I’m also looking for an apartment in Palo Alto, California right now. I can’t believe summer will be here in just six weeks! I’ve started making tentative plans with the other UChicago Bay Area kids so hopefully I’ll have stuff to do, and I want to spend a decent chunk of time in San Francisco since I’ve never been there before. Also, at the end of my gig, I’ll be going to Lake Tahoe in late July for the Wheel reunion. We’re renting a huge lake house so that should be a blast.

Afterwards, it’s to Texas for a week or so, and on the way back I’ll drive up my car so that I can embark on the Ultimate Midwest Roadtrip that I’m planning with a friend from school. Two weeks, close to 4,000 miles of road to cover. The main points of interest are camping out in Yellowstone for a few nights and seeing Mt. Rushmore. But we also want to go horseback riding, do the whole B&B thing, see Amish country, visit ghost towns, go fishing or ziplining, hiking, etc. I’m excited. We’ll be traversing Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. I’ve never been to any of those states, so it should be an adventure.

That’ll bring me to late August, and school doesn’t start until late September. I’m definitely going to visit my sister and Dan in Houston at some point, and depending on the money situation I’m thinking a trip to New York or Boston (or both) is in order.

So, yeah. Lots of traveling ahead. Last quarter was fun with musical and Vis Moot activities, but I’m a little exhausted with it all, so I’m just going to focus on knocking out these last few weeks, and then it’ll be all travel, travel, travel.

EDIT: I wrote this post last week, remembered that I had thought I’d left something out, and I realized I didn’t even mention that I’m going to China in September! So, yeah. I’ve never been to China, so yay for new experiences.

Mostly, it was heartwarming to see everyone doing well and happy with their lives and choices in careers (or at least putting on a convincing show). It’s weird to think of us all back in high school playing Tetrinet in class, doing problem sets, coming up with skits, doing artsy projects, talking about prom dates and all sorts of silly things. Now, a significant portion of our little IB class is married and some have kids. And, of the thirteen that got together over break, three were in law school, three were in medical school (or soon to be), and three had masters degrees. Others had very serious-sounding jobs, haha.

It’s comforting to see that through the stress, moving, debating over jobs, majors, colleges, and a bunch of other dilemmas, everyone seems to have gotten through it all and come out on top and are able to be supportive of each other and happy for each others’ various accomplishments.

So, yeah, break was nice. Happy holidays!

One of my favorite things about being in New York City in a job with fairly little responsibility is that there’s always people coming and going and it’s easy to make time for them and to take weekend trips, too. So, the itinerary for the next month or so –

Next weekend, Daniel, who I haven’t seen in over three years now, is dropping by for a visit. The weekend after, (the fantastically talented) Brooke will be here. The week after, I’m going to Seattle for a cousins’ reunion, minus Caroline, who’s off to China. And the week after that it’s off to Florida to hang out with the Emory/Just Loop It gang at Dan the Man’s place in Sarasota. And then, the following weekend, FINALLY, my sister is coming to visit! Which has been a long time coming — so, it’s shaping up like the next month and a half will pass by pretty quickly.

On a less upbeat note, but still pertaining to the topic of comings and goings, now that our two-year stints are up at the law firm, the old guard will be moving out to be replaced by newer, more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed legal assistants. Today was Peter’s last day which was great for him and sad for us, and it looks like at some point in May, Christina will be leaving the firm, which I know is going to colossally suck for me.

Also, I really need to figure out what I’m going to do about law school. I’m a little (read: very) heartbroken to leave New York, but it just seems way to expensive to stay. Even apart from tuition bills, the cost of living is really hard to justify if I have no income. Honestly, moving was not an easy process for me, not unlike how moving to Atlanta was for college. I feel like I finally created some sort of life here and now it’s time to go. At first I was considering just moving home for the sake of getting out of my job, but due to cost considerations, it makes more sense to just stay, work and only move once when it’s time for school — wherever that may be.  I found that I was actually a relieved to be sticking around a little while longer.

While there are a LOT of ways to get from New York to D.C., there are only a few ways to get from Charlottesville to D.C. Namely, Greyhound, Amtrack (sold out) and by Air (very expensive). I ended up taking a Greyhound at 2:15 AM to arrive at Richmond at 4:30 AM. Then, I went from Richmond at 5:30 AM to arrive at Charlottesville at 6:50 AM. I finally, finally got to Sleep Inn at 7:30, unpacked, took at shower and called a cab to get to UVA at 8:45 — just 15 minutes before registration ended and with no sleep. I looked pretty rough that morning, haha.

