After a lengthy absence, some quick words

Pardon my recent, multi-month, blogging laziness my dear fans… or magnus, to be specific… I can make up gazillion of perfectly reasonable and worthy excuses, but I refuse to lower myself to this level… it was laziness… laziness… and pure lack of motivation… that’s that….

Given that it’s the end of the year… I figured I can put together something for the departing 2007… and what a fine year it was… it started out in late February, with whiffing and sneezing moi arriving into the snoozing arms of Magnus at Addis Abeba international airport. From there, a few life changing and near life ending experiences later, I came out with a fine photo album, a few more friends and tales of madness and ineptitude that I will be sure to be reciting to my grandchildren 60 years from now…

From there things got more serious.. I had to work on firing a particularly worthless employee of mine… without getting the axe myself… a feat I apparently pulled off with great success…. Except that this lesson in management and human resources wasted a good several months of my career…

And from there, right as I was about to re-orient my sloth-like post-MBA career… just as I was about to peak out into the great wide world to see what fine opportunities are out there for a bright boy like me… there comes the now legendary credit crunch of 2007… and there I am, wasting a perfectly beautiful summer locked up in the office trying to save somebody else’s money and somebody else’s job for reasons that are still not perfectly clear to me…

Then of course there were the trips with Mila to Belize and France… which were good and healthy for I managed not to get us into any legal trouble and my only death-defying inclination was the 70 mile/ hour drive in our Yaris from Monte Carlo to Nice at 4 in the morning, with Timbaland…

Anyway… end of all ends… the year was great and successful… thanks mainly not to the above near debacles… but to the great improvement in my life, health and social standing… (though I am still a fat, overfed pig)…. And all of these, can of course be credited to Mila… that’s that…

Now onto planning our New Years party which I have a feeling will be an absolute organizational mess…

Incoherent composition of literary genius

OK… mila is in the other room reading claudia’s book… and I am blogging… half ill from the cheeseburger I stuffed down my throat half an hour ago at some half seedy, half yuppie joint on upper west side… actually there was nothing seedy about it… the place was just dark… and you could clearly tell the yuppiness of the establishment by both the number of regulation finance employee blue shirts worn by the clientele and the wide selection of over-priced and obscure foreign (most likely Belgian) beers….

Anyway… today had my first writing class… actually… now to think of it… really my first writing class… its called something like intermediate fiction… its suppose to help lazy bastards like me complete our life goal of writing a thought out and meaningful and of course commercially successful novel… as a consequence… we will achieve some degree of financial freedom, quit our current miserable jobs and develop a combination of drug/ alcohol/ pain killer habits… we will of course hate outselves more than ever… but it seems like any semi-reasonable life endeavour eventually ends up there… how do I know you ask? This is how my friends – I spent my formative years caddying at a jewish country club… for a bunch of very rich jews… a fair number of whom were self made men… men who were successful in their careers (mostly lawyers and dentists) and achieved if anything a healthy degree of ‘freedom’…. What this freedom seemed to entitle them is to unfathomable degrees of whining and self-pity… a strong sense of your own rights… and an iron will to not over-tip any given member of country club staff (myself included) by a number greater then $5…

Anyway… I forgot where I was going here… the writing class… yes… so I sat in the class… one of 12 devoted pupils – we are like the 12 tribes of Israel… and I choose myself to be Rueven – the cooking tribe… why – I don’t know but it seems the most practical of all of them… let the Levites pray and the Benjamenites rule… or whatever it is… I will stick to cooking bland and unoriginal gastronomical cuisines of Eastern Europe….

The class itself was fine… we had to write spontaneous essays about ourselves and our scars… on both of them I think I wrote the most volume for the least quality… though the one line about me being like a diseased pig seemed to draw a reaction… what was good was that everyone was outside the field of finance… something I assessed immediately, even before the formal introductions… how you might ask? Easy – I was the only one with the sociopathic vulture stare in his eyes… everyone else was calm, seemingly well adjusted and even thoughtful… though there was an older librarian… I respectable looking, older bearded Jewish man who somehow inserted his life story the fact that he has a small p(*&s… but even this managed to come out cultured, in a modern sort of way…

And the class was fine and I spent the good first half of it feeling superior to everyone since I was the asshole from structured finance and no one there knew what a real asshole from structured finance really is like… now to think of it, no one there probably even suspected that such a thing as structured finance even exists… but that’s besides the point… so anyway, there I sat, overlooking everybody, thinking what sheep they are… knowing not a thing of life… for after all, who knows something about life but one who lives in a mad and cannibalistic shop I call my employment… and this feeling of superiority lasted until we started reading our pieces… and I started listening… and it started coming out that everyone here can write… and write pretty originally… and even with a bit of surprising flair… something really surprising to me since the way I see things in this world, no one can have surprising flair but me… but surprised I was… and was… and was… until it was my turn to read… and I looked at my scribbled handwriting... and had a thought in my head that even I cant read my own chicken scratch… and then started talking… or I mean reading… and missing the punctuation marks that I failed to put down in the first place.. and tripped over sentences… and words and nouns and adjectives… and finally over everything… including the diseased pig remark… until it came to me that I was no longer an evil structured finance vulture, by a blush red 31 year old… reading out loud his spontaneous prose for the first time…. And that despite all my personal assurances of self-genius… I was quite average in this room… maybe even below the median… and that if I am to make any headway in this sort of thing… this blushing and stumbling and mumbling and mis-punctuation might have to go… and maybe, just maybe I’ll have to put some honest to god effort into what I do… but again… that requires work and focus and concentration and thought… and where is a scraggly finance finance vulture like me to find these….

Burma news

here are some CNN reports from Burma... pretty upsetting stuff

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/02/myanmar.unrest/index.html

A response blog

OK, so I want to start off tonight… by giving full props to my man Magnus for leaving a blog worthy commentary on my entry from 9/24 (and especially referring to it as his rant – that’s all me baby)… I have pasted his comments below for they are well worth of ‘front page’ treatment… and front page on Sivyxa… is high end real estate indeed…

Now let me address some of Magnus’s points… regarding the fact that UN assembly is in NY is an honor… I know… though unfortunately most of us… especially myself… take no advantage of this whatsoever… except for wondering through the UN park once every seven years… looking at the black overfed squirrels who reside there – they are fat and obese creatures indeed… and then posing for pictures next to the well hung elephant whom our own beloved despot, rudy-boy guiliani tried having de-masculanized…. Thank god the elephant is still in one piece, all pieces included…
To a degree I feel like my complaint is still valid… but yea… I guess end of all ends… I don’t have a car… I do take the subway… and all the hoopla surrounding these hypocrite gatherings really is kinda funny to watch… especially when one of their motorcades gets stuck in Rockefeller center traffic and you see the secret service agents start going apeshit…. (this I witnessed on Friday)…

Next point on Magnus’s commentary – my boy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… I still stick to my guns here… I do totally agree that he should not have been allowed to stand on his Hitler pulpit and spit out his usual idiocies… on the other hand… I am not sure trying to embarrass and humiliate him was the best way to open up a ‘meaningful’ dialogue… for after all, all good people of Persia are going to hear is how their elected representative (Hitler was kind of elected too, now to think of it) got treated like a one eyed leper at a beauty colony by these ingrate American intellectuals…

Magnus – regarding beating you to Burmese commentary – I didn’t think of it before – but the pleasure is all mine J

And finally regarding Burma… who the hell knows… end of all ends… I hope it sorts itself out… what else can be done, by us at least, outside of telling anybody and everybody what an unbelievable place it is – I am not sure…

On other points of the day… I was provided these two fine youtube clips in the last couple of days… one of them is by a deranged queen of a Britney spears fan… and the other (in Russian) is by the mayor of my beloved hometown, Kharkov… both qualify as perhaps some of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU-WwG9-LAI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fforum%2Emediaport%2Einfo%2Fread%2Ephp%3F5%2C425346

Finally… on other matters… a special threat goes out to Lena & Yoga for brainwashing my Mila into thinking that Southern France is quaint and boring and not worthy of a first European visit… the guilt trip on this one, my friends, will be quite large… trust me!!! It took me a full evening last night to sort the mess you made out!!!

