Last week Kyoko, a Japanese girl I met in Korea, visited Amsterdam, and we met for some dinner and drinks. She actually lives in the UK now, so it wasn't such a long trip for her. I must admit I was a bit apprehensive at first, because of what happened during one of the last days in Korea. I'm not going to say what exactly, but for me personally it was certainly a strange experience., and I guess for her as well.

Of course, in the end it turned out to be a nice weekend. We talked openly about what happened, and it's always nice to talk about stuff that happened in Korea. We'd actually never really talked much to each other before, but it's funny to hear that we form more or less the same opinions about most of the different people we met there, even though we hung with different crowds. It was a pretty fun time, and talking about it definitely makes me feel a bit nostalgic.

One of the things we mentioned is how much more confident and social I seem to be compared to 5 years ago. I remember saying to her that I don't like to pinpoint any one reason for that, and that I rather see it as a long and hard process. But looking back, I have to admit that I made a huge step thanks to my experiences in Korea. Perhaps that's the reason why I feel Korea will always seem special to me, even if I did not harbor any particular feelings about the country at the time.

Lately I've been thinking a lot of picking up another education. Not to advance my career or anything like that, but out of pure interest. My mind has been restless lately, perhaps because it has spent so much time thinking about my job, and it needed something else to keep it distracted. So I've been looking on the University of Amsterdam website to check what courses they offer. My preference goes to literature (of course), though philosophy and history also interest me.

Sometimes I wonder why I chose International Business (IB) when I was younger. It wasn't too bad, and I guess things turned out pretty good in the end, but I realized that I never really experienced much fun or passion during my education. The funny thing is that my favorite course by far was Distributive Justice, when it should not even have been available for IB students if not for an administrative error. It had a very philosophical angle, which just reaffirms my interest in those kinds of subjects (though I also really liked the workshops SQL and Working with spreadsheets, which is actually a large part of what I do for a living!).

In the end, I even wanted to write my thesis from a philosophical point of view (a combination of Distributive Justice and International Trade), as opposed to all those hundreds of quantitative theses. Of course, like mentioned earlier, it doesn't exactly fit my education, and I wasn't really knowledgeable about it, but it was the only subject that really interested me at the time (also because I've always felt extremely annoyed by all those anti-globalists out there who often don't make sense). But I always felt I was pushed to approach things in a mathematical way, which was precisely what I did not want to do. Maybe it's a weak excuse to never finish my thesis, but I can't imagine spending months of your life working on something you don't really believe in.

Of course, the problem now is that I have a full time job. So I'm a bit disappointed that the University of Amsterdam does have a part time education on literature, but that they do not offer any classes at night or during the weekends. Working shorter hours is not an option for me, at least not on the medium short term.

Alas, knowing myself, this might be one of those things I'm thinking a lot about doing, but never actually pick up in the end. And maybe it's a good thing. I feel exhausted already when I get back from work; I can't really imagine if I have to study an additional 20 hours a week on top of that.