i just need someone to tell me what to do

so last night, i got a great news from the german investment bank (the one who was going to fly me out to singapore last week for the interview) that i've been extended a job offer to join their team in hong kong. i'll be part of their equity derivatives sales team. the offer package is REALLY attractive so it's very hard to turn it down. normally, i would be really excited about it because of how great the package is and the excitement of int'l rotation, except that my heart was already set on working for the consulting firm up until last night. i know that financially, i won't make as much in consulting as in the derivatives team but i'm also not sure how much i would enjoy doing equity derivatives in the long run. so i've been whacking my brains out thinking every possible way to rationally decide on which offer to lean towards.

on one hand, the equity derivatives work will have a better lifestyle (since your hours are defined by the market hours), but on the other hand, i'm not sure how my skill sets will be transferrable after i leave the company, since equity derivatives is such a specialized field. BUT, on another hand i'll probably make a lot more money in derivatives than in consulting. BUT, in consulting, its easier to start your own business after having that broad experience in strategy consulting which is eventually what i want to do i think. Do you see my dillemma here? so i'm torn between the two.

i had dinner with few friends over dinner and asked the same question.... of course, everybody had different opinions about which one i should take...but i guess ultimately what it boils down to it is that i have to figure out for myself exactly what i want out of my life. its so hard to choose especially since both jobs are in completely different industry and career path. but despite the soul searching exercises, i'm still very thankful to have this opportunity to be even able to have control and be selective about my own career path and destiny. so i feel lucky in that sense although i wish that somebody will just tell me what to do sometimes.

Day after Thanksgiving

Today was officially the start of the Christmas shopping season so what better way to spend the day then to go shopping! So I end up xmas shopping at the nearby outlet mall most of the day....picked up few things on my list. Man, the drive was so beautiful with white powdery snow all along the road. Christmas is definitely my favorite holiday and I love hearing Xmas songs being played in the stores! It's really starting to feel like Christmas! This year, I promised myself that I would finish all of my xmas shopping early so I can kick back and relax. Of course, every year, on the night of the 24th, I end up frantically running around the mall trying to finish up my xmas shopping. This year will be different. I will finish early and just enjoy the holiday.

Then at night, I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with Della. The movie was pretty good and managed to keep me awake the entire 2.5 hours. Even though I didn't see HP #2 or #3, surprisingly I was able to keep up with the storyline. Overall, I liked the movie but I still liked HP#1 better.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It was rather an uneventful Thanksgiving this year. Didn't do a whole lot except sleep, eat, and watch TV. It was snowing pretty hard outside when I woke up this morning. I still get really excited seeing snow fall out of the sky. Here are some pictures I took in the snow:

Road near my house.. pretty eh?

Snow on my car 

It's snowing!! View of my backyard 

Surprise package in the mail

So tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I've decided this year not to travel anywhere. I'll be staying put in Ithaca so I can get the much needed R&R that my body has been begging me. It's a strange feeling to see all my friends leave one-by-one for Thanksgiving especially since I'm the one who is usually on the road traveling. Last Thanksgiving, I flew to Tokyo to attend my friend Yuko and A-chan's wedding. Can't believe its already been a year! Happy 1 year Anniversary! =)

This year is different. I don't really have any plans except to stay home, watch all of the DVDs that I bought over the summer, eat, and sleep. I definitely will force myself to sleep a lot since I haven't been getting too much sleep lately. But again, one can only sleep so much before he can sleep no more. The house is super quiet with my roommate away to London for the week. I was just at school earlier and it was also depressing to see an empty school. But, there's something about this break that makes me feel good...probably because I feel like I have so much free time to myself to do whatever I want and finally do the things that I've been putting it off.

I don't really mind spending Thanksgiving on my own since Thanksgiving has never really been a big holiday for my family. With my parents in Taiwan and Japan until the end of December, there really isn't any reason for me to go back home. Also since I'm planning to go back to LA in 2 weeks for winter break, it made more sense to just stay here.

In other news, I got a suprise package in the mail today. It came in a big box and it was from McK. In the box was a big basket containing all kinds of snacks - cheese, crackers, chocolate, cookies, crackers, popcorn, cheese spreads, sausage, and candies. If you look closely at the cookies (below), you'll see that the company's name is printed right on the cookie. How cool! It also contained a card congratulating me about the offer. Very thoughtful of the company.

