Off to DC again

It's about 2 degrees celsius outside so I've been literally chillin' in this weather, getting my arse frozen off. In all honesty, my ability to deal with the cold weather seems to have improved from the days yonder. Then again, it could just be me learning to wear more clothes in this crazy weather.

The week that's just gone past has been quite a week for movies - have caught the following ones (in order of ability to remember). Just a note, for those that don't know, UVa has a place known as the Robertson Media Center (yes, spelt 'Center') and it's a fantastic joint where you can borrow just about almost any DVD. Their collection is amazing and it's all free. So the movies are:

1. Leaving Las Vegas - One of the saddest movies I've watched in a long long time. And very depressing. About the story of 2 people who are in a destructive relationship that is doomed from the start. Very very very haunting soundtrack.

2. Elephant - I think this one won at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003. Explores the viewpoints of many different people in a school shooting, although officially not based on Columbine (yeah, right). Supposedly great cinematography.

3. The Shawshank Redemption - A really good film about how Tim Robbins learns to age on camera gracefully while portraying a wanted man in prison. With Morgan Freeman in the token black man role. I wish I watched this in the cinema, though.

4. The Matador - A supposedly funny film with Pierce Brosnan sporting an Irish accent and Greg Kinnear sporting a mustache that makes him look rather less gay. Incidentally, Pierce Brosnan doesn't age quite as well as Tim Robbins does.

Finally, I'm off to DC again tomorrow - the good folks at IRC (da Collective, remember?), after having a wonderful wine-drinking session (where we were introduced to Boursin, a kind of garlic cheese that goes very well with free wine), are taking us up to the capital once again. Whoever wants something from DC, drop me an SMS.


Banker wannabes being...banker wannabes

A lil' bit of Halloween humour. This one had me in guffaws.

As I lay me down to sleep...

...I notice the weather outside is 36F. That's 2 degrees celsius, mofos. WTF?!?!

Why the world is the way it is.

The secrets of the universe laid bare here.

Dinner @ The Rotunda

Poor Liying got locked out of her room today, and we had to make a trip to the key room to retrieve a back-up key. Of course, the rapid decline of temperatures over the past few days (it's bloody 5 degrees outside!) sure as hell made the trip a really fun one. Liying, if you're reading this, I hope you're okay and do remember that you owe us big-time for freezing our asses off with you.

The IRC (International Residents' College/Community/Collective), which is where we stay, hosted a dinner yesterday at the Rotunda. The Rotunda is Tommy J's (that's Mr Jefferson to the more respectful) contribution to the University of Virginia, and is now a World Heritage Site, one of the few man-made ones in the United States, actually. It's a gorgeous place and we couldn't help but be tourists, naturally.


Dinner - baked potato with asparagus and chicken with rice stuffing (with blue cheese). Don't you just love exotic looking food?


Dessert - some custard-based cherries on top of a chocolate crust. As you can guess, I don't write restaurant menus for a living.


That guy on the right has some serious issues with his lips, man. Picture of the Browns (Chief of the Collective), Brit gals and Singaporean Exchange Reprezant


The Rotunda, viewed from the inside. Apparently Jefferson used to dine here al fresco

Monday morning comics

Found this in today's daily. This is so wrong. Haha.

Crazy American grocery shopping

Grocery shopping is so weird here.

1. I bought 2 tubs of Haagen-Dazs ice-cream at US$3.69. To all those in Singapore, eat your hearts out while I eat my ice-cream out.

2. It costs US$6 to buy a pack of 2 Oral-B toothbrushes but if you get 2 of those packs, you only need pay US$5. So in effect, you're better off taking that extra pair and throwing it away (or giving it to charity) if you want to save money shopping.

Of preparation for Halloween

One thing that I am eternally grateful for is the enormous amount of hospitality that I've received while here in the States. It makes me want to ensure that when I'm back in Singapore, I'm able to have my own place so that I can put up friends who visit in the region or in general, just be able to spare a place and spare time to bring people around.

