What I finished, started, and listened to
On the reading side, I finished Money Games and started The Journey of a Lifetime.
I also spent time with a few podcast episodes, including discussions on sexual assault support, domestic workers, part of Episode 26 of Across the World, and two episodes of The Weirdo.
And then there was the trip itself.
A lot of it.
Staying steady before heading out
Even though I was leaving on Wednesday, I still worked seriously on Monday and Tuesday, and on Wednesday morning I got up early to hand things over to several coworkers before heading off. I was oddly pleased with that.
At some point I came across a question-and-answer exchange: if tomorrow were the last day of your life, how would you spend it? The answer was: keep your plans unchanged, and do what you were already supposed to do.
It sounds a little like motivational fluff, but somehow it did land with me. A short-term change in plans shouldn’t be enough to throw your whole rhythm into chaos. There’s something grounding about continuing to do what you should be doing, consistently, without getting swept away every time the near-term goal shifts.
What stayed with me from the podcasts
The two episodes of The Weirdo left very different impressions on me.
The one about sexual assault support was heavy. The speaker’s helplessness came through clearly. Because of gaps in the legal system, limits in education, and the persistence of backward social attitudes, this is not a problem that can be solved at the root anytime soon. In practice, the work often comes down to dealing with individual cases and helping whoever can still be helped. And there is also a painful reality built into that work: some rescue efforts fail. People working in public-interest roles sometimes have no choice but to watch victims continue sinking, making one bad step after another.
But the episode that affected me most was the one on domestic workers.
A female speaker rather matter-of-factly framed the existence of women domestic workers as a form of male oppression over women, and urban oppression over the rural poor. There was an instinctive pity in the way she looked at these workers. But one domestic worker spoke with striking honesty and confidence: no, this job had given her a sense of professional achievement. The income helped support her family, and the trust she earned from clients by doing her work well gave her something she had never imagined for herself before. As an ordinary woman from a rural background, she had found confidence and dignity in her work.
That made a strong impression on me. Jobs like domestic work have, in a very real sense, helped many women discover professional confidence and realize their own value. My main takeaway was simple: don’t assume you already understand other people’s lives. And don’t look at those you consider “weaker” through a lens of pity. A lot of the time, that kind of pity serves only to move ourselves.
Rethinking MBTI on the way to the airport
On the way to the airport Wednesday, I listened to part of Episode 26 of Across the World, which focused on the four MBTI dimensions. I only got through the E/I and F/T parts.
E and I are fairly easy to grasp as extroversion and introversion. But I had always assumed F and T simply meant emotional versus rational. After listening, that felt too simplistic.
At a deeper level, both F and T are rational; they just reason from different angles. F-types are more likely to think from another person’s perspective and tend to have stronger empathy. T-types, meanwhile, are more inclined to examine whether the other person’s perspective is actually correct, and whether the overall chain of logic holds up.
A simple example: if someone says, “Based on premise A, we now need to solve problem B,” an F-type may quickly understand premise A, accept it as valid, and move toward solving B. A T-type is more likely to stop and ask whether premise A is correct in the first place.
On the surface, T can look more rational. But in many real-life situations, F-types are better at offering emotional support because they can genuinely connect with how someone else feels.
During the trip, I kept noticing how the F- and T-type friends traveling with me communicated, and in many ways it lined up with what the podcast described. It honestly felt like a small door had opened.
Three days of “vacation” that felt more like field training
From Thursday through Saturday, the trip really began—but calling it a vacation feels generous. It was essentially nonstop hiking.
We spent three straight days on the trail, walking 6 to 8 hours each day, and covered Angels Landing, The Narrows, and The Wave.
The Wave was by far the toughest. I carried four liters of water and spent eight hours trekking through the desert. On the final stretch, I even had to use scrambling techniques. So no, this was not exactly a relaxing getaway. It was more like voluntarily signing up for endurance training.
Still, the mountaineering course I took earlier this year had done its job. My fitness had been built up well enough that three consecutive days of hiking didn’t really cause any problems.
Finishing Money Games in the cracks between the miles
During scattered bits of downtime on the trip, I finished Money Games. It was a fascinating read.
The book goes in detail through how Newbridge negotiated with the Korean government after the Asian financial crisis, eventually acquiring Korea First Bank and carrying out its reforms. Roughly 80% to 90% of the book is devoted to the early negotiation stage, and one thing becomes very clear: dealing and negotiating with a government is exhausting.
The story is told entirely from the point of view of the buyer—foreign capital trying to make sense of the acquisition. What I found myself wondering, though, was how the seller side saw it at the time, especially Koreans living through it. And that led me to a broader question: if a similar acquisition happened in China—as Newbridge did in fact acquire Shenzhen Development Bank—how could I, as a Chinese reader, understand the event as fairly as possible?
Nothing much to fix
Honestly, not much to improve this week.
Work hard. Play hard.