Snack basket in the mail 

Cookie

Shopgirl

Tonight, I saw "Shop Girl"... the movie with Claire Danes and Steve Martin. Despite the poor reviews for the movie, my friends and I all suprisingly liked it A LOT. I never believed in those hollywood movie ratings anways because all of the movies that they give good ratings usually turns out to be a dud...at least to me. I guess I was also in a mood for a dramedy which helped as well. In usual circumstances, I tend to fall asleep in the theatre if the movie is slow. But since this movie was shot in LA, it made me miss home and gave me a nostalgic feeling when watching the different LA scenes. I know its dumb but I always get all nostalgic and semi-home sick whenever I watch a movie that's filmed in LA. Gosh, by the time I finish with my MBA, it would be 4 years since I've lived away from LA. And it doesn't seem like that would be the end since I'm considering going back to Asia to work full time after getting my MBA ...at least for few more years.

Jewish Rabbi: Conclusion to my long day

Man, what a day! As if my long day of flight cancellations weren't enough, I had another interesting encounter on the way back. (If you missed the whole thing, read from 2 blog entries ago...."Stuck in LGA")

So after finally taking off from NYC to Syracuse (instead of Ithaca, since the flights were all cancelled), I arrived at the Syracuse airport with no ride back to Ithaca. As I was telling a friend of mine on the phone how I was stuck in Syracuse and somehow needed to find a way back to Ithaca (which was 50 miles away!), the guy next to me on the plane overheard and offered to give me a ride in his friend's car since he was also going to Ithaca. Apparently, this guy was going to Cornell for a speech that he was giving. He was probably in his late late 40's or early 50's and seemed pretty nice so I decided to take up on his offer. His name was Steve.

It turned out that the friends that came to pick him up were these 2 Directors from Cornell University from the Center for Diversity and a PhD Physist student (all very important people). Apparently, Steve is some favmous speaker/writer who was coming here to give a speech on Jewish religious studies. In the car, one of the director showed me the book that he wrote. The book was on the topic of "Homesexuality in the Jewish Community". Whoa, right?! That just woke me right up. Not only that, he turned out to be a Jewish Rabbi! Actually, later I realized that everybody in the car (but me!) was all Jewish. Apparently, the book is all about his personal experience growing up being a Jewish and gay. So the whole drive back to Ithaca, we (or I should say "they") had a lot of very interesting "academic" type of conversation on Jewish community, various religion and how it takes part in our life, and about differerent sexuality in various cultural communities. The discussions were quite interesting since up until now, I know only a little bit about the Jewish culture, religion, and other stuff they were talking about in the car. Although I couldn't contribute much to their heated debates and discussions, I thought it was quite interesting just sitting there listening to what they have to say. They were all very nice people and it was fun talking to them and learning about new things that I've never really given much thought about.

I think this whole talk about religion made me start to think how I should maybe one day pick up a religion? Although my parents are Buddhist, I'm technically an atheist since I don't practice any specific religion. Besides my parents, I think the only other person in my family is my youngest brother who happens to be Christian. I think my brother Tom and I are just indifferent about a specific religion since religion wasn't a big part of life growing up.

Finally came home at 5pm after starting my day at 7am! I was exhausted. I think I'm too tired to travel anymore. Even though its an all expense paid trip, I've decided not to go to Singapore next week. I think I just want to hang out here and just relax and catch up on my TiVo =D

mini-update

so my flight is delayed/cancelled again and the next flight is not until 5:30pm!! so i've decided to fly out to Syracuse arriving at 1:30 instead and take a shuttle from there. it takes about an hour from Syracuse to Ithaca. bleh. my goal is to be back home by 3pm. i really hate flying into small airports. luckily, they have wolfgang puck here at the airport so i just had my all time favorite salad - the chinois salad :)

Stuck in LGA

There are two things I hate in this world: paying taxes and flying on US Airways. The first is pretty obvious - nobody likes to pay taxes but its something we all have to do. But flying on US Airways is something I'm going to try and avoid from now on. I've flown them probably 6 or 7 times in the last 2 months for job interviews and I kid you not, every single flight that I've flown have all been delayed! They are such an inefficent airline. They really should hire some consultants to figure out where their bottlenecks are in their operation. I guess there's reasons why they went bankrupt. Go figure.

I was suppose to be on the early flight this morning (got to the airport at 7:00 AM!) but found out that my flight was cancelled and I'm now booked on the 11:45 AM flight. That's a delay of over 4 hours! I'll be missing all of my classes today thanks to the airline. It would have been much quicker to rent a car and drive down myself. So I'm stuck in La Guardia. But thankfully, there's wireless internet access for a small fee at the airport. Luckily, I was able to finish with all of my emails, pay my bills, bid for my classes next semester, and blog about it :)

Okay, enough about my tirade. Here's my attempt at catching up from the last few months: some pictures that I've taken during my 3 months absence from blogging.