There's Andrew, who brought us all the way to DC, and happily spent a weekend with us instead of his family, his girlfriend or whoever. He's been absolutely amazing, driving us around now and then, and since I know he reads this blog, I'd just like to say a big thank you, and also that we need to go grocery shopping soon, so please get those engines ready. :P.

There's John Paul, a fantastic guy and good friend of Andrew, who put up 3 of us Asians in his room (making him look like a dodgy trader of Asian labourers) and brought us around during the time we were in DC, despite him not exactly knowing us. That, btw, involved walking an hour up and down Georgetown (the Orchard Road of DC) in the blazing sun trying to figure out where we were.

The list probably goes on and on but the one group of people I'm particularly fond of and feel particularly indebted to would be the Carltons, Liying's host family. They have been amazing not just in terms of their hospitality, but in terms of just providing us with experiences that you would never ever be able to replicate, they have been absolutely wonderful.

Consider the experiences they've brought us to: visiting an apple orchard, a show-and-tell in an elementary school, pumpkin carving for Halloween. I can't imagine ever having those experiences here if not for them bringing us about, and I certainly can't imagine the amount of fun that we would actually have with such a warm and lovely family.

Let the pictures tell you more:


6 children, including 3 oversized ones and the Carltons.


Will, taking it all in. He's probably the most adorable thing/person on this blog.


My project for the afternoon.


Our end products. I must admit, it's quite the real thing, eh? Carvers from left to right: Emily, yours truly, Jem


An amazing treat for children of all ages - caramel apple. Thanks to Emily for that (and the unpictured cookies I'm eating while typing this).

Pictures from a game to remember

The beginning of the stampede. It sure as hell doesn't look like the stewards were bothering to hold us back


The invasion of the masses. Apparently, the last time this happened was also when UVa beat FSU. It probably didn't help that there was a sign "For your own safety, please do not invade the pitch" just a minute before the end.


And they just keep on pouring and pouring...


A moment to savour - desperate attempts at bringing down serious heavy duty goalposts. A.K.A. "What you missed on ESPN".

The makings of a footy fan.

I have finally become a fan of American football.

What began as a day of shopping (Jeremy and Liying's idea of showing Darren and Kaixiang around) ended with a football game that was perhaps the most memorable sports event in a long long time. Or at least among the ones which I've had free admissions to, anyway.

Today, Virginia played Florida State University (FSU), ranked 4th nationally (UVa is unranked on the Top 25 list, after losing to Maryland and Boston College over the last 2 games). Pre-game discussions went a little something like this:

"Dude, we are so going to get raped man."

"I'm not watching the game, man, we are so going to get raped."

"I'm going home and not watching the game, man, we are so going to get raped."

The list goes on.

Anyway, since our dear friends from Penn decided to pop by, we thought we would showcase to them something a lil' unique about UVa (although according to Darren, the abundance of good-looking women already makes UVa distinct from Penn). We headed to Scott Stadium, home of the Virginia Football (that's Americano football) team. Darren and KX didn't pay for admissions because they managed to pass off as a South Korean lass and an Indian girl respectively (I might have the two mixed up). Master of disguises they are, indeed.

We arrived to find our team up 13-10, which is, for lack of a better word, rather surprising. The star quarterback, Marques (pronounced "Marcus") Hagans, was supposedly on form - apparently he either threw or rushed a career high (don't look at me, I don't understand this game either). Anyway, the quarterback is a really important player in American football because he's the player who chucks the ball to the others when you're trying to score, or roughly translated, he's the player whose nuts everyone's after.

So the star quarterback plays a really fantastic game and at one point, we're leading 26-10. This is the point where the audience goes crazy, random Americans start high-fiving me and I'm singing some seriously weird version of "Auld Lang Syne" known as "The Good Ol' Song", a tune they play whenever Virginia scores. You have to understand that such a scoreline is something along the lines of Arsenal leading AC Milan in a Champions League game by 4-0 (i.e. an impossibility, or certainly nigh impossibility).

