. Facebook, Inc. Attention: Department 415 P.O Box 10005 Palo Alto CA 94303

BACK TO THE STATES!!

I've made it back to school - and am a bit culturally shocked.  So no time to blog. Well, a little shocked a little comforted. It's a new world and I hope to blog about it, but for now I have college days to enjoy! Will blog when feeling like it but that will probably be minimal.  Thanks for following along for the year.

Cheers to the world, Catherine

Sound of Music? Psh China

- Catherine

Crossroads Hong Kong

Here's a bit of the motley crue of interns - this is just a portion - those that got away from work Friday 1pm - 5pm.

Super cool thing - we did a simulation of poverty where we were split into families and we had to make paper bags out of newspaper with glue (flour +water - i guessed the ingredients correctly - hello! paper mache) and then we could make the bags in 3 10-minute increments. We had to then sell the bags 10 at a time to the "shop" - Food costs us 100 dollars, rent for our slum 180 and then a clean toilet 30 but that was optional. 

Trying to make the bags in a hurry, we scrambled to make more bags for more money, but ended up selling watches, shoes, "hugs" - yeah, a bit surreal and disgusting to realize how lucrative a "hug" was in comparison to the paper bags. After the end of the first 10 minutes, my group made only 210 dollars. Not enough for rent, but we sold some shoes to cover that. Because we didn't pay for the bathroom, we were penalized so only 1 worker was able to make bags for 2 of the 10 minutes, then the other 4 could join once "cured." We made more money that round after we sold more possessions, made sloppier bags, and gave hugs away like candy to the "land lord."

The final round had another level - if we made 500 dollars before the end of the third round we could send one of our children to school.  We became animals desperate to make a dollar - selling our selves, our bags, anything. We ended up having over 1400 dollars, but were so focused on bringing in the revenue no one dropped the 500 or even 1000 off at the "school" so no one became educated. By the end of the simulation, the room was trashed - no care for the environment when you are struggling to make a buck. No one in my group had shoes, watches or bracelets. We had covered our rent unlike some who were isolated to the other room giving all their bags to a loan shark, but because we hadn't paid for the bathroom only 4 of us survived.

What a surreal simulation of Slumdog's Oregon Trail. The growing trend of CSR - or Corporate Social Responsibility was the discussion point - that although it's a hot word these days, it's more and more just a dialy important reminder to each one of us that although we are struggling to get the offer or the promotion, one in 6 people in the world are struggling to make less than a dollar a day. Having to resort to such low levels of dignity and sanitation in our simulation, it was incredible to understand how this occurs in real life.  Pretty cool concept of creating a simulated global experience across the street from a beach resort in Hong Kong!   

---

Day in the Life of an Intern

4:45 am: Wake Up, dance party, attempt to iron a shirt... throw it in a pile, one of many piles. See how fast that room got.. Catherine'd

6am: show up to work, look out the window (note this is not the 6am view - it's much darker)

2pm: Gangster Rap lunch with the spot traders - here's a view of the lone USA hockey jersey for some reason in the corner of the window

8pm: head home, try and resist the temptation of pineapple buns...



Somedays I'm good. somedays, its' Buns = 1 Catherine's waistline = 0 (ahha well maybe not zero, more like too big - they simply don't size me anywhere - intimidation even if I can fit their clothes)

10pm: bed time. But credit trading now has me up by 6am and home by midnight-thirty... different hours for different folks.




Exhausted and its the weekend... going to be ready for monday.. maybe,
Catherine

Upgrade: Home Sweet Home

Here are pics of my serviced apartment in TST - fantastic living I might say. I'll be a bit spoiled when I return the states... they change my sheets twice a week and towels too!

Pictures before I unpacked my ghetto old Shanghai migrant bag. Derek made fun of me for having one, he said I was too Chinese now.

My stellar view - or maybe it's their stellar view of me?

Dreading packing this mess,
Catherine

Journey vs. Adventure

"What is a journey. 

A journey is not a trip. It’s not a vacation. 

It’s a process. A discovery. It’s a process of self-discovery. 

A journey brings us face to face with ourselves. 

A journey shows us not only the world, but how we fit in it. 

Does the person create the journey? 

Or does the journey create the person? 

The journey is life itself. Where will life take you?" 

- Louis Vuitton

Huh! (sound made similar to the post-pump up speech after any halftime in a football movie). I’m a marketing sucker despite my finance path currently, and this ad makes me respect Louis Vuitton enough to strut around in their best pair of size 42 peep toe pumps. Even if that will never happen. Yes, I'm admitting it everyone - I've got boats. Quite frankly, in Asia my shoe size is more of a spectacle than Chinese New Year.  Adorable fun-sized sales ladies in 9 countries have laughed at me once I asked for my size, pointed, giggled, took pictures and a video, yes, a video.  But I’ve learned that this is one of those aspects that defines who I’ve become, and I’m learning to accept it.  Isn't that part of the journey, Louis? Showing us not only the world, but also how we fit in it?

