Monday, September 29, 2003
First interview in about an hour and 15 minutes. Oh boy. Wish me luck!
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Daaaaa-dm... Daaaa-dm... daaa-dm daaa-dm daaa-dm daaa-dm ---
Ever have one of those weeks where it starts out badly, but then... it just keeps getting worse? You try to put little obstacles behind you but new and bigger ones just keep popping up (or worse, you yourself keep creating them)? Sometimes things reach a point of ridiculousness so extreme that all you can do is laugh. Yup, that's the situation I'm finding myself in right about now.
Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water...
Ever have one of those weeks where it starts out badly, but then... it just keeps getting worse? You try to put little obstacles behind you but new and bigger ones just keep popping up (or worse, you yourself keep creating them)? Sometimes things reach a point of ridiculousness so extreme that all you can do is laugh. Yup, that's the situation I'm finding myself in right about now.
Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water...
Monday, September 22, 2003
Posted some new pictures last weekend. Check 'em out if you like -- Crater Lake is gorgeous... :-)
Saturday, September 20, 2003
Erin McKeown *rocks*. No, I mean literally she rocks -- like Buddy Holly with a chartreuse guitar, like the Amy Ray songs on Indigo Girls albums, like (or better than) any rock band, really. Heard her live tonight at the New Haven Folk Festival, and haven't been that excited about music since... well, maybe since the Endelion Quartet played Haydn last year. W. notes: she sounds like there's a whole band behind her -- but it's just her and a guitar, and some incredible technique. The instrument sings; it also drums, and hums, and buzzes... Possibly the greatest thing, though, is the sheer joy that comes out in the music. So much of the good music out there is downright depressing. Not so here. Toe-tapping, rollicking, glad happy songs that make you bounce, with just enough clever irony to make you smile while eliminating any trace of cheesiness. The Distillation CD is good and all -- the nimble charm of the vocals actually comes out better on a recording, probably just because of the acoustics of the space -- but the hard-driving guitar just isn't there. All I can say is: if she's playing and you're anywhere near it, then go. Live, it's great, great stuff.
Friday, September 19, 2003
The valiant keepers
Needed to check on some names and position titles today -- bunch of investment bankers cited in an upcoming article. Or should I say, bunch of co-heads of global mergers and acquisitions. Or were they just heads? And was that global or worldwide??
One would think this would be a fairly straightforward matter of either looking it up on the web or calling their secretaries and asking about how last names are spelled and what the position is called at each bank.
And one would be wrong! This oh-so-vital information is guarded more closely than the recipe for Coca-Cola. First, have you ever tried to get a phone number for, say, Goldman Sachs or USB on the web? Nearly impossible -- unless, of course, all you want is a phone number for a media relations department staffed only by voicemail. Apparently all potential customers have some sort of inside connection -- perhaps this is a selection mechanism to ensure that they only represent companies sufficiently "in the know." Once the impenetrable maze of the website has been navigated and a number acquired, one may hope to speak to some sort of receptionist -- who may or may not actually be on the same continent as the office you're looking for. The receptionist may have access to names -- but not to titles. (And note that these firms have a suspicious habit of hiring low-level clerical workers with the same names as top executives -- sneaky, sneaky.) So the next step is to be transfered over to the secretary of the party in question. There you will be subjected to an interrogation that would be the envy of any CIA investigator -- your motives and qualifications must be impeccable.
These guardians of the rich and powerful will then subject you to a final test. They will agree to disclose the information you seek... only if you already have it! Strangely, while they are permitted to tell you whether the information you have is more or less accurate, they are not permitted to provide you with a new, truly accurate version. So unless you can correctly guess the title of the Executive/Managing Director/Officer and (Co-/joint) Head of Global/Worldwide/Industrial Investment/Securities/Mergers & Acquisitions. you are out of luck.
Needed to check on some names and position titles today -- bunch of investment bankers cited in an upcoming article. Or should I say, bunch of co-heads of global mergers and acquisitions. Or were they just heads? And was that global or worldwide??
One would think this would be a fairly straightforward matter of either looking it up on the web or calling their secretaries and asking about how last names are spelled and what the position is called at each bank.
