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Twitter – Week of 2012-01-22

By on January 22nd, 2012

  • look at the extent of Japanese deleveraging and how long more they have http://t.co/9volvZ9Q #
  • Good two hours with John Mauldin this morning. He thinks there's a good chance that natural death may be optional for our generation #
  • The Fear Index http://t.co/Dfl5hwc9 #
  • Ban CNBC alums from BTV http://t.co/t5PNYK0X #
  • wtf?!"(Merkel) would consider legislation to bar institutional investors from selling bonds when downgraded" http://t.co/UsjepnbR #
  • Overnight Long/Intraday Short Gold Fund Doubles In Just Over A Year: Generates 43% Annualized Return http://t.co/DHPmCY6A #
  • anonymous-businessman-suffering-serious-ptsd-following-iphone-incident hilarious http://t.co/jxxOs12c #
  • I defy you to tell the difference between a naked prostitute and any other naked woman http://t.co/zSxFkm1d #
  • If the business world were a book it'd be in extremely small font cos of all these people trying to be on the same page #
  • So I just realized the monthly run rate of my seat on this desk is appreciably HIGHER than my own salary. Thats what i call fiscal imbalance #
  • Wow. Wikipedia is about to stage a 24 hour blackout. Good luck to last minute homework writers… #
  • Marina Bay station – now offering two ways to reach Dhoby Gaut http://t.co/g7SG5nSM #
  • Employing dudes to explain the new orange Marina Bay to low-IQ passengers http://t.co/rv5cusHg #
  • #Page 17 of 366. The rest is still unwritten. #
  • Oh hai Casin-imean-Bayfront station http://t.co/kvCT1f1A #
  • Funny how bbg writes so. Much. Fluff. http://t.co/F0mZ4g8z #
  • A selection of comments from Federal Open Market Committee meetings which resulted in laughter
    http://t.co/2aq2S0vB #
  • the baltic dry index is down 42% YEAR TO DATE. not a typo. global trade is the worst it's been since end 2008. #
  • http://t.co/KJ1Pql2x http://t.co/KJ1Pql2x #
  • in an impressive display of the lunacy that was Wall Street in the mid-2000s, CDOs started buying each others’ pieces http://t.co/cvzAiw92 #
  • In the last two years, half of all CDOs by Merrill bought significant portions of other Merrill CDOs. http://t.co/cvzAiw92 #
  • I wonder how Asian people in Hollywood answer phones. "Go for Wang" isn't quite business formal #
  • 2nd day with John mauldin http://t.co/oVuIYyJY #
  • jerry yang should just retire and enjoy life. well past his heyday. #
  • Einhorn's idiot chart http://t.co/6IyoheBO #
  • this is probably the most important economics I have learned since high school, very recommended. http://t.co/XB1k6zUF #
  • holy crap this is actually pretty good! http://t.co/MOlaA6xM great job @AlephBlog #
  • "Since inception in May 1996, Greenlight Capital, L.P. has returned 1,685% cumulatively or 20% annualized, both net of fees and expenses." #
  • "HORNETS! TONIGHT WE DINE IN HIVE!" http://t.co/1XGoK85S #
  • http://t.co/oriiQQMk #
  • 10k.126: Dell vs. Apple http://t.co/CEhUmhTQ #
  • Just realized my boss used to be a PM at Pimco. Wonder if fixed income trading ability is transferable independent of pimco's superior infra #
  • ok even my barber is asking me to get a girlfriend. this is getting ridiculous. Something wrong either with me or with society. #
  • Well done Citadel! http://t.co/upJxGmJc #
  • Oh god. Valentines freaking day ads are starting to get airtime. The day invented to make singles drown in self pity. #
  • @Namitamita you forgot the chestnuts roasting on an open fire #
  • Markets Monitor for 21 Jan 2012 http://t.co/3bqoVlFI #
  • @nduan those two things sorta contradict! #
  • Singapore: "}?>{\£*€{{>+#{^"

    Thailand: "You call THAT a flood?!" #

  • how Oprah got her start: http://t.co/SoAMWkJL #
  • "the confidence interval surrounding [the capital of “large complex financial institutions”] is greater than 100%" http://t.co/ZEZ1zQM6 #
  • i have trouble believing John Hempton's CV is what it is. http://t.co/Dex6aV9z #
  • Chuck Norris Endorses Newt Gingrich for President http://t.co/BgOgCvt9 #
  • my mum is an AMAZING chef. #

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Gleecap: S3E10 – Yes/No

By on January 21st, 2012

There was so much ground covered in this episode that I am in a bit of disbelief that it was all done in 43 minutes and 21 seconds. There was:

