Do This At Home, Not Outside! (mature audiences only)

To Be a Classic

Around 6:30pm yesterday, I hopped into the tram after having done with my back routine in the gym. Not just one stop away, I could feel there was a little bit commotion going on even though I was on my iPod. Curious of what was going on, I took out one of the earphones and the next thing I noticed, the tram driver walked up to me and asked me to give him a hand.

So I followed him just a few steps to the front door where all the commotion seems to be coming from. An old man struggling to get on the tram. Why not let him? We were at the Royal Melbourne Hospital stop. And he's an in-patient. He still had that needle thing on his hand that the drip tube goes into. Obviously he ran way from the hospital. I told him, "Sorry man, I'm afraid you have to go back to the hospital". He said, "I just want to go to McDonald's to get pancakes, pancakes!".

He was old. He was barely able to walk. So I thought it really wasn't nice of me to forcefully block him and get him down. Eventually he got up and found himself a place to seat.

The tram driver didn't want to move and he wasn't able to do so by the way: the patient's wife was standing in front of the tram. While two emo/punk girls were chatting with him, the police came in less than 5 minutes.

One of the many curious passengers came to the front and asked what's going on. The driver explained to him, and as he walked back, the emo girls tried to get that passenger's attention by saying "Oh, that's life!". Apparently, that guy didn't care much what they said. And I, sitting facing them, thought they should shut the fuck up too.

The patient however was cheerful all the time. He even made us laugh when he said "Ahhh c'mon move the tram, dickhead!".

The cops came up and talked nicely, and he left nicely as well. Everything was handled pretty well.

As other passengers got back into the tram, the two emo girls were pretty agitated. Finally, one stood up and said "I'm gonna leave this damned tram, I can't stand you people. Why can't you just let him go?". They walked down as others were still embarking, and as they left, they yelled "You guys are sick! You guys are so twisted!".

It's my first time to see how emo people would react in such situations. And personally, I think the two girls have a bigger problem than the patient who merely wants to indulge in some pancakes. Seriously. If that's life, get a life.

Sidebar #4 (Melbourne Edition)

Drive, take a tram, or even walk past the Toyota showroom on Elizabeth St. Notice the dolls/mannequins or whatever you call them at the window. Do this at night. Do this when you need them creeps.

Sidebar #3

I suppose the majority of the world still has paper babies/newborn registration forms. Imagine one day everyone has to do it on a computer terminal. If I'm able to, I'd run a tally on how many people would be named Qwerty.

NB: Please check you know what I'm talking about. Look at your keyboard.

Nice One...

Some nice stuff spotted in my own blog. Click to enlarge (hint: 3rd ad)

Bubble Bubble

This week we've been touching so much on private equity, bubbles and efficiency.

In fact, look at what's happening around you. You know there's a bubble, but just when is it gonna burst?

I could give you a corny+technical+boring example of private equity (despite some arguing it's not one) but let's have a look at something still boring but more personal.

I being an actuarial student since last summer have got all hooked up with investment banking ambitions instead of actuarial. Maybe it's because I worked in a Big 4 and got myself exposed to more of the finance stuff. But probably not so much. It's really more like how, in a way, I decided to do actuarial: the wave.

Haven't you realized how glammed up investment banks are lately? How many finance students you've heard say they wanna work in IB? How many then can go on and on about what IB is but couldn't tell you much on why have they not considered sister jobs like global markets, equity research, or trading?

I myself being an actuarial student am also dragged into the happy bandwagon. I'm already rejected by two major IB's but I'm not worried. They only hire one or two out of the thousands of the online applicants. Unless I'm terribly outstanding. Unless I really get hooked up with some big shots and get hired outside of this process. But it's best one leaves such expectations alone. It works best that way.

So what's my point? Maybe there's another wave coming, among us more mathematically inclined students: quants. Quantitative analysts needs to have done alot of postgrad work, doesn't have to work as dreadfully as IB counterparts and still earn heaps. Imagine a senior quant could earn 500k till a million pounds a year.

So... I really wish I was able to do at least Honours. Too bad I'm not financially able to. But then again, even if I was able to, I still might not want to. Why? You'll never know what you'd like to do when you graduate. Learning skills are more important than learnt skills. And I'm already lucky enough to be here in Melbourne. After grad, it's all up to me!

Week 11 already

Listening: Sarah McLachlan - Mirrorball

After 6 days since our last round of UBS ended, we met up again to do some catching up. The conversation now is so much more refreshing than the ones we had back then. But still, it was a very good experience.