MAGNUS’S COMMENTARY –
On Myanmar - first off all, the thought of you beating me to commenting on this issue has hampered my productivity at work all week. Secondly, I think you are very right - The people of Myanmar are on their own. Sitting as they do in the shadow of and under the protection of China, Nobody will do Anything to help them - not if they lined up their people outside a pagoda and chopped their heads off one by one on CNN. Sanctions don't mean anything to a country with three trading partners - China, India and to a small extent Thailand - who won't participate. As long as all those brainwashed eighteen year olds in the army keep taking orders to shoot from the Generals, the nation is screwed. It makes me angry, and it makes me upset - but there's nothing I can do about it.On having the UN in New York - dude, deal with it. What I wouldn't do to have the world's decision makers - or scratch that, anything of enough international significance so that it would be worth spending a career working on - at my family's doorstep. New Yorkers, unlike the rest of Amercia you're blessed with a functioning public transport system - use it. I've never understood why one would want a car in New York anyway - it's consistently faster to walk across town. Here's an idea... congestion charge...Ahmadinejad - I did not approve of the rude name calling. But everything else I thought they did right. Of course they were right to invite him - students and faculty got engaged, and intellectual debate and awareness was stimulated. Those voices calling in outrage for him not to be allowed to speak - I hate to point this out, but that's just another form of the self-righteous cencorship he practises in Iran. As for how to manage the discussion and letting him say what he wanted to say - the man is an accomplished demagouge. He could have stood there for hours and spewed propaganda, some valid and some not. But the only way the discussion has any value is if there is frank debate. Not rude debate - but ask the tough questions, and when he doesn't answer, tell him he didn't answer. It's the same as a TV interview - if you want something new to come out, ask some real questions.Enough ranting for now...

My rather disorganized commentary on Burma

So I have been an absent blogger for the past week or so… despite a slew of important events that obviously are in dire need of comment from my end… As an excuse for this I will use 2 very important but pathetic factors… first is the vicious cold that attacked me in the middle of perfectly fine autumn weather… rendering my brain, and hence blogging ability, utmost useless… second is the sudden internet crash that brought all my important, life sustaining activities to a halt on Thursday evening… In retribution for this unacceptable mishap, I have cancelled my subscription to HBO (deemed worthless anyway by the conclusion of Sopranos a few months ago)…

Anyway… about the most important news event of the past week… and for me, probably the last year at least – the unrest in Burma… or as the media decided to call it – the Saffron revolution… a cute & modern name by the way… given that we had purple, orange and cedar revolutions in the past couple of years… and that’s not even counting the coup in the all-important republic of Kyrgyzstan, who name/ colour I have already forgotten…

With this in mind… I’d like to also ask for a moment or two of silence to the most idiotic and absurd of all tyrants/ dictators… who just happened to drop dead just a few short months ago… Yes… the wise and ageless seer of Turkmenistan – Turkmenbashi himself... many a despot in human history has mercilessly murdered friend and foe alike… many a dictator has led his country into humiliating ruin… many a tyrant has lived in lavish palaces while his people starved… nothing out of the ordinary here… but to have the gall to rename the calendar in his own honour… now that’s priceless…

Anyway… the events in Burma… in the last week I think a lot of us went from very excited, to hopeful to dejected… the popular uprising, the saffron revolution, looked great and promising… especially for the media… but end of all ends, at this point at least, looks like it ended up nowhere… or to be exact – with a lot of people hurt or worse… and little actual results to show for it (that’s if we don’t count the cover of the Economist as a result)…

now of course I might be an undue pessimist here… and given the fact that the situation in the country is truly humiliating… for anyone and everyone involved… some good might come out of this… for after all… the powers supporting the junta – Russia/ India/ China really don’t want a public relations nightmare with the West over this… and I am sure somewhere in the bottom of their hearts, even the evil generals running the country might have a soft spot for actually doing something positive and not having their historical legacy be a giant blemish on Burmese long and storied history…

But fact of the matter is that change for Burma must come from the exact same source as the problem – the military… all of monk & citizen protests, all of international sanctions and condemnations will do very little good… until something within the military itself gives… and by this I mean independent of what some crabby old general says or orders, someone still must execute… and as we saw last week, when the average soldier is willing to follow orders, no matter what the popular opinion on the street is… the results will be quite negative… for after all soldiers have guns and average people do not…

So what must happen? Well if we take a look at the history of the Russian revolutions… in very broad and simplistic manner… what was the difference between the revolution of 1905 and October 1917? In the former, the street stood up in outrage – i.e. the proletariat masses… while both the army and the peasantry did not budge… Result – a bloody putdown…. October 1917 – all major classes of the population, starting with proletariat and liberal intelligentsia all the way through peasantry and the armed forces were deeply unhappy with the situation at hand – a horrific & pointless war (WWI) and economic ruin at home… Hence, when the revolution was launched, not only was it driven by the working class & liberal intellectuals (as is the case in Burma), but also by the very soldiers who were suppose to protect the ‘home regime’… And as a matter of fact, the whole success of the communists during the Russian revolution and subsequent civil war hinged on the fact that they were able to recruit the best and the brightest of the army to their side… And this I have so far not seen in Burma… for all the popular protests… for all the newspaper headlines… and revolting pictures of massacre and murder… there has not been one mention of the Burmese army ‘crossing over’…
And once again… to stick to the Russian angle… if we even go to the Moscow coup attempt of 1992 or the Orange revolution in Ukraine… what was the difference… in the former – it was the fact that general Lebed (now long gone) disobeyed a direct order and put his tanks in front of the Parliament on the side of the ‘democractic’ government… and that in Ukraine, when Kuchma ordered a forceful dispersion of the protesters camped out in Kiev’s main square, the head of the Kiev military district told him to go f*&cjk himself and walked out…
And this leads to my next question… is the ‘absolute’ removal of the generals in the best interests of Burma as a whole? On that I am not so sure… for while there are practically no positives to these baboons being in power, there is one distinct thing they do bring to the table – order and stability… for we must remember that the country in question is not a uniform entity like say Portugal (I was going to say Belgium… but just remembered that its trying to split itself in half)…. And that burma is full of various ethnicities and nationalities… most of whom have centuries long hatred of each other and would probably like nothing more than to go slit their neighbor’s throat, Balkan style… and much like Marshall Tito did in post WWII Yugoslavia… the generals are probably deserving of some credit in keeping at least this part of the Burmese equation under relative control…
Now if the generals were all of a sudden yanked from their palaces… Saddam Hussein style… would there really be anyone in place to control various ethnic tensions and movements? For remember, there have been at least a dozen of these nationalistic revolts going on around Burma in the last decade or two (like say Karen National Liberation Army)… For lets be students of history here and remember how much we all hated evil old Saddam, and how we really wanted him deposed… and how nobody (outside my grandfather) ever mentioned the fact that without Saddam, and the Republican guard, and the secret police, the good people of Iraq would all of a sudden lose their minds and start killing each other in ever more liberal and creative fashion…
So with this in mind… As much as I want to say down with the generals and the evil dictatorship and in with freedom and liberty… I am really starting to think that slow and steady might be the best way to do it… Think Chinese version of communist capitalism… granted in a lot of ways its not inspiring… but it sure as hell beats the Russian ‘lets go capitalist overnight’ experiment of the early nineties…. So a meaningful solution would be perhaps for the generals, in kind response to the current mess and of course to the 2008 Olympics in china, to start slowly and steadily relinquishing control… not all at once, mind you… but slowly and steadily… liberalizing the press… allowing free, uncorrupted enterprise… inviting foreign investment… while giving themselves a chance to bow out with grace and good face… while building mighty pagodas in the plains of Bagan to make up for all the world of sins they have committed in the last 50 years….

3 issues of the week

So I’ve had a wonderful weekend… starvation on Saturday… drunken mess on Sunday morning… first free ambulance ride on Sunday evening… and a fine round of golf on Monday (outside the fact that I got outplayed by an 89 year old man)…

I have two things on my mind tonight… no… actually three… first of all – the most noble of them… the current events in Burma are quite exciting… and perhaps even promising… who knows what would actually happen if the military junta over there did get overthrown or pushed aside… perhaps controlled dictatorship is better than absolute chaos… something that’s a distinct possibility for a conglomeration of nationalities and ethnicities that Burma is… but on the other hand… having traveled there… and experiencing possibly one of the finest weeks of my life on Burmese soil… remembering the countless people who approached Magnus and I wanting to talk about ‘freedom’… perhaps this will turn out for the best… and I must say… the one thing I am looking forward the most for tomorrow, is researching the events there further and trying to think up of a way of getting involved… but that’s the young Pioneer (see communist brainwashed youth) speaking in me …

