Garbage on tour in the US this fall

No Doubt are touring with Garbage in the US in October / November. I missed out on seeing Garbage at the Big Day Out in Australia earlier this year, so I'm pretty keen to catch them this time.

If anyone would like to join me, I'm considering either:

• Philadelphia (October 17th), or
  
• Orlando (October 30th) - roughly coinciding with a shuttle launch on November 2nd.
  

Weekend wrap-up

The distinction between weekday and weekend has become a bit of a blur for me over the past few weeks, what with exams, holidays, long flights, decontructing my apartment in Melbourne, setting up my new room in New York, and the like. As such, there's no compelling reason why I should write a 'weekend wrap-up' as such. Instead, let me just tell you about some of the highlights of the past few days. My primary focus since my last class on Thursday has been career management and sleep catch-up. With a multitude of company presentations coming up in the new two weeks, I felt it was time to do some work on my resume (American-ise it so to speak). After five hours work on Friday and Saturday, I now have both a one-page and two-page resume designed for the US market, and well as my original one-page resume for the Australian market. I also prepared three job applications over the weekend: a summer internship with Deutsche Bank in either Sydney or Melbourne, a summer internship with Macquarie Bank in Sydney, and a part-time resume reviewing job with the Careers office here at Columbia. If I get an interview invitation from either of the banks, we'll have to do the interview over the phone.

Today I put the books and the career aside, and went for a stroll through Central Park. The weather is very nice in New York at the moment - around 81 degrees Fahrenheigt every day (which translates to around 27 degrees Celcius for all the non-Americans in the audience, myself included). It wasn't an aimless wander though - my destination was the Guggenheim Museum. They have an exhibition on at the moment called Moving Pictures which definitely had that 'modern art' feel about it - very abstract, lots of bright colours, and a dash of erotica. Interestingly, they also have a Rembrandt on loan from The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The web graphic (follow the link) doesn't do this painting justice. The realism and condition of this picture (it's over 350 years old!) are absolutely incredible.

Course overview: Advanced Corporate Finance

This is something I meant to do originally on my MBA-orientated weblog, but didn't get around to for Term 1 and 2 at MBS. I make heaps of posts referring to particular aspects of my courses, without ever providing an overview of what the course is actually about. So, over the next few days, I'll try to put together a summary of each of the courses that I'm doing at Columbia, together with my personal expectations / outcomes.

B8301 - Advanced Corporate Finance (Professor E. R. Arzac)

Advanced Corporate Finance at Columbia is pretty much the equivalent of Corporate Finance at MBS. It is "a course on entrepreneurial and corporate finance dealing with the design of financial policy and the valuation of firms and financial instruments." More specifically, the course uses cases, mostly developed by the professor (rather than published through Harvard), to demonstrate free cash flows in domestic and international acquisitions, private equity and leveraged buy-outs, equity derivatives (options, futures, etc), real options, mergers & acquisitions, recapitalisations, and asset restructuring.

Enrique Arzac uses his own text and his own cases, which is unusual for an upper-level corporate finance course. From my understanding most b-schools have adopted Brealey & Myers' Principles of Corporate Finance as the standard textbook for corporate finance-orientated courses. However, Enrique's classes are always fully subscribed, and receive consistent student ratings around 6.5 out of 7.

I'm anticipating that I'll get a lot out of this course. Being a finance course, there's lots of numbers and formulas to learn, but untimately it's a course about how proceed with a big corporate finance deal; which approach to take, and how to deal with each of the stakeholders. Should be challenging, engaging, and maybe even a bit of fun.

Adrian is now a NYC Blogger

Check out the other blogs on the '1' line in New York. My closest station is 'Cathedral Parkway - 110 Street'.

Columbia Business School - Fall Semester 2002: Day 0

Administrative day today. Picked up my Columbia student ID card. Paid off my accommodation for the semester. Met with some of the staff in the Columbia Business School admin offices. And also attended an careers information session.

Adrian's 60-second summary of the careers situation at Columbia
Columbia seem to have had more success in placing their 2002 graduates than back home at MBS. Roughly 80% of the graduating class are now employed, compared to the undisclosed (but significantly lower) figure back home. The Columbia Careers Office's way of explaining this was a 'flight to quality': recruiters are focussing their search on top schools, since they're not looking to hire so many people over all, and cannot justify the expense of visiting so many schools.

Several major employers have chosen NOT to recruit/present on campus at Columbia this year, including two of the biggest investment banks. Goldman Sachs employed the largest number of CBS grads (roughly 30 of the 600 or so students).

The I.T. systems in place for managing the whole careers process at Columbia Business School are very impressive. Interviews are scheduled automatically to avoid conflicts with class times, and we even get the opportunity to bid for interview slots with some companies (just like bidding for classes).

My GSB

The b-school also has a fairly impressive portal set up for students, which includes personalised course material, summarised reading lists for each week, and face-books for each class. More details on this system later, after I've had a better chance to use it.

