I am not sure whether this survey is meant for girls. I took it because I am a movie buff myself. I watch around 4-5 movies a week. Thanks to Vongo!
| Erotic Thriller |
 You've made your own rules in life - and sometimes that catches up with you. Winding a web of deceit comes naturally, and no one really knows the true you. Your best movie matches: Swimming Pool, Unfaithful, The Crush |
It has been very hectic for the past 3 days. It all began on my group's preparation of the update presentation of our electrical & computer engineering design program, the culmination of my undergraduate years at Carnegie Mellon. We're implementing a variation of the MPEG-2 encoder/decoder on a piece of Digital Signal Processor (DSP) board. I spent the entire Sunday editing a mix of spoken word (sajak) and music for my sound recording class. It can be a very addictive activity as one will never be satisfied of his creation. The DSP update was on Monday afternoon and the music demo was in the evening. A financial econons homework due Tuesday so I spent the entire night last night building CAPM and Fama-French models on Excel. The assignment required us to do everything from scratch (i.e. finding the historical stock prices).
The above is not my usual way of life this semester. I think I spend more time these days watching full webcasts of NBC series like Studio 60 and 30 Rock.
I finally close my job search with 4 offers for analyst positions, all from financial services firm in New York City. West coast giants Google and Microsoft never took my skills and abilities seriously into consideration. My employer for the past summer, Bank of America, wanted me to return to my old team at Global Markets Technology as a software developer. A final round phone interview with Citigroup Technology landed me with a second offer. I attended a Superday with Goldman Sachs Technology in New York to interview for 2 groups - Foreign Exchange Proprietry Trading front desk technology support and Risk Technology. An offer came with Risk Technology. The managers brought me out for lunch at Goldman's cafeteria, something that was outside my schedule for that day.
I was called for a Superday with HSBC investment banking, an effort that was not fruitful despite the hours put to practice for interviews. Found out that I was missing the work experience and coursework in finance although I know one or things about corporate finance. My competitors were former ibanking interns themselves. The day before HSBC's, I interviewed for the Portfolio Analytics Group (PAG) analyst position at Blackrock. Their office at 55 East 52nd St, between Park and Madison avenues, is a very sleek place. It's in the Park Avenue Plaza on the East Side of Manhattan.
Last Monday, the Monday after the two Superdays with HSBC and Blackrock, a director from Blackrock called me to extend an offer to join them. By Friday, my signed offer letter was its way to the HR department in New York. I was eyeing for the PAG position for quite sometime. I heard of it being a reputable group to work in one of the top investment management in Wall Street. Blackrock is still a small firm yet they are managing over $1.05 trillion in assets. Graduates of PAG are highly regarded as I was told. The reputation came with a price, I also heard the hours are long and demanding especially during the first year but I think I must be prepared to earn my stripes if success in a professional career is my target in the years to come. The nature of the position is semi-technical and semi-finance-based which is suits my background heavy with computer science courses, projects and courses.
I'll be flying home on Dec 15 and going to be in Bintulu for a month before flying back on Jan 16. The next 4 weeks is the last stretch of the semester. The last dash as I sometime call it.
Daylight savings time ends.
An extra hour gained.
Carved a pumpkin.
And it is good lookin'.
I often feed myself with a lot of sensational football plays videos on youtube. Lately, I've been having a lot of interest in watching football (NFL and College).
The best play ever is the 1982 Cal Berkley Bears vs Stanford Cardinals. I don't go to CalB or Stanford but its amazing how close this game was in the last 30 seconds. Watching this play is interestingly inspiring.
Stanford got a 20-19 lead from a field goal on the last 4 seconds. Everyone thought Stanford was going to win. Then, on the returning kick and with that very 4 seconds left, the Bears used 5 lateral passes to bring the ball through 30-40 celebrating Stanford BAND MEMBERS who were already on the field near the end zone. The magic of this play was also provided by the commentary by Joe Starky who nearly lost his voice when the TD was confirmed.
More details at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_play
How much football is available to the American...
Thursday night, NFL
Friday night, High school football
Saturday night, NCCA
Sunday afternoon, NFL
Pittsburgh Steelers plays of the year during 2005.