  • The slightly ludicrous thing between Mercedes and Sam got an upgrade to quite ludicrous. I mean, Mercedes is a world-class diva and all but fat is fat and Sam’s league is of the sort where he can waltz in to school and date Quinn Fabray by his second episode. Just sayin’: Let’s keep things in perspective here. Although I guess if this is all a prolonged plot device to work a Summer Nights duet into the opening act and to introduce a motive (any motive!) that inserts the synchro swimming number (more later) then I will forgive. Slightly.
  • Becky’s channeling her inner Helen Mirren and her short thing with Artie: As always, tastefully done (to someone who knows nothing of what it really feels like to have that disability, but tries to empathize). The fictional world in McKinley isn’t at all that much removed from the real world, and Sue’s sheer decency and respect probably makes her a role model for us all in thinking about the kind of person we want to be in these situations.
  • Moves Like Jagger is a standalone song. Forget mashing up for the sake of mashing up. What the hey was Jumpin’ Jack Flash doing in there? The sampling was so incredibly brief in the middle of Moves that I had to mentally recheck what I thought were the lyrics. And the dancing was alright but could have been way more contextual, for example with the guys flashing their moves around the school. Anything to approach this level of hot.
  • Finn discovering the truth about his father and considering the army and proposing to Rachel. Finn is a trainwreck. I was mouthing no all throughout his proposal to Rachel. Pathetic reasoning. His stepfather’s a United States Congressman for crying out loud. Those guys don’t send kids to the Army!
  • And of course the big one with Will and Emma finally getting engaged. What I loved about the way this was handled was that it took the obviously overly harsh parents of Emma to simply point out some hard truths to a head-over-heels-in-love Will to really think about what marriage to Emma would mean – and how that might not actually be an improvement for Will’s, or even Emma’s, life. Being the weakling that he is (the guy has NO OTHER FRIENDS he wants to be his best man other than Finn, really?) he relays those exact same concerns to Emma causing her to kill herself in self-guilt for a while before finally manning up to decide that he wants her despite all her crazy. Could’ve saved your woman some distress there by just thinking aloud someplace else, dude. Also you used the word disease to describe her OCD, which should have earned you a slap. But all is forgiven when the big synchronized swimming sequence appears, tying together the Wemma and the Samcedes(?) storylines so unexpectedly (to me) perfectly and topping it off with a wonderfully written and delivered proposal speech. You could not say no to that.
  • Although the first two teachers standing in the hallway handing Emma those flowers were kinda sketch.

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Primary School

By on January 18th, 2012

pri school photo

Tao Nan School Class of 6I/1998

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Twitter – Week of 2012-01-15

By on January 15th, 2012

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Essays, Success No comments yet

Getting Into School

By on January 14th, 2012

Today was an interesting opportunity for me to jump from the Back To School mentality even further back, to the point when we are Getting Into School. Giving four consecutive university admissions interviews, meeting four superficially similar but deep-down-unique individuals, telling my own story and spinning my own college experience four different ways (Was it Pocahontas that said you can never step in the same river twice?).

We take these imposed structures in life so very seriously. I have always lamented the fact that pieces of paper are more important than individual human beings (c.f. my Cuba situation 4 years ago) but such is the price of civilization: we have no time to “really get to know” even a thousand people truly well, forget 7 billion.

So we take shortcuts: stereotypes/heuristics, and signals such as university diplomas, in the place of real achievements.*

As stereotypes cannot much be helped if you happen to be caught by one of them in a negative sense, signalling becomes really the only way to get a quick leg up without actually achieving anything noteworthy (a sort of achievement by association is implied, of course). And like leeches drawn to warm blood, gatekeepers soon ingratiate themselves into the signalling process, sucking the life out of those passing through and producing not very much extra value added of their own.

I am not proud that today I played a part in that role, but given the fact that it is unavoidable, I endeavored to make it both painless and truthful, which is harder than it sounds.

Truth in my book meant saying things like “Yes, we all know that Penn is NOT the best school, but-” and “Really, you should know you’re choosing schools based on the most superficial and blathering nonsense possible because the stuff that is really going to matter to you, the professors you love and the people you meet, can’t be known until you get in”. Painless meant taking things none too seriously, sharing what little I knew of things within their orbit of interest, and, well, smiling a lot**.

One candidate really stood out; one was good; two were kind of average (for the warped sense of average one gets from interviewing people at this level); none (thankfully?) got to the level of the absolute liar I exposed from last year. As a general rule, the candidate that stands out in my book is the one I actually do want to follow through on and see where he/she ends up in life just because they are that interesting.

I did feel somewhat like a used car salesman – selling something of a certain value that the buyer thinks is of a higher value than it truly is. It is true that Wharton played a huge part in getting me where I am today, and I am happy where I am. But it isn’t true that I could not be where I am today without Wharton. Not by a long shot.

As I thought further to advice I would give, I happened upon a presentation by Angela Lee Duckworth of Penn. Although the presentation is plodding, the message is clear and sincere: Tenacity*** breeds greatness. Not what school you went to, although that helps.

Footnotes

*I don’t mean to diminish the value of this – shortcuts are there to be used by both frauds and high achievers alike.

**This last bit I am still working on. :) It does not come naturally yet.

***Grit is an awful name. I don’t even like it as a marketing term.