Sip from the what?

I’m in London again this week to work on a project for entriq, my main client. Besides doing a lot of work, I also get to hang out in this very big and crowded city. Last night, I met up with Cormac Lawler, who’s a PhD student in Manchester and active on Wikiversity. Together with Giota, a friend of his and PhD student at the London School of Economics, we went to a pub for some beers and later to a French restaurant for dinner. Giota is studying epistemology and encyclopedias in particular, which also entails a research project on the qualitative development of Wikipedia over the past years. It was really interesting talking about their perspectives on Wikipedia and online learning communities, such as what Wikiversity strives to be and is, at least in my opinion, on a good to path of getting there.

There was one incident though last night that was entirely random yet very cool at the same time. As we were walking from the university to the restaurant, we ran into Dr. John Lovett, an economics professor at Texas Christian University from which I graduated in Mat 2006. We chatted a bit about the unlikelihood of just running into one another on this busy street in this city of over 7 million people. He’s in London for a while to take a look at local museums in preparation of teaching a class at TCU’s London Center next summer. The London center is an offering within the university’s study abroad program, which was very popular when I was still a student.

What was even more random though was what happened this morning. I was making my way from the hotel to the tube but, when I arrived at the platform, the announcer was talking about delays on the line that takes me right to the office. So I walked back upstairs to take a different line which would also take me to the same place, but on a more roundabout way. As I was standing on this platform waiting for the train to arrive, nobody else but Dr. Lovett walked up to me again. I don’t know what the odds of that are and calculating that would probably make anyone’s head hurt. This time we had more time to chat since we were both waiting on the same train, plus we also got lost and went one station in the wrong direction, which meant spending more time waiting for the train to take us back. All in all we got about half an hour to catch up, which was really cool since I hadn’t been to TCU since graduation. I was telling him about my plans to come to TCU in September for the homecoming game though so I expect we’ll meet again at that time. I’m still very surprised at the randomness of it all and I can’t wait to see who else I will meet unexpectedly around here.

Next week, I’m moving to a new place. It’s on Bornholmer Straße in the Eastern part of the city. It’s a nice top floor, 1-bedroom, 893 sq. ft. (83 m²) apartment from 1915 but recently renovated. Take a look at part of the living room:

Later today, I’m going to some local furniture stores to get some basics like a desk, chair, bed, etc. We went to IKEA last night but wanted to see what else was out there.

Things didn’t work out so well with my last landlord who was just subletting his own apartment. This time, it’s maintained by a regular property management company so I think there’ll be much less problems.

I’ve been struggling for years trying to find out what I want to do with my life. I’ve always known that I wanted to do something significant, something that would leave a mark in the lives of others. When I started college, I was a computer science major because I mistakenly thought this would be my career. I was decently good at programming so why not, right? Only I never really got along with other computer folks and the instructors especially. Too many times they appeared to take their own field too serious, as if computer science had any value for its own sake. I quickly came to the conclusion that computer science wouldn’t be my thing and that I would have to find something else.

So I moved on to economics and political science. For some reason, economics had fascinated when I first learnt about it in High School. Call it the nerdy side in me but I found the idea of voluntary mutually beneficial interactions intriguing: that two people can exchange something and both be better off afterwards. At first I didn’t really think that was possible. Surely, if I hand my money to to the guy at the movie theatre, he would be off just as well as I am with my new ticket. What economics tries to explain here is that I’m totally forgetting the internal benefit of the transaction on both parties. The ticket is obviously worth more to me than the money I gave up for it because in addition to receiving a piece of paper, I also get the opportunity to watch the next awful Aeon Flux clone. And the movie theatre guy would rather have a lot of cash than a lot of movie tickets because you can’t pay rent for the place with those.

So I’ve just told you I’m a giant nerd. What does any of that have to do with helping people? Well, the cool thing is that all of this is happening totally voluntary. Nobody’s holding a gun to my head telling me to buy a ticket and nobody’s threatening to bust the movie theatre’s guy’s kneecaps if he didn’t sell the ticket to me. The only reason we’re both doing this is because we both thing we’ll benefit. That’s pretty powerful stuff because it basically means that, if we want to affect people’s behavior, we just have to make the desired behavior beneficial to them.

Poverty and disease exists because there’s someone who stands to benefit from it existing. Or who doesn’t benefit from it not existing, which is really the same thing. If we know what that benefit is, or if we can create some sort of benefit out of getting rid of poverty and disease, we’ve solved the problem. And that’s why I want to become an economist and go to grad school.

Does anybody have any idea how to put this in words a selection committee would wants to read and be ecstatic about?