Memorial Day Weekend

Love the short Fridays at work before long weekends. As financial traders in San Francisco say, we should be "on the 101 at 1:01" today. With all of the leisurely activities we have scheduled for the weekend, it will be difficult keeping the purpose and the gravity of Memorial Day in mind this weekend. A colleague thoughtfully reminded us this morning, "Lest we forget those who have died serving our country". I would add to her comment, those that are still serving our country, including my cousin Matthew, who, after graduating from West Point a couple of years ago, began his service in Iraq as an officer in the Army's helicopter corps. Of course, he is in our thoughts year-round.

Graduation Speaker?

We were in Berkeley a few days ago eating at Cha-Am Thai in the Gourmet Ghetto section of North Berkeley, and it was very evident that the university and the city itself was abuzz with the frenzy of graduation ceremonies. I can still remember my Berkeley graduation and the memorable walk across the stage of Hearst Greek Theater on one of the warmest days of the year. I even recall the gargantuan beach ball being tossed back and forth over the mass sea of black caps, as well as the hundreds of soap bubbles being blown into the still air. The one thing I do not remember is the graduation day speaker, let alone, what that person actually had to say. Wish we were as fortunate as Harvard was during their commencement last year... Will Ferrell's Commencement Day Speech, Harvard, May 2003 http://www.commencement.harvard.edu/2003/ferrell.html

Life as a Derivative Investment

The other day, I spent a good half hour talking to a Berkeley PhD candidate about her desire to transition from academia to the private sector, specifically for a career in finance. She participates in the same professional association that a friend of ours does and it was as a favor to our friend that I fielded the call. Much of our chat involved her picking my brain as to how the financial services industry was structured, i.e., who does what and why. At a particular point in the conversation, I brought up alternative investments and financial risk management, including derivative instruments, primarily because I am currently working for a derivatives sales and trading group. Invariably, I had to distinguish a derivative from a security, i.e., a derivative "derives" its value from that of an underlying security. In my mind, I ruminated over the irony of working in derivatives. My entire life is a derivative. It has very little intrinsic value per se. Its primary value is derived from its relationship to and the worth of its various underlyings, whether that be my fiance, family, friends, or accomplishments at work or in business school. This fact of life will be ever more evident as marriage and parenting enter the mix. Bolster the value of the underlyings, increase the chances that the derivative (my life) will not expire worthless.

Montclair Stroll

Sunday afternoon, at my urging, we took a pleasant stroll through the heart of Montclair Village. The weather was spectacular. Walking through the small neighboring park was nice too. Parents were out playing with their young children... tossing the frisbee around, feeding the ducks out on the pond, playing a game of catch on the softball diamond... kinda wished we had hours of free time to just lay out a blanket on the greens and crack open one of the books in my small but growing stack of casual reads. Last week, I leapt at one of the first copies of Aloft, Chang-Rae Lee's third novel; his second, A Gesture Life was a personal favorite. Also been meaning to finish either of the two Michael Lewis books I am part of the way into, Moneyball and The New, New Thing. Maybe I'll tote them to Paris later this year and chip away at them in one of the streetside cafes along the Left Bank. Oui.

"Photo Ratio", Part Deux

Carved out fifteen minutes this morning to hop over to Kinko's to get a quick and dirty passport photo for my renewal application. The photo ratio for the session 0:2. One wish in my life is to have the illustrator for the Wall Street Journal create a portrait sketch of me to be used in all of my identification cards in lieu of a real photograph. But then again... sketch ratio 0:2.