A favorite song. This is a rendition by an unknown artist. Originally written by Eric Clapton and Robert Cray, there's also a cover sung by John Mayer that is also a favorite.
Based on the drawing and the 10 answers they gave this is a summary of their personality:
You are sensitive and indecisive at times. You are a freedom lover and a strong person. You are shy and reserved. If you've drawn a cross on each of windows, you always want to live alone. Once you have a problem, you need a friend with you. Your life is always full of changes.
You will avoid being alone and seek the company of others whenever possible. You love excitement and create it wherever you go. You see the world as it is, not as you believe it should be.
You are not a romantic person by nature. We also see that you are sensuous, sexual, and privately passionate. You are self-confident and happy with your life.
A truly confident person, i.e. at 110%, does not convince or tell those around him that his decision is the best or better than others'. If he does, then he's only 50% confident.
Just got back from an Irish bar with some friends of mine interning at an invement bank. One of them shares the same birthday with me. Was listening to them whining about how their intern class at the ibank is becoming very clicky (from the work clique) where jocks and blondes are forming an exclusive gang.
Work's been pretty good. I am working for a software development team (coders, not business analysts) who writes apps for Credit Default Swap traders on Banc of America's trading desks in New York, London and even Tokyo. I don't deal with traders (at least not yet) as the applications that we develop are huge and require full software development cycles so we have business analysts to obtain the requirements from the traders.
I finally got my workstation after 2 weeks of roaming around for unused workstations. I am working from a dual-processor P4 HP machine equipped with TWO 19" LCD monitors. The cubicle and the chair are comfortable. Starbucks coffee is available free at the pantry. I work on the 29th floor at 40 West 57th St. Not sure what's the building's name. From my cubicle, I have a view of Central Park South. The building is in a quite trendy place in midtown Manhattan. I am less than a block away from the Ding Dong Plaza Hotel, made famous in Home Alone 2, and also the Trump Tower. 5th Avenue is a block away so you'll get the famous Tiffany & Co. there as well. Lunch is expensive if you sit down and eat so usually I tapau salads and eat them at my desk. Everyone does that. American's believe in quick lunches and long hours. Indeed, there are among the most hardworking societies in the world. Malaysians have long lunches and even long coffee breaks. Socializing for Americans come from Friday-night bar drinkings and not from lunches. The only restaurant eaters are bank ppl bringing the clients out for lunches.
New York is a thrilling place to be in. The Village is my favorite place as they are less touristy and caters more for a working class and student crowd. The East Village that I favor runs from 23rd St. all the way down to Astor Place near 7th and 8th St. Amos brought us to a really old Irish pub near Astor last week after a funky Japanese dinner where I ordered a whole fried frog. Friday was drinks at this cheap jazz bar.
The jazz bar was awesome as I met Han Chun's hot Msian housemate. Well, we came there with the intention to meet up with her. I noticed this Asian girl sitting at the couch having drink with another guy. I was like checking her out and she kept looking at me. Han Chun didnt notice her for a full hour as we drank at the bar. He turned around and realized that his hmate was there all along.
Yesterday, I took the trouble to attend CNN's Anderson Cooper's book signing. Two hours of waiting was worth the wait. If you haven't heard of him yet, Anderson is the anchor of Anderson Cooper 360. He's known for his highly-acclaimed reporting on wars and disasters from his days with ABC. He reported from Bosnia, Iraq and the Tsunami areas. So, this book that he wrote, Dispatches from the Edge, chronicles partly his life especially on the death of his father and the suicide of his elder brother. I had two copies of his book signed, one for myself and another for Kenneth. He looks just like he is on TV. Most of the crowd are girls and women, making me feeling a bit gay asking for his signature but those females are there mainly because they fancy his good looks. I am fascinated by his adventures as a journalist. I am thinking to attend to other book singings if there are any, from Anthony Bourdain and Frank McCourt. I am hoping that Christiane Armanpour (CNN's London-based Chief Foreign Correspondence) would follow the same book-writing steps of Andy sometime soon. Her experience outweighs Andy's by miles ahead.
Max is coming this weekend. I am hoping to meet up with other CMU ppl this weekend too. Friday's lunch will be with other interns, a plan that we skipped last week for lack of enthusiasm.
