Much better

Instead of drinking and making raucous fun like last night, which put me in a foul mood, I went with Magic Circle folks (them that could make it, anyway, which were very few) to do a little painting tonight.

Attorneys making like artists!

After the initial shyness and anxiety over picking the right size canvas and the approximate picture I wanted to create, I had a pretty good time. The end result wasn't quite pretty, but I liked it.

I started with a sponge for the greenery at the bottom, but loved the effect, so kept it unfinished-looking. Unfortunately, that precluded a nice background to set off the structural look of the greenery. I painted the sky about four times, not satisfied with the texture, color or look the first three times. The fourth was the result of needing to scrape off the layers of paint from the first three times; I accidentally found out that scraping the paint created an unexpectedly textured finish too. And then I just globbed on the big flowery red things.

When they packed up my painting, I realized that I really liked the small square that was showing much better than the entire painting. I asked if they could cut it for me, but no dice... I don't know what I'm going to do when I leave HK next weekend.


The elegant woman from Shanghai (with the LLM from the UK and the millionaire French boyfriend) painted the best picture, but then again, she has done this twice before.

I barely did any work today, and surfed the web all day long, which never makes me feel really good -- I'd rather do a nice, solid 5-7 hours of work and go home feeling like I've accomplished something. Unfortunately, the norm is more like 10 billable hours per day, I think...

I really don't know how I feel about coming here after law school (if I get an offer). I do like living abroad a great deal, and since they pay for accommodations for the first three years, I could quickly pay off my loans and save up a little. I'd be close to my dad and grandmothers. I could work on my Korean language skills. I could learn more about Asia. But HK is pretty soul-less -- it's all about finance and making money. (Someone told me today that Macau, where only a few hundred thousand people live, compared to the over 6 million in Hong Kong, had many more tourist attractions. I'm going this weekend.) And I can tell that it's a grueling, extremely stressful job. Sigh.

The way it rolls out in my mind at this, about 2/3 of the way through the summer, is threefold. I talked to my parents about this at the HK airport before they left, and this is how I presented it:

Option A: work like a dog for a couple years at some firm, pay off loans, save some money, leave the law within 3 years. Unclear which city or which firm.

Option B: get a job in the government, hopefully the EEOC, and have more interesting work I believe in, at one third the wages and one third the time, for a number of years.

Option C: don't work in law at all.

My mom voted for option B, which is definitely reasonable. My dad voted for option D -- find a job that melds my interests (history, for one) and the training that's taken $100K and three years to acquire.

Interesting.

You know, I saw a Discovery channel show on New York yesterday, and felt a pang of homesickness and longing. It's so perverse that I should miss a place I wasn't enthused about when I was there.