Anyway, the rest of the trip proceeded much more smoothly, I really liked the current students I met, and I was really excited about the IP Law Curricular Session thing I attended, which reminded me of why I wanted to study law in the first place. The professor discussed why or why not and based on what grounds comedians would or could have a cause of action against other people who stole their jokes, haha.

As for UVA as a whole, while I am undoubtably glad I went to visit, the trip really wasn’t determinative. My main reservations are job prospects, location and diversity when it comes to UVA and honestly, I still have those fears.

So that’s where I am. Law school applications are behind me, and law school deposit deadlines loom ahead. I’ll see in the coming weeks how the situation develops.

Also, I went to Panama for a week-and-a-half over Thanksgiving and then Texas where it managed to snow the one day I was in Houston. Thanks, Mother Nature. Panama was amazing, except for that one place with bad water that made me break out. Yeech. And I was also tired the first few days — I spoke a lot of Spanish, and I think dredging it out of my memory was surprisingly enervating. However, there was sun, snorkeling and beaches, and I went on a coffee tour, saw dolphins and sloths, met the indigenous people, watched a boat go through the Panama canal locks, went hiking in the mountains, etc., so it was worth it. We also ate a lot of fancy meals and fruit there was so good– I can’t even compare it with the fruit in New York, it’s too depressing.

Anyway, I returned to the dank coldness of the city and managed to get sick. Fast forward two weeks later, I’m all better and now there are inches and inches of lovely power-like snow all over the place. Also, since returning from my trip, I’ve gotten admission into Duke, Georgetown and NYU Law (I’d already gotten into UT in the beginning of November)! (!!!!!) So, I’m excited for law school, but I’m a teeny bit scared of how much work it will be. Regardless, thanks to the happy news, I’m sure it’ll be a very merry holiday season.

Now that law school is close to definite, I’m starting to realize that my time in New York might actually be coming to a close — at least for now. It went by extremely quickly. My two years of indentured servitude to the firm is up in July, so I’ll probably be leaving then or even earlier. Seven months. Weird.

We also went to a showing of the Best of Second City (a well-known Chicago skit/comedy/improv club), which was hilarious. We took the Architectural Boat Tour of the city, we watched fireworks (an oddy death-defying and harrowing experience, actually) and Ali’s parents were gracious enough to cook and grill for us! Yummy!

So, yeah, that weekend was great. Speaking of Chicago, I bought a ticket to watch Hugh Jackman and Craig Daniel in a limited run of A Steady Rain, which is a broadway play set in Chicago about two cops, etc. I got the ticket for the day after my September LSAT. After the June administration, I went to watch Neil Labute’s reasons to be pretty, because I thought it would be nice to relax afterwards and to have something to look forward to that wasn’t the LSAT. Well, I thought that play was great, so it worked out pretty well.

Anyway, the 1-year anniversary of my moving to the city passed by last month, and I didn’t even realize it. I suppose it’s making me want to be sure to check off all the things that I had planned on doing in my time here — I’m going to John Stewart in September, too. I should have more time for these things once law school apps are over, but I don’t want to risk putting it off and never doing these things. Oh yeah, I also turned 23 last month, so I am rapidly approaching old age, haha. My birthday was great — we went to Cuba, per Rita’s reservations, where you get a free cigar with your meal that some guy that rolls in a corner — hilarious! A mish-mosh of middle school/high school/college/work friends came, which was awkward at times, but fun for me, haha.

Anyway, post-Hawaii, I am now three different skin colors. My upper body is now the normal color that humans should be — enough color to look healthily sunkissed, but not so much that my skin color fails to correctly reflect my ethnicity. My legs, meanwhile, have been burnt to a crisp and are too dark or a bright red. Hot, I know. My torso has remained its usual pale-ish, albino-y white. Ahhh.

Luckily, most of the color differentiation can be attributed to a day-long kayaking trip that we took which was wonderful (kayaking to a nearby island, lunch on the beach, mini-geography lesson, some snorkeling, and kayaking home), so it was worth it.

Anyway, I won’t recite the details of the trip here — my sister took plenty of pictures so I’m sure I can look back on it that way. Aloha!

