SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Stu Jay Raj puts us all to shame.  He speaks 29 languages. Fifteen fluently. Amazingly, he is Australian.

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SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – Now that Sarah Palin’s brief and spectacularly ephemeral star has, for now at least, burnt out brilliantly in the international night sky, a small sigh of relief has been exhaled around the world.

But the relief is just as palpable for reasons other than having someone who can’t distinguish between nations and continents at the helm of the world’s most powerful nation. I’m a brunette with a fringe, you see, and I wear spectacles. For reasons entirely to do with slackness and nothing to do with fashion, I very frequently like to pile my hair up on top of my head, albeit for a lot less than a $10,000 a month stylist. For the past two months I’ve had to think twice. I’ve cringed as I’ve walked out the door wearing a red jumper, only to have some wit gafaw at my hair and ask me if I can pronounce “nuclear.”

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Has i-banking permanently lost its sheen?

LONDON, UK — Current market conditions and mass lay-offs are making students re-think joining the ranks of investment banks. Newspapers in both the US and UK have reported this and, although the evidence seems anecdotal, it is a story that instinctively makes sense.

However, it’s not only job security leading to the hesitation of students, but the view that bankers have now been exposed as contributing so little to society. Structuring and trading complex banking products (in this case collaterised debt obligations or CDOs) reminds me of building a room full of mirrors, then disappearing with the cash. CDOs are the very reason why sub-prime defaults are linked to, and therefore have crippled, the wider global economy. Sure, structured finance bankers have lost their jobs and done little for the world, but will there really be a sustained trend away from joining i-banks?

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They say that success is demonstrated best by how you respond when you get knocked down, and election night 2008 is how America responded

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA — November 4, 2008. The student lounge began filling up at 3.00pm, as the first polls around the country began to close on the East Coast. The flyers advertising the event said that no alcohol would be provided, but nonetheless, cases of beer and bottles of wine had been procured — though hopefully they would be used to toast to victory rather than drown our sorrows.

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STANFORD, CALIFORNIA – As an international student, I keep a close eye on exchange rates. The majority of my savings and investments are denominated in Australian dollars, but the majority of my expenses flow out in U.S. dollars. Therefore, fluctuations in the AUD/USD rate affect my purchasing habits. And the fluctuations that have happened over the last three months have been nothing short of breathtaking. Breathtakingly bad.

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Race is still a white hot issue in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA — Circa 1987, the flavour of the month for ethnic Malays was the soaking of traditional daggers with the blood of fellow countrymen (Chinese, sweet and sour). The idea of the “Kris drinking Chinese blood” was plastered across placards in a particular rally as the speaker poured gasoline upon a crowd burning with racist hate. As the country hovered on the brink of another racial crisis, a kris was unsheathed, lifted and waved around with gusto — for an Oscar-worthy effect — by the speaker on the podium.

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In a world increasingly conscious of cultural relativism, some things remain absolute

L’VIV, UKRAINE — There are very few absolutes in life. Having spent a lot of time at university, I once thought that there were no absolutes. This is the disease known as post-modernism.

But I always knew this was wrong. Even when I was most vehemently arguing that everything is relative, I knew that some things aren’t.

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