Second thing is the semi-absurd fiasco of a United Nations assembly we are having here in New York this week… first of all, now that UN is an established organization with clear standing in this world… there is no more reason to have its headquarters in New York… I realize we are the capitalist capital of the world, bla bla… but does anyone outside here know the absolute disaster we, new Yorkers, have to live through each time these talking heads come to town? I mean its nice and all to know that of all the places in this world, it happens to be here… but on the other hand, when you see five miles of traffic down second avenue… or five square blocks cordoned off by secret service for the president of Zambia… one really has to ask if maybe Rochester or Albany or maybe even Lexington, Kentucky would be a nobler, saner choice for everybody invovled…
My second thought on this UN thing is the visit to New York by our favorite Hitler wanna be, Mr. Ahmadinejad… I don’t know if anybody followed this, but I thought his treatment at Columbia was an absolute disgrace… Especially considering the heat the school took for having him speak there… shit… if you are going to let him speak… at least treat him hospitably… instead the man gets introduced to the audience as the ‘honourable tyrant and dictator’ by the president of the school of international relations… and then gets grilled in a highly rude fashion about his esteemed opinions on the Holocaust, 9/11, etc… now I think this Ahmadinejad guy is an absolutely petrifying combination of street-smarts, charisma, assertiveness and delusion… and I really think his opinions, as outright mis-informed and absurd as they are, are driven by one underlying motivation – “Persians are somebody… and don’t you forget it.” So hence I think a lot of his foot stomping idiocies… from his theories on homosexuality to Iranian nuclear problem, really boil down to the fact that Persia (i.e. Iran)… much like Russia, India and China is finally ready (or thinks its ready) to assume to dominant position on the world stage… A position occupied for a long long time by tall white, blonde men… So with this in mind… I think if Columbia was to invite this guy to ‘speak,’ it really should have given him an opportunity to do so in a respectable and hospitable fashion… for no matter what his actual opinions are, he is without a doubt their ‘guest’… and if you don’t like the guest, what he is wearing, how he smells or what he talks about – don’t invite him into your house… but if you do… common courtesy and respect are not unreasonable to ask for…. And again, while being highly, even aggressively, ‘questioning’ of Mahmoud’s words and thoughts would be OK – he was after all there to defend his views… right… Being an unhospitable demagogue (as the head of Columbia’s international relations school was) is still inexcusable… and really does put our country (the good old US of A in a terrible, closed-minded and ignorant light abroad)

My final point of concern for today is of the nauseating variety… I have to compose a ‘telega’… translated as a complaint letter in English… about one of the superiors… it wont be an actual letter… but essentially talking points for the conversation ill be having with another of my bosses over this lovely gentleman… the great part of this is that end of all ends I think its all pointless anyway… and I am doing this under the guise of ‘not taking any shit’… instead of actually defending some ‘career’ position I might have… anyway, the ‘telega’ will consist of one giant point – this guy is an absolute dickhead… and a few supporting arguments… like he is fond of accusing without bothering to learn the facts… he tries to single out without any reason… and overall, his main motivation seems to be quite KGB’ish… dig up all the shit possible… put it in one big pile… and start tossing it against the wall to see what sticks… screw everything else…

a restless farewell...

Its Yom Kippur… one in the morning… I’ve been starving myself for a good six hours now… the lips are dry… the head is spinning… is it the lack of food… the lack of water… or the copious amounts booze I drank last night that make me feel so damned crazy???

Yes… last night was a true success… myself and two of my dear b-school friends went out to a ‘gastro-pub’ in alphabet city… who the hell came up with a name ‘gastro-pub’, I don’t know… to me it sounds like it could be one of two things… either a thing metrosexual… and hence unmanly… or an intestinal disease of vicious nature the clears one and all in its path… including the two boiled eggs you had for breakfast this morning… pieces of cheesecake floating around your innards from the night before… and even that tiny speck of pot you swallowed by accident while trying to clear your ancient pipe… right after the shower… and about ten minutes before you took off for work… the day was starting on a frantic note you see…

Anyway… if I had to choose one… I guess I’d have to go with the metrosexual thing… which is of course nauseating… but in a lax, pathetic, you can deal with it once every other gibbous moon sort of way… and that’s what it turned out to be… a very chic and modern sort of establishment… with white toothed waitresses… a wine list… and a menu exotique… full of garbled foods I never heard of… as well as fine cheeses and mussels and things of that nature…

Anyway… the drinks were as fine and as merry as drinks get… and I can get into this big whole complimentary shpiel about how great life was… and how drunk we all got… and yaddi yadda yadda… who cares… nobody wants to hear about the glories of my life… especially me… What I want to talk about are things dark, disturbing and unjust… perhaps bizarre, cynical and uneven… but certainly never happy, cheerful, well adjusted or even reasonable…

So this is where we get back to reality… for yesterday really was a momentous day… outside of the fact that I got into a screaming match with my beloved managing director (of finger pointing glory described in an earlier blog)… anyway, to focus on the story at hand… yesterday was a very important day in my life… it was a time of season… a time of change… a time to live… and a time to die… but before I totally go off on this tambourine man jibe… here is what happened…

I went out and got myself a digital camera… a digital camera of big expensive variety… the type you see geeks all over the city carrying, wrapped around their wrists, flinging around like sort of yo-yo’s… occasionally stopping to capture a particularly artistic shot… like say of a traffic light that’s not red, not green but in that fluxed state of yellow…. And the thing is that after spending half a month’s worth of my salary on a piece of electronic equipment, you’d figure I’d be feeling like a million bucks… I’d be feeling like I did something great and important… something that gave me a bright outlook on tomorrow… something that changed my life… (for that kind of money it better!)… but no…. I felt like a filthy traitor…

I felt like a filthy traitor because while my new camera is of the digital SLR variety… and its big and its heavy and its shiny and purports to make a great photographer out of me… at home… while I was out blowing my hard earned pennies on this piece of technological wonder…. There lay a black camera case… black in nominal terms for now it’s a combination of black and yellow from all the dust it collected in nether reaches of Ethiopia and Sikkim and Burma and Guatemala and who the hell knows where else… and inside that dusty black camera case is another piece of electronic equipment… not nearly as pricey or fancy as the one I just spent half of Kolkata’s GNP on… but valuable none-the-less… though a bit scratched up and dusty… and perhaps malfunctional and occasionally unreliable… but end of all ends… deeply… deeply… oh so deeply beloved…. And yes… I am talking of my best friend – my Minolta Maxum 5… of discontinued model variety… with eternal grease on the shutter button… hopeless scratches on the lens… and a film rewind mechanism that does whatever the hell it pleases… some people call it backwards and ancient… many a photography expert has laughed at me for still using a ‘film camera’…. I’ve sometimes wondered what the hell I was still doing with it… say when some of my finest pictures from Belize got exposed or overlayered thanks to the afore mentioned rewind mechanism boo boo…. But end of all ends, I LOVE MY MAXUM 5…

And now… like a filthy poseur… like a dirty traitor… I was abandoning my truly beloved, my truly trusted, my truly battle-tested companion for a hunk of metal that every six figure making, former Metallica loving, artist-wanna-be lugs around more for show than any artistic merit in of itself… and there I sat last night… drunk as an overfed swine… choking away on cancer sticks… listening to Cure… and looking at that black camera case on the floor… thinking of all the good times we had together… like when I fell in shoulder deep into monsoon swollen stream in Luang Prabang, Laos… and I thought my Maxum 5 was a goner… or when I took a bit of an aggressive picture of a very large African-American gentleman selling rags on Broadway and 27th… and we had to hold on for our dear life for that man, all six foot seven, 300 pounds of him, was coming to kill us both… or when I kept on pulling it out of my bag as I wondered through the woods of Sikkim and my Mexican companion kept on demanding to know why I was taking so many pictures…. Or shit… that time in Rangoon… where that lovely older gentleman approached me as I was smoking a cig… and talked to me… and my Maxum 5 was there… holstered in my bag… my trusted companion… my friend… (I am starting to get weepy)… what a filthy traitorous swine I real am….

How things will be

Anybody who has dealt with me in the last half a decade (or a five year plan if we go old school) knows full well that I am amidst a prolonged mid-life crisis… starting with say the milkround (business school interviews) in january of 2004 (I realize my math is off here) I have been fruitlessly searching for a meaningful and rewarding career… or at the minimum a slight whiff of one…

Now that we are close to 2008, this is a lot of water under the bridge… in that time I’ve failed countless interviews including
- having to explain to an angry pregnant HR woman at Deloitte why I believe pregnant women should not be allowed to smoke
- cover up a foul stench of liquor off my breath during a Diageo interview
- told a BarCap managing director that a research position in Singapore would be interesting but I really do prefer New York
- got almost interviewed by Chelsea Clinton at McKinsey (job denied - smart enough but lack presentability)
- was informed by my former employer, Lehman Brothers, that I lack confidence to be in a ‘trading floor’ environment
- got a rejection email from CSFB informing me that while they are not interested in me, I rally should be pursuing a career in trading
- Failed in the last round of American express global rotation programme
- Scheduled the worst possible time for my Deutsche Bank global markets interview… arriving to find two vice presidents so tired that they could barely listen to my bundle of incoherent lies and half-truths
- Decided not to stick with an Indian hedge fund where I interned… only to see them grow 10X the size and make an absolute killing in fees while totally underperforming the market
- Messed up simple foreign exchange/ interest rate parity arbitrage question at my dream job interview with Lazard emerging markets
- And cancelled another ‘dream job interview’ for emerging markets analyst mid-process because I was taking a job at my current gulag of employment (was fed up with interviewing)
- And oh yes… Did nothing about perfectly fine opportunities presented to me by my dear friends to either do a) Carbon trading in India b) start up a retail bank chain in Ukraine
- And one more – having received a fine opportunity to run my own group at my current place of employment… ended up getting stuck with two of the worst numbskulls for employees in Wall Street history (I’ll take 50% responsibility here)

So to sum up… despite ample opportunities to find reasonable career success and glory… I seem to consistently grab crushing defeat out of clutches of absolute victory…

What lesson to I gleam out of this, in all my worldly wisdom? I mean I am good enough to get these opportunities… so why is it that I am so damned unlucky… like Urkel at a strippers convention….?

