Blogging from Hong Kong International Airport

Local Hong Kong time Saturday 10:15am

I am at the airport waiting for my flight back to the United States and using the free Wi-Fi provided by PCCW. This marks the end of my 2008 trip to Hong Kong.

I am updating the last couple of posts with pictures and videos. Please re-check them if you have not done so recently.

Good Morning Vietnam

Local Ho Chin Minh City time Tuesday 8:01am



I can’t believe it took me so many days in Vietnam for me to come up with the most obvious title to this blog posting. It’s similar to this morning when I went to the hotel gym for the third morning in a row and finally found the remote control so I can turn up the volume and hear what they are saying on MTV Asia. I found it just in time for me to check out this afternoon and return to Hong Kong.

Visitors to Vietnam are quite fascinated by the traffic in Vietnam. There are armies after armies of motorcycles. The city is laid out very similarly to Washington DC with many traffic circles. Interestingly, both cities' road networks are designed by the French.



One USD is equal to 16,000 VND and the Vietnamese currency is quite volatiles. Often times souvenir sellers and shops prefer to be paid in either HKD or USD. I suspect this is partly because Vietnamese people prefer to put their money at home rather than in banks.



I will blog at you later this week from Hong Kong

Jane Fonda was here

Local Ho Chi Minh City time Sunday 7:54pm

Greetings from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. We landed here Friday morning and have been spending the past two days around the Ho Chin Minh City area. I took some high quality photos and videos that I hopefully will be able to share with you once we return.

First thing I learned about Vietnam is its currency. One American dollar is equal to early 16,000 dong. You often see people on the side of the street selling fruits with a sign saying “(Vietnamese word) 18,000.”



I was touring around the Mekong Delta area earlier today and our tour stopped by a fishing village. Among the people walking by I spotted a caucasian woman with a Vietnamese man, whom I quickly identified as her tour guide. There was nothing unusual about the couple except that the man was wearing a UNC hat. I later had the chance to talk to them. She is an American from Texas by way of New York City and the tour guide has never been to UNC, bought his hat at a flea market. When I told him I asked because that was the grad school that I went to he immediately offered to sell it to me. I declined since I can get better and more appropriate souvenir elsewhere.

Wheels up for Vietnam

Local Hong Kong time Thursday 3:27pm

I read two weeks ago that Cathay Pacific was rated by Zagat as having one of the best coach-class products among "large international" airlines. I will get to experience that myself tomorrow when we leave Hong Kong for Vietnam.

Unfortunately I will not be taking my laptop with me and therefore will not be able to blog until we return to Hong Kong mid next week. Hopefully I will be able to make up for it by taking some high quality shots/videos and posting them here then.

Venus and Jupiter over Hong Kong

Local Hong Kong time Monday 9:17pm

For all my readers in North America, this is a preview of something that hopefully you will get to witness ten hours from now. Two weeks ago I was in Chapel Hill looking into the early evening sky hoping to witness the flyby of the International Space Station when I noticed off in the lower Southwestern horizon two lights that uniquely stood out. I later learned that they were Venus and Jupiter.

I saw them outside my hotel window tonight, this time accompanied by a crescent moon. I later read that this is the closest the three celestial bodies will appear until 2052. Looking at the video, trio looks almost like someone had painted a smiling face into the sky.

Macau from the sky

Local Hong Kong time Saturday 10:56pm

Greetings from Hong Kong. When I was here last year I blogged about our visit to Macau, the gambling capital of China. I recognized it out the plane window last night as our Continental Boeing 777 was preparing its final descent into Hong Kong International Airport. Even though I have only been to Macau twice in my life, I recognized it from the bright lights of the casinos and the unmistakable sight of the three unique bridges that cross the bay.

Giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. The President of the United States has a traditional Thanksgiving message to the nation; I have a traditional blog post where I give thanks to God Almighty for the progress (sometimes even lack of progress) in my life over the past year.

The past year has been extremely challenging and rewarding. I am grateful foremost for the religious faith which has helped sustained me throughout the challenging job search earlier this year. I am also grateful for the job that the search resulted in. While this is by no means the type of job I had envisioned when I quit my job for business school three years ago and thinking about the job makes it tempting to say that business school was a total waste of time and money, I am grateful that I have a job given the recent macroeconomic developments. It helps that almost every month I read about layoffs in a company that I have interviewed with and my current employer is relatively recession proof.

In addition to some of the fruitful relationships I have built in the Chapel Hill area over the past year, I am also thankful for a couple of exciting things that are happening in my life. One is I will be going to Hong Kong once again with my parents for two weeks. I am fortunate that I have enough vacation days for me to do this.

Me and my parents are leaving for the airport in about two hours. I will blog to you from the other side of the world.

Jack Bauer still has it

Listening to Rush Limbaugh during lunch today talking about 24 reminded me that I have yet to blog about Sunday night’s two hour movie. 24 Redemption gave us the classic Jack Bauer, a man willing to sacrifice his own personal interests for the benefit of those around him, and demonstrates that the 24 franchise (unlike James Bond) is alive and well.

The movie began in the middle of Africa where Bauer had been spending the past year hiding from a subpoena forcing him to appear before then American Congressional committee to answer for the complaints against him in his work at the Counter Terrorist Unit. There he found himself in the middle of a military coup and gave up his freedom to help a group of African children board one of the last helicopters leaving the American embassy.