Regardless how close the person is to me, even if he's family member, I expect him or her to respect my privacy when I decide to hide or not to discuss something. I just couldn't understand why some people (especially Malaysians!!) become angry when their friends refuse to share something with them.
Time flies extremely fast. These are the last two weeks of the Spring semester. Finals are coming up. Worse, projects are wrapping up. Presentations. Reports. I've been having very little sleep since the carnival, up till 5 a.m. almost every night working on this huge distributed systems lab. Yet, on Thursday, I took time off to drive up to Cleveland for Dim Sum. Zane and I rented a Nissan Altima with a 2.5 L engine. The ride was smooth. I was driving on the way back and 100 mph felt like 60 on a Dodge Neon. Anyway, we arrived in this dying city just in time for a heavy Dim Sun lunch. $11 including tips for dim sum that I barely can finish. Pretty cheap, eh? We met up with Brian after he finished work for some beer at this local brewery cum restaurant in the hippest part of town, West 25th St. The joke of the day came when the waitress brought us our finger food, "pub bites", which was a fried fish. $9 for 6 ounces of fish. King, Zane and I had 2 bites each. $3 for 2 bites. $1.50/bite. We might have gotten a bargain for the dim sum during lunch but we couldn't run away from being ripped off. Zane said I should do my Jesus thing - multiply the fish.
Friends have associated me with religion because I do talk a lot about Christianity but not to preach but simply as topics of laid back conversations. I do find interest a little bit of Theology but I don't find myself as that Christian hot shot wearing a Christian T-shirt 24/7 or having crucifixes around my neck. I don't listen only to Hillsong and I definitely don't have Christians as my closest circles of friends. I disagree when Christians (or with any religion as a matter of fact) get too close with each other, starting to form a tight clique or community. Eat, sleep and work with Christians when you should be a silent witness of Christ out there with your Muslim, Buddhist and Atheist brothers. This applies only to the lay people like us as I do agree and even am very well supportive of religious orders like monks and nuns because their sacrifices in giving up their lives to God.
Btw, I was getting a tour of the Penn State campus with Rafiq during Spring break. One building, called the Willard building, has a preacher from the Orthodox church preaching every afternoon. I happened to listen to him preaching about rock music in Christianity that Protestant churches are being said to be "cool" because they have Gospel pop during the service. But Christianity isn't about being a "cool" religion or being modern in accordance of current trends. All these hype and preaching about the Christian faith is able to restore your lives from your troubles is extremely misleading. Being a Christian is not about being protected by Jesus from personal, school, financial problems. It's a religion that promotes selflessness and ascetism.
Also, I have my own not-so-supportive view on the charistmatic movement within the Catholic church but I'll talk about it another day. Interesting to note that the charistmatic movement within the Catholic church originated from Dusquene University, Pittsburgh which is located 2-3 miles from where I am currently sitting right now.
Through the lenses of my Canon 350D. Nice day with fun people around. Photos are at
I hate being sensitive as in being overwhelmed by the fear of offending others. I think I am a sensitive person that tries to please everyone that I encounter. You guys might agree. For example, this evening, I was apologizing to my lab partner for not being able to work tonight because I can't concentrate in the clusters until he said "hey, no. don't take it personally. there are times that we just can't work and should take a break" that's what i love about americans. they are frank people and don't take things personally. awkwardly, i observe this from The West Wing, where friends and colleagues argue at the top of the voices in defending their opinions and their actions without jeopardizing their relationships. That's why at times I wish I can spend some time in a military college where I'll be drilled by the roughest of all men without taking their words at a personal level. That's why I should take up rugby as well.
I think a recipe to success is shrug off what others think of you and bulldoze your way through. Shrugging off criticisms, scoldings or comments doesn't mean keeping quiet and backstab those people who told you off in your blog but simply just let them off your mind.
This is one thing I want to be prepared for during the summer internship.
This post serves as a post in case I forget the steps in the future and for those who are interested in installing the client for this distributed file system engineered originally at CMU.