That said, I’ll be visiting some new locations in the next few months. My travel plans are as follows:

November 21 – 23: Boston, MA
November 26 – December 4: Hawaii
December 12 – 14: Atlanta, GA

Also, sometime in March or April, I’m trying to plan a short week-long trip to Spain, which has been on my to-do list for a long time. The Boston trip is for the Harvard-Yale game; I’ll be staying with one of Amy’s friends. Obviously, I have no interest in the actual results of the game, I’m just going to hang out with old high school friends living in the Northeast.

Hawaii is my Thanksgiving trip with my family. The plus side is that it’ll be a nice change from the current weather conditions to be able to get into a bathing suit and do water activities under the sun. The con is, of course, I’ll have to wear a bathing suit. Yeech.

The Atlanta trip is tentative. The tickets are about $250, which I can afford technically, but I don’t know if I’d rather save up for other things like the aforementioned trip to Spain. We’ll see.

Anyway, those are just some of my updates on life. Obviously, if anyone’s going to be in any of those places at those times and would like to meet up, I’m sure I’d be happy to see you unless you suck. Suck less! Just kidding.

Work is…going. There are better days and worse days, mostly depending on the type and amount of work that is available. Oh, we also had our FIG outing that was actually really fun. They took us on a tour of the Federal Reserve gold vault, and later that night we had a lovely dinner and drinks at Cipriani’s at 55 Wall where we got to meet everyone’s plus-ones (e.g. wives and girlfriends). I discovered the next day that going to work partially hung over really sucks.

Anyway, now that the financial crisis has somewhat abated, at least in terms of rush-rush spur-of-the-moment deals taking place every other day, I’m re-focusing on my LSAT studying regime. I’m trying to gather the motivation to take 1-2 full length, timed exams each week until the end of the year. After that, I’ll try to ramp it up to 2-4 until February 7th, which is my test date. In all, I hope to take roughly 30 timed tests by the time I take the real thing. Mostly, I think I need to get used to having to concentrate for such a long period of time, which has been difficult for me. Additionally, I’d like to have done ALL of the available logic games by test day. That’s the goal, anyway.

In all, I’ve completed 6 full length tests currently, but only 2 of which were timed. I’ve can tell I’m improving, but I need to up my score by 7 points to reach my goal. I’m not sure if this is too lofty a goal, but we’ll see. Wish me luck, please!

Anyway, the wedding was really nice and the whole thing took place at a really romantic beach-side resort in San Diego, CA. They are a pretty chill couple so the wedding took out a lot of the unnecessary pomp and circumstance that tends to make them really tedious; the whole ceremony took all of — 15 minutes? Yeah, shortest wedding ever, or so I’m told. Just walking up the aisle, short sand ceremony, him: I do, her: I do, kiss kiss, the end. It was fun to see all the family again though it was a bit unbalanced (her side: 42 people, his side: 7, haha). Overall, it was a really well-planned wedding, I think.

Well, I’m back at home now catching up on some reading. I’ve been trying to get through Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, but I’m finding that it’s just a little bit much with all the spirituality and stuff. I mean, the parts when she is on her bathroom floor writing and telling herself it is the voice of God pouring forth from her hand (and this happens multiple times) — yeah, color me skeptical. Sorry.

I’ve had better luck with a collection of short stories by David Sedaris – I guess they’re technically essays, which is useful to know if you’re ever looking for his stuff in a bookstore – which I switch to each time the Gilbert book starts to get on my nerves. I’m still determined to finish it, but it’s definitely testing my willpower.

Finally, los videojuegos. I beat Fable yesterday. I actually really liked it. My sister’s friend Marc says it’s too short, but I thought it was a good length if you do all the optional sidequests (which I am wont to do) and take the time to find everything and try out different options. Lessee, I’ve also played The Movies (gets very boring around after 5 hours or so), the Sims Castaway Stories (waste of time, non-fun, WAY TOO LINEAR, gets boring after the first hour and a half), and I’m about three-quarters of the way through Neverwinter Nights. Neverwinter Nights is very long. I don’t know how long I’ve been playing but I’ve been trying to get through this game since prior to finals. Looong. But quite good. I think more hardcore gam3rz would appreciate the length/depth more than I do.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

But enough with the introspection. The Europe trip is officially on! The flights and hotels are booked, credit cards have been charged, and now we’re on the prowl for things like travel adapters. Here’s the itinerary thus far:

TH March 6 – Flight into London overnight
FRI March 7 – Check into base2stay in Kensington
TU March 11 – Take the light rail to Paris and check into Hotel Residence Foch
SA March 15 – Take the rail back to London and stay the night at the Hilton Gatwick
SU March 16 – Flight back to Atlanta, get home at night

By the way, in case you haven’t guessed, this is pretty much going to turn into a My-Trip-to-London-and-Paris blog for the next month and a half. I am very happy about this.