And one would be wrong! This oh-so-vital information is guarded more closely than the recipe for Coca-Cola. First, have you ever tried to get a phone number for, say, Goldman Sachs or USB on the web? Nearly impossible -- unless, of course, all you want is a phone number for a media relations department staffed only by voicemail. Apparently all potential customers have some sort of inside connection -- perhaps this is a selection mechanism to ensure that they only represent companies sufficiently "in the know." Once the impenetrable maze of the website has been navigated and a number acquired, one may hope to speak to some sort of receptionist -- who may or may not actually be on the same continent as the office you're looking for. The receptionist may have access to names -- but not to titles. (And note that these firms have a suspicious habit of hiring low-level clerical workers with the same names as top executives -- sneaky, sneaky.) So the next step is to be transfered over to the secretary of the party in question. There you will be subjected to an interrogation that would be the envy of any CIA investigator -- your motives and qualifications must be impeccable.
These guardians of the rich and powerful will then subject you to a final test. They will agree to disclose the information you seek... only if you already have it! Strangely, while they are permitted to tell you whether the information you have is more or less accurate, they are not permitted to provide you with a new, truly accurate version. So unless you can correctly guess the title of the Executive/Managing Director/Officer and (Co-/joint) Head of Global/Worldwide/Industrial Investment/Securities/Mergers & Acquisitions. you are out of luck.
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Confessions of a math nerd
I pulled out my old TI-82 today. Put in some fresh batteries, started it up. Was suddenly overcome by a strange but comforting sense of peace, even joy. In all seriousness, I kid you not. I felt somehow like all the possibilities for discovery, for figuring out even a little piece of something truly important, some small part of the huge puzzle that is life, were opening up again...
I've been caught up in a rather disheartening wave of negativity lately. Feeling negative about academic stuff, negative about summer job prospects... negative about how reminiscent this all is of high school. That's an often-made observation, nothing I came up with... but I feel it in a lot of ways, especially the way classes often feel more like duties than privileges, or the way seemingly benign social situations have a tendency to twist themselves into not-so-nice, exclusionary, disorienting ones.
Something is missing from my high school days, though, and I think my trusty TI gave me a clue to what it was. In high school, they tell us we can be whatever we want to be. Our world is boundless -- even things we think we might not be so good at (like math, for me) can end up being the paths we take if we care about them enough. We don't know anything, and we're fully aware of that -- but we think we can be taught, and that the things we learn will matter. I can't say I feel that now. With everyone scrambling to get ready for fall interviews with all the same big firms, it's hard sometimes to remember that there is a whole world out there full of options that may not be obvious, and that there are grander and greater things by far than the nitty-gritty details of legal practice. Maybe I'm just a math nerd feeling a little lost in this non-math world -- but I think that sometimes everyone wants to feel that sense of wonder and infinite possibility. Sometimes everyone needs to believe that, if they just had time and brains and maybe some calculator help enough to figure it out, the world would make sense.
I pulled out my old TI-82 today. Put in some fresh batteries, started it up. Was suddenly overcome by a strange but comforting sense of peace, even joy. In all seriousness, I kid you not. I felt somehow like all the possibilities for discovery, for figuring out even a little piece of something truly important, some small part of the huge puzzle that is life, were opening up again...
I've been caught up in a rather disheartening wave of negativity lately. Feeling negative about academic stuff, negative about summer job prospects... negative about how reminiscent this all is of high school. That's an often-made observation, nothing I came up with... but I feel it in a lot of ways, especially the way classes often feel more like duties than privileges, or the way seemingly benign social situations have a tendency to twist themselves into not-so-nice, exclusionary, disorienting ones.
Something is missing from my high school days, though, and I think my trusty TI gave me a clue to what it was. In high school, they tell us we can be whatever we want to be. Our world is boundless -- even things we think we might not be so good at (like math, for me) can end up being the paths we take if we care about them enough. We don't know anything, and we're fully aware of that -- but we think we can be taught, and that the things we learn will matter. I can't say I feel that now. With everyone scrambling to get ready for fall interviews with all the same big firms, it's hard sometimes to remember that there is a whole world out there full of options that may not be obvious, and that there are grander and greater things by far than the nitty-gritty details of legal practice. Maybe I'm just a math nerd feeling a little lost in this non-math world -- but I think that sometimes everyone wants to feel that sense of wonder and infinite possibility. Sometimes everyone needs to believe that, if they just had time and brains and maybe some calculator help enough to figure it out, the world would make sense.