I am using Gentoo Linux is an awesome O.S. as it is highly configurable. I took the pain of installing the system manually by command line. Even compiled the kernel manually so it will generate a sleek and thin kernel, removing unneccessary modules or built-in features that would slow booting and takes up memory. I love portage, the package management system, since every app you want to installed is compiled locally first which means you won't have conflicting binaries. It also calculates dependencies using the revolutionary USE flags.
1. Make sure in the kernel, module unloading is supported. Get this done by doing make menuconfig from /usr/src/linux. Recompile the module by make && make module_install. Copy arch/i386/boot/bzImage to the kernel image at /boot. Make sure the boot partition is mounted directly from its root at /dev/hda1. Reboot machine.
2. #emerge openafs-kernel
This will install a kernel module called openafs located /lib/modules/
3. #emerge openafs
This will install openafs itself.
4. #emerge mit-krb5
Carnegie Mellon's AFS authenticate users by granting them Kerberos tickets. This will install a bunch of programs like klog.
5. Modify /etc/openafs/ThisCell to andrew.cmu.edu. Default client cache size is 200 MB. Kesden says, in AFS, any file that goes beyond the cache size will be dropped. Coda does it differently.
6. Reboot your machine.
7. To log on, do klog cbasah@ANDREW.CMU.EDU and enter password. Files are at /afs/.....
This post serves as a post in case I forget the steps in the future and for those who are interested in installing the client for this distributed file system engineered originally at CMU.
I am using Gentoo Linux is an awesome O.S. as it is highly configurable. I took the pain of installing the system manually by command line. Even compiled the kernel manually so it will generate a sleek and thin kernel, removing unneccessary modules or built-in features that would slow booting and takes up memory. I love portage, the package management system, since every app you want to installed is compiled locally first which means you won't have conflicting binaries. It also calculates dependencies using the revolutionary USE flags.
1. Make sure in the kernel, module unloading is supported. Get this done by doing make menuconfig from /usr/src/linux. Recompile the module by make && make module_install. Copy arch/i386/boot/bzImage to the kernel image at /boot. Make sure the boot partition is mounted directly from its root at /dev/hda1. Reboot machine.
2. #emerge openafs-kernel
This will install a kernel module called openafs located /lib/modules/
3. #emerge openafs
This will install openafs itself.
4. #emerge mit-krb5
Carnegie Mellon's AFS authenticate users by granting them Kerberos tickets. This will install a bunch of programs like klog.
5. Modify /etc/openafs/ThisCell to andrew.cmu.edu. Default client cache size is 200 MB. Kesden says, in AFS, any file that goes beyond the cache size will be dropped. Coda does it differently.
6. #rc-update add openafs-client default
Add openafs-client to be list of started daemons during bootime at the default run-level.
7. Reboot your machine.
8. To log on, do klog cbasah@ANDREW.CMU.EDU and enter password. Files are at /afs/.....
Enjoy.
Do you think TV Chefs Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain, Emille Lagasse or the Iron Chefs are the best chefs in the world? I doubt they are. The genuine master chef does not need the media to promote himself. Perhaps iron chef competitors are but not the Iron Chefs themselves.
I just realized that some of friends here taught their moms at home my pasta recipe and they are using it at home now. Kenneth used not to like pasta cooked by his mom. After have fed with mine several times, he started eating pasta.
One particular aspect of American society that I have high regards for is the responbilities taken by manufacturers in making sure their products are safe. In comparison with Malaysia, we don't hear many news regarding recalls of cars, toys or lawyers making lawsuits against companies for negligence. I just read the news on a particular toy being recalled. Several Magnetix Building Sets are being recalled after a child died after swallowing the magnetic part of the building set that came off. I bet in a couple weeks or months, lawyers will be making legal threats to the manufacturer. It is going to cost millions if not billions, adding to the lost after the recalls etc. Some people think lawyers are sucking a hell lot of money from making this lawsuits basically enriching themselves from the grievances of others. However, we must agree to the fact that the influence these lawyers have shaped a more responsible society. Healthcare may be expensive in the States but it comes with a quality as well. My economics lecturer, young Indian chap who grew up in Singapore and had somehow worked as intern in a JB hospital, said that a bypass in the U.S. can cause the patient to be bankrupted while in Malaysia, such medical procedure would merely cost around USD 200.