Well… the one thing I have noticed is that in this world is that the lucky are good and the unlucky are well… not good… and no matter how hard the latter try… no matter the ingenious plans they devise… no matter the hot sweat they pour over their plans… somehow they always get screwed over… while the good – well somehow they always get lucky… taking the worst possible debacles and creating miracles out of them… doing nothing yet showing everything for their results…

And in this I think I know what I am talking about… for some absolutely unknown reason… whenever I pick up a pen or a camera… something positive comes out… I have seen my most far-flung… my most worthless, thoughtless efforts come to great success… I have been ‘noted’ for things I had absolutely no interest in being noted for…. It all just kind of happens… but that’s the thing… it doesn’t kind of happen…
Fact of the matter is… each time I pick up a pen or a camera… even if I have no clue what I am going to write or photograph or think about or whatever… I always know what I want and I always know what ‘should be’ coming out… its something that I cant explain or describe… but every time I look in my camera’s viewfinder… at any random waking moment… I see exactly what I am looking for and what I am trying to accomplish… there is no thinking… there is no planning… its just obvious…
Likewise with my literary efforts… they mostly start out random… they mostly have nothing but the vaguest idea behind them… but the next thing I know I have a couple of thousand words down and they all seem to make sense… usually each and every one… without me having pre-planned nothing, and I mean nothing, but the vaguest of ideas behind it…

My career on the other hand… the numerous hours I have spent writing down answers to ‘my greatest weaknesses/ my greatest strengths’ questions… the number of times I;ve recited like mantra why I should be hired for this or that job and what my plan is 5 to 10 years down the road (usually to be in a senior and super senior position within the firm in question)…. All of this goes to absolute crap since I mean none of it… I see none of it… I feel none of it… fact of the matter is I really don’t give a crap about any corporate culture… fact of the matter is one of my strengths is being funny, witty and doing whatever the hell I please (not good in a corporate environment – trust me)…. And fact of the matter is no, 5 to 10 years down the road I do not see myself as a managing director in your firm… wearing a suit seven to ten times more expensive than the wrinkled Today’s Man rag I am wearing today…. Thinking important thoughts… deciding who to promote and who to screw over… and counting how many strippers I am planning to bang at the next Vegas industry conference….
Though to be honest… In 5 to 10 years I do see myself being paid up the ass and doing whatever the hell I please… whenever the hell I please… though certainly not wearing a suit… or attending an investors meeting… or dreaming of my 22 year old secretary’s bosoms while pictures of my Prozac happy wife and spoiled children stare at me from my desk….

So yes… I am officially amidst a mid-career crisis… one I have a feeling I will have to resolve with a drastic action… involving heavy hallucinogenic drugs… colouring my hair purple… and sitting on some mountaintop somewhere in India…

Jealousy

Its 1230 in the morning on a Wednesday night… its my ‘alone’ night for Mila left me unattended to sick thoughts and ill behavior… I’ve taken full advantage of the free time – got home at 9PM from work… turned on television… watched it for what amounts to two hours and forty five minutes… thought of doing something productive… took a shower… had a lovely cherry compote from Brighton Beach… thought about smoking a cigarette… decided to err on the side of health… and now finally decided to do something meaningful and important – write in my blog…

Now for the thought of the day… and how jealous I’ve been feeling lately of something… jealous of what – its hard to say… nothing in specific… like the thought of Magnus being stuck in Cairo traffic in a filthy Lada cab while a fat turbaned man went at it with a particularly stubborn mule in the middle of the busiest intersection in all of Egypt… or my dear friend Matjaz traveling up and down the safe and sane region we know as the Balkans… yes… traveling up and down that wondrous and diverse land conquered by Slavs and Greeks and Turks and probably a whole bunch of others in-between… trying to meet important people and get the right contracts to develop a thing called commercial real estate… yes… imagine… there you are in Sarajevo… say in 1994… in the middle of some bombed out building… smoking cheap cigarettes and eating grass (cuz there aint no food around)… a careful Serbian sniper just took out a grandma on her morning stroll just a block away… and you sit there and think about life and how things will be when all this madness is over… when they finally clean up the bomb fragments and blood stains and random shoes from the cracked pavement… when you and your old friend Branko from the other side of town can have some good rakiya again… for you see Branko turned out to be a Serb and is now killing Bosnians… for reasons he probably don’t know… and you are killing Serbians… just like Branko for reasons you don’t know… and it all goes on and on and you think and wonder in those terrible hours of where its going to get everybody in long ten years…

And ten long years pass…. And Serbs and Bosnians are still not friends but at least have the decency to hate each other from afar… and through newspaper caricatures… and the bombed out building where you were smoking your cigarettes (rolled from that caricatured newspaper) and eating grass… well now its one of the top investment stories in all of the EMEA region (Europe/ Middle East/ Africa for the ignorant ones out there)… a nice private equity firm showed up and bought up the property… sometime before they paid some bribes… and a long time afterwards they will continue to pay some bribes… the local politicians are ecstatic – the country is growing! The local proletariat is happy – they have work! And the local women are thrilled – Victoria’s secret is coming to Sarajevo, along with Kmart, Wendy’s and McDonalds… and shit for the rebuilding effort, they crazy Swedes are even opening up an Ikea on the outskirts of town… they are claiming to be using aged wood from burned Muslim villages to make furniture that is both modern and convenient… and oh yes… even Home Depot is right around the corner… yes… the first one in all of former Yugoslavia… for how are angry former soldiers to occupy themselves but to build houses and other contraptions with their bare hands (you cant expect them to waste time on metrosexual non-sense like Ikea… now can you?)… and everyone is happy… and everyone is thrilled… for that bombed out, rotten building (and about a dozen other ones all around) have now become a giant shopping mall with horrendous music, stale air and uniformly happy sales staff… even goofballs from EBRD showed up, taking grinning pictures next to Ronald McDonald and exclaiming “Europe is finally coming together” in thick German accents… the only ones unhappy are the town drunks… for what good are shopping malls to them – old rotten burned out buildings work much better for their purposes…

And that’s what my friend Matjaz is doing… building a better tomorrow… for the people of today… And I am jealous… for forget all the slogans and all the construction and all the investment and all the money… I want to know what the town drunks are doing, now that they’ve lost their base and home…

Spontaneity

I showed up home at 9pm today… sometime before that, between 5PM and 8PM I managed to purchase a flat screen television… an idea or expense that I had no idea I was about to incur at 430PM of the same afternoon… how does this happen? And how does this happen specifically to me? I don’t know… I have a knack for the random, spontaneous and completely unprovoked action…

For example… some two, or is it three, years ago… was heading over to zone 3 in London… on the west side… to attend the world famous school disco… where lads and ladettes dress up in boarding school outfits… get insanely drunk… and either have random sex or fist fights… so in summary, if you take out the first point, its an average night for a british youth… on the way there I was listening to my now deceased Ipod… I don’t remember what I was listening to but it must have been good for by some stroke of fate I managed to get off two stops early… how this is possible as my stop was the last stop on the line – I don’t know… but out I go… and as I walk a block down from the wrong station, I start looking around and scratching my head… finally it dawns upon me that I got off early and right as I am about to go on a cursing fit what do I see before my eyes… but a nice looking mountain bike… parked in front of a coffee shop… and being sold for a princely sum of 35 quid – quite cheap mind you…

Now the question here is what should happen here? A normal person gets back on the tube, rides out the two extra stops and goes on with his night trying to get lucky with some drunk English whore… but me… I am not normal… I see the phone number on the sign and I dial it… a very eager woman picks up and informs me that she’ll be right there… literally two minutes later she appears, with an addition of an eight year old girl in hand and the subtraction of a few of her teeth and a couple of ribs… sometime later I figured out she was a heroin addict... though the little girl seemed quite happy and well adjusted nonetheless… anyway… the woman saunters over to me and in great blabbering rush explains that her and her husband… and probably daughter too… are moving to where else but Australia tomorrow… and that this is quite unexpected… like most moves to the other side of the world to the old penal colony… and that she really must get rid of this wonderful bike… me and my moral sense disassociate from each other at this point and in an almost dreamlike state I find myself handing the woman over 35 quid for a bike that’s clearly not hers, removing the chain off the bike which the woman assures me was cut because her husband, silly lass that he is, lost the keys... waving good buy to her sweet daughter… ignoring the angry, piercing stare from the coffee shop owner… and off I go… riding my newly acquired bike to the school disco… with no idea what I will do with this thing while I am at the disco nor how I will get it back half way across London to my flat at Russell Square…