In 24 Redemption, the writers changed certain things about the show but kept the main ingredients that made the show great. In the eighteen months since the last season ended, I became concerned about the future directions of the show because of criticism from liberals who object to its portrayal of torture. In the movie, the writers answered those critics by introducing issues that they care about such as genocide in Africa and children being forced into the military. Yet the rest of the show remained unchanged. The writers even embedded a “wink and nod” to conservatives by having Jack Bauer give a very clever response to a United Nations peacekeeper who was getting in the way of fighting the bad guys.

There was one scene, however, that I found totally absurd and I blame the product placement people and not the writers. When Jack’s friend discovered that a coup was underway and called to tell Jack to evacuate the children, both characters were speaking on cell phones with the Sprint Nextel logos displayed prominently. Somehow we are supposed to believe that these phones don’t work in major American cities and yet they work in the jungles in the middle of Africa.

For those of us who have spent more than a year waiting for Jack Bauer’s return, 24 Redemption was true redemption indeed.

A “Bourne again” James Bond

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS OF QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Last Friday I saw Quantum of Solace, the 22nd movie in the James Bond franchise and the second with Daniel Craig playing the MI6 spy. I am a huge James Bond fan and have looked forward to seeing this movie for almost an entire year.

The good news is that the first weekend’s $70 million box office opening means that James Bond will remain as the most profitable franchise in the history of the movie industry. The bad news is that for diehard fans like myself, Quantum of Solace continued the (in my opinion) downward trend started by Casino Royale with the movie becoming less like a James Bond movie and more like any of the other spy action movies you see in theaters today.

Having seen all the James Bond movies (with the exception of the recent ones staring Daniel Craig) multiple times, I consider myself qualified to comment on the evolution of this franchise. There are certain trends and themes that are consistent in many Bond movies yet absent from Quantum of Solace. Not once did I hear a sexual innuendo uttered against an unsuspecting woman and with the exception of a cell phone used to track a suspect, there was no display of the type of high tech gadgets you expect to see in a regular Bond movie. Gone are the Bond movies where the main character works in conjunction with the American Central Intelligence Agency. In this movie, the CIA is portrayed as an organization ripe with internal conflict that at some point works with the villains against Bond. This movie, taken at its entirety, resembles more Bourne Identity than James Bond.

Hopefully I will feel better tomorrow when Jack Bauer returns tomorrow in 24 Redemption.

Stocks for the long run

Recently, following the wreckage in the stock market has become a ritual every afternoon at “work.” It’s tough watching the market slide further and further everyday. I began the calendar year with six-figures in my 401k account and the account has gone down close to 50% year to date. To illustrate how bad it has gotten, if I had closed out the account on January 2 and paid all taxes and penalties involved, I would still have more money leftover than what I have now.

I am, however, reminded of something a professor (one who worked in investment banking) I had at UVA said more than ten years ago. He said that the greatest fortunes are often made by doing the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing – buying when everyone is selling and vice versa. Over the past ten years, following this maxim would have cautioned any investor from the speculative frenzy over technology equities in the late 1990s and the real estate craze in the mid 2000s.

It gives me hope today that with the S&P 500 having dropped to where they were in 1997, any investor buying the index today would have an entry point equivalent to having bought during my junior year in college. During my last semester in college and the following summer I invested significantly into Applied Materials, having bought close to 650 shares at a split adjusted price of $7.65. I sold all those shares over the next five years at profits no less than 120%. Applied Materials closed today at a price lower than what it was when I bought my first shares in 1998.

But I realize that getting into the market amidst such volatility is easier said than done. Over the past two months, I have made significant investments into various indexes and individual stocks only to see prices continue to sink. My advice for anyone who is risk adverse but interested in taking advantage of the current market level is to invest in an index mutual funds and to invest only funds that he does not need for at least five (maybe even seven) years. My believe in the efficient market theory and my experience tell me that even when you are right about timing the market, very rarely will your timing be so perfect that you will manage to buy at the very bottom (or sell a the very top).

I am not going to end by saying that me having an MBA makes me better at giving investment advice because recent developments on Wall Street cast doubts into the judgment of many of my fellow degree holders. I will simply point out that during my two years in business school and the ten months of unemployment that followed, I never had to worry about money. Hence proving that not only am I a follower of my own advice but am also a beneficiary of it.

Happy Halloween

I hope you like our new digs here at Blogger. The transition was not as smooth as anticipated. The video clips transferred (with one exception) flawlessly but many of the pictures required further formatting. The biggest problem with the transfer has to do with blog posts that link to other blog posts – while the posts transferred without a problem, the links did not update to reflect the new linked posts on Blogger.

I wish everyone a happy Halloween tomorrow. Those of you in the Chapel Hill area may want to exercise extra caution if you encounter a McCain/Pain yard sign while trick or treating. Apparently the local liberals (that’s almost a redundancy given the political persuasions of the people in this area) have been doing such a good job at targeting the signs that some owners have taken extraordinary measures to protect them.

New URL for this blog

Please redirect your web browsers to http://buckyhoo.blogspot.com. The entirety of this blog will be transferred to that site and future updates will be made there.