Oh, last thing, progress has been made on the job search, but I’ll give updates soon enough.

So, here’s the story: I found out someone wanted to drop out yesterday (because sign-ups were last semester) so I immediately e-mailed him, knowing that the deadline was imminent. I thought we had worked it out and was waiting for a confirmation, so I went to the coordinator’s office to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. However, after talking to her I found out he’d given his spot to someone else and I was still, well, spotless.

So, I e-mailed two other people and had “maybe”s from them. Meanwhile, I had a second problem to deal with. Both of these two other guys were assigned to rooms with three other guys. This, obviously, would be pretty awkward. I asked around and, by chance, found out that a girl had swapped out of a quad the other day. Her replacement was a guy and he’d be living with three other girls. I didn’t know if he’d be willing to give it up, though, but I e-mailed him anyway, inquiring about a swap.

Long story short, late last night, we finally worked out the details – I would take one guy’s spot and swap into the all-female room. The coordinator let us know that 3:00 today was the final deadline for everything. I turned in the forms and the check, and viola! I’m off to North Carolina on my first skiing trip next week!

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.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Anyway, I just wanted to do a quick post before tomorrow since I don’t know how busy I’ll be from then on because I’m going to New York tomorrow! Basically, after leaving Los Angeles, I flew back to Texas with my family. A couple days later my sister swung by and I went with her and her friends, Sean and Ivan, to Houston. We all stayed with her and her roommate in their apartment. We all slept in her room, but Sean got the bed because no one wanted to sleep with him. Ha ha.

The day before they left we went downtown to a club at night and accidentally parked in some office building because their gate stayed open too long and we thought it was paid parking. It was a fiasco. The club was interesting — it was all Asians and they had a live band playing, like, 80′s and 90′s music, but then all the Asians looked confused and were just standing around with these “Where’s the techno?” looks on their faces.

Iris and I watched Borat, which has been long overdue, especially because my Communication Law professor this semester, Joe Beck, actually represents Borat. It was funny. We made smoothies from scratch and lemon muffins from a Williams Sonoma mix. Delish. If you like smoothies, here’s a tried and true smoothie recipe I’ve used tons of times that has never let me down:

Ingredients

• One and a half (1 1/2) cups, or eight ounces, of blueberries
• One (1) cup of orange juice
• Half (1/2) cup of plain, low-fat yogurt
• Half (1/2) cup of ice

Instructions

Put in blender. Mix. Drink. (It’s a little thick, so, add more water or OJ as needed.)

I’m somewhat apprehensive about New York just because I feel so all over the place and unsettled right now. Hopefully the three days before the internship starts will be enough time to get my mind focused (and perhaps to pick up a new pair of shoes? Maybe?) so I can concentrate. Wish me luck!

We’ll see if that actually happens though because she’ll have to fight off my dad for his attentions — Dave’s an electrical engineers like my dad so I guess my dad seems to think its kismet. ANYWAY.

I’d like to be able to say I went surfing, but more correctly, my sister and her friends went surfing whereas I was hugging a surfboard for an extended amount of time and drinking copious amounts of water. Very salty, that oceanwater. But it was fun and I enjoyed looking all goofy and hardcore in my wetsuit, haha. We also went to her friend’s uncle’s house to eat and had these banana fritter things – I think it’s a Filipino dish – that were so (so, so) good. Oh man.

After my sister left, I went to visit some temples with my parents which was somewhat less exciting, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. (I’ll upload pictures later.) It was about as fun as hanging out with aunts and uncles over the age of 55 or so ever gets. We also saw a lot of pictures of my parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents when they were younger so that was cool.