The bike survived school disco by being parked amongst 50 other bikes near the tube stop (really dying to remember its name)… I wrapped the ripped lock around it to disguise the fact that it was in fact free to take… and now to think of it, that would have kind of been kind of a just turn of events… but anyway… I left the bike at the bike rack… went to the school disco… waited for my Argentinean comrade (who shall remain nameless) for over an hour…. Paid 5 quid for the ugliest tie on the face of the planet…. Got insanely drunk at the festivities… didn’t get laid though got into a fist swinging match with some drunken idiot… left the party drunk and irritated… talked two of my classmates into agreeing to share a cab back to zone 1 with my ‘new’ bike… and spent a night twisting and turning in guilty misery over being an accessory to what was clearly bike theft…

the spontaneous story ended well… I rode back and forth from school on the bike… I didn’t wear a helmet but lived to tell about it… the 35 quid I spent on it plus another 20 I spent on a real lock paid for itself in reduced commuter costs… and I got compliments from quite a few classmates for being very cool… something that I always thought, I was with or without my bike in tow… but whatever… ill take all the help I can get…. And at the end of my school career I sold the bike on for 80 quid to an Israeli student… the proud jewish glee glistening in my eyes when I closed that transaction… yes… my mother would have been proud… profit… profit… and more profit… though with an unfortunate moral disclaimer though…

the story didn’t end perfectly though… the bike broke a week later and being that I was already on the short end of my immorality quota, I had to refund most of the bike money back to the Israeli for repairs… the deal still ended up being profitable based on commuter savings alone…. Though not as profitable as I dreamed it to be but again… given the fact on what confluence of sheer luck and scummy principles this happened… I should be happy I wasn’t run over by one of those psychotic black cabs…

and in the end… when I finished reciting this story to my friend Pranav… probably the foremost business brain I know… all he could muster to say was ‘Eugene, I have no idea how you pull this off!?’…

But now back to 2007… to my apartment and perpetually sore throat… I am now 400 bucks poorer… and one flat screen TV richer… why I need this fancy thing all of a sudden… I don’t know… but shit… a good deal is a good deal… so who am I to question…

Former life

For the sake of preserving history… fruitless history at that… here is my former jdate profile… which netted me exactly zero dates in a period of eight months… fair or deserved - definetely not! but one way or another - AMEN....

KrokodilGenaFF32

About Me

A friendly crocodile. Live in an apartment. Work at the zoo as a crocodile. Of soft, delicate and a bit melancholic character. To relax, enjoy lying in the pool for hours on end, thinking deep thoughts on life and its meaning.

Personal Info

Gender: Single, Man seeking a Woman
Last Update: 10/30/2005

Lifestyle
I am looking for: Friend
Relocation: I would relocate for the right person or relationship
Relationship Status: Single
Children: None
Plan on having children:
Custody Situation: I have no children
I keep Kosher: Not at all
I go to Synagogue: Will tell you later
I smoke: Occasionally
I drink: Socially
Zodiac Sign: Cancer
Activity Level: Very Active

Physical Info

I am: 5' 11" (180 cm) I weigh:
My hair is: Other My eyes are: Brown
My body style is closest to: Athletic/Fit

Background
I grew up in: new york, ussr
My ethnicity is: Ashkenazi
I speak: English, Russian
My Religion: Will tell you later
I studied or am interested in: zoology
My education: Master's Degree
Occupation Other
Occupation description: an animal on exhibit
Annual income: Will tell you later
Political Orientation: Midway Moderate

Personality and Interests

My personality is best described as:
Adventurous/Wild/Spontaneous, Argumentative, Artistic, Easygoing/Flexible/Open-Minded, Eccentric, High Energy, High Maintenance, Intellectual, Stubborn
In my free time, I enjoy:
Camping, Hanging Out with Friends, Motorcycling, People Watching, Photography, Reading/Writing, Traveling/Weekend Trips/Adventure Travel
In my free time, I like to go to:
Antique Stores/Flea Markets/Garage Sales, Art Galleries, Bars/Nightclubs, Beach, Bookstores, Coffee Houses, Movies, Museums
My favorite physical activities:
Basketball, Biking, Boating/Sailing/Rafting, Golf, Hiking/Walking, Ice Skating, Soccer
I like/own these pets:
Cat, Dog
My favorite food(s):
Barbecue, Eastern European, French, Jewish/Kosher, Thai, Vietnamese
My favorite music:
Other
I like to read:
Fiction, Magazines, Newspapers

Relationships
My perfect first date:
we will go eat ice cream and it will be good and i might be a little sloppy and spill a little of mine, after which you will offer to share yours, which i will accept. and then we will walk around and get lost and it will start to rain and you will carry the umbrella and i will carry you . or is is the other way around?
My ideal relationship:
we will be friends and do a lot of things together. like for example, you can watch me working at the zoo or perform in the sherlock holmes theater. we can play music together - i can play the harmonica and you can sing.
My past relationships:

My Ideal Match
Age Range:
20 to 30
Relationship Status:
Single
Religious Background:
Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, Secular, Traditional, Unaffiliated
Education Level:
Some College, Associate's Degree, Bachelor's Degree, Master's Degree, JD/Ph.D/Postdoctoral
Drinking Habits:
Never, Socially, Occasionally
Smoking Habits:
Non-Smoker, Occasionally, Regularly
I am looking for a:
someone cute, with big eyes and big ears, brown in color with a short but fury tail. must be of curious and intelligent nature and willing to participate in interesting activities like playing chess and reading train schedules

Dangling from a rope in the middle of Ethiopia

Well… what a lovely evening for Thursday night it is… and tomorrow mila and I are going to the roxman dacha in Connecticut… where I will lie on the beach… do nothing… read Alchemist by Paolo Coelho – a book everyone recommended and I have a feeling I will absolutely hate… and that’s about it… the weekend sounds stunning… does it not!

Right now feel enfeebled by another round of thera-flu I am drinking… at 1215 @ night, mind you… for this ridiculous virus is still working its way around my office… XXXXX went home sick on Tuesday… got anti-biotics on Wednesday… and I feel like dog poop this afternoon… a lovely, easily repeatable and fully foreseeable pattern this is…

Anyway… lately have been thinking of Magnus and where he is…for all the pleasures of my life… a certain rush of insane & mindless risk taking is clearly missing… like I haven’t done anything absurdly stupid… like dangle from a goat-hide rope twenty feet in the air… with no safety rope… and my skeletal biceps as my only insurance…. in the cliffs of Northern Ethiopia…. Trying to get to some monastery where I will learn about the latest in AIDS prevention and medications (samples of which I have @ home!)…. Yes… nothing matches that feeling… that split second… when you pause for a second from madly driving yourself to the top… realizing… that first of all, the rope you are clinging to really does smell like a corpse of a rotting beast of burden… that second… its really far down and still pretty far up… and that third… there is really a LOT of local people down there, mostly faithful women, eagerly staring upwards in my direction wondering if this particular farangee will make it up to the monastery or in god’s hands in the rocks below… luckily frenzied panic doesn’t allow me to consider these points… and I madly continue paddling up the rope… forgetting that as a child I was always a horrendous tree climber… and that heights really never were my thing… and that shit… I think I made it to the top… that the lovely Ethiopian people greeting me have seen many white people before me and really don’t care… and that shit… I am still alive… I am still breathing… that I have a water bottle in my backpack and some cigarettes in my pocket… and that my biceps are about to explode… that I cant see for all the sweat pouring off my forehead… and that all I can do is lie down on the filthy stairs pouring warm water on my head, dragging away on that fine cigarette which five minutes before seemed like an eternal impossibility…

And then we walk around the monastery… and see the ancient scrolls… and see the coolest looking Orthodox priests ever… meet the local cat… see the locals dragging over sewer water that they will have blessed before drinking… learn the history of Ethiopian church… admire the fine bright red towel with jesus Christ’s mug on it – sold at a Christian convention near you for $9.99… holding a place of honour amongst ancient artifacts… and listen to a local scholar talk with great eloquence about history and religion and AIDS… or how the latter is just an easily curable white man concoction…

And its all fine and well… we meet a pair of nice Icelandic boys… blonde and young… and way cooler than I ever was at 23… and Magnus comes to the conclusion that in my 4 days in Ethiopia I must have met all four Icelanders currently present on the Horn of Africa… I nod my head… But thoughts of sampling the AIDS medicine in my pocket are quite distracting… I think its oatmeal… but am not sure… kind of afraid to taste it actually…

And now its time to head back down… the same way we got in – by a long stinky and quite unsecured rope…. Icelandic boys are joining us for the ride into town… and Magnus is passionately chatting away to them in the ancient Norse tongue… Probably not too many speakers of that in Dubai either…

