Michael Called It.

I'm pretty horrendously predictable.

Meet my new shoes, purchased for ($49.99 + 30% off + 15% off = $29.74) from (where else?) J Crew.

These shoes are not only (vaguely?) business-casual, but also feel like your most comfortable pair of bunny slippers. If they were to sprout wings and make me better at Mariokart programming, my life would pretty much be complete.

Speaking of things I love, goodbye "Tank" Paulson and hello "baracket!" (Nicknamed by the full-timers for their respective effects on the market) Good luck to the new president.

Recent Purchase(s)

Crap. I caved to J Crew's extra 20% off sale, and bought some more stuff >.<
This is the Dream Stephanie cardigan in "dark poppy" (really, just red).And ummm, the same thing in "tangelo" (bright orange).
Clearly, I have a problem >.<

Why Finance?

That's a conversation for another time entirely, but here's a couple of my most trivial reasons. Not only do you get to witness/participate in the most epic fights, but you also get to work with your childhood heroes!

Last week, on Friday, right before the close, 5 seconds before the bell started to ring, this broker ran down into the pit and tried to trade with the boss. There was some misunderstanding about the markets, and when the bell stopped ringing, the boss refused to do the trade. As soon as he heard the word "No," the broker lost it. He started screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs, and the entire building got very quiet very quickly.

So, when you're swearing, say at an airline employee who's just given your seat away, you're supposed to start low, with a slightly angry normal voice, and escalate from there to yelling. This broker started with screaming (louder than yelling!) and somehow managed to keep it up for a full 5 minutes. It was (simultaneously) the most badass and the most frightening experience I've had. I was sure he was going batter the boss (we had passed assault a full 3 minutes back). Then, after the matter was resolved, he came by and asked us if we "enjoyed the show." Yes, very much, Mr. Angry Broker.

I've also run into a surprising number of people I really, really admired as a kid (and still do!) On Saturday, I had dinner at Tailor (their miso butterscotch pork belly is divine) with JJ, who was the high school hero who motivated me to get into Scibowl. Turns out he's working (at Goldman) with AC, who's been one of my heroes ever since I met him back in 2003. Then, on Sunday, I had dinner with JQ in K-town (where I had my first Pinkberry :D) He's a childhood hero who happens to be working with one of his childhood heroes, who also happens to be one of my childhood heroes.

As if that weren't awesome enough, after closing today, we had a class with Sandor Lehoczky (hero!!) who coauthored the seminal middle school math books. This guy is pretty much responsible (however indirectly) for me getting into college. During class, I actually discovered another hero. This guy was just sitting there, learning about Power Laws, and his veins were literally popping out of his forehead. You know how tennis players use their arms so much that their arm veins pop out? This guy uses his brain so much that his forehead veins are popping out. My hero. If anyone has a valid medical reason or an alternate explanation for this, shut it! I don't want to hear.

Transportation Adventures

So on Sunday, (at AChang's advice), I got up really, really early so I would be sure to get a ticket to the Chinatown bus, which may have been a little silly in retrospect - since when have the Chinatown bus people ever turned down a paying customer? And when I couldn't find the Lucky Star bus (the safe one!!), I had to take the Fung Wah, though we did manage to make it to New York intact ;)

I then managed to (somehow) get myself and my luggage very stuck in a subway turnstile, and some impatient person behind me had to wait for quite a while when I tried to extricate myself. And it hasn't gotten better. Since that little incident, I have managed to take the wrong train (twice!), the right train the wrong way (twice!), and gotten hopelessly lost in New York (four times!). Clearly, transportation fail.

Work has been very fun, though sometimes very scary. We're on the floor, so there's real money involved, and when I do anything wrong, large amounts of real money are being lost. Scary. After work, we also have these mock trading sessions, when the full-timers get a bunch of people (new hires and us) in the room, set up lots of different options, and start yelling at us - really, really quickly. All the new hires know what they're doing, so from their end, there's a lot of screaming like "SOLD!" "TAKE 100!" and "SELLCALLSBUYSTOCK!" ...I wish I knew what I were doing so I could scream too.

Hoboken is nice, I guess. It turns out that there's 5 people (including me) sharing the 2 bedroom apartment, but there's no rent, so who am I to complain? There's a married couple from China, and an Indian grad student who really loves Battle Star Galactica. My aunt (who makes 5) arrived yesterday, and brought my coat with her.

My mother bought me a J Crew coat for Christmas, which brings the total up to three. Maybe we don't have to get everyone in the hall to buy a J Crew coat - those of us who are interested can buy enough so that on average, everyone in the hall has a coat. Anyhow, it's the Stadium-cloth Shipley coat (reviews here and here). I got it in what J Crew calls "dark poppy," but what everyone else calls "red."


Hmmm. I think that's about it. I'm going to go eat some dinner now :)

Cleanliness?

When I first got back from break and tried to take a shower, it turned out that I had (rather stupidly) forgotten my flip flops at home. The thought of showering with bare feet makes me feel vaguely nauseous, and I wound up showering that night in a pair of old sneakers (also disgusting).

The next day, I dragged my sorry ass out to the Galleria to buy flip flops (in 20 degree weather, to boot!). Of all the stores there, only J Crew had decided to start selling warm weather clothing. So I had to shell out $15.72 ($18.50 with the 15% student discount) for a pair of shower shoes!
Clearly, at $16 a pair, these flip flops should not only be able to do my laundry and clean my room, but also should smell like flowers. Which they do not. However, a cursory googling turns up that these flip flops are (supposedly?) made from tire rubber, which is kind of cool.