Anyway, that pretty much sums up the bulk of my trip. I spent a lot of time playing on my sister’s new Dell MX1210, which made me want a new laptop. Mmm. Oh, and speaking of nerdy things, I played a PS2 game with my cousin Dennis and I can’t seem to figure out what game it was. He said it was called Time-somethingorother and it was an arcade-styled first-person shooter and you used a plastic gun to shoot at the screen. The plotline was something about some villain planting missiles on an island so you have to go stop him. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Anyway, we pulled through the mishap at the beginning and did pretty well, I think. In the 54 hours between getting the case and doing the last presentation, we only slept seven hours or so and on day two, I worked 20 hours straight without leaving the hotel room. Our powerpoint (which I made) was pretty great anyway. However, now that the competition is over, I need a new hobby to squander my time on. I’ve decided to learn Korean! Cho-neun han-guk-mal-ul moht ham-ni-da. (I don’t speak Korean.) w00t.

I’m being completely serious, actually. I started uh…today. But I put in a good five hours in order to get down the basic sentence structure and subject/object particles. Next up, tenses! I tried learning from web sites and such, but I may need to get a book because verb conjugation has never been my strong point. I probably only know 50-ish Korean characters right now, but that’s okay because I want to focus on grammar before delving into building a vocabulary.

My plan is to continue LSAT studying and attempting to learn Korean throughout the summer. Hopefully I’ll have something to show for my efforts when the new school year starts. Wish me luck! An-nyong-hi kyeh-se-yo! (Goodbye!)

I’m in Washington D.C. right now, participating in a Business Strategy Case Competition sponsored by Georgetown. We got our cases yesterday at about noon and we’ve been working non-stop ever since, breaking only to eat. The presentation is on Saturday, but I think we worked about 8 hours yesterday and we’re hoping to get in another 14 hours today.

It’s grueling, but fun because the topic is non-profit organizations and the case is about a real non-profit who is looking for ideas to expand their operations. The impression we’re getting is that our mock “consultant” role could really change and better their organization if we presented them ideas that are feasible and well-thought out. Basically, KEYS for the Homeless gets donations from hotels of gently-used items and delivers them to local homeless shelters in the Washington D.C. area.

Anyway, hopefully, we can go back to Emory having represented Goizueta well and having dome some good. Wish us luck!

Anyway, my roommates are an orderly pair, which is great, but sometimes it gets to be a bit much so I went on a cleaning strike the day they left. It went pretty well until I realized that I, too, do not enjoy living in flith, and earlier today I started cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning … and now the apartment is cleaner than before they left. What can I say, I am weak. And, I remember why I like my roommates.

At any rate, I’ll be sort of having my own mini-vacation next month anyway. I’m leaving on the 11th for Washington D.C. because of Georgetown’s Business Strategy Challenge, which is a student-run undergraduate case competition, where I’m going to (along with three other Goizueta kids) be representing Team Goizueta. I’ve never done a case competition before so I’m sure this will be a bit embarrassing. However, the whole thing is run by a bunch of undergrads so I’m guessing it’ll be a little to rag-tag too take all that seriously anyway.

After that, in May, I’ll be off to California for my cousin’s wedding, which will be on the 14th, which means I’ll have to miss graduation. That makes me a little sad, but … whatever. Then it’s off to NYC and maybe Taiwan right before school starts up again.

Long story short, I’m going to be jet-setting around a lot so I’m not too sad about staying in Atlanta for Spring Break. Also, I hate plane flights. And I’ve actually had a pretty good time here so far. When I got out of the movie theater after watching 300 on Saturday, the police had surrounded the building because right past the parking lot was a field where (an) armed robber(s) had escaped into. According to an officer we asked later, they caught the guys, but not before we sat around in the parking lot watching the helicopter fly around and seeing the police do their thing. Fun stuff.

300, by the way, was great.

The timing isn’t the greatest – everyone’s finally back from college and getting together. We went to Olive Garden tonight and then bowling (I had to leave early). During this time, I discovered the following:

1. Hemal’s family moved to Virgina – What the hell? When did this happen?
2. Thomas has been in Argentina for a semester. How did I not know this?
3. Nate, our wonderful Chindian, has been in Beijing and is going back to finish off this academic year. Seriously!?

Clearly, I missed a lot by being AWOL in Atlanta over the summer. Boo. At any rate, it was good to see Bo and Khang (dude, where have you been the past three years?) again. Kasey and Cathy both look great. :D Bo claims that his university’s mascot is the color green. I am appalled to discover that this is at least partially true (Dartmouth’s unofficial mascot, says Google).

Oh, and I saved the best part of this post for last. When my sister and I went to Walmart, we ran into my friend’s mom. Apparently, Kassi’s having her second child. Rosie is adorable so I’m sure this one will be a blessing, too. Fun!