Bring on the study

Despite the fact that classes haven't even started yet, I already have 'homework' to do. For my first (and every) class for Introduction to Venturing, I have to prepare a Harvard case, and submit my short answers to the case questions online the night before the class. The Professor collates all the answers and cold calls students in class, asking them to ellaborate on their answers. Awesome.

It's going to be a sensational semester.

Jet lag

I haven't usally been one to suffer from jet lag, but I think the time difference between New Zealand and New York is really getting to me. Since my arrival on Friday, I've been going to bed around 3:00am every night, and waking up around midday. I'd better fix this up soon, as I have an 8:15am class on Wednesday to kick off the term at b-school.

Monopoly

At the US Open last night, I was required to store my backpack and carry its contents in a US Open-emblazoned plastic bag. Apparently, this is some form of post-September 11 security paranoia. I'm okay with that, but I was most annoyed when they charged me US$5 to do so. FFS, $5 to store am empty backpack (especially since I didn't end up seeing any tennis at all, due to the washout).

And, once I was inside, 20oz (equivalent to about 600ml) soft drink bottles were priced at US$4. $8 Australia for a soft drink. What is this world coming to. That's not inflation - that's extortion. Of course, an economics professor would start arguing that it's all about WTP, and that there's competition for the monopoly, rather than competition in the monopoly. Maybe, but they didn't get any money from me.

New York Mega-post #1

"...If I can make it there,
I'll make it anywhere.
It's up to you,
New York, New York!!"

New York City, capitalism's home town, Columbia University heartland, and the major victim of the September 11 terrorist attacks on America.

After the two day journey from the adrenaline-orientated, fun-filled, scenic retreat that is Queenstown, New Zealand, I arrived in New York in the middle of the night (2:00am on Friday morning) disorientated and completely exhausted, and checked in to the most basic of hotels, West End Studios, for a few hours sleep. For $150 (Australian) a night, I had my own little broom closet, complete with creaky bed, barely working fridge, and a run-down sink that offered only cold water, despite having taps labelled both 'C' and 'H', and a 'color' TV with about 50 home shopping channels. (apologies for the partial nudity on the sink link)

Getting set up

My dorm room is surprising large by New York standards. For US$2300 for the entire term, I have a room over 4m by 4m in size, with nearly-new floorboards, a cupboard, twin-sized bed, basic office desk, and drawers. All my electricity and heating is also included. I'm just one block from the University, and I have cafes, restaurants, bars, and supermarkets all within a minute's walk of my front door. On a negative side, I have to use a shared bathroom and kitchen, both of which are rather unappealing. (The photos that I've linked to were taken within a few minutes of my arrival. I'll post some more photos when I'm more established)

I've had to go shopping for basics like sheets, pillows, laundry basket, etc, and I've also set up a fixed-line phone and a pre-paid mobile. Can you believe it costs me US$1.70/min to call Australia from my mobile?! Ridiculous considering there are calling cards available with rates are low as US4.3c/min which you can use from payphones. One of the interesting features of US mobiles (sorry, 'cell phones') is that users must pay to receive calls as well as make calls. As such, deals are advertised in terms of 'airtime minutes' (i.e. total time 'on the air').

Tennis

I also went out to the US Open on Sunday evening, but, alas, it was a complete washout. As a consolation, I get a free ticket to the same session again next year (now there's an incentive to get that job in New York post-graduation ;-)

But what about the b-school?

Well, it's a 'holiday weekend' here in the States, which means that things don't really start until Tuesday. There's a careers orientation session on Tuesday, and then classes start on Wednesday. My 3rd round bid for Building and Managing Brands was successful, so the list of subjects in the left-hand column are now confirmed. In anticipation of the new semester, I've changing the background colour for my weblog header to Columbia Business School navy blue, and I've adopted a new temporary title for the weblog, Melbourne MBA in New York.

Qantas gets a makeover

The Qantas website has had a fairly serious makeover, with heaps more features on the front page, but a fairly unintuitive navigation system. The <TITLE> tag for the main page is 'Homepage' which is very useful for bookmarking, not.

Term 2 Results @ MBS

Well, results for Term 2 are up, and I'll be the first to admit that I didn't do nearly as well as in Term 1. Business Law was the subject that suffered, which I deserve since I didn't do many of the readings and hardly ever participated in class. I also had a severe drop of 15% from my VFA midterm result to my final result, but I think that might be partially to do with the good old 73% mean requirement. Pleasing results for the other three subjects, but my Law result has really bitten me hard. My overall average has dropped from 84% to 79.6% (ouch! we're just below that H1 cut-off now).

• Valuation & Financial Analysis - 80% (H1)
  
• Economics & Public Policy - 81% (H1)
  
• Business Strategy - 75% (H2A)
  
• Business Law - 67% (H3)
  
• Project Management - 75% (H2A)

BTW, first New York post coming really soon...