Sunday, September 07, 2003
Weather Dependency
Have new theory. World sunniness --> world peace. Sometime in the last few days the sky changed abruptly from a gray humidity-producing muck to clear blue breeziness, and suddenly all was right with the world, or at least this little corner of it. Even New Haven improves on sunny days -- street vendors and smiling strolling folk come out; sale-price clothing in your size finds its way onto sidewalk racks; wine vendors extol the virtues of Chilean merlot, and tangueros swirl the night away. Confused about course selection? Debilitating stage fright causing dreadful auditions? 300 pages of reading in two days? No clue about job-hunting? No problem. Sun makes happiness. (Incidentally, so do good company, comfy couches, and compliments on one's cooking -- thanks for coming by, guys.) :-) A superficial idea perhaps, but the effects are so striking that it's almost enough to make me a fan of global warming -- that is, if we could have the additional warmth without, oh, the melted polar ice caps causing my home town to sink below sea level...
Have new theory. World sunniness --> world peace. Sometime in the last few days the sky changed abruptly from a gray humidity-producing muck to clear blue breeziness, and suddenly all was right with the world, or at least this little corner of it. Even New Haven improves on sunny days -- street vendors and smiling strolling folk come out; sale-price clothing in your size finds its way onto sidewalk racks; wine vendors extol the virtues of Chilean merlot, and tangueros swirl the night away. Confused about course selection? Debilitating stage fright causing dreadful auditions? 300 pages of reading in two days? No clue about job-hunting? No problem. Sun makes happiness. (Incidentally, so do good company, comfy couches, and compliments on one's cooking -- thanks for coming by, guys.) :-) A superficial idea perhaps, but the effects are so striking that it's almost enough to make me a fan of global warming -- that is, if we could have the additional warmth without, oh, the melted polar ice caps causing my home town to sink below sea level...
Friday, September 05, 2003
Hugo et al.
About 2/3 of the way through Les Miserables I find myself asking a familiar question. I read somewhere once that F. Scott Fitzgerald conveyed layers of meaning through his descriptions of clothing -- the color of a man's handkerchief could tell you whether he was old money or nouveau riche, academic or businessman, conservative or progressive; the fit of a woman's dress would predict how likely she was to end up married to the handsome young millionaire within a year. Sadly all that knowledge is lost to us now -- these days the average person can't tell a Cuban heel from a bad cigar. It's the same with Victor Hugo and publications. Somewhere, is there some French Revolutionary historian who can explain which of the dozens of newsletters and journals Hugo mentions are Bonapartist, which "ultra" and which just garden-variety royalist? Does anyone really remember all those barons and counts, well enough to know Hugo's meaning when he puns on one of their names? How did Hugo himself keep it all straight (mostly -- the editors do note some errors)? Maybe writers then had more leisure, as members of the middle or upper classes. Maybe there just wasn't anything else to do -- without television, movies, or CDs, most of us would have more time for reading too. Maybe Hugo was just an exceptionally speedy reader with a phenomenal memory... The result is somewhat like watching a movie with subtitles -- you catch the overall meaning, but not the nuances. And you constantly have to remember to pay attention not only to what is being said, but also to who is saying it.
About 2/3 of the way through Les Miserables I find myself asking a familiar question. I read somewhere once that F. Scott Fitzgerald conveyed layers of meaning through his descriptions of clothing -- the color of a man's handkerchief could tell you whether he was old money or nouveau riche, academic or businessman, conservative or progressive; the fit of a woman's dress would predict how likely she was to end up married to the handsome young millionaire within a year. Sadly all that knowledge is lost to us now -- these days the average person can't tell a Cuban heel from a bad cigar. It's the same with Victor Hugo and publications. Somewhere, is there some French Revolutionary historian who can explain which of the dozens of newsletters and journals Hugo mentions are Bonapartist, which "ultra" and which just garden-variety royalist? Does anyone really remember all those barons and counts, well enough to know Hugo's meaning when he puns on one of their names? How did Hugo himself keep it all straight (mostly -- the editors do note some errors)? Maybe writers then had more leisure, as members of the middle or upper classes. Maybe there just wasn't anything else to do -- without television, movies, or CDs, most of us would have more time for reading too. Maybe Hugo was just an exceptionally speedy reader with a phenomenal memory... The result is somewhat like watching a movie with subtitles -- you catch the overall meaning, but not the nuances. And you constantly have to remember to pay attention not only to what is being said, but also to who is saying it.
