This was originally posted on blogger.

Hello there!

I’ve realized that as life goes on and I meet more people and live in more places, it becomes challenging to keep in touch with everyone on how our lives are going.

So here’s my solution: an email list! I plan on sending it out just twice a year (around January & July). This way, I can share about my life and elaborate more than I could in an Instagram post description.

This list also makes me remember to keep in touch with family and friends, past and present. If you are reading this and it’s been a while since we’ve talked, drop me a line, long or short! I hope we can catch up soon.

So onto the updates! In this post: Graduation, Music & Arts, Research, and Taiwan.

Warmly,

Rohan

Graduation

It’s hard to believe but in May I did graduate from UC Berkeley! I thouroughly enjoyed my time there, and I was especially grateful for this last year being in-person.

Graduation was quite the riot. The stadium was unbearably hot, and the audio quality sucked. So all the famous people on-stage spoke to a fidgetty and distracted crowd of students on the field of Memorial Stadium. I had a great time nonetheless – it was like a 6,000 person mixer! After graduation, I spent a week with my parents in Yosemite National Park.

And then I stayed in Berkeley for a few weeks packing up and saying goodbye to friends. I will miss my friends, the joy of being a student, the charms of the city and Berkeleyans.

Music & Arts

This last semester was an extremely fruitful time for me. Since I had finished most requirements for the economics degree, I was fortunate enough to take two performing arts classes. One was theater, where we did various scenes and monologs and even musical theater throughout the semester. I had a wonderful, energetic teacher and most other students in the class were sweet young freshmen, so it was a wholesome time. A recording of me doing a Forrest Gump monolog is here on Youtube.

I also took a class in jazz improvisation and reconnected with my study of the saxophone. I had another incredible teacher. We focused partly on music theory and partly on free jazz and playing like you mean it. That last part really struck a chord in me… Before, I was used to reading the notes on a page and playing them as accurately as possible. But now, I’ve realized that there’s infinite ways to play any song, and so many ideas that can only be expressed through music (or sound). Some ideas are ugly, some are beautiful, but that’s all part of art. I’d like to share recordings etc. of me playing music at some point, when I decide how!

As an aside, one small thing I learned recently was how to use music notation software. So here’s song I wrote about Tamiami Boulevard. It’s a main drag near my parents’ new home in Florida.

Research

I wrote an academic paper that’s coming out in October! It’s a review paper on the “Economics of the Wildlife Trade and Consumption”. I’ve been working on this paper part-time since the summer of 2020 and pleased to say it’s in its final version.

We didn’t directly do empirical research but summarized the significant discoveries thus far and reframed it for economists. I’m grateful to Gordon Rausser and David Zilberman, my co-authors. They are well-established agricultural economists and guided me through the process.

I’m proud of the work. I now feel more knowledgable about the wildlife trade than I ever thought I would be. The wildlife trade has numerous causes (as you might read in the abstract) and results in threats to endangered species, serious animal exploitation, and increased risks of creating pandemics like COVID-19. I was happy to work on a project I felt was important and neglected by economists and social scientists generally.

Nonetheless, throughout the process I realized that academia is slow, solitary work. As much as I enjoyed the topic, there were times were I got de-motivated working at my computer so much, especially without any peers to talk through ideas with. So I take it as a lesson for what kind of work I want to do in the future.

Taiwan

I just moved to Taiwan! I’m teaching at an English “cram school” (after-school, supplementary education) called Schoolhouse Language Center in Kaohsiung City (pronounced: GAO-shiong). My friend from Berkeley, Leon, is also with me teaching at the same school.

A lot people are thrown off to hear this update. People also sometimes confuse Taiwan with Thailand, Vietnam, or China. It’s understandable. But Taiwan is a unique and remarkable island! Mandarin, English and Taiwanese are the main languages here. It’s an incredibly safe and well-run democratic place. Public transport in the cities is extremely efficient, and there’s a high-speed rail that runs from Taipei to Kaohsiung.

There’s also a rich culture of vegetarian food because of Taiwan’s history of Buddhism. In general, I think there’s a lot to learn and experience, and this kind of move wouldn’t be as easy when I’m later in my career.

A large part of my motivation for living in Taiwan is to immerse myself in Mandarin. I studied Mandarin in middle/high school, but never got to a decent level of fluency, and I’ve never spent a substantial time in a Mandarin-speaking country. I enjoy speaking, reading and writing Chinese and think that it will be a useful language to know as China becomes a more central global power.

Studying so far, it has been humbling. There’s so much knowledge of English vocabulary, grammar, and literature that I’ve accumulated over the years, and it’s over-whelming to rebuild all that in Chinese. But I’m grateful to my Taiwanese/Chinese-American friends who have been helping me speak with them. I wrote a couple stories in Chinese which you can read here (shout-out to my editor!). I also may start a Instagram (ugh, I know) or something recording my experience here… but we’ll see.

Be well, joyful and healthy these next few months!