Time for dinner.
Spring break was last week for Carnegie Mellon. It started pretty badly as Zane and I rushed through Project 2 for Distributed Systems. This time the beast was thread-based simulation of distributed systemds implementing TWO very different algorithms on mutual exlusion (ie. controlling access to a resource on a system, allowing only one processor at any time) - path compression (zane's party) and Maekawa voting district (my part). We intended to have both algos running on the same framework but as we coded, we got very far apart that we added so many features that make our implementations incompatible with each other. The report was 12 pages long. It's an interesting class, taught by a lenient professor who tells stories in almost every lecture. Zane and I are the only ones in class who have not taken O.S. but last semester's embeddedd systems did help.
I realize that on deciding on what areas that one should pursue depends on how comfortable he or she is in the core knowledge/skills need for that particular area. For example, I can't say that I want to delve into computer vision when I've not taken any courses on signals processing or matrix algebra. That was the mistake I did last Spring when I took vision without prior knowledge or understanding on discrete signals processing. This semester, Signals and Systems is listed as one of the 5 courses I am doing. Materials in Vision now made a lot of sense especially on the part in feature extraction. Btw, Computer Vision is a huge area. The course I took last Spring covered feature extraction, classification using methods like bayesian tree networks and some heat equation thing that you perform iteratively. There was also a topic on callibration of camera lenses to estimate distances.
Spring break was okay. Went on a roadtrip to visit several Shah Alam friends in State College and Boston. First was to Penn State to visit Rafiq and experience what a real american college is like. Huge campus in both the size of the student body and physical area. The newest building on campus is the business school which, in terms of design, is on par with KLIA or some fancy office building in NYC, London or Tokyo. After Boston, we left for Boston but since we left State College late, we stopped in NYC for the night. I drove directly into Manhattan. NYC traffic is no joke. The streets are narrow yet people were driving as if they are on the interstate.
The next day, we continued our journey. Stopped in Yale, New Haven for lunch. Then, we went to Newport, Rhode Island. An awesome old town which still has the English influence. The shorline is rocky and with cliffs. So, conjure up the image of a town in a classic English movie and that's Newport. Many summer mansions here built mostly in the Gilded Age, a time where a bunch of filthy rich Americans lived and pretended that they are America's royalties(probably cared less of the poor). I thought the celebrity homes in Beverly Hills were huge but the houses here are like palaces. The town also hosted previous races of the America Cup, a yatching challenge that attracted many billionaires. If there's one place on earth that I want relax, drink sangria and eat fresh seafood to my heart's content for a week, Newport is the place.
Met up with Eing and Cheng Hau in Boston. Apparently, both of them have single rooms in their MIT dorms. Eing keeps a cat in her room. A cat so smart that it shits at the right place. Wanted to go drinking at night but the bars at Newbury St were all closed. We visited this pub which unfortunately, was patronized white-collar white ppl. Felt a bit out of place. THe next day, drove back to State College because I couldn't continue the 10-hour drive to Pittsburgh. Recorded over 1900 miles in a week.
I am thinking of applying for a Canadian visa once all these work clearance with Banc of America is done. I heard Montreal and Toronto are cool places to visit. These days my objective of travelling is to eat, drink and laze. When I was in Boston, I did not bother to visit the historical sites the city is famous for. Given a week stay, maybe I could have visited them but I think I am slowly getting my dad's philosophy of travelling of not being attracted to tourist attractions. I now detest Museums or theme parks. I would prefer to visit a market in the town like the one in Frankfurt which had fresh sausages that was so tempting.
Got back from Chicago last week. Pretty eventful and exciting past two days. DRW flew me in to the Windy City on Saturday for their Callback Weekend aka Superdays. Around 30 intern and fulltime candidates and each of us were put to a nice, sexy, sleek room in the W hotel. Another boutique hotel that is catching up the designer interiors etc. The hotel has an obvious theme: sex. Dimmed lighting with many candles throughout the building. The lobby looks more like a trendy club. Staff dressed in black. Lounge music played through its pipe music system. Definitely a place I would bring my significant other for a weekend of intimacy :)
DRW was very lavish with us. Had dinner in this Brazillian steakhouse called Brazzaz along Dearborn St. Awesome salad buffet and waiters would come up to you with skewers of a variety of meat. Grilled lamb, barbue chicken sausage, NY strip, fillet mignon etc. I ate a week worth of meat. Free flowof wine.