Reality kicks in as the game goes on and FSU goes on to score about 11 in the 4th quarter, giving them all to play for with at least 5 minutes to go. To cut a long story short, FSU f**ks it up, Virginia makes some interception with a minute to go and kills enough time to win the game. Which is a feat to remember, considering that this is a team that has only beaten a former Top 10 team all of...5 times (or the other way around, I can't remember).

Naturally, this being an occasion to remember, we stormed the field and engulfed the players. That's right, the whole stadium went mad, we dashed onto the ground itself and had a good ol' time watching as people tried desperately to bring down the goal posts. The euphoria of watching your local underdog kicking some serious ass is really a fun feeling, and let's face it, we all want to be football hooligans.

For a more technical analysis of the game, you might want to read this. For more pictures, you'll have to wait for someone to pass me some. But man, storming a football pitch is what it takes to make you a football fan. You should try it sometime.

PS: On a sidenote I spent US$10.48 today purchasing 2 books, which are pretty far apart in their ideological leanings. Michael Moore's "Dude Where's My Country?" covers the left-wing, anti-capitalist vox populi while this autobiography of Jack Welch, former head of GE, is the story of the capitalist hero, or vox money.

Jason Mraz Live!

I need to get the pictures from Shu'en, because we were convinced by Liying that bringing digital cameras were bad ideas (which turned out otherwise, but then, we didn't have enough people with hand bags to hide them in, I guess). In any case, what a concert!

Too lazy to write flowing prose (tired too), but here's what made it great.

1. Raul Midon. He's a blind musician who is by far the most talented guitar player I've ever seen live. His music has clear influences of jazz and soul and he's talented enough that he can mimick the sound of a trumpet while tapping the guitar to mimick a drum. In other words, a one-man jazz band act. Did I also mention that he's got a rich voice? I swear, I've never seen a more talented live performance. Why isn't this guy famous yet?!?!?!?!

2. Showmanship - Jason Mraz is from Richmond and his image is so college-y that it's no surprise he totally pumped up the audience with the whole "I'm one of you" attitude. Countless references to Charlottesville, UVa, the nickname "Cavaliers" (a nickname for a UVa person, most often used in athletic team references) and references to UVa beating Florida State in tomorrow's football game - an unlikely possibility but enough to win the support of the audience.

3. Jason Mraz can sing. Helen, the President of the UVa SingSoc, tells me that he has vocal training and that's why he's got the ability to quickly change vocal styles. But seriously, the guy's goofy, he's got a penchant for robot moves and he sings pretty damn well. Oh, and his band can play too. What more do you need?!

Random Thursday musings

One thing that I think I'll miss about UVa when I leave for home is all these crazy squirrels running around all the time. For some reason it adds to a sense of homeliness which I think is slowly but surely disappearing from SMU, now with its city campus. On the other hand, there's going to be Old Chang Kee on campus at SMU, which is something I can never complain about. Ever.

Summer has left so long gone that I'm freezing my ass off. This also means that I'm likely to end up putting on weight as the weather gets colder, which is depressing news. In any case, you know the seasons have changed when the weather is this f**kin' cold, and when the fashion accessory of choice is not the oversized shades (which every girl in UVa has) but the rain jacket/trenchcoats.

I wanna be a trader. Damn.

Of Gob & Gobfathers

There isn't much better on a Tuesday afternoon than eating a US$2.88 tub of Ben & Jerry's ice-cream known as the Gobfather while watching Gob & his father on "Arrested Development" after messing up an Economics paper.

Oh yeah, NOT messing up the Economics paper would be better.

Yet another careers entry...doesn't the author have anything else better to blog about?

I know I always inadvertently end up blogging about careers but having spent over 3 years in college waiting to get a real job, it's one of those topics that's always on my mind. Coming on exchange and taking a mountain of debt doesn't exactly ease up any of the pressure, and perhaps having too much time to worry about it gets to me a little.