 

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that all contents (especially the photos and videos) will transfer smoothly. See you on the other side.

Urgent programming note

I learned recently that AOL Journal will be permanently shutdown as part of AOL’s decision to focus on services that are on the profitable side of its corporate profit and loss statement. Due to that decision, this internet address will cease to function starting November 1.

 

Fortunately the contents of this blog, including pictures, videos, and reader comments, will be migrated over to a new address hosted by Blogger. I have yet to decide when to make the migration because Blogger is still working out some bugs related to the transfer.

 

Unfortunately, it does not look like traffic will automatically be forwarded from the current address (http://journals.aol.com/buckyhoo/UNC/) onto the new one. Therefore when the new address has been determined, I will post it here.

 

Please make sure you check back prior to November 1, when the current address will be permanently disabled, to get the new address. After November 1, you can get the new address by emailing me at buckyhoo AT aol DOT com or by doing a Google Blog Search for buckyhoo.

 

Thanks for your patience. I know I have not been the most diligent blogger of late but I do appreciate the readers who continue to check back periodically.

"You really went down the toilet on that ugly b*tch"

Right before I left "work" today, I looked at the stock market to assess the wreckage on Wall Street. For some reason, regardless of how bad things get, quoting my favorite movie always makes me feel better.

Woman marries manger

Once a resume coach talk told me about the importance of not completely relying on Microsoft Word’s spell checker to spell check my resume. He said “you’d be surprised how many people have worked as a senior manger.”

I came across one such person today in the Wall Street Journal. He works for Consolidated Edison and his wife has just celebrated her fiftieth birthday.

Reversal of fortune

I apologize for having been delinquent in my blogging activities. For the past two weeks I had been so caught up in following the events of the Democrat and Republican National Conventions that I have had little time for everything else.

 

Earlier today when I was at “work,” I logged into my Roth IRA account. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the position I took last summer in the Panera Bread Company had hit my target sell price and was sold in accordance to my limit order. This was particularly good news considering that two months after I bought the stock, I blogged about not liking the direction it had gone, especially in comparison to Chipotle Mexican Grill. In the months since that blog posting, both stocks continued their trajectories. But eventually Panera staged a comeback and looking back, it was a smart move to choose Panera over Chipotle.

 

Goes to show that I am still pretty screwed about predicting financial instruments, my Tim Pawlenty prediction (previous post) notwithstanding.

Pawlenty to be McCain’s running mate, according to futures market

The major news outlets, including the Drudge Report, have yet to report the identity of Senator McCain’s vice presidential running mate but within the past hour Intrade.com has seen a spike in the futures of Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and a parallel drop in those of Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

This is one of the most useful demonstration of the power of information and the futures market that I have seen in a very long time. While I like Pawlenty and think it's an excellent choice, I am a bit disturbed about what Intrade.com is also telling us about the likely winner of the election in November.

Analyzing FiOS from an MBA perspective

Today’s New York Times had an article on the progress that Verizon is making in its endeavor to use fiber optics to deploy internet, video, and landline voice services to major markets around the country. The article interviewed various analysts and industry experts on whether Verizon will ever be able to recoup the $23 billion invested into the FiOS product.

 

The paper’s web site features a very detailed walkthrough of the analysis by Craig Moffett, Harvard Business School alum and analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, who has been extremely bearish on Verizon’s latest investment. Moffett carefully weights the amount invested into FiOS versus its benefits. His analysis touched on many of the major topics I learned during my first semester in business school. It talked about strategy (a disruptive innovation created a need for traditional telecom companies to respond), finance (tax shield, discounted cash flow), financial accounting (how FiOS allows Verizon to make its balance sheets look better), cost accounting (how to allocate costs to calculate a cost per customer), marketing (lifetime value per customer ), some of the major topics anyone with an MBA is expected to understand.

 

I hope the folks at the Harvard Business School Press decide to write a case on this sometime in the future.

AT&T High Speed Internet service's latest marketing ploy

A friend of mine in Chapel Hill recently called AT&T, his landline provider, and ordered the AT&T High Speed Internet service, delivered via DSL. He quickly received in the mail his Motorola DSL modem and instructions on how to hook up the service. When he was unable to get the service working after having clearly connected his devices properly, he turned to AT&T for assistance.

 

It wasn’t until after multiple phone calls and at least two appointments with a technician going out onto his property that he found an AT&T representative who told him the true reason why the last light on his modem was not blinking properly. His location was physically too far from the central office to receive the provisioning for the DSL service.

 

Even though my MBA comes with a concentration in marketing, I have yet to come across a business situation where a service provider has embarked on a strategy of marketing a service to customers who are physically unable to receive the service. Maybe that’s why I didn’t get too far during my second year in business school when I interviewed for the AT&T Management Leadership Program.

How your alma mater affects your salary

The Wall Street Journal today had an article about a recent survey by PayScale Inc. on the salaries of college graduates from 300 major universities in the United States. The survey is unique for in addition to recording the starting salaries of recent graduates, it also measures the salaries of graduates who are currently in their mid-career (which it defines as 10 to 20 years post graduation). Schools are divided into four categories, liberal arts, state, party, and Ivy League and respondents do not include those who have gone on to receive a more advanced degree such as an MBA.