Honestly, the world shows you even more so of how you don't fit in it.  But what are you going to do?  You’re already in the world!  Solution: As Project Runway’s Tim Gun says, “Make it work!”

Fact: I will never be able to buy a pair of (women’s) shoes in Asia.

After 7 months of searching for shoes, 100% failure, yet if my luck in the shoe department defined how I fit in the world, the rest of my days would be full of rejection, humiliation, hopelessness, and failure.  The key is harnessing the creativity that you have to wake up with and say, Hey, I don’t fit in - what now?  How do I make this work?  Do you think that my mammoth shoe size stopped me from navigating a continent where I'm essentially illiterate?  No.  I just have bigger footsteps.  The fact that Asia has more or less proven that I do not fit in makes me search for what really makes me me, since the sales ladies kindly point out who I am not.  

The differences are clear – and clearer than trying to figure out who you are in a world where everything is easy: reading, writing, talking, eating, driving, working out, socializing, wearing gym clothes in public, finding shoes at any price in any size.  If shoes make a girl happy, then you have to be a lot more creative when you are in Asia with a size 42! And that's the splendid thing.  The joys that you attain in circumstances where you are sometimes not welcome, not approached, not answered, not considered a customer are insanely more telling and less superficial than happiness in an easy life.

Immersing yourself in a world of who you are not really kills the typical self-discovery path by process of elimination.  If I eliminated everything I am not from what is in Asia, I’d be nothing.  Okay, so I like spicy food and contemporary architecture.  But you have to learn who you ARE not just who you are not.  In Asia, I don't have to struggle with figuring out who I am by how I fit in but how the world fits into who I am. 

Unlike in America or in any more similar culture, I cannot follow the common trend, which a culture’s homogeneity absentmindedly encourages people to follow.  For instance, learning the fashion styles in America - you look for the cutest girl, you copy her style maybe add your flair if you have any (most don't).  In Asia, I copy their style and I end up leaving the store with a nice crop top instead of a floor length dress, completely missing the fad an ending up on the worst dressed list.  If I followed a culturally sensitive lifestyle (don’t work out, eat rice, slurp noodles, and nosh on bakery desserts 24/7 while wearing heels and whitening cream) I don’t become one with Asia, I  get fat! (A quality both Asia and America fear, single out, and negatively look upon; No wonder the Renaissance was the life, no judgments against curves as long as you indulged in everything, you were hip). What this has taught me is that I know now when to be the coffee, when to be a potato, and when to an egg. (the fantastic tale of egg hardens in boiling water, potato softens, but coffee flavors!) Instead of being in a world of copies or redundancy, it’s not a matter of eliminating the noise in order to find yourself.  It’s the fact that you have to make the beat to your own drum and make noise to be yourself. Philosophical stuff here on a Sunday, eh? Why not!

So you're 21 and you are having a real chat with yourself evaluating who you are, who you’ve become, how you’ve gotten here, and what’s ahead.  Seriously thinking I’m the minority on this one… add that to the list of quirks.

But this Louis Vuitton commercial really hit me and this is the sign that that I'm beginning to question myself even further (despite the shallowness that this is a luxury brand’s attempt at forcing people to buy more leather goods simply because it hits to the core.) Essentially, my motto for a while has been in line with “Can’t stop, won’t stop.” A pinball in life’s arcade. A go-getter. An up-for-anything, you say “Adventure” I say “I’m there!”  Having placed Albus Dumbledore's quote on my Facebook page last August, I'm starting to rethink its value in my life.  

The quote reads: "And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure." Fantastic words here - flighty temptress – yes, indeed, that is the essence of adventure. The elusive person I’ve been known to be. Changing my plan of action based on evaluating the adventure value in the options.  (So, if I bailed on you previously, it’s because you weren’t adventure enough… sorry).  Yet what I’ve realized, is that adventure is more about selfish risk taking than it is profiting from the journey.  Adventure means expectations have not been set and that is why adventures are thrilling – you usually surprise yourself with how much of a rush you get jumping off a suspending rope bridge into the rushing River Kwai in Thailand, three times.  But can you really grow from adrenaline?  Does it cumulate to produce something that makes you better for taking on that flighty temptress?  Spontaneity fuels adventure, whereas self-discovery accumulates through the journey.  A journey being an adventure with expected growth once you reach the finish (but what journey really has an end?) Am I outgrowing cheap thrills and expecting more out of the final product? My Goodness, am I growing up!?!?!

Has this journey I’ve been on since August forced me to grow up to fast? Maybe or is it  just about time that the little four-year-old took the brick off her head and straightened up her posture.