In life, you'll be curious in learning about other's culture, way of life, languages etc. Also, you'll be curious in learning various occupations that are out there. Me talking about traders doesn't mean me want to be a trader. I had a tour of DRW's electronic trading desks in the office. Each trader is surrounded by 7-8 21" LCDs. There's a radio communication from the desk to DRW's pit traders down at the Chicago Merchantile Exchange where they trade stuffs like Eurodollar futures and account for 20% of the trade volume for this particular type of security. I could hear the shouts from the pit traders over the radio. It seems unreal especially I would think this kind of environment are military-like. "Get me those March contracts at 50!!" shouted one of the traders in the office and a pit trader would shout back over the radio with a "DONE!!!".
Traders are a special breed of people. Like pilots, these ppl are supposed to be able to make very quick judgments. They are living calculators. This characteristic was obvious from the way they played poker. Even the trader assistant candidates had such qualities of quick with numbers. I lost early in a tournament later in the evening to a bunch of kids from Stanford, Berkeley and MIT and eventually volunteered to deal their cards after that. I thought I was good in the game but these kids are way much better.
Got another offer from an investment bank for IT. The IT recruiter from Credit Suisse called me up while I was enjoying my Brazillian dinner with the guys from DRW. I am requesting DRW to give me a reply by Tuesday when I will have to make a decision.
Btw, congratulations to Max for getting his long-waited offer in investment banking. Guess we'll hang out in NYC over the summer. Probably we'll room together with that Persian chick from MIT than you mentioned. 10 weeks in the Big Apple, like the lifestyle idealized in the many movies we've watched.
Wrapping up my internship search for this season. My power suit has served me well despite being dry cleaned only once for 30 interviews that spanned over 3 months. I thank God first and foremost for everything He has provided. Thanks to my family for their prayers and support. Thanks to friends like Max for helping me out with the preparation especially during the Futures in Finance event in NYC last December where I had the first round interview with BofA.
The coldest day so far this winter. The weather web site registers -13 C for Pittsburgh and the "feels like" value is -18 C. 2 days ago, it was everaging 15 C. Pelik giler.
There are friends who really know how and where to eat. Brian (not Brian Tong but Brian Loo) is one of them. One of the best things about him is that he always introduce new, non-Asian restaurants to me. He once told us that "why come all the way to the U.S. to eat Malaysian food". So tonight, together with his lady company, El, and King, we went to this upscale Spanish place called La Casa (the House?) to drink Sangria and eat plates of Tapas. If you don't know, Tapas are Spanish dim sums. Appertizers or snacks served on small plates. I was not dressed as I didn't expect the place to be of such standard. Food and decor are awesome. Had this grilled squid Tapas that inspires me to create something similar someday soon. Almost every Tapas we had featured olive oil.The Sangria (wine mixed with fruit cuts) accompanied the Tapas well. Pretty pricey at $24/person after tax and tips. Still hungry but I think such an experience is not wasteful at all.
And I got an e-mail from DRW Trading inviting me for a second round interview at their Chicago headquarters next week. Hotel and flight covered by them. Most probably going since it's before my BofA deadline. Position is for quantitative research. The proprietry trading firm is known for its brain teasers during interviews.
Hope can meet up with Max, Seng Seng and Alex on Feb 24/25.
DRW Trading is awesome. It does only proprietry trading which means it only manages the funds of its extremely owners or partners. Crazy. The guy who interviewed me was pretty cool. He looks more like a software developer but he's in fact a quantitative researcher.
My brain teaser question is crazy but I manage to come up with the solution at the end:
- Given ten buckets. 9 buckets are filled with an infinite amount of stones weighing 1 gram each.
- The other bucket is filled with an infinite amount of stones weighing 1.1 gram each.
- Given a chemistry lab weighing machine, develop a method to identify which bucket has the 1.1 gram stones.
- Can only use the scale once. Gather all the stones you need anad press "weight" once.