 

“Even though graduates from all types of schools increase their earnings throughout their careers, their incomes grow at almost the same rate, according to the survey. For instance, the median starting salary for Ivy Leaguers is 32% higher than that of liberal-arts college graduates -- and at 10 or more years into graduates' working lives, the spread is 34%, according to the survey.

 

One reason why Ivy Leaguers outpace their peers may be that they tend to choose roles where they're either managing or providing advice, says David Wise, a senior consultant at Hay Group Inc., a global management-consulting firm based in Philadelphia. By contrast, state-school graduates gravitate toward individual contributor and support roles. "Ivy Leaguers probably position themselves better for job opportunities that provide them with significant upside," says Mr. Wise , adding that this is the first survey he's seen that correlates school choice to a point later in a career.

 

Also, more Ivy League graduates go into finance roles than graduates of other schools, and employers pay a premium for them, says Peter Cappelli, a professor of management and director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "Dartmouth kids get paid more for the same job than kids from Rutgers are [doing]," he says.”

 

One interesting finding is that how much a professional in his mid-career gets paid has less to do with his choice of undergraduate major but more to do the industry choice and career direction that he chooses to pursue.

AOL Mail finally enters the 20th century

I was on my personal AOL webmail account tonight when I noticed something that I have not seen before, at least on AOL. On the left hand panel of the mail screen, sandwiched between the folders titled “Inbox” and “Sent” is a new folder called “Draft.” AOL webmail users can now save unfinished emails on their accounts without having to entertain complex workarounds such as saving them onto a Word document or emailing them to themselves.

 

When I went onto the AOL/AIM Mail Product Insider Blog to read the announcement, I realized that the real story is not the addition of the new functionality but the absence of it for so long. I first heard of Hotmail more than ten years ago before it was owned by Microsoft and I don’t recall it ever not having had the “Save as draft” functionality. The same can be said about other major providers of free email such as Yahoo! and Gmail. Yet AOL somehow has managed to survive for so long without adding this much needed functionality is a story within itself.

One truly “malicious web site”

At the company where I “work,” we use a service called Websense to block employees from looking at certain web sites on company time. Websense allows companies to set the desired levels of censorship, which usually depends on the corporate culture. At my company, in addition to the standard suspects such as pornographic and hateful sites, employees cannot access sites that offer other vices such as free email, streaming audio/video content, or social networking.

I first learned of this three months ago today when I started working and for the past three months, it's been interesting to learn that Websense classifies some of my regular internet destinations as "tasteless" and others as gambling sites. Yet I was still shocked the other day to learn that Websense classifies the Cavalier Daily web site as “malicious web site.” Not sure what the justification for that is, not that I disagree with the it considering how the paper used to run the nastiest quotes about me when I was in college.

Your best life now

I have been working at my new job for almost three months now and within the past month, I began to notice that I am actually beginning to like my post business school life quite a bit. Thursday night was a bit of a wild night – or about as wild as it can get for me not being in school. I kicked off the Fourth of July three day weekend by going to Bub’s for karaoke night. After two hours of watching townies and old people making an attempt to sing, me and a bunch of girls went to Lucy’s (the new name is P.T.’s Grille but I will forever call it Lucy’s) for 80s night. We had tons of fun even though we didn’t stay long enough to hear my favorite Journey song.

 

Afterwards I thought what a difference one year makes. A year ago that very same night I went out to eat by myself and afterwards drove by Franklin Street wishing I had some people to hang out with. And now for the second weeknight in the same week I went out late into the night with a bunch of people (part of the trick here is to make friends with teachers so during the summertime they don’t have to go to work).

 

I thought about this again on Sunday when I talked with a friend. He recently experienced a change of circumstances and is now in a situation where he has to make new friends. He was lamenting that because people tend to socialize within the same age group, making friends was much easier right out of college compared to now when more of his peers either have children or at least are in serious relationships.

 

Given that this friend is not that much older than I am, I consider myself  pretty lucky that I have the friends that I have in Chapel Hill.

God bless Senator Jesse Helms

I heard on the radio this morning that former U.S. Senator from North Carolina and conservative firebrand Jesse Helms died. My initial thought was how fitting it was that he, very much like others who love America such as his hero Thomas Jefferson and Charles Kuralt, died on the anniversary of the American independence.

 

When I first began following politics at a young age, Helms became an immediate hero because he was one of the few conservatives who was not afraid to speak his mind regardless of the consequences. Yet it wasn’t until I became older that I realized just how rare of a trait this is. Unlike most of his colleagues and many of the people I went on to meet later in life, Helms was more interested in following his internal compass than he was in making social and professional connections or in having people say or write nice things about him.

 

I had the chance to meet the Senator during my first semester in business school when his book came out and he had an event at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh. As I was leaving the store, I held the door for a woman who attended with her two children. She was explaining to them that he was controversial and some people don’t like him. I replied that “they don’t make Senators like him anymore.”

Unfortunately they don’t.

 

Speculators and their role in the free market

I don’t like to do this but this is so important that I am going to copy word for word multiple paragraphs from a book that has been on my mind lately. I first read Hidden Order: the Economics of Everyday Life more than ten years ago when I was at UVA and what David Friedman (son of economist Milton Friedman) wrote in Chapter 13 does a much better job at explaining the speculation in the oil market (or any other market for that matter) today than manyof the Congressmen who appeared on the news earlier today.