I may be ready to accept growing up, but not ready to return to an easy world with Barbie dolls in the flesh, where the Walmart people in my emails actually come to life, where the value of a person is rarely weighted corrected, and the time people take to listen is far less than the time people take to judge.  I'm sitting in Kowloon Park right now, as the only person in the sun.  I don't have my umbrella out because it's beautiful today and I need the vitamin D.  I'm soaking up the sun as Sheryl Crow once wrote. I've got my 45 on (assuming she's talking SPF) and I'm gonna rock on.  

Contemplating is the new black, Catherine

Spirit of the Doppelganger

Many of us have spotted that crazy haired tall girl walking around and been like, Noo way. She's in Asia! but the spririt of the doppelganger is a great one, you see something you wish to see simply because well that person has such an impression on you that you make it up in your head that they look identical to someone you know. In Asia, I see lots of doppelgangers... okay, bad joke, but How I Met Your Mother had a show on doppelgangers and they mentioned on thing: 5 years ago, we were all ourselves, but now we are just doppelgangers of that. 

True I might look like myself 5 years ago but we have all changed over those years that it's almost not the same person.  Although I wish that was so, I think I look more different 5 years ago than I personally am. But when you think about it 2010 - 5 years = 2005, wow! I was 115lbs. in Paris, living with a family, studying abroad. I was what I would consider wildly amazed by blending cultures and techno music. Well, see not much has changed. I'm now, 1__ lbs and 4.5 inches taller (when wearing 3 inch heels to work), living by myself in Hong Kong, working in FX Sales and Trading, working on average 14 hours a day, fascinated by different cultures and techno music. See not much is different. Okay, actually a lot is different and the only thing that holds the same is the international curiosity and the necessity for a beat to dance wherever I might be.  

I guess the doppelganger idea does play out, but consider what were you 5 years ago and where do you see yourself 5 years from now? Is life just a continuation of new doppelgangers, or is there something that glues the doppelgangers together to combine them as Catherine. I call it character, but some people lose that in all their changes and make such drastic life differences that they are not the same individual they were at 4, which is still my perfect age. Others, barely change so that there is no personal growth and though they might be the same person you know them as there is nothing pushing them to keep up with the rapidly changing doppelgangers of the world. 

So the important thing to get out it is that regardless of how you change whatever pace it may be, keep sight of your core - be it your quirks, your drive, your integrity, your sense of humor, (my dad would say your fitness level, but we all know that gravity and greasy chinese food are pretty insistent on destroying that), your essence that at the end of the day people can note your intellectual evolution or your "maturity" whatever that might be but they still hold the same amount of respect for you and trust for you that they did when you were just Catherine to them. 

Catherine Coley ▪ GLOBE IV ▪ BSBA Class of 2011 ▪ UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School
▪ Hong Kong cell +852.6974.4874 ▪ catherinegcoley@gmail.com

It's A BEAUTIFUL DAY!

Never looked into the lyrics but U2 speaks the truth: 

You're on the road 
But you've got no destination 
You're in the mud 
In the maze of [your] imagination 

You love this town 
Even if that doesn't ring true 
You've been all over 
And it's been all over you 

It's a beautiful day 
Don't let it get away 
It's a beautiful day 

See the world in green and blue

See China right in front of you

See the canyons broken by cloud

See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out

See the Bedouin fires at night

See the oil fields at first light and 

see the bird with a leaf in her mouth

After the flood all the colors came out (oooaoout)

 It was a beautiful day (aaaaay) Don't let it get away !!!

My Analysis of Twilight: Eclipse

First of all, I'd like to thank the academy. No, really! The entertainment industry I take for granted. Watching a movie on the big screen is actually a treat and quite rejuvenating. This fourth of July instead of gathering with patriots around a grill, I went on an expat solo trip to the movies approximately 40 feet from where I live at about 4 minutes after I woke up. My gym gave out free Twilight tickets so I jumped on the offer as hey, it's a break from Asia life for a bit. So I've decided to channel my thoughts about the movie - feel free to comment if you agree, disagree.

1. There is more fake hair dye in the cast of Twilight than the Anime Annual Convention
2. The new vampire enemy gets a gold star for attractiveness but I wish it was Hunter Parrish
3. Dakota Fanning remains the worst actress to become famous, obviously because out of the whole cast of perfectly tweezed eyebrows, Dakota's are still grizzly and unkept
4. They gave Taylor Lautner the better script - great lines there or involving him
5. The wolves are almost as beautiful as Aslyn from Narnia
6. Does anyone know what qualifies where fake contacts in vampire world? When they don't have them in is that a preference or why don't they were glasses then? or is it like Mood Ring?
7. The dramatic effects by Dakota Fanning's crew further validate my theory that she is the worst actress in the world. Dako I'm sorry, but really you are not a cross over start from awkward childhood to teen queen.
8. Why was I the only one in the theater to gasp with every shirtless scene and giggle at the jokes. Perhaps the subtitles left out all the subtle humor. Haha!

Well, off to bed, must wake up for my now routine 3am work start! Wahooooo great sunday!

- Catherine