Got stuck and he told me to scale it down to 3 buckets. I managed to solve it.
Then he asked me to come up with a solution for the case there could be more than one bucket with the 1.1 gram stones.
Solved it too using a sequence of base 2 numbers.
It is very cool to be rich one day and employ a bunch of geniuses to manage your money like a hedge fund do. Sounds fictional but firms like DRW do exist!
Rescheduled lagi. This is the second time in less than a week that I came to the career center in the morning and was told that my interview is postponed. The interviewer from Goldman Sachs couldn't fly in from NYC as the result of the heavy snowstorm over the weekend. Luckily I was there last Wednesday instead of today. Else, I might be stranded at La Guardia as well.
I want to suggest the career center should come up with a systematic way to handle last minute cancellations of interviews. It was pretty annoying for me to wake up iron my shirt the night before and put on a suit just to find out 5 minutes before the scheduled time that the interviews for the day have been cancelled. I might want to suggest that they should have an automatic telephone reminder for the interviews. Just like what Orbitz has to remind its customers of upcoming flights. I think it will be awesome if I get a call at 7 a.m. saying
"Good morning. This is a reminder from the Carnegie Mellon Career Center of your scheduled ... first round interview ... with ... Goldman Sachs ... for a ... summer internship ... in ... Investment Banking.. at ... 9.30 ... a.m. .... today for ... 30 ... minutes. Please be at the waiting lounge 10 minutes before the scheduled appointment. Thank you."
On the other hand, if there's a last minute cancellation, the system should have an automated call to the candidate's cellphone informing the cancellation.
Fuh. I think I can do something like this. I was part of a research project at Intel Pittsburgh on music recognition service during sophomore year.
* this entry is not a mere tell-my-friends-what-did but for a future reference. pretty much like a diary except that it is not secretive.
A hard-earned day of rest after a busy and tiring week.
Tuesday - had a Citigroup interview rescheduled. I was the second candidate for the day and I was only told about it when I was five minutes from the scheduled slot time.
Wednesday - flew out on a morning flight to NYC for a superday with Credit Suisse for a position as a Summer Tech Analyst. Lost my suit jacket's top button as I walked into my apartment's elevator. Tried fixing it with a safety pin bought from a pharmacy on CS's building but wouldn't work. The superday was very structured with more candidates than mine at Bofa. Had a group exercise with people with from UPenn and other colleges. I was the only undergrad candidate from CMU that day. The rest were grad students in the MISM program. Then, there were three one-to-one interviews. Had a tour of CS's office in NYC. Three buildings joined by sky bridges. The place has a gymn (normal), a barber shop, postal office, grocery store and laundry. CS employees can even live from the cubible all week. Tech at CS is less trading-involved as the Bofa position but there's opportunity for travel. A CMU grad who just joined CS Tech last year has already travelled to London 3 times and Zurich ones in the past year. His boss is in NYC while his director is in London. The 2005 tech associates who brought us around are very friendly. There was this new hire Cooper Union guy who even hailed a cab for us to get to the airport. Even the new hire at Bofa was also very friendly during the trading floor tour. I guess they felt what we feel as college was not very far in the past for them. I got back to Pittsburgh with three other MISM guys I made friends with. Tired, I almost slept in my suit. Btw, the flight to NYC cost CS over $900 which is enough to get me a return flight to Malaysia.
Thursday - EOC (career job fair) but nothing much. Investment banks and other reputed tech and wall st. firms have started their summer recruits search earlier in the year.
Friday - interviewed with Barclays Capital and Yahoo!. For Barcaps, it was for an i-banking position, my first and only ibanking interview so far. Two associates and they really impressed me from the way they talked and dressed. Yahoo! was pretty casual with this lady giving me one a tough programming question involving getting values from random positions in a list. Sounds easy but with a list that you can only reset once and only a next function and also a random number generator that takes no bounds as arguments, it was really a code to write. My interviewer even wanted me to come up with solutions that provide some kind of distribution. Sweat my way through but managed to solve with some hints from her. I felt solving the problem was very funny as an experience that I held myself from laughing as she explained life at Yahoo! to me.
next week...
