Exposed: my life as a blog

The Australian ran an article a few days ago comparing the blog scene in Melbourne with that in Sydney. A few interesting quotes: ...

"Weblog culture seems to go deep; it is easy to find Melbourne weblogs with visual flair and good writing. None of this, of course, is obvious to an interstate visitor wandering along Swanston Street.

"Melbourne is very much a secret place," says Badger, who lives in East St Kilda.

"All our good bars and venues are hidden down scary, weird alleyways in places where the only sign is a projection on a wall opposite. We like discovering things, we don't want them to be too easy to get.

"So weblogs, and the anonymity they afford the writer, suit us and our dark, secret personalities – of course, this could well be just me."

Alas, I didn't receive a mention - probably because I've chosen not to take that anonymous route to the world of blogging.

Anniversary

It feels like a lot longer, but it's now a year to the day since I last did any paid work. On Sept 20th last year, I took my retrenchment package from Com Tech / Dimension Data after more than four years with the company. I was hoping Anthony (who took a retrenchment package just last week) would have posted his post-mortem essay by now, because I never really posted one in 2001.

Com Tech was a fantastic company with brilliant management and high aspirations. I truly admired its founder, David Shein, as a CEO, leader, and motivator. Unfortunately an international acquisition and a receeding economy caused major headaches for Com Tech. Hundreds of people have been laid off. Customers have left in droves, and the remaining staff, for the most part, do not have the same level of enthusiasm and loyalty that we all used to share together.

Add this one to your New York 'To Do' list - Arthur's Landing

I ventured out of New York state last for this first time since my arrival, to visit a restaurant called Arthur's Landing in New Jersey. I'll admit it's not very far out of New York state (7 minutes on the ferry), but that's America for you.

While enjoying a seafood platter, a delectable rack of lamb, good company and interesting conversation, I looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the evening view of mid-town Manhattan from across the Hudson River. I'm not sure if it was the ferry trip or the company, but I was feeling very 'Sydney' all of a sudden. Perhaps I'm a little homesick.

(This was also my first opportunity to notice the gap in the skyline where the WTC used to be. I haven't visited Ground Zero yet, and to tell you the truth - I'm in no hurry to do so.)

New audience members

Readership of my blog has almost doubled in the past month. Two major reasons:

1. The MBS student community has become aware of the existence of the site, and
   
2. Soon-to-be-MBAs Tad and Martin have been sending new readers my way.
   

So, for everyone who is new to the site, I encourage you to read through the archives to get a feel for where I'm coming from. There's usually quite a bit of assumed knowledge when I make a post, so it's worthwhile getting up to speed. I try to post at least once every couple of days, but the MBA workload does get quite ridiculous at times, so hang in there if I occassionally 'disappear' for a week or so.

Life in New York

A few of you have been asking me to write about 'life' in New York, as well as just documenting the MBA student experience at Columbia. One must appreciate that 'life' as an MBA student is a very, very time consuming endeavour. A colleague of mine was commenting this week that, for him, the MBA is essentially lifestyle choice - instead of being paid to work 50 hours a week, we're paying to study closer to 80 hours a week and giving up virtually all our free time. Surviving the MBA requires skills in time management, prioritisation, and sacrifice - it's very difficult to find/make the time to do anything else ... but we try. In my both my first and second terms in Melbourne I found the time to travel interstate on three separate weekends. The Columbia MBA is definitely a notch higher in terms of intensity, but I am an exchange student after all and all I need to do here is pass my subjects (rather than striving for that magical mark of 80% which generates an H1 at MBS). In theory, I should relax a bit and ensure that I enjoy the New York experience.
So, what have I been up to since I arrived in New York three weeks ago? The short answer is: not as much as I was hoping to do. As far as the 'tourist' experience goes, I've revisited Times Square and the Guggenheim. I've attempted, on two occassions, to allocated a full afternoon to visit the Museum of Modern Art (temporarily located in Queens). I've caught up for dinner and a couple of beers at Washington Square with one of the MBS students studying at Stern. And I've been for the occassional walk/run in Central Park. In short - I'm not experiencing the tourist side of New York to the extent that I expected. It's amazing how much one can cram into a visit to a city when they've got the full day everyday available to them. I've had two short tourist visits to New York in the past, so I've been to most of the major museums, been to the observation decks at the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center (RIP), and taken the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty. There are a few other 'typical' New York attractions that I'd like to visit, but they may have to wait until I'm either hosting visitors from out of town, or until I've finished my studies for the term. In the meantime, I'm definitely having the 'living' experience in New York, and I'll do my best to find the time to write about it.