We approach the rope and my heart palpitations begin… getting up was easy… I was too stupid to realize what I was doing… getting back down… now that’ll take some courage… and the gentleman with the rope – all 115 senior citizen pounds of him (see picture) – gladly agrees… for he is demanding a king’s ransom of 20BIRR ($2.20) per person for the privilege of lowering us back to safety… one of the Icelandic boys gets outraged and starts arguing… no more than $5 BIRR… no fucking way! He insists…. But the old man insists and so do i… ‘if there is one time in your life to overpay for something, my friend’ I say ‘ this is most likely it…’

And down they go… one by one… first Magnus… with a healthy smile a big backpack and my camera in tow… then Pavel… our insistently tacit Czech companion for the day… and then the Icelandic boys… At a negotiated rate of 10BIRR per person… they all disappear into the abyss before me while I choke away at what I am convinced is my last cigarette… I think my last thoughts which now to think of it, I don’t remember… I check if my palms are sweaty.. and they are… and I give a once over to the older gentleman with the rope… noticing a slight pungent smell of sweat and whiskey in the air and remembering the comment of one of the Icelandic boys about how the old man had a bottle of liquor with him earlier… swigging away quite liberally… while a couple of guys sitting next to him tried to convince him that he might be getting too drunk for the job of a rope handler… but hey… money prevails over booze in these parts… and whether the bottle was finished or not I don’t know… but out the monastery I go… clinging to that god awful, filthy stinking goat rope….

The first steps are immeadiately fatal…. I look down… see that I have a good 60 to 70 feet to go… that its quite high up… that there is a lot of people watching me…. That magnus is off to the side aiming at me with my camera… and that I am scared shitless…

As fast as my ascent was just an hour or so before… as slow and frightening this descent is…. I try to maintain control as I go down… but start speeding up… that scares me so I put sharp breaks on… with what now feels sturdy goat rope burning into my palms… and my legs in deadly python wrap…. And I am hanging on… and now stalled… and swinging back and forth… maybe with 30 or 40 feet to go… and everyone cheering… from both above and below…. And magnus actively snapping pictures… and me being swung forwards and backwards on this stinking rope… half way between life and death…. But at least with great fanfare….

By the time I got down… I must have lost at least three to four years of my life… though I would not admit it out loud… I really thought I dodged the grim reaper out there… and for the rest of the day… sitting in our rusty white van… listening to atonal Ethiopian folk music… riding on some of the worst roads I have ever seen… all I could think of was how lucky I was to still be alive and how appropriate it would be for me to now be somewhere safe and sound, like say my bed in new york… where I don’t have to play anymore games with god almighty or attempt to bet my life on physical skills that I have absolutely no confidence in….

Tales of my interviewing prowess

Well… I have one major complaint to issue to start off tonight’s rant… I have not heard from my dear friend Magnus in a very long time… I know he is alive and well since he posted a blog a fortnight ago…. But oh Magnus, dear Magnus… where art though!? Please leave me your phone number so I may call you!

On other matters… right now actively working on my CV… the interesting thing I’ve noticed is that while under certain circumstances I might be the best bullshitter alive… when it comes to selling myself to other people… or to be clear – people of strength and importance… I must be the worst ever… All the cacheisms and key phrases… all of the fancy shmancy way of telling these people what a bright and no-lose prospect I am… I cant do any of them… and while I can write a satirical piece on any damned topic that can entertain a rotting corpse… I cant write a decent CV or cover letter to save my life… maybe its true and I am in the wrong business…

Now to think of it… of all the hundreds of interviews I’ve been on…. Two really stand out as my finest… neither resulted in gainful employment… but nonetheless… one was my interview after college for a program to teach English in Japan… as usual, I showed up clueless and unprepared – the adventure seeker in me loves the spontaneity involved here… and when the guy started tossing out strange and random questions like why in the world I would want to go to a weird ass country like Japan (I’ve been to the airport… trust me… its weird…)… and teach a language I barely count as my own to people who speak or understand none of it whatsoever… and the interesting part was that I breezed through the interview and answered each question with absolutely stunning grace and aplomb… resulting in a job offer… that I, in my infinite wisdom (and under pressure of jewish mother), passed up to work as a treasure analyst in a failing mortgage originator… and no… I don’t regret this choice one bit… life of travel, adventure, learning… or reconciling daily wires for a now defunct company… the choice is clear to anyone semi-reasonable… isn’t it? Stay in new york… develop a slight drug and alcohol habit… earn measly pennies… watch and learn corporate intricacies… what kind of a freak needs to travel the world anyway… and no… I am not bitter… not matter how hard you ask…

Anyway… to move on to the next successful interview… I was on a train ride from Moscow to Kharkov (my beloved hometown)… in 2003… sixteen years after I left my sweet and bankrupt homeland for greedy world of capitalism… as a little background… the previous couple of days I spent at my cousin Andrei’s crackden apartment in Moscow… smoking copious amounts of cheap dope and playing video games… so by the time I left Kursk station on an overnight train bound for Kharkov (in Ukraine)… my brain was officially fried, toasted and un-functional…. The overnight part was fine though the three ladies in my coupe seemed to hate my guts… don’t know why… maybe, as has been recently suggested to me, I am a nasty snorer…. But that cant be true… anyway… at 7am I get woken up by a bang on our door… there stands a young and handsome Ukrainian border patrol officer… surely known for his unbending moral strength and fortitude… he gleefully asks where the American citizen is… whom it turns out is me… and one thing leads to the next and there is a problem with something I filled out on my visa form and there I am, in a different room, one on one with the officer, half awake with $200 bucks stuck in my back-pocket in case of an ‘emergency’…

Anyway, the interview starts in an old soviet fashion… I am presumed guilty before I can even defend myself… the officer demands to know how I could possibly have an inconsistency on my entry forms – i.e. on one it says I am here as a tourist... on another I am coming into my former motherland on a personal visa… I am such as easy catch that I can see the young man, with a nice clean uniform, mind you, already counting the bribe I’ll be paying him in a minute or two… but there again my wit and quick thinking comes out… true, I might have planned this in the back of my head just for a moment like this… but I lay out to the officer that its hard for me to say if my trip is personal or tourist since in a way its both… as I am heading back to my beloved homeland to see what these capitalist cretinism has done to my wonderful land…and how after sixteen years of absence, mind you I left as a proud and honorful Pioneer, I am really dying to see what good things have happened in my country since then… “and now”, I turn to the officer, “what further questions do you have?”

Here things get weird for the officer since obviously it would be implicitly a very unpatriotic thing to do to demand a bribe out of me… on the other hand, just letting me go just like that seems a little weird… so the officer starts asking me about America… what I do there… how I like life there… etc… he seems of reasonably educated sort… so maybe at this point he is just stalling time and scouting out his own prospects…. After a few minutes of an ever increasingly friendly chat… he sticks out his hand… wishes me luck… and tells me that I hope I like what they’ve done with Ukraine… I say of course… though deep inside I highly doubt I would… at this point I look up and realize that another border guard spent this whole time standing over the back of me… trying to intimidate me… which didn’t work because I was so obliviously lost in my conversation/ interview that I forgot to notice his presence… this latter fellow is slightly taken aback by this turn of events since I doubt his buddy is generally known for his softness of heart… he weakly asks the other guy if maybe they should search my stuff… who knows, maybe I'm one of those crazy Americans with fifteen pounds of fine Afghani heroin in my backpack… but the other says no… this is a good man traveling… and I shake hands with both of them… extremely warm handshakes by the way… to a degree I almost regret not asking for a photograph… and off we go in our own directions… officers over to the next train car where they’ll be mugging some other poor soul in lieu of their failed ‘collection’ with me.. and me back to my coupe… where the previously hateful three women greet me as if I am the rebirth of John the Baptist… head attached and all…. What happened in Kharkov is a story (s) for another time…. But again… strange that of all the demented, strange and bizarre interviews I’ve had… these two are my most pleasant memories…. Is there a message buried in here somewhere?? I think… but I fully gleamed it yet….

when you are in Rome....

It’s a Wednesday night… nearly midnight… and its close to beddy bye time for me… and you know what I noticed… as I’ve gotten older… and climbed past the mighty 30 barrier on the age scale… the earlier I am going to bed… the more valuable my sleep is… and more I count down towards days when I can actually sleep as I wish – i.e. the weekends….