Buttermilk Fall - Ithaca, NY

Me and my Cornell friends at Buttermilk Fall in Ithaca. The Fall season here was really pretty with all the leaves turning yellow and red. Ithaca is Gorges =D

Back in NYC....again

This morning I flew into NYC for a dinner reception that I'm attending for another i-bank tonight. This must be my N-th time to NYC int he last couple of weeks. I've definitely been travelling WAY too much. The good thing is that the Millenium Hilton that I'm staying at is actually pretty nice. It's located in the downtown area, right across from Ground Zero (next to Century 21). In fact, since my room is on the 50th floor, I have a clear view of the entire site where the World Trade Center use to be.

I purposely took the earlier flight this morning so I'll have the entire day of just hanging out and shopping in NYC. So, I made my usual shopping rounds first at Herald Square, then Soho, then around 5th Ave. I did manage to pick up couple of things. Then had lunch at TGIFriday's before going back to my hotel to take a quick nap.

The dinner reception was pretty good. Got to meet a lot of the equity traders and sales people. They all seem pretty nice. But I think there's more interviews after this round of dinner (this is like my 3rd interview/meeting/dinner with them!). One of the senior sales person that I talked to tonight mentioned how he was interviewed by a total of whopping 65 people before he received his offer! If that's still the case, it seems like I still have long ways to go.

Dinner with Paigie at Bridges in Danville

Dinner with Kinyoshi at Berkeley

Trip down memory lane

I had a great time in San Francisco this past week/weekend. Overall, I think my interviews went pretty well (fingers crossed) and hopefully I'll hear back from them soon. On Thursday night, I got a call from Koji in Japan. I haven't talked to in awhile and it was definitely nice to catch up with him.

On Friday night, I met up with Kinyoshi and had Mexican dinner at Mario's in Berkeley. Kinyoshi is one of my "globe trotting" friend who I meet up in random places around the world. The last time I saw him was in Hong Kong few months ago. It was really nice catching up and hearing what he's been up to lately. I can totally understand what he's going through in terms of taking a standaridized test. Those tests are never fun and hopefully it'll be over for him soon.

After dinner, we walked around Telegraph Ave. and around the campus. Somehow, it felt good and nostalgic but at the same time slightly weird to be back in Berkeley. It's such an interesting feeling to be back in the city where I spent 4 years of my late teens and 20's there (god, listen to me.. i sound like an old man!). Walking around the campus really brought back lots of memory from my college days. The campus and the city of Berkeley looked pretty much the same except there were many new stores on Telegraph and the newly built gym on campus.

Then on Saturday, I had Dim Sum with Paigie and my aunt in Fremont. After Dim Sum, Paigie and I went to Great Mall and spent the rest of the afternoon shopping. It was a good shopping trip and I bought couple of shirts and shoes for myself. It's always nice to shop with her since we both like to shop and she's always great at finding the best deal (better than me!). Then, afterwards, we had dinner at this pretty fancy restaurant called Bridges in Danville. The food and the ambience was pretty good. Afterwards, we drove to Berkeley and walked around some more before she dropped me off at SFO airport. Luckily, I made it onto my flight on time.

Overall, I had a blast being back in San Francisco/Bay Area. As always, I ate waaaaay too much this weekend. I need to go detox now.

Cable car in Union Square (San Francisco)

I heart San Francisco

After 8 hours in the air, I finally arrived in San Francisco! It's so nice to be back in the Bay Area! Coming back to the city definitely brings back a lot of good college memories.

Later that afternoon, I had lunch with Paigie at a Mexican restaurant nearby her office before I took off and wandered around the city. I mainly strolled around and shopped in Union Square area. There seems to be a lot more stores in the city then back in the college days. Later that night, I had dinner with my aunt and uncle in Fremont. It's hard to believe that the last time I saw them was back in Japan 2 years ago, when they came out to Tokyo for vacation. Damn, time really flies! They're my closest uncle and aunt and it really doesn't feel like its been 2 years especially since I talk to them on the phone on a regular basis. Nevertheless, it was good to seem them again and we had nice Chinese dinner :)

This morning, I checked into the Hyatt Hotel, right across from the company where I will be interviewing tomorrow morning. Since I have the whole day to myself, I went out and shopped some more in Union Square area. For lunch, I went to Cheesecake Factory on top of the Macy's in Union Square. I forgot how much I loved CF!!! The waiter was really nice and the food was excellent. So it was a great lunch. CF is always so packed with people. As I was eating my 'Crispy Beef', I was thinking to myself that if I ever open a restaurant, I definitely want to open one like CF. Great interior, ambience, service, atmosphere, and food, which all translates to huge customer turnout = $$$. Sometimes, I wish that I studied restaurant management or have some experience in that field since it does seem pretty interesting and fun (and possibly lucrative).