So anyway, a number of things about careers today - it just happened to be one of those days, I guess, where I'm being reminded that I soon have to decide where I'm going wit my life. Argh.

1. I received a call at about 2pm (US time) from [Unnamed North American Financial Institution]. On a whim, I applied for their Investment Banking Analyst Program. Thus was I awoken from a mid-day slumber (been staying up to prepare for a Spanish paper this morning) and screened via a phone interview for a potential Super Saturday event. Of course, being just awoken, I probably made a fool of myself - for example, I hadn't had the time to really look into this company and couldn't give a list of the company's merits. Thus have I learnt an important lesson - if you sign up with whatever firm, you better bloody read up the moment you've submitted your thing. Then again, working in the USA would have been something of a long shot.

2. I also had the time to chat with a former colleague of mine from my days working at a Who's Who publication in Singapore. This lady of Jap-American descent is currently in Costa Rica doing a publication based on travel, which is as far out as it gets from doing a Who's Who publication in Singapore 2 years ago. Her words to me were "Don't turn into a suit. You've got more brains than that" (or to that effect). I suppose this would have been something one would shrug off, only that later in the evening, I had the opportunity to speak with the speaker of that celestial tongue (hey, don't look at me, she came up with that name). She thinks we're too young to commit ourselves to the rat race, and duly suggested I turn to working in an NGO. I thought it might have been kinda rude to laugh at that point.

3. Kudos to my university, which has had some tremendous success in recent days in bringing in some top-notch financial institutions to present on career opportunities, as well as some career opportunities without presentations. A sample would be as follows:

Barclays Capital
Citigroup
DBS
Deutsche Bank
GE
Goldman Sachs
HSBC
Lehman Brothers
UBS

Today, I noticed on my university's career page that the Boston Consulting Group and Macquarie Bank will be coming to visit to recruit people. This is, of course, wonderful news but it's really irritating to see how all these things start appearing the moment you're away. And I don't even have new episodes of Arrested Development to keep me occupied from these thoughts.

A tourist in DC Part 4

The Washington Monument, one of many sites named after former Presidents in DC. Take a closer look at the lovely sunset in the background.


Lincoln Memorial from far out. Right in front is the area where Jenny from "Forrest Gump" runs up to say hi to Forrest when he's making his peace speech.


Dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives fighting in the Pacific.


Slightly more poetic than what I could muster. I know Ian would enjoy this.


Abe@Lincoln Memorial.

A tourist in DC Part 3

A sculpture from a Native American museum.


A yearning for a lost legacy. The small words in white indicate the numerous tribes of Native America


Capitol Hill, ladies and gentlemen. Majestic, isn't it?


La casa blanca, home to squirrels, interns and oh yeah, presidents


Singaporean tourists pretending to be happy to have walked 13 streets only to find out that the friggin' White House is visible from a million miles out

Why tests and exams are a waste of everyone's time

Not perhaps the most insightful of observations but this can technically be proven from an Economics perspective (ah, yes, the power of attending Economics classes half-asleep). Let us consider first the following analogy:

Theft, as we all know, is a problem. Besides the clear ethical issues with theft, it's an economic problem, as we need to start allocating resources in order to ensure that theft doesn't happen. For example, we need greater quantities of police, we need guard dogs, we need burglar alarms, we need guns and the works. All the resources can be devoted to something else more productive (like, say, making Krispy Kreme donuts) but have to be allocated to the prevention of theft, and thus, economic inefficiencies occur.

Similarly, if you look at tests and exams, there is absolutely no productivity gathered out of them. They're designed in a way to see if you have the information you "need" in your heads, but no knowledge is transferred or gained and in no way is someone's productivity increased as a result of testing. It's a waste of resources because the time could have been spent elsewhere (like visiting your local Krispy Kreme), we could hire less TAs and graders, we could have less quantities of teachers/professors, less red pens could be sold, etc. In a nutshell, it's economically inefficient and on that basis alone, we should do away with tests and exams.

