Read Reid's Blog

August 26, 2005

What a great last day of work! I actually didn’t do any work; I had lunch with Gordon Chang and learned a lot about his interest in history, how he got started, and his life at Princeton, in Oakland, and also about his family. Most interesting was hearing that he got into history because he wasn’t good at anything else (like me!), he was commencement speaker at his high school graduation (like me!), and he was involved with a lot of activist activities at college (like me!). So, what a cool guy and I’m glad to be working with him more the coming year.

Chris drove me to the Roosevelt offices to store some bags there. I’m so glad I can store stuff so close to campus! It’s going to make life a lot easier when I come back.

In the afternoon I read about Tokyo Disneyland for my Tokyo class – what an interesting book! I learned a lot about how Disneyland is run, from hiring its employees to teaching them how to “smile” and how they focus on making Disneyland a fantasyland where everything is “staged” as a performance, from a child spilling a drink and a costumed character picking it up while on the way to another location to the scripted dialogue.

Tonight was Jenny’s leaving-for-China-so-I-need-to-eat-all-the-American-food-I-can night. Stephanie, Jenny, AJ, Justy, Seamon, and I went to In-n-Out (I ate an animal-style 2×2), Krispy Kreme (chocolate sprinkled donut), Pho (brisket/meatball pho shared with Jenny), and then to Denny’s for some cheese fries. Chris came over to Castano later and we drank some Goose. And that was it.