After lunch, I walked around the city some more and came back to the hotel few hours later since I was feeling a bit tired. This afternoon, I had another phone interview with another i-bank which I think went pretty well. I'll find out in couple of days. Oh, speaking of interviews, apparently one of the german i-bank who I interviewed with few weeks ago, now wants to fly me out to Singapore the week of Thanksgiving for their final round!! I'm considering it because it would be a free trip to Asia, and maybe I can stop over in Tokyo or Hong Kong for few days before I return back to NY. But its awfully short notice for such a long way though. The downside is that, the flight from NY to Singapore would be SO FAR. I'm guessing its at least 14 hours. Bleh. I'll keep you posted on my decision. Hopefully, if I decide to go, I can stop over in Tokyo and meet up with some of my friends there :)

Okay, I'm off to dinner now. Will write more later.

Back from 3 months of Hiatus

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 3 months since my last blog entry. I apologize for not keeping many of you updated with my ins and outs of my daily Ithacan life after coming back from Hong Kong over the summer. The truth is, things have been so outrageously busy and stressful ever since I came back that I haven’t taken good care of myself. The stress from trying to figure out exactly what I want to do after b-school, traveling to these companies for job interviews, while trying to do all my school work, and eating and sleeping irregularly has definitely taken a toll on my health. As many of you already know, I was hospitalized once back in September in California, and again in NYC a week later. Both times, we called 911 for ambulance to take me to the nearest emergency room. Having to call 911 to take me to ER was a pretty scary experience that I hope I will never have to repeat. After spending a total of 4 nights in ICU, going to the hospital for weekly checkup for the past 6 weeks, and having had a total of 30+ shots to get my blood drawn every day and now every week, I feel somewhat close to my old self again. I mean, I don’t feel like I’m 100% back to normal, but at least I do feel much better than how I felt last month. I’m no longer anemic and hopefully my blood count level will be back to normal. Basically, I lost about 2000 cc of blood back in September when I vomited blood. This was caused by some ruptures on my stomach lining – which some doctors claimed to be caused by an ulcer while other doctors disagreed. To this day, I still don’t know what caused me to vomit that much blood. I’m not really sure if I’ll ever find out what happened. For now, I’m trying to take my doctor’s advice and rest and sleep more than usual (I’ve been sleeping an average of 7.5 hours every night – that’s 3 hours more than I use to get), and try to relax and not stress too much. If this was indeed caused by ulcers, than the doctor is probably right -- I should try not to stress too much since stress = ulcers. Because of all this, I’ve decided to drop 2 classes this semester and really focus on getting better.

Ever since my hospitalization, I’ve been trying to watch my health. But that’s easier said than done since I still need to look for a full time job. I tried to limit my interview traveling but it’s hard since most of the companies are located outside of Ithaca. Let’s see, in the last month and a half, I’ve traveled to: LA, NYC (4 times), Boston, and Philadelphia. This week, I’m flying off to San Francisco for another final round interview for a banking position. Then the week after that I have a final round interview with GS.

Last, last weekend, I was in Philadelphia for an all-day interview for a consulting gig. I can honestly say that this was one of the hardest interviews I have ever had. It consisted of 3 rounds of interviews with 4 case interviews and one 60 minute multiple choice question. But I’m happy to report that I came out ahead that night with an offer J It was a total relief after getting the phone call from the Partner as I was driving back from Philly to Ithaca. It’s a great company and basically I can choose to work in any of their Asia Pacific offices – mainly HK, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, and Taipei. If I were to choose, I’ll probably choose to work in Hong Kong since it’s their biggest office. Most likely, as a Consultant, I’ll be traveling to Beijing and Shanghai quite often anyways so it really wouldn’t matter where I’m based out of I guess. Hopefully, I’ll get couple more offers and can see what all my options are before accepting one and be done with all this interviewing. Sometimes I forget if I’m a full time student or just a full time interviewee. J

Anyway, just wanted to let everybody know that I’m still alive and recovering from my ulcer problem. I’m hoping to get back on track and start blogging regularly again.