*Yes, I know it's not a brilliantly written piece and someone's going to argue that the benefit is that grading acts as a sorting hat which acts as some form of lubricant in matching demand and supply in the job market but transaction costs are a result of inefficiencies, right? And besides, who said Economics makes sense?

A tourist in DC Part 2

Think I can afford larger pics...


"What's with the hair, Georgey boy?". Yet another clueless Asian tourist.


Perhaps one of the least rated landmarks of DC. The Watergate hotel, home to the collapse of a presidency and the independence of the 4th Estate.


The waterfront on the way from the Watergate hotel to Georgetown. Lovely lovely place for a meal if you printed enough money.


This is exactly the kind of thing that retards Darwinian's natural selection. Warning signs for the seriously retarded.

A tourist in DC Part 1

Having been influenced heavily by Jeremy to act like a tourist when being a tourist, the following entries shall be filled with memories of the time we spent in DC...


All smiles before the road trip. From left to right: Clara and the Washington Redskins wannabes.


In varying modes of ecstasy - Krispy Kreme at Dupont Circle.


Wisconsin Avenue, Washington DC's "Orchard Road" of accessible pseudo-high fashion. Possibly the least All-American area in DC. Very quaint, very European.


Andrew proving to Jeremy that Americans can be easily excitable too.


The staircase seen in the movie "The Exorcist", filmed on location at Georgetown University.

The MacDonald's Phenomenon

Back from DC after a weekend which can best be described as time-consuming. There's just so much to describe that pictures will certainly tell a much better tale. Interestingly enough, the thing I want to talk about most isn't particularly DC-related - it's more to do with just some random thoughts off the top of my mind.

I've had the opportunities to eat at McDonald's twice over the past 3 days and it's interesting to just note the demographic of people going in to eat at the great McD's. If you look at the average Mac's in the US of A, you can neatly categorise the people going into Mac's within 4 main categories:

1. Blacks
2. Hispanics
3. Fat white people
4. Tourists

This is, of course, not 100% representative of the demographic of people who go into MacDonald's but probably serves as a good general guide to the kind of people who are loving it. To the average Singaporean, this demographic probably isn't the kind one would expect (given Mac's positioning in Singapore) but when you probe a bit deeper, you start to get an idea why.

The divine M in this country has been my eatery of choice for the past 2 days because as far as food goes, it's the cheapest and most convenient food that's actually edible in many areas. M is ubiquitous. You see it everywhere (something that's noted by Andrew on the drive all around the country). Relative to most other fast food, it's a hell lot cheaper (usually $1 - $2, which is quite something since fast food here costs about as much as in Singapore). There's no need to bring in restaurants here obviously.

So, if you look at the above groups, you sorta get a feel for what MacDonald's is. Historically, given that there are large pockets of poor blacks/hispanics, it's unsurprising to see that this demographic tops the list of the M's customers. With regards to the fat white people - again if you look at the obese people (and I mean really obese, not just normal kinda fat), you'll see that these people tend to be those working in environments which aren't exactly on top of our wishlists of dream jobs. There seems to be a strong connection to suggest that the pricing methods of M has made it such that it's really an accessible form of food to the masses. Unfortunately, the trend of upward mobility in terms of income seems to lead many to seek some way of classifying themselves - a class war, if you will. And interestingly enough, fast food seems to appear to be the arena for which this kind of class wars are fought.

What then, of the tourist? The only seemingly logical conclusion is that the proliferation of MacDonald's the world over has led to many people viewing the M as a symbol of Americanism, or perhaps a symbol of just American food in general. In terms of pricing, the M doesn't exactly place itself in quite the same spot as in its home market - food centres sell cheaper food than the M back in Singapore, while many Asian cities still use the M as some indicator of how globalized that location is. A series of random thoughts, perhaps, but to see how it all comes together is fascinating.

*Disclaimer: All ideas here are based on random thoughts from the author, whose observations are in no way scientific. And no, I'm not racist, you yellow bastards.