A friend of mine told me that about 8 actuarial students from LSE got into Goldman Sachs vac training positions in Hong Kong. If I was financially able to, I could've been one of them. I was already officially enrolled but just didn't turn up. This just shows the lack of opportunity here in Melbourne seriously. Things are just made worse with all the citizenship/residency requirements. The economy could have been so much more vibrant, but maybe that's just the way it is and will be for some choose this country for such features.

But indeed. Think about the lifestyle and culture. And food! Speaking of which, I've only discovered today that there is 'Nachos' pizza in Melbourne Uni! If you thought spaghetti on pizzas were novel, think again. I haven't tried it though. The usual meat lovers or bacon pizzas were all tempting enough.

A Wednesday of...

We finally came into Top 5 but not Top 3 of the campus final. Of course we are a bit dispirited, but at least we've got rid of a big burden. Exams are coming close by the way, and I've got quite a bad schedule.

Our presentation was not persuasive enough. Here are some thoughts I can offer:
1) don't just rehearse to your team mates, but also to your friends so they could NOT ONLY give feedback, but also perhaps be judges and ask you questions on the spot.
2) when you are not creating a presentation from scratch but drafting from an existing one, make sure you don't copy too much. Doing such references could sometimes be more harmful than good.
3) for girls, wear high heels! You will feel the difference.
4) people in Aussie think my tie/shirt combo is good but Malaysians don't.

After our 15-minute presentation followed by the 15-minute bombardment of questions, we went to the city for dinner by tram. My team mate stepped on another girl's foot with her heel and got that girl bleeding. On the other hand, I sat down and immediately stood up when I thought some older guy wanted to sit. But he didn't. An odd-looking haggard woman who was sitting there looked at me sourly and said "sit there, nobody's sitting there". I felt so bad. She probably thought I stood up because I realized I was sitting next to some weirdo. But that's not what I meant. I sat down and the place smelled like piss. We went back for the awards presentation and when I was going back, I happened to hop onto the same tram with the same pee smell. What the fuck man...

Irony

Listening: Shake - Ying Yang Twins feat. Pit Bull

I was streaming news when I was having a late breakfast today. It's really funny to see how amused two (if not mistaken) NBC female anchors were at miss Paris' misfortunes.

But really, I found it funny myself: Paris complained that the court is picking on her because she's blonde and she's rich. How could that not be funny? She's really confused.

Poor her she only gets one hour outside of her cell everyday and a 5-minute shower daily with only soap.

Orange is the new pink.

Hardcore

It probably doesn't sound as big a deal to some, but I think I've never been inside the campus for 14 and a half hours straight.

First 6 hours were spent in 5 classes and a lunch break. Then a short 45 minutes break before I met up with my team to do more UBS stuff.

Again I feel like I'm slacking. Not by my choice, but I'm always not assigned enough work. Maybe my part just didn't need that much update for the next phase. But I'm also like the graphing and graphics guy. My technical skills help beautify the whole presentation.

Oh well. Tomorrow we will have the whole room to ourselves again. But the speech has to be written up now and I've got to get some tute work done as well.

Presenting your pitch to a panel of 5 bankers and academics ain't fun. Plus up to 5 more previous winners (or something).

Wish me luck! Will update soon.

But then again...

Things slowly worked out in my team. Upon going through more thoroughly each of our part of the UBS Investment Banking challenge, our members got a better understanding of each other and their respective contributions.

Things got less tense already.

And at the ultimate point, during the presentation, it was an impressive one. What's even more important was our superior Question & Answer session. We were asked a question probably beyond the conventional scope of the competition but our 18-year old member had it resolved almost effortlessly.

The result? I, being the team's correspondent, received a call 4 hours later that confirmed our standing as the last 4 in Melbourne. For an undergrad non-honours team, I must say we did really well. And if we go through this round again, we'll end up in Sydney competing for the finals. But it's too early to talk just yet.

What a week

Last week was apparently a good one. Anzac party, Anzac holiday, and our random AEIOU party. It was indeed alot of randomness and fun.

But this week, I'm involved in my 2nd investment banking challenge. I decided to participate again because honestly I had alot of fun the last time I did. This time around though I went through quite a bit of hassle to put together a very diverse team. Expertise from Malaysia, PRC, Aussie and even America.

The result? No, our presentation is on Friday, I mean, the result of the team so far. I see segregation and communication breakdown. The latter started even before we finalized our team's composition. It was a big misperception. It was also one that's giving me trouble: I'm associated now with lacklustre and mediocre efforts. Let's just say it's bad. We are really unsure how we'd do even though we've put quite some time into it and despite some of the really good members we have.

The lesson to be learnt? Unless you can manage diversity well, diversity could make things worse. Even if you do think you can manage well, make sure everybody has a potential fit. The best we could probably do is to remain as last 4 in the State. We'll see how it goes, but I am rather disappointed already.