Over the next week, I have an appropriately complicated journey home. I will be traveling Bangalore-Hyderabad-Mumbai-Brussels-New York-Philadelphia-Atlanta. I wonder if anyone has ever visited those seven cities in a week before.
I will still write a few more posts in the next week or so, but for now, here are 8 (the luckiest number in China) end-of-summer takeaways on varying subjects and of varying levels of seriousness:
- Both China and India are much more economically, politically, socially, and culturally diverse than I ever imagined
- China (well, Shanghai at least) was much easier to work in than I thought. India was harder than expected. I expected working in India to be easy and working in China to be difficult
- China's middle class is already bigger than I expected. India's is much smaller than I expected
- China's pollution is not a future problem, it is a problem today. And it is a big problem
- "Real" Indian food is quite good. "Real" Chinese food is hit or miss. Neither even resemble American-Chinese or American-Indian food
- I could live in Shanghai (or Hong Kong, though I would not particularly want to) if I needed to for a few years. I don't know that there is anywhere else in India or China I could move for an extended period
- I think someday I will work for a start-up. I think I would really like to run Business Development for a growing technology company. In the meantime, I think I am likely to return to investing directly after school. VC investing though is too early stage for me. I prefer working with companies that are real today rather than just future plans
- It may not always be easy to communicate with people in China and India, but they are invariably extremely generous hosts and great friends
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