 

SPECULATION

It is difficult to read either newspapers or history books without occasionally coming across the villainous speculators. Speculators, it sometimes seems, are responsible for all the problems of the world – famines, currency crises, high prices.

 

How Speculation Works

            A speculator buys things when he thinks they are cheap and sells them when he thinks they are expensive. Imagine, for example, that you decide there is going to be a bad harvest this year. You buy grain now, while it is still cheap. If you are right, the harvest is bad, the price of grain goes up, and you sell at a large profit.

            There are several reasons why this way of making a profit gets so much bad press. For one thing, the speculator is profiting by other people’s bad fortune, making money from, in Kipling’s phrase, “Man’s belly pinch and need.” Of course, the sae might be said of farmers, whoare usually considered good guys. For another, the speculator’s purchase of grain tends to drive up the price, making it look as though he is responsible for the scarcity.

            But in order to make money, the speculator must sell as well as buy. If he buy when grain is plentiful, he does indeed tend to increase the price then; but if he sells when it is scarce (which is what he wants to do in order to make money), he increases the supply and decreases the price just when the additional grain is most useful.

            The speculator, acting for his own selfish motives, does almost exactly what a benevolent ruler would do. When he foresees a future famine he drives up the current price, encouraging consumers to economize on food (by slaughtering meat animals early, for example, to save their feed for human consumption), to import food from abroad, to produce other kinds of food (go fishing, dry fruit, …), and in other ways to prepare for the anticipated shortage. He then stores the wheat and distributes it (for a price) at the peak of the famine. Not only does he not cause famines, he prevents them. 

            Speculators, if successful, smooth out price movements, buying goods when they are below their long-run price and selling them when they are above it, raising the price toward equilibrium in one case and lowering it toward equilibrium in the other. They do what government “price-stabilization” schemes claim to do – reduce short-run fluctuations in prices. in the process, they frequently interfere with such price-stabilization schemes, most of which are run by producing countries and designed to “stabilize” prices as high as possible.

Some nice things I have missed

What an incredible time I had last weekend at the 2008 UVA Reunion where the Classes of 2003, 1998, 1993, 1988, and so on, were invited to the University for its annual reunion weekend. This is the one time every five years when alums can return to campus and expect to regularly run into some of the people who made their University experience the special time that it was.

I spent the weekend attending class dinners, dance parties, talks by prominent members of the faculty and mini-reunion events organized across dorms and campus organizations. Throughout the weekend I was constantly reminded of several things that make the University a unique place where I received a college experience that was second to none.

The first is that the University is a place steeped in history. During the lecture by an architecture professor on the design of the Lawn and the Rotunda, it dawned on me that when I walk by certain parts of campus I am literally walking the steps once taken by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe – three former U.S. Presidents who played a role in the founding of the University. Even though UNC is at least 20 years older than UVA, I don’t have the same sense of history when I walk the campus of UNC. Thesecond is the commonality among those who attended this institution. I remember when I first started working I got an email from a friend asking how the working world was different and I told him that while I always had no difficulty finding commonality with my classmates at UVA, I had trouble finding a similar commonality with people I was meeting outside of school. On Saturday night when after the class dinners, we had a performance on the steps of the Rotunda by current and alumni members of the acapella group Academical Village People. It ended with the UVA President joining the performers in linking arms across shoulders and leading the audience to a rendition of the Good Old Song. There was no more powerful demonstration of this common bond than to see the Lawn littered with alums all proceeding to join hands to sing. Lastly, the University serves as a place where I often get randomly reconnected to people whom I have had encounters with in the past. I was at the Rotunda Dome Room talking to a 2004 alum who was there to help plan her five year reunion next summer. She mentioned that her sister was my year and when I saw her last name on her name tag, I knew exactly who her sister was. Later that day I was at a book signing by NBC reporter and 1983 alum Sarah James, who looks nothing in person like she does on TV by the way, and overheard two women talking. I heard one say she was an economist and when I looked at her name tag, I realized she was a 1978 alum whom I had an on campus job interview with ten years ago during my senior year.

What was without a doubt the best part of the weekend was catching up with the people I graduated with. But the most interesting aspect was what was left unsaid. There is this guy who was your typical pre-law, student government type. I didn’t particularly like the guy and didn’t talk to him at the reunion but each I saw him I smirked at just how fat he’s gotten and how much he resembles Chief Wiggums from the Simpsons. He was nowhere this fat at the last reunion. Another thing that’s changed since the last reunion is that one particular couple is no longer together. The two have since gone their separate ways, gotten married, and went to the reunion with their respective spouses. They strategically made sure they were nowhere near one another at the class dinner.

Every time I reminisce about my college experience, I feel like the main character in the movie Stand By Me looking back to his years growing up. The movie endswith him saying the following words “I never had friends later onlike the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”

The best place to park your car

I saw this last week on Columbia Avenue, South of Franklin Street, on the construction site of the addition to UNC’s Sitterson Hall. This is an even better parking deal than the parking lot on Franklin and Graham Streets that I blogged about during my second year in business school.