Monday - Goldman Sachs for Technology
Tuesday - DRW Trading for Technology
Wednesday - Citigroup for Quantitative Trading
Two consecutive evenings of great dinings. Food at Cheesecake factory is really good although rather pricey for a college student like me. You can't leave the place without the desert. Brian got his first paycheck from Keithley and gave me and Wendy a treat at some restaurant at Shadyside. Both evenings I had pasta and these dishes made me realize the flexibility that one can go with the durum dough.
I am looking forward to making my own pasta. Probably I should invest on a second hand pasta maker. Explore the use of dried tomatoes or maybe mushrooms. Lessen the tomato gravy. Infuse more garlic and olive oil.
Got a verbal offer from Banc of America Securities this morning. The recruiter from New York called me to convey the good news. A formal letter will arrive in my mailbox by the end of this week. I'm given till Feb 28 to decide whether I'll take the offer or not.
BoA flew me in to New York on Thursday evening. I was put up in a boutique business hotel along 57th St steps away from their NYC headquarters. Room was awesome as it has a view of Central Park. Steps away are Trump's Tower, where The Apprentice is shot, and the Plaza Hotel, where Home Alone 2 was shot. I spent the entire Friday morning interview by 7-8 VPs, one or two associates and a managing director. Every half hour, a VP walks in, asks me either technical or behavorial questions. Since Ali Basah as my surname brings me to the top of the list alphabetically, I got to have the 32nd floor conference room.
We had a tour of the trading floor too. Occupies floors 2 and 3 ENTIRELY. Nearly wall-less. Bullpen as they call it I think. Traders sit around 8-9 monitors with a Bloomberg terminal as its main machine. Phones kept ringing. Every two rows of desks, a huge LCD TV hangs showing market news.
The search is still going but I'm very impressed with BoA especially on how technology dominates trading. Analytics are important part of Sales and Trading. Will be flying to NYC for another day of interviews with Credit Suisse this Wednesday. Two first rounds on campus and a career fair.
5 a.m. and Cadrian and I just finished working our FIRST Signals and Systems homework. Barely a week since classes started and I'm doing an all-nighter just to crunch not-so-nice numbers. I think I might form a homework group for the ones to follow. We're even answering questions on topics not taught in class and by the speed the professor is going at, he can finish the course by Spring Break.
A week since Max went back to Chicago. Pretty sunyi but don't take this in any gay way like Brokeback Mountain. Now, have to cook for one person only. My DA job ended last Friday morning with an 8-hour shift. Weather was cold and snowed a little over the weekend but getting warmer again. Forecast tells this coming week will be be in the single digit celcius. Last week of winter break and I hope to be able to go out and enjoy the sun.
My brother is starting A Levels at Taylor's. He's staying at the exact same place where I stayed for my internship last summer. He might be roommates with my ex roommate who has the exact same birthday as his.
I've been reading autobiographies to kill time. Lee Kuan Yew's From Third World to First, his sequel to A Singapore Story, is well-written. Gives a different perspective on our country's history that are not taught in secondary school history books. Kuan Yew talks about Malaysia, how he wanted it to be a Malaysian Malaysia but it was shattered by the Malay nationalists. It seems to be a scar for him. He even cried when giving an interview on the day of the separation. The book is also an interesting read on how he built the island nation, how important Economic Development Board (EDB) is, staffed with the brightest scholars unlike the Malaysian Government. There are a few chapters dedicated on his experience in dealing with Asean countries, Japan, China, Taiwan, Britain and the U.S. making it a book partly on discussing foreign relations. To no surprise that top American diplomat Henry Kissinger wrote the foreword. I wouldn't mind saying that his book is a cookbook on how to run a country.
Currently reading Bill Clinton's My Life. I am not sure whether I'll enjoy the politics part of the book as I might find it to be rather dull. So far, reading about childhood experience has been pretty interesting.
I am already dreaming on what to do for spring break. I WISH I have a fatter bank account so that I jump onto a plane to London and backpacked the entire British Isles for a week. I don't care if I am doing this alone but it'll be a nice if a girl is willing to be my travel companion. =)
If scenery turns out to be not good, at least she'll be inside to enhance it. jk.
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