I was pretty much ready to write a really cynical joke about how now that I am officially heading down the other side of the hill, I have really low expectations of my conscious time and time sleeping seems ever more pleasant in comparison to the daily reality…. Yes… that would kind of sound morbidly witty for a second or two but really not true…. I was much more miserable in the years past than I am now… and this latest habit of
early bed times – i.e. midnight – is just a function of deteriorating body stamina and
function and not of the condition of my mental state…

was going to write something more meaningful… but now it doesn’t make a difference… wanted to go on a rant about a certain professional matter but then remembered all the horror stories of people getting their blogs found on the internet and getting fired… now on second thought…. Maybe that’s not such a terrible down side… Screw it… and lets do it…

ill use secret decoders tactics to make sure that even if undesirable eyes do befall upon these precious words… that there can be no implication of yours truly in anything whatsoever…

anyway… we have a certain senior manager where I work who is a lovely man… generally polite… pleasant in conversation and in possession of a healthy sense of humour… of reasonable physical appearance – not too shabby and not too shallow… is of reliable and diligent nature in his professional responsibilities… and really has only one slight fault as a professional and a human being – he is a finger pointer…

nothing this man enjoys more than talking about what somebody else didn’t do or even better yet what someone actually did that he shouldn’t have done… this gentleman is very good at reciting in public places who forgot to deliver what to him… who had what stupid idea and who was really doing something he had very little clue about… the gentleman’s pleasant nature, natural approach and flawless timing made these sorts of observations seem almost natural… so natural that at a certain point you feel an ancient cow instinct kick inside your brains, and next thing you know you are badmouthing the guy next to you for no reason but for pleasant conversation…

anyway, the above quality – the finger pointing – has its fine and not so fine points… for example… its quite noble when this gentleman occasionally calls out a more senior member of the staff for being an idiot… very refreshing… when he talks about clients or counterparties or whoever else – its not bad and it re-affirms your own hidden suspicions that everyone around you is an imbecile of first class intent on holding you, and your paycheck, as far down as possible…

things don’t go so well, though, when this gentleman starts whistfully recounting the failures of his employees (for sake of disclosure, I am one of them)… somehow, though this guy is suppose to be overseeing you and making sure you don’t make the exact screw ups he is so philosophically discussing, somehow he makes you seem like a complete ignorant incompetent, while he - an observant and astute manager… how he is an observant and astute manager I don’t know, for fuck ups seem to happen and you feel your career getting worse instead of getting better… but no… somehow it all makes sense, and even when your neighbor is being ricocheted off of three walls of a closed office, with the door wide open and the neighbor nowhere near, you sit there and nod your head knowing full well that the next time this guy is at a managing directors retreat, all he is going to talk about is what a failure his staff, namely people like me, are…

this quality in a manager does a few things… first of all it institures accountability, which is good… since you know that if you muck something up, on purpose or not, your name will be plastered across every office in midtown manhattan…. Second of all it creates clear lines of responsibility… nobody wants to take on something unknown that lord forbid might blow up in his face… so everybody sits there and does their particular lot in life… trying to keep their head as low as possible… which creates a very orderly place in one sense, and a place without innovation or initiative in another… you pick which one you prefer… finally, this managerial finger pointing creates a KGB atmosphere around the office… you never know who is ratting what on whom… because when the guy calls you in his office and asks you why this particular data happened to have been entered in the completely opposite manner to what it was supposed to… you can either bow your head and take the bullet to the head… knowing full well that this guy is going to go to the head of the group and say how things are going pretty well except for these slight errors by that guy in the corner (i.e. you) who keeps on ruining everything for everybody… or as another option… you can announce that yes, perhaps you did enter this specific piece of data in a literal sense… but metaphysically, you got this information from so and so and that person mislead you, maybe on purpose, maybe not… who knows… and that while you’ll certainly be happy to take your share of the blame… all you did was mis-enter the information this other incompetent, the true incompetent here to be perfectly clear, provided you with….

And so it goes… you have your job… you do it… if you do it OK or very well or excellent really doesn’t make a difference… for you are never going to be over-complimented or over-recognized… you keep your head down… and if push comes to shove… they say when you are in Rome, do as the Romans do…. so you become an expert at lifting thy right hand and pointing in the direction of the weakest link you can think of… it’s a healthy work environment, I know….

But here the story gets better my friends…. Though my colleagues and I never actually discussed this… this gentlemans reputation for being a shitty ass boss somehow established itself of its own… i.e. you don’t need to say it… you just know when push comes to shove this guy don’t have your back… he’ll sell you out to whoever he needs to sell you out to… and that’s that… its not going to be personal… he’ll happily shake your hand and share a beer with you afterwards… its business baby….
Well… of this no more… I am happy to say that I wasn’t the only one totally fed up with this non-sense... in the past couple of days this guy lost two out of his three main employees…. (I am not the third and will not divulge more for confidentiality reasons)… the guys bailed of course at the worst time possible… and essentially this guy is left with only the most junior member of the staff… which of course sucks for him and must raise a very curious question to the senior management of the firm – why doesn’t this guy have any loyalty from his employees…. Cuz he don’t care about no one but himself… that’s why you dummy! So when you are in Rome, do as the Romans do, and if it pays to do something for yourself, do it and worry about other people’s asses never…

How i bought a cell phone

OK. So we’ll start with the important developments in my life… After heavy and management consulting intensive search, I’ve selected myself a new cell phone… Its shiny, nice and has a 2 megapixel camera… and only cost me $50 bucks after a $50 rebate and signing my life away to Verizon for another 2 years… so far it looks like a good deal… the graphics on the phone are very colourful… almost like a real tv… the keypad is real futuristic looking, though my slimy fingers keep on sliding all over it… but hey.. who needs to dial the right number as long as you look cool…

and oh yes… yesterday I began my next important mobile project – finding just the right ring tone for my new machine… never mind that I am likely to keep the thing on vibrate at all times… so I dug through the phone, got myself connected to UniVision mobile website… which turned out to be in Spanish… tried to download some hot latin beats…. Namely Eminem… only to realize that they wanted to charge me something like three bucks for the privilege… without a second of hesitation, my bargain nose clearly told me that this was a rip off, I went to two other ‘free’ mobile sites touted by my beloved Verizon phone… lo and behold… while accessing the actual website is apparently free (I’ll find out on my next bill I guess)… downloading the advertised ‘free’ ringtones was decidedly un-free…

and this brings me to my next raving rant… the little rip offs in life we all have to deal with… ill stick with the mobile thematica here… so while purchasing the afore mentioned slick new phone – LG VX8700 to be perfectly exact…. At the Union Square Verizon store… I was being helped by an Indian saleskid – so good was he that I even remember his name – Manesh…. Or is it Mahesh? Anyway, lets go on, who cares…

So there I am, booking the purchase of the new phone with Mashish… a fine upstanding young man of maybe 18 he is… with a lightly protruding mustache awaiting its first bloody shave… and a fresh Verizon employee uniform that some marketing buffoons at headquarters spent six and a half months and half a mil drawing up… ‘the colors of the uniform will encourage more accessory purchasing, mr. Verizon CEO, sir…’ was what they said at headquarters… instead they got a bunch of little greedy monkeys running around their stores, looking like half literate gas station attendants trying to pawn off god knows what crap on us, unsuspecting consumers….

So anyway, back to Mashish and me… there he is, booking my purchase of the phone/ two year soul sale into the system… all is fine and well and I am even excited for the 2 megapixel camera will truly allow my ‘photographic talent’ to shine and explode… allowing to explore the nether reaches of my existential existence and prune out the liberating truth behind it… OK… sorry… that’s just the non-sense stuck in my head from the last photo show I attended… fuck them, art overbred maggots….

Anyway, mashish is there booking me into his system with a lazy tune of a teenage salesman… about two minutes into the procedure, he scans something over on the screen and announces that I do a lot of texting… and that I don’t have a texting package… and since I do around 90 texts a month… I should get a $10 monthly texting package…

Now that’s where an uneducated consumer – i.e. one who has not spent forty thousand pounds on his MBA – just nods his head and gets his face ripped off by this teenage criminal… but no… because Mehesh was a young man, he didn’t realize that not only did he need to make a generally vague financial proposition to someone like me… but he also needed to appeal to my vanity… say by complimenting the number of friends who must care deeply about me for 90 texts really is a lot…never mind the truth – half are to my mother reporting on my whereabouts… but my vanity would be pleased… I’d feel like a wholesome member of society and gladly fork over the $10 monthly fixed charge…

Instead he let me think… and I did the math… and asked the right question – i.e. how much is each text… Normal text = .15… picture text = .25… I never picture text…. So effectively I spend $13 bucks texting on average…

“and how many texts do I get for $10 bucks?” – 2000 or way too many…

“And how many texts was my minimum in the last four months?” – fifty two, this past month…

“and oh shit, is there a cheaper plan?” – why yes, for $5 bucks I get 250 texts for free….

And there we go Mahesh… you sell me the cheaper plan instead of the one where you earn an extra 20 cents a month or whatever your commission is on this….

