A Journey to the West

I am an economist by education and a finance guy by work. Therefore, isn't it a bit sad that I was never remembered as such but mostly by all the stories I told?
After I graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business, a classmate approached me suggesting I put a talk I gave at Stanford into an article as he liked it too much. The talk of course was not about economics or finance but my experience navigating through the educational system in China, UK and then US. The experience was a painful one to me but a painfully funny one to my classmates. They loved it and so seemed the general readers from the popularity of the article I eventually wrote for the American Affairs journal. It was even mentioned by the site RealClearPolitics although it had little politics in it.
But it is OK and I have a big heart. I know I am never going to anywhere close to my hero Warren Buffett anyway: I started compounding too late, unlikely to live as long and my rate of return was too low. The only places I can match him are the love for Coke, rejection from Harvard Business School and the desire to be remembered as a teacher. So if I can share my experience in my education journey rather than in investing or economics, that works for me as well.
So here you go, my journey from China to the UK and later on going west again to California. If you are the few who can learn things simply by reading others' mistakes, thanks for reading this and the pleasure is all mine. However, if you, like me, could only learn after making the mistakes yourself, I hope you could at least have a similarly amusing experience. Life offers plenty of challenges and we might as well enjoy them.