With all the students returning to campus in August, I hope the construction crew gets its work done before classes begin. Because I’d hate to think how the large construction vehicles will get into and out of the lot when it becomes completely packed with students’ vehicles.

aoljurlAdd, aoljurlAdd_1

Quiet anniversary

I was at Bible study this week discussing adulthood when someone asked “at what point in your life did you feel you’ve become an adult.”

 

After thinking about the topic for a moment I said “June 5, 1998.” I went on to explain that it was a significant day in my life because on that day I moved into my own apartment for the very first time after graduating from college weeks before. It was my first day of no longer living with my parents or on UVA property. I had traded the protection of my parents and a daily class schedule for electric bills, tax withholding, and having to go to work everyday.

 

Here we are ten years later. It’s been a decade of surprises, disappointments, things I learned that I want to share with the world, as well as things I have done that I’d rather not tell anyone about.

 

Tomorrow I will be returning to UVA for my ten year college reunion.

The importance of wealth management

I wish to preface my comments by saying that I wish Ed McMahon the best of luck in dealing with his health and financial predicaments. When I was kid, my family used to watch Star Search and I remember watching the show even before I understood what it was about. I certainly do not want to see this 85 year old beloved icon of American entertainment lose his home to foreclosure.

 

But the story that surfaced today about his financial dilemma illustrates just how little even affluent Americans know about prudent wealth management. According to Wikipedia, McMahon had a net worth of more than $200 million in the 1990s. Over the next decade, divorce settlements, declining real estate value, and a career-stalling neck injury put him in a situation where he currently owes $644,000 in mortgage payments.

 

Everywhere around us is evidence that the wealthiest nation in the world has somehow produced a population which is incapable of wealth management. I think this is partly due to a culture where we push everything to the extreme. When I was in business school we had a class visit from two alums who started a successful email marketing company in Durham. The duo explained that company cash flow was so tight in the beginning that the two did not get paid for the first year. When a student asked how they survived an entire year without a salary, one explained that it was the result of having purposely made financial decisions to live below his means. He said we could graduate from business school and choose to either use our MBA salaries to live a lavish lifestyle or be frugal and create further lifestyle and business opportunities along the way.

 

With the recent economic problems in the country, one of the most important thing Americans can do during this time is the virtue of saving for a rainy day.

Fox announces Season 7 of 24, for real this time

You all remember 24, don’t you? The show I used to blog about? As I prepared to relay the latest news regarding my favorite show, it dawned on me that the wait for season seven has become a drama in it of itself.

Back in October, Fox released an internet preview for the new season with an announcement from Keifer Sutherland promising “the biggest season yet.” That season was scraped due to the writers strike. Now Fox is announcing that the next season will premier in January and will be accompanied with a two hour movie in November.

“Producers also dished on the two-hour, stand-alone '24' prequel movie which aims to bridge the gap between the end of season six and the start of season seven. Shot partly on location in South Africa, the movie will take place on Inauguration Day for the next U.S. president as Jack Bauer finds himself in the middle of an international crisis.”

The rest of the article mentions that the writers used the extra time to fine tune the story line and for the first time, mapped out the entire story before shooting took place. Unfortunately they decided to go ahead with the storyline of Jack Bauer being court marshaled for crimes he allegedly committed while fighting terrorists. And Keifer Sutherland is once again promising “the best season of 24.”

After the tortuous wait fans have endured, I hope for Sutherland’s sake that he delivers and this is the best season ever. Otherwise, there would be justified reasons to have him court marshaled.

Changing lanes with Sydney Pollack

I am going to confess that I had no idea who Sydney Pollack was. When I heard yesterday that he died, I initially had him confused with Sidney Poitier. Even after I saw his picture and recognized him from several movies, I still had no idea he was the director responsible for some of the most memorable films in the past thirty years.

 

My ignorance is surprising given that Pollack played a major character in a movie that very accurately illustrates the moral compromises we often make in the business world. In Changing Lanes he played a partner in a law firm where Ben Affleck’s character was an associate. The plot involves him trying to convince Affleck’s character (who was also his son in law) to forge a signature on a court document. He enlisted the help of his daughter who told Affleck’s character (paraphrasing) the following:

 

“At the level of the law that you’re dealing with, your goal is not the pursuit of truth or justice but to manipulate the system to get the desired outcome.”

 

This makes me think about all the times I have been in a conversation where the primary goal of what I was saying was not to convey the truth but to either positively portray myself and/or to get my listener to do something I wanted. And I am not alone in having done this. In business school, I found the culture to be such that people were constantly “selling themselves” by talking about themselves in the best way possible. While I realize the needs to “sell yourself”, I sometimes wonder if we lose a part of ourselves in the process. Once a friend told me that her friend was at a Duke MBA happy hour and later described the Fuqua students as “emotionally shallow.” There was another time when I was at He’s Not Here talking to some grad students and when I mentioned I was in business school, one girl sarcastically said(paraphrasing) “oh we know about all you MBA types.” She needed no further explanation as to what she meant by “MBA types.”

 

The most memorable point in the movie came toward the end when Ben Affleck’s character confronted his boss and asked him “how can you live like that?” Pollack’s character masterfully replied:

 

“I can live with myself because at the end of the day I think I do more good than harm. What other standards have I got to judge by?” 

