The Big Rivalry Continues

Given the number of Cal and Stanford alums working in the San Francisco financial district, I have quickly discovered that the rivalry is one that lasts well beyond graduation date. And the competition is not confined solely to the last Saturday in November, when the two football teams and the thousands of ardent alums meet in the annual Big Game, either at Memorial Stadium in the Berkeley Hills or down at the Farm in Palo Alto. The rivalry bleeds into the office dynamic as well. Case in point. Our equity derivatives group here at Wells is comprised of graduates of the following schools: Berkeley 3, Stanford 3, MIT 1, and Virginia 1. And we were approved to hire one additional marketer. With the 3-3 deadlock, a new Cal or Stanford hire would tip the scales for either side for a very long time. Undoubtedly, all six of us have memories of the Axe (link here). And not surprisingly, the Cal and Stanford factions have been scrambling to find a suitable candidate from their respective campuses. Boy, would I hate to be the person interviewing with a member of the opposing camp.

Revolution, War, and an Inalienable Right to Cheese Bagels

Second straight week without the Asiago bagels (see Food Fight entry)... an open insurrection has begun. While we don't have pitchforks and lit torches in hand, de rigeur props for a violent mob, we plan to seize the supply closet and arm ourselves with a cache of Wells Fargo promotional stress balls, highly effective for beaning your fellow team members. "A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing" (Thomas Jefferson). How appropriate that I have been watching and thoroughly enjoying the BBC series Rebels and Redcoats on PBS. The series revisits the American Revolution, this time from a decidedly British perspective. And to breathe new life to an old story, the BBC narrative occasionally draws parallels between the American experience in Vietnam and the British experience in the American colonies, both wars lost by more advanced nations and armies. At one point, the documentary makes reference to the fact that St. Paul's Chapel in lower Manhattan, the church where George Washington worshipped on the day of his inauguration as the first President of the Union in 1789, had survived both the siege by the British ships earlier in the Revolution which laid waste to all of the neighboring buildings AND the terrorist attacks, more than two centuries later, on the nearby World Trade Center Towers. In fact, Lower Manhattan, at the mouth of the Hudson River, was the epicenter both for the Revolution and for the 9/11 attacks; ironic that the two principal combatants during the Revolution are now the two principal partners in the post 9/11 "war on terror", most notably in the Iraqi conflict.

Summer Has Arrived

Love taking the cable car to lunch. This is one of the joys of working in the heart of the Financial District. Hopped on a car and rode it all the way down to the Embarcadero, where I met up with Ken and Ellie for a long lunch at the Ferry Building. Summer has definitely arrived. The sun and the crowds were out in full force today. Conversation at lunch was fun and lighthearted, and the grilled burgers at Taylor's Refresher rocked! We were very tempted to knock off the day and just lounge at one of the busy outdoor cafes in North Beach. Viewing the parade of pedestrians walking by our table at Taylor's was an activity in and of itself. Indeed, people-watching in San Francisco is almost on par with people-watching in any of the European capitals including Paris and London. And with Ellie's upbringing in Rome, we had a true afficianado of the art form to provide us expert color commentary.

Popcorn Budget

Read an entertaining essay in the San Francisco Chronicle about one reporter's attempts to scratch a living for him and his family in the San Francisco Bay Area (link here). He raises the question that I and many of my peers living in the area have had to confront head on at some point, especially amongst the majority of us who grew up elsewhere and know exactly what we are foregoing by calling San Francisco home: Are the intangible benefits of living in the Bay Area worth all of the material sacrifices that one must make given the extremely high cost of living here? Guess that will always be a tough call.

Pencil, Rice, or Money? Or "(D) All of the Above"?

Archiving some of the family photos over the weekend, I came across a series of photos from both my "hundred day" and "first year" celebrations. Koreans traditionally observe the first one hundred days of a newborn child's life by hosting a large gathering and feast. Later, they host an even more elaborate first year birthday celebration (referred to as "dohl"). This includes the requisite photo of the child adorned in a traditional silk hanbok posing in front of the customary spread of fruits and rice cakes. In his or her hands is one of three items (there are probably a few more choices, but these are the ones I recall): a pencil, rice, or paper currency. The child is presented with the three items and is allowed to select only one, the idea being that each of the items represents a particular path or priority that the child will pursue later in life: pencil (pursuit of knowledge), rice (pursuit of happiness), and money (pursuit of wealth). I chose the pencil. But given that (1) I love eating out and (2) I work in the investment field, maybe I would have grabbed all three if given the opportunity.

How Many Cal Graduates Does It Take To...

...transport a ten foot, eighty pound exhaust system for a BMW 330 in the interior cabin of a 2004 Subaru Outback? Apparently, more than two. Jonathan, aka Wagamama Boy, needed help hauling his repaired exhaust system (think the steel pipe that runs from the engine to the muffler) from a shop in Oakland back to his place in Alameda. Sounded simple enough over the phone on Friday morning as I volunteered my help (along with my Outback). Should have known better. At the shop on Saturday afternoon, we quickly realized that the piping would not fit completely within the cabin; rather than risk damaging my interior by using the old fashioned "trial and error" method, we tapped into our collective training, he as a physics and physical sciences graduate and me as a former engineering student, to attempt to find the right "angle of attack". Reminded me of an episode of Friends where Ross, Chandler, and Rachel attempt to haul a sofa up a twisting flight of stairs; predictably, the couch and the three movers all get stuck along the way in the narrow confined crevasses of the stairwell. Not realizing the futility of the situation, Ross repeatedly instructs the others to "Pivot! Pi-vot!". After some deliberation and some frantic mental calculations, Wagamama Boy and I determined that the only way to fit the part in the car was to open the front passenger side window and allow two feet of the pipe to extend out over the side mirror. On the drive back, I came very close to jousting with a street sign. Knowing our luck that day, the street sign would have won.