The Seven Great Private Business Schools

On Thursday, I attended a forum held by Columbia Business School's dean, Professor Meyer Feldberg. He outlined the role that he plays within the school, how the school has improved during his tenure (1989 to present), and how Columbia interacts with and benchmarks against what he refers to as the 'seven self-appointed great private business schools.'

Regardless of the rankings that come out every year from Business Week, US News and World Report, and the Financial Times, the 'seven self-appointed great private business schools' (hereafter referred to as G7) remain the same group. These are the business schools that have stood the test of time. They have massive alumni networks, great locations, very impressive faculty, and receive upwards of 5000 applications each year.

When I did my MBA tour of the United States in 2000, my eventual shortlist for applications was Haas, Stanford, Kellogg, Harvard, Sloan, and Columbia. Guess what? 5 out of the 6 happen to part of the G7. Haas is public (it's part of the University of California, Berkeley), so it can never be a member of the G7. The other two members are Wharton and Chicago, which didn't appeal to me for various reasons that you can read about in my archives.

In general, the G7 b-schools have lasting appeal - they're the brand name schools. When one pays in excess of US$60,000 for an MBA at one of these schools, they're not just paying for the educational experience. They're buying a membership card into a prestiguous alumni network.

I received an email yesterday from 'Tad Holbie' who's currently going through the application process for his MBA. He's applying to seven different private b-schools in the USA. Can anyone guess which ones? ;-) You can read all about the applications process on his weblog (mbawire.blogspot.com).

Bull spread, bear spread, box spread, strangle, straddle, strip, strap

Believe it or not, these are all finance terms. More specifically, their trading strategies in the world of options. What's an option, you might ask - well, it's a contract which gives you the right to buy or sell an underlying asset (such as a share in a company or a commodity such as wheat) for a particular price at a particular point in time or over a particular period of time. Why should you care? Well, I'm taking a course at Columbia called Options Markets and I may be referring to it from time to time...

B8311 - Options Markets (Associate Professor Zhenyu Wang)

Zhenyu Wang uses the text Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives as the basis for his Options Markets course at Columbia Business School. In essence, my thinking is that this course will give me an opportunity to heavilly exercise my quantitative skills (we're talking calculus here ;-) and possibly give me a bit of an edge over my MBA colleagues in the application process for Investment Banks and other finance firms. It's also reasonably interesting - in the world of options trading there is always a winner and a loser for each trade, and you can make big money in options trading regardless of which direction the market is heading. Think a stock is about to plummet? No problem - buy a put option. Think a stock will rise a bit (but not a lot)? Try a bull spread to capture the small gain, but lower the cost by giving up the full upside potential. Of course, there is a downside to options trading - if any of your 'bets' are wrong, you could be seriously out of pocket.

Where were you?

Avid readers of my weblog would be aware that javaboy.blogspot.com experienced a hiatus around September to December last year. Indeed my final post prior to this period was a brief mention about the world falling apart. In the spirit of the stories floating around in our conversations and in the media today, I thought I'd add my own answer to that question, "Where we you on September 11th?"

September 2001 was an difficult time for me. I was dealing with my parents' separation, which had only just been formalised. I had just finished a two-year project at work, and my position had been made redundant - but at this stage I had not taken a package - I was essentially waiting at home (in Melbourne) while my manager sought out other opportunities for me within the company. I had a meeting lined up with the manager of one of the divisions in our Melbourne office to discuss the details of a position in one of his groups, so I'd spent most of the day at home outlining a potential compensation package, updating my resume, and generally pondering my future. In the early evening, I watched the movie, Fight Club, which for those of you who haven't seen it, is essentially about a schizophrenic terrorist who blows up ten office buildings in America.