 

Unfortunately the moral logic of the above statement is not limited in today’s world to lawyers and us “MBA types.”

Yet another error in the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is an excellent source of information on the business and political worlds. But I am getting sick and tired of the errors on this publication, both in the print version and the internet edition.

I have trouble believing that someone who has never taken a journalism class and with no formal training in writing other than the required classes in college and in business school can spot these errors right away and the staff of the Journal cannot. Either the paper should hire a proofreader, ask its editors to be more aggressive in spotting errors, or put in place a process where anyone from the paper’s summer intern to the average reader can point out these errors to the

The Journal markets its print subscription and internet site access as a bundled product. Since my subscription expires soon, I have embarked on a strategy to keep reading the paper in perpetuity. I have gone onto the web site and suspended home delivery of the paper product until 2014. Between now and then, each day will not count against the number of days remaining on my subscription. Meanwhile, I can continue to read each day’s paper (US, European, and Asian versions) on the internet site.

Since I have been so diligent about pointing out the paper’s faults and errors on this blog, getting to read it for free is the least the Wall Street Journal can do for me.

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The controversial ingredients of happiness

Monday’s Wall Street Journal had a book review of Gross National Happiness by Arthur C. Brooks. Over the past three years I have thought much about what exactly makes one happy. From my personal experience, I can tell the source of much of my happiness has to do with finding a meaningful community, making a connection to members of such a community, and also disconnecting from some of the things that the more secular elements of my life claim to be important.

 

“In “Gross National Happiness,” Mr. Brooks has assembled an array of statistics to measure the mood of America's citizens and to discover the reasons they feel as they do. Most often he cites polls that ask for self-described happiness levels, matching up the answers with various beliefs, habits, life choices or experiences.”

 

One of the more controversial claims in the book is that people with certain political affiliations are happier than others.

 

“At the end of the day, Mr. Brooks notes, "political conservatives take the happiness prize hands down." Those who identify themselves as conservative or very conservative, he says, are twice as likely to say that they're very happy as those who identify themselves as liberal or very liberal. What explains the rightists' relative bliss? It seems that a conservative political disposition exists alongside other happy habits of being.”

 

I agree with this. About a month ago I was entertaining myself by using the North Carolina State Board of Elections web site to lookup the voter registration records of some of my business school professors. In North Carolina, one can register as either Republican, Democrat, or as unaffiliated. With the exception of the ones who were registered as unaffiliated, I correctly guessed the political party affiliation of each and every professor that I took a guess on.

 

It’s difficult to describe the qualitative metrics that I used to estimate the political preferences of the professors. But I do remember that one professor struck me as a strong Republican because of his ability to tell self-deprecating jokes about himself. Everything else about his mannerisms conveyed that he was very happy about his life, his profession, and where he was in life. In contrast, I correctly guessed that another professor was a Democrat based on his classroom demeanor which conveyed that he did not want to be there.

 

The author wrote something else which is also quite applicable.

 

“In an observation of particular relevance at the moment, Mr. Brooks says that political "extremists" – who comprise 10% to 20% of the population – may be among the happiest people in America, because they "believe with perfect certainty in the correctness of their political dogmas."”

 

Perhaps this explains why I am so happy.

Looking back and planning ahead

One year ago tomorrow I graduated from business school with my MBA. The past twelve months have been both challenging and disappointing. When I started this blog almost three years ago I was in the process of preparing for business school. While I had concerns about whether UNC (or even going to business school in general) was the right choice for me, never in my wildest dreams would I have expected my job search to last almost an entire school year.

 

In some ways I feel as though I spent three years in business school. The first two going to class and last one looking for a job while reflecting on my MBA experience. Over the past three years the words “A place for me to share my thoughts and hopes as I go through the MBA program at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School” have served as an appropriate description for this blog. However, going forward the blog will be less focused on business school and more focused on other aspects of my life.

 

Over the next couple of days I will be rebranding the blog to more accurately reflect the topics I will be blogging about. While I haven’t finalized on what the new blog description will be,  I imagine it will revolve around my life as a young professional the Chapel Hill and will cover the myriad of topics I am interested ranging from technology, politics, my Christian faith, all the way to the latest rumors on the internets.

 

Stay tuned!

The Boston Globe looking to hire a proofreader

I was bored at work earlier this week and read a news article about the market for used sport utility vehicles. Because of the recent high gas prices, selling one of these high gas consumer vehicles is harder than ever. According to CNW Marketing Research, it took 66 days to sell a used SUV in April and the average sale took place at a 20 percent discount from the Kelley Blue Book value. This parallels what I have been seeing at the lot of the used car dealership near where I live.

 

The reporter goes on to write about the challenges facing current SUV owners.

 

“Frustrated and unable to afford prices at the pump, Nizami last month turned over the Toyota to a dealer who only sells vehicles from private owners. Nizami is still paying the $450 loan but now is bumming rides to work with a cousin and worrying about making enough from the sale to cover the car loan.”

 

In other words Nizami borrowed $450 to finance the purchase and is worried he won’t be able to resell it at a price high enough to cover the amount still outstanding on the loan. The mainstream media would have you believe that the economy is pretty bad but it’s not that bad that an SUV owner has to worry about a $450 loan.

 

The Boston Globe should hire a new business reporter. I’d take the job but unfortunately I already have one.

