Archive for October, 2007

This is version two of the blog, which currently contains 136 published posts. To some extent, this blog represents the creative excesses of a design enthusiast who is somewhere in the process of applying to grad school, working at a law firm and resides in the Financial District of New York City.



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A Good Turn?

October 30th, 2007

So, I have bad news and good news. Bad news is: I forgot to bring a camera with me to Ohio State. I know, I know, what’s the point of getting a nice camera if you never use it? I know. But that aside, it was a very good weekend, which leads me to the good news…

We won! Yay! More explaination. Paul, Eden and I competed on behalf of Goizueta Business School at the 2007 Nationwide Fisher Biz Quiz Competition, hosted by Ohio State University. It’s a quiz bowl-type competition with preliminaries, semi-finals and a televised (local station, of course) finals round. Basically, we’re assigned to read the Wall Street Journal for seven weeks and then we face off against other schools. I’ve actually worked with Paul and Eden before; we all did the Georgetown case competition together last semester along with Minnie.

Anyway, I think a lot of things were working to my advantage this weekend. For starters, Ohio State is actually my dad’s alma mater, so that’s clearly automatic luck right there. Also, I am in love with the Wall Street Journal, so that’s a no-brainer, too. In the end, Emory took home first place wins in both the individual and team competitions. We’re happy, but also relieved that we don’t get lynched by the mob that is the Goizueta administrators. Our Ohio State host was also wonderful.

Basically, we decided to divvy up all the articles by section. Because I got Marketplace, Pursuits, Weekend Journal and Personal Journal, I was also responsible for the individual competition, which is over the Personal Journal. Eden was Front Page and global What’s News. Paul was Money & Investing and domestic What’s News. In all honestly, I think my job was the easiest, both in subject matter and the sheer number of articles, though I think doing the investing section would have been very helpful.

All in all, it was a great weekend. The teams were all really nice, though the competition was decidedly male-heavy, clearly a lot of finance majors. Paul and Eden were really helpful to work with — I think we learned more explaining concepts and things to one another — usually, them explaining and me listening — than from the articles themselves. (Anyone want to know what a Ponzi scheme is? I can talk about it all day.)

We had fun (in a dorky way), but they both also gave me a lot of advice on pursuing jobs in finance, which helped me see what I was doing wrong or how to better tailor myself for the job search. They’ve both got jobs/offers at top investment banks, so they’re clearly set. Anyhow, I feel pretty read to get back out there and conquer the job search, which I have been avoiding the past month.

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Protected: Boo.

October 18th, 2007

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Truth and Self-Realization

October 17th, 2007

There’s a lot to be said about truth. In a Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway wrote that “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

I love, especially, when truth comes in unexpected forms. There are the poignant, stirring truths and then there are… other types of truths. For example, I just read a hilarious web-comic strip that is so absolutely true for anyone who has ever used online package tracking. This was me this past summer waiting for my computer to be shipped. See? Too true.

By the way, the rest of the strips on this site are pretty damn funny (in a nerdy, dorky type of way, which incidentally fits my M.O. perfectly).

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Chinese Foreign Films

October 13th, 2007

I think one of the fallouts of visiting any foreign country for an extended amount of time is having a sudden and intense interest in the celebrities of the said country.

Anyway, as such, my return from Taiwan has been marked with an extended interest in Jay Chou. What follows is the obvious: download his music, watch his music videos, pour over lyrics desperately trying to decode what the hell he’s saying (seriously, can this guy mumble any more? I didn’t think so), and finally watch his movies. So, I watched Secret, which he directed, which I thought was pretty damn good for a first effort. It was cute, I think.

(Now it gets ugly.) Last week, I followed up my Jay Chou movie viewing plans by watching Curse of the Golden Flower — holy crap. Okay, I remember when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon came out I thought it was an overrated movie that people were afraid to say was bad. Afterall, maybe they didn’t like it because they didn’t “get” it or because it’s a translation/foreign film/aren’t artsy films always a little weird? — e.g. it’s easier to give the movie the benefit of the doubt than to seem like an uncultured bigot, right? Yeah, so, Curse of the Golden Flower is so much worse.

Soooo much worse. I can’t believe how bad it was. I want to assume that people said they liked it for the reasons I stated above for Crouching Tiger, but honestly, you’d have to be a little stupid not to see how bad it was. It was just one plot turn after another that led up to bullshit. The most gruesome thing about it (other than the tens of thousands of dead corpses in the movie, of course) was seeing how much money had clearly gone into this terrible film. What a waste of stuff. Clearly an example of when liquidation value would’ve been higher than the “asset” they produced.

I don’t really have a point I’m trying to reach here. I just thought it needed to be said how bad this movie was.

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Class Tomorrow and Retirement

October 10th, 2007

I have class tomorrow, so, by all reasonable standards I should be in bed. Unfortunately, as usual, I am hard at work doing something that will have absolutely no positive effect on my life in the near future. Nonetheless, I got a sudden urge to calculate how much I need to save for retirement, and holy shit — it is a lot.

I mean, they say you should budget to spend for about 90% of your current income – so if I plan that (on average – I know I’m not going to make that much right out of school, duh) I will need 90,000 per year for 25 years (65-90?) — that’s like 2 and a quarter million dollars. Seriously? I have to be calculating something wrong. That’s a lot.

Anyway, so now college and potentially law school debt aside, I’m also worried about retirement.

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Protected: Avoidance

October 8th, 2007

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