After the movie, I made some dessert and settled down to the latest episode of The West Wing on Channel 9 - I can't remember what the particular episode was about, but around five minutes before the end, it was interrupted by a newflash from Jim Whaley stating that the World Trade Center was on fire, and that there'd been an explosion of some sort. I don't think he mentioned that it was the result of an aeroplane. They had a visual shot of the building. I think it was only two or three minutes after the actual event. They allowed The West Wing to finish, and then returned with a (slightly) more informed report, before switching across to the CNN and ABC America coverage. It was late at night in Australia, past 11 o'clock. My friend Anthony called me, to ensure that my eyes were glued to the television. We spoke for a while in interrupted disbelief as more news came in. I called my friend Saj, who was asleep at the time. He thanked me for interrupting his sleep for such an important event. When the first tower imploded, I was on the phone to someone, but I can't remember who - it was all a bit of a blur. I think I stayed up until around 4:00am that night, absorbing all the news and trying to make sense of it all.

The next day, I came into work and continued to watch the news via a webcast. Not much work got done that day. I did have my meeting, but the outcome wasn't good. For various political reasons, the Melbourne position wasn't going to eventuate for me, and on September 20 I ended up taking a package (but we'll save that story for next week).

Columbia Remembers

Well, it's an awkward feeling being in New York on the anniversary of September 11. As I walked to uni this morning, the general feeling of solemnness amongst those around me was incredible. After a brief breakfast and a chat with Mark (my fellow MBS student on exchange here at Columbia), I proceeded to the steps of the Low Library and joined a crowd of over 2,000 for the University's official Remembrance Service, Columbia Remembers. After a minute's silence at 8:46, the University President proceeded to read out the names of the 107 people (alumni, friends, and family) associated with Columbia University that lost their lives one year ago. I felt somehow attached to all of this, and yet, so distant at the same time. At the end of the service, the crowd gradually dispersed, and I returned to the business school to resume my classes. Later in the day, over a period of several hours, current students and staff of the University, read out the names of all the victims, over a period of several hours. This evening, there are candlelight vigils being held across the United States, including a large gathering in Central Park that I (may) attend.

Welcome to the world of Investment Banking

Today was a bit of a crash course to the world of Investment Banking for me: I had my second Advanced Corporate Finance class, spent an hour with a careers advisor discussing my resume's suitability to American employers (specifically investment banks and VC firms), had my first Investment Banking class, and attended a recruitment presentation by UBS Warburg, a European investment bank that is making inroads into the US market and was recently rated the world's "best [overall] investment bank."

Continuing with my plans to provide an overview of all the subjects I'm undertaking at Columbia, here's my take on Jim Freeman's Investment Banking course:

B8317 - Investment Banking (Professor James L. Freeman)

Considering I'm so far behind the eight-ball as far as knowledge of the investment banking industry goes, Jim Freeman's aptly titled Investment Banking course should prove very suitable to my needs. Jim spent 17 years as an investment banker with Credit Suisse First Boston before founding his own firm, Freeman & Co. which specialises in management consulting and strategic advisory services for the financial services industry. The intention of his Investment Banking course is basically to impart as much of his knowledge about the industry as he can within 13 three-hour classes. Specifically, the course covers what an investment banking firm does, how it is structured, how the various components function together, how investment banks solve problems (bring on the cases ;-), and how investment banks make money. For our first lesson today, Jim provided an excellent overview of the industry as it stands today - which firms are dominating the market, which divisions are making money, where the jobs are, etc.

Interestingly, the class is no where near full capacity - there are only around 35 students (compared to 104 in my Introduction to Venturing class). My theory is that if someone has already been at Columbia Business School for a year, they've probably had the opportunity to obtain most of this knowledge through on-campus events and discussions with their network. Coming in as an outsider, I'm hoping this course will help me come off as a knowledgeable prospect when (if ?) I get some interviews with these firms. Indeed, Jim states that his main objective for the course is "to inform students; so they can hit the ground running day one at an investment bank and never be asked 'what rock did you come out from under?' "