Out and about in Chapel Hill

I was driving back to the office during my lunch hour today when I saw the above in front of my windshield. Motricity is the local start up I had blogged about earlier - it recently purchased a company in Seattle only to later announce that it would be laying off most of its employees and require the remaining ones to move to Seattle. The laid off employees’ last day in the office was this past Friday.

Judging from the make of the vehicle and the audacity of using one’s company name as the license plate, the driver of the above vehicle is probably one of the upper level executives who will relocate to Seattle. I wonder if he will be able to get the same license plate in Washington State.

Round the world we go

I am back at Chapel Hill after two short days in Singapore,. I returned via United Airlines by way of Narita (Tokyo) and Dulles (Washington DC). One of the more remarkable things about this trip is the route that I took – I went to Singapore by crossing the Atlantic and returned via the Pacific – making this literally a trip around the world.

Pictured above is an eating place (I believe these are called "hawker stands") at the corner of Circular Road and South Bridge Road where I had a dish of wonton noodle and a dish of fishball for S$3 on Friday. When I visit foreign countries, I often see things that I wish I can bring back. But I am also frequently reminded of how great of a country we have in the United States of America. The one thing I will remember most about Singapore is a random conversation I had with someone on Thursday morning. I was walking in the area around my hotel in Clark Quay when an Indian man asked me for directions. He pulled out an Indian passport with a business card bookmarked within and asked if I knew where a particular address was. I told him I myself had just landed hours ago. He asked if I was from Japan and when I told him I was from the United States he said “you’re a very lucky man.”

Singaporean morning

Singapore Local Time Friday 6:42 am

 

Good morning from the Republic of Singapore. I landed on this island-nation yesterday at around 6am after spending 18 hours on a Singapore Airline A340 that flew over the Atlantic Ocean, France, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and entered India south of Mumbai before landing at Singapore Changi Airport.

 

Below is some footage I took of the MRT (subway) ride from the airport to the hotel. This was during morning rush hour and some of the buildings along the route are the HDB (public housing) buildings that more than 85% of Singaporeans live in.

 

  

 

I read a newspaper article saying that Singapore has the 9th highest rent (as measured by three bedroom apartments) of any city in the world. The article states that a three bedroom apartment the area near Orchard Road where a lot of expatriates live costs around $4460 USD. The survey ranks Hong Kong as having the most expensive rent in the world and New York as third.

Strapping in for the bumpy ride ahead

I apologize for not having blogged but a couple of things have transpired since my last posting that have taken up much of my time and mental energy. I do not wish to share them with you at this time, except that I have accepted the job offer with the insurance company and will start on Monday.

Meanwhile, I am flying out to Singapore for a last minute trip this week. The 18 hour flight with Singapore Airlines is the longest daily scheduled flight in the world and easily surpasses the one I took in November to go to Hong Kong.

Hopefully I will be able to upload some pictures once I get there.

Exclusive: U.S. unemployment rate set to decline

The first item on the radio news yesterday morning was about the latest rise in unemployment statistics. I, however, have inside information that unemployment is about to go down – yesterday I received a job offer for the Senior Business Analyst position with a local insurance company. I have until Thursday to decide but I am leaning toward taking it.

 

I will blog more on this later but if the old economist joke is correct – that a recession is when your neighbor loses his job and a depression is when you lose yours – then the logic follows that since I am no longer unemployed, we must be headed for a recovery.

Buckyhoo joins the cast of 24

April 1 – Hollywood, CA – Fox Broadcasting announced that Chapel Hill celebrity and blogosphere sensation Buckyhoo will join the cast of 24 during Season 7, playing a spy from the People’s Republic of China.

“Over the years, I have enjoyed corresponding with Buckyhoo and reading his blog postings. Since he has a good grasp of how the show works, I decided to capitalize on his current unemployment and bring him on board for cheap,” said show producer Joel Surnow who first met Buckyhoo at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

It is unclear whether Buckyhoo’s character will work with or against Jack Bauer. “At some point I may get to strangle Janeane Garofalo’s character and if her character is anything as annoying as her persona is on Air America radio, that can be the highlight of the entire season,” said Buckyhoo.

This is the latest in a series of stints that have raised Buckyhoo’s public profile over the years, including hosting a short lived show on CNN’s mobile network and running for the Republican presidential nomination. But not everyone has positive things to say about this latest development. One of his former business school professors, Mary Smith, the Franklin Koury Moorehead Professor of ethical strategic entrepreneurial management communications at the Kenan-Flagler Business School commented, “the ultimate test as to how good of an actor he is will be whether his character manages to stay awake for more than two hours.”

Random observations from Wine Bar

I went to the West End Wine Bar tonight to watch the UNC Tar Heels play Louisville in the Elite Eight basketball tournament in Charlotte. There was a very funny moment during the second half with about 2:48 left on the clock when the local CBS television station, WRAL, moved the picture onto a small subset of the screen to make room to display tonight’s Powerball lottery results. The boos and jeers coming from the fans at the Wine Bar must have been loud enough to wake up the guy asleep at the switch at WRAL because almost as quickly as the split screen came on, it disappeared.

 

As I watched Tyler Hansbrough score his 28 points against Louisville, I became convinced that he must know how to fly.