And I am going to stop now… but what I didn’t mention was the thousand and one accessories that they tried to hang upon my already burdened neck… including a lovely cell phone case… headphones… god knows what else… for you know what… they make these freaking things so they are not compatible with anything else and the headphones you have, the USB port you already use… none of it connects with any of this new crap you bought… and you know why… so big capitalists somewhere in Korea… or maybe even in our very own Verizon store in Union Square, can make a few extra dollars off your lazy, inattentive American ass….

Time

So now I am working on my resume for time to move on with my career has arrived… But as I type another thought has arrived… Due to excessive stress/ work/ brainwashing… I’ve realized that my conversational range has shrunk to near zero… I.e. I can talk about very few topics… sports as always… though less than before… booze and drugs… for one always keeps the dearest the closest to the heart… bad weather… for something must be said of being stuck for twenty floors in an elevator with a bozo you cant stand so bad that standing there silent is just unacceptable… and finally… work… how so and so did this or that and how its all really retarded and my karmic signs are really out of place there and that shit… I’ve been talking about this shit for over a year now…

Whatever happened to the smart, civil, witty, cultured me… no longer can I opine on modern topics of importance… such as lesbian rights to reproduce and bear children… no longer am I an ardent advocate of political change – fuck them all… no longer am I madly obsessed with philosophy of our times – screw them, let them all rot in consumerist hell… and no longer I root mindlessly for a bunch of mindless jocks playing an equally mindless sport… somehow it all receded to the nether regions of my brain I call my not so near past… and there it resides… only for me to reach back on those whistful rainy Sunday afternoons… to the equally rainy Sunday afternoons my junior year in Binghamton… when like a bored and mindless degenerate that I surely must have been… I would make my way, every Sunday afternoon, to the Sports Bar… to watch my miserable and beloved Jets lose game after game after game to reach the now hallowed record of 1-15…. And why did I have to go watch those games.. even when all hope was lost and gone… why did I have to drink those beers and eat those wings? Perhaps bored idiot’s hope springs eternal… lack of vision… misunderstanding of the term loyalty… anyway… the point I am getting to.. is the more I think back… the more i realize that I’ve wasted quite a healthy portion of my life on worthless and idiotic pursuits… such as gainful employment when I needed none… such as trusted friends when they certainly were not… such as empty days and nights, spent in front of a television with a pipe in hand… or to be honest… not even that much… just an empty, bored grin…

Yes… I am getting old… and lamenting loss of time… and the question I am coming to is am I wasting my time now… will I look at these days with a bemused smirk and shake my head…. When I am over 40… sitting on some suburban train… at six thirty in the morning… dressed like a modern ape in a freshly pressed suit and an over priced tie… on my way to a job that I despise to do work that I find meaningless and to make money for people I feel are worthless…. Now if this aint a real nugget for the evening… I don’t know what is….

Disclaimer: this was written while sipping on a heavy potion of night time thera-flu… so misery and melancholy expressed in the above paragraphs might be the direct result of the headache currently creeping around my head, as well as all in all bitterness about my life that overcomes me in time of illness or any other minor inconvenience…

Hygiene and society today

So just wrote a nice long piece on the interesting points of the current CDO/ subprime meltdown and my honoured place amidst it… tried highlighting everything to copy it… to ensure that I don’t lose it to some random internet mishap…. Instead my 2 page article of intelligence and wit went somewhere… where I don’t know… and my thoughts and dreams and wisdom of those inspired moments is gone forever and ever… into the netherworld of my bright new laptop… may they rest in peace…

Of course there are other thoughts I have, outside career thoughts… for example I found myself in a restaurant the other day… in the restaurant’s toilet to be exact… and while I was surveying this particular facility’s hygienic condition and stark observation came to mind… there… above the polished white sink…. With the pubic hair at the bottom… there hung a sign… in clear and plain English informing that all employees must wash hands after using the bathroom… now there was nothing novel in this particular sign as it appears in pretty much every toilet in every eatery in tri-state area… but what caught my attention were two interesting points in particular…

First of all… a large percentage of any restaurant’s staff is Mexican/ central American immigrants… most likely illegal (though I am all for it)… and though they are not likely to be the maitre’d or the waiter, they are likely to have something to do with the food we eat – say basic preparation of the ingredients and the plates/ utensils… there I asked myself what are the odds of these specific individuals, towards whom this sign is specifically directed, being able to read and understand this sign… now it is big and clear… and it does have an image of running water on it… but realistically speaking, how many Miguel’s or Jose’s or whoever else would be able to read it and comprehend it? Not to be unfair or anything… for I hold all of these individuals in the highest respect… but probably a lot of them, given that they are the way below minimum wage labor and definitely deal with essential functions such as unpacking and laying out the basic ingredients which we later digest, in great glee and aplomb… probably understand none of it… and hence the sign should at the very least be bilingual… in both both English and Spanish…

And this leads to the second point… in all likelihood this sign has nothing to do with the employees altogether… I bet they have a bathroom in the back that they use and the bathroom I found myself in, incense stinking, dimly lit and perfect for a quality nap… this bathroom is only for big shot, paying customers like me… so hence, this big loud and clear sign really has nothing to do with the employees who only get to read it, or to be more correct, according to the above paragraph, see it, when they show up in the bathroom with a bucket and a mop in hand, ready to wipe some cokeheads snot off the toilet bowl…. Yes, the sign is a big subconscious brainwashing plot to make us, overworked yuppie imbeciles, think that this place is germ free and sanitized like crazy… and the restaurant maybe is germ free, and maybe it is indeed over-sanitized… who the hell knows… but this particular sign… which I must admit guilts me into washing my filthy paws three times over just like my grandma prescribed… really is nothing but a ruse to play on our impressionistic minds… poisoned by calorie counts and health ads… myriads of flesh eating diseases and horrific fatal ends…. Neurosis and car wrecks…. Terrorists and mass murderers….
Anyway… too bad my professional tract got wiped out… that one was good… but I guess whats not meant to be is not meant to be…

another thought on my world

ok... so i just realized that its been a month and a half since my last ramble.... so here we go... on another fine monday evening... woke up at 630am to go the passport office.... got there to find a fine queue going around the corner of the building and coming back out in front.... i got in line... and stood next to the immigrants, and the first time citizens and fellow white collar criminals like me, just looking for their bloody passport so they can go spend the dear dollars we've spent all hours of the night leeching off society in debaucherous carribean resorts... hmm... yes... i am suppose to be going to belize with mila... which is wonderful... my passport renewal application is nowhere to be found with 2 weeks to go... thats not so wonderful.... after spending a half hour in line a fine security officer came out, annoucning in quite a convincing manner that we were definetely going to get into the passport office today, though we'd have to sit in the very spot we were standing for only another three to four hours... i bit my lip... thought things over... decided that the officer did seem like an outright ignoramious but given by his practiced insistnce really did know what he was talking about... and given what a valuable contributor i am at work, no way i could afford to miss half a days of work... without feeling it in my january bonus that is.... lord forbid... so fuck it i said and off i went to the subway down to 49th street over to the deli where i got a bagel & lox over to my office where i was the third person on the trading floor and in all likelihood the most miserable one....

the day was spent in a highly productive fashion.... i worked on KYC docs... filled out spreadsheets... watched my beloved next seat neighbour come in with a half a foot gash in the posterior of his suit pants.... thought about the fate of humanity and how my life is connected to it.... harassed some counterparties with truly annoying phone calls... said hello to the head of my group in a highly pleasant manner.... looked over the list of the things to do for the rest of the day and realized i was fucked.... worked on another spreadsheet.... instructed the new admin on how to staple things.... went out and smoked a cigarette and thought of my career progress.... went back upstairs and made some more phone calls... worked on another spreadsheet... learned how many beers my neighbour had over the weekend (at least three dozen).... exchanged some work related jokes i cannot recall.... worked on another spreadsheet... prepared for a meeting with the senior management of my group.... conducted the meeting and was complemented on it, with a certain party noting that it went well.... and that it was especially good since the guy i report to didnt try to make me look like an idiot... which for some reason he seems to enjoy doing.... or as it was clarified to me - i didnt leave the window of opportunity open.... lucky me.... went out and smoked another cigarette... fixed another spreadsheet for the accountant... shared with him the source of my excel genius... worked on another spreadsheet for 3 hours... shit.... its 930pm.... the fine cultural cultural lecture i was suppose to attend with mila has been hopelessly missed... and the asshole 'star trader' just announced that my last 4.5 hours of excel analytics have been a waste.... shoot me in the head.... and off i go home.... wait for 5 minutes for the 4/5 train... Rush is playing... get off at union square... run into Leva from Burning Man and he wants to know if i am going.... fuck... i dont know... i think i am going to belize but dont have a passport.... think i have a career but its really only a job (ok... thats a lie... i know its a job...).... hope i manage to combabulate myself enough to get out the dessert and do some very heavy narcotics to soothe my repressed yuppie moral compass.... but again... who knows.... i still have an 'administrator agreement' to read tonight and its not even midnight yet...