… Stories of My Mind …

How could it be that someone you’ve only known for 2 days take so much of you that you keep wondering where he was all these times before?

How could it be that you didn’t know that you could connect with someone you know so little about, but you do connect, and on so many levels that you start thinking that you are a simple creature afterall?

How could it be that finally you meet someone you think you can trust, but only that you had met him on vacation, ten thousand miles away from home?

It is, just half my luck. And there is nothing, I can do about it.

So once again, we move on.

“… perfection is simplicity.”

It’s 520am - I was awake three hours ago. I thought going to work yesterday after I landed would mean that I would not be as jetlagged. I was wrong!

It’s funny how things work out - the people that you most want to hear from, has not done so. The people you used to most want to hear from, suddenly decides to care. The email from the ex was friendly, but mostly about how well he’s doing. Good on him, I am happy for him.

How was New York? It rocked. I love it so much that for the first time, I did not want this vacation to end. I wanted to stay, to find out how the New York story continues. There is so much to the place, that you just can’t be bored. The thing about New York that I love most, is that whilst it is in the US of A, there is so much of everything else, that I can’t tell that I was in the US if not for the accent.

Why not move there? If I didn’t love this job so much, I would. Dare I say, I have not heard of anyone being treated as well as I have been here. First day back today, and I was positively surprised, and I didn’t even ask for it. How could I leave? How could I leave something so good? Should I leave, that would be considered making a concious choice of picking second best. I can’t do that, can I?

Met anyone interesting? Another thing I love about New York, is that it’s so much easier to meet people. Or it could just be that I had let my inhibitions down since I was on vacation. But yes, I met quite a few new people. Some of them random, some of them friends of friends. Either way, I met quite a few in a week - far more than I meet in six months in Sydney.

But home now, and have to focus on the more immediate, more important things (like study!). Shall be posting a more detailed note on New York once I get my photos out. For the mean time, I am going to try and go back to sleep (I dearly miss my bed).

“The only thing predictable about you is that you are unpredictable”

Everything in the past few months felt so spontaneous - Tasmania, camping, cruising, studying, training, racing, and then, meetings, meetings, meetings. All those meetings that I never really manage to really prepare for and then ending up sitting in them feeling a bit like an idiot.

As per usual, I procrastinated packing for New York until today. I am not a fan of packing - I can’t quite “forecast” what I feel like wearing tomorrow, let alone the day after. And when you have to pack for serious winter and all I have is a summer wardrobe… it tough shit.

But even this trip, and I booked my flights early-February, still feel last minute. I barely spend enough weekends at home (I really should). I have barely spent anytime studying (I really should). What is it have I spent my time doing? Every night I get home I feel spent.

Missing my citizenship appointment on Monday - made me realize that maybe I have too many things on my plate right now. I thought the appointment was at 3pm when in fact it was at 9am. I didn’t realize till 1130am. I was lucky enough to get it rescheduled for the next day (I waited 3 months for the first one).

I think I need to slow down. And fall/winter is perfect for that kind of thing.

So, it’s been awhile. Or at least so I think since it was a big weekend… at Canberra.

We had a dragonboat race in Canberra, on the beautiful Lake Burley-Griffin. It was a beautiful day, and it was a great spot to be racing. Not to mention that we also got some bling - we came second in the Mixed A Finals, and although we didn’t get any for the Opens A Finals, may I add that we were the only mixed crew racing against other crews with all men. We still did sub-50secs time, and it was a great result.

To celebrate, naturally we had a huge night. Everyone had to down a “cement mixer” thanks to the wonderful mixing hands of one of our team mate (he naturally had six of these to demonstrate to six seatings worth). What started as a fast-paced tapping drinking game ended up being a hands waving in the air slow motion, requiring vast amounts of concentration (espeically when you’re pissed drunk). I don’t know how, but we ended up deciding that we needed kebabs, and so at 1am I found myself holding a kebab that I didn’t even want. Apparently kebabs went flying after that.

Then, on a street corner, there were guys with bongos and various other musical instruments, and so we (or rather I) decided we should do some salsa on the street. Even managed to get the white boys to shake their booty. Sexy, I say.

So, I conclude that Canberra can be an interesting place. Especially so when you’ve got a crazy / sexy team, more than enough alcohol, and did I mention winning some bling?

Various incriminating photos and video footage have surfaced after that, with one team mate having such a rough time the next morning that no one is quite sure if he had made it back to Sydney. Some photos I have no recollection of ever having taken, but since they are photos, I had no way of denying my participation.

And that is the end to my season. Damn good fun that was. Can’t wait till next season.

“We are sexy first and paddlers second - with fun in between”

Caught up with a couple this evening at the Belgian Beer Cafe. Forget Lowenbrau or the Bavarian Beer Cafe (they are actually the same entity, by the way), if you want some good beer, great atmospher with awesome food, this is the place to be in the evenings. The mussels are awesome.

Somewhere, somehow, my friends managed to concoct this whole thing about the waiter cracking onto me. He just talked a lot, laughed a lot, and commented on things. Isn’t that what the waiters are meant to do? To be friendly?

My mate very kindly, in his most polite way (not) pointed out: “That’s the problem with you - you don’t notice it when someone is cracking onto you!”

I mean, it’s not like the guy asked me for my number, or in fact, asked me anything. What am I to take from it?

We came to a conclusion that maybe that’s where it all broke down for me. Most are keen on having babies, or at least getting married. And I have to admit, I enjoy the company, but I don’t think I can quite go so far with the marriage concept, let alone babies. Hence the motivation to meet someone - isn’t there. Besides, quite happy with the way things are now - no confusion, focus on work & study and spend time with my wonderful friends.

You can’t step out of an oblivion if you’re not in one. Or you can’t step out of it if you don’t know that you are in one.

So we’ve succumbed to the world of corporate sluts and ended up Blackberries in hand.

Now I am too, going to be one of those sad sods permanently attached to work.

God save me.

My mother is the most amazing woman I know - she barely finished high school but managed to plan for all of us financially throughout these years. She’s right most of the times, unless it’s of those times that I am convinced that I am right. Everything she did, she did it for the best of all of us. She’s welcoming and warm, her laugh and smile beams through like some sort of light that I could never really quite explain.

My mother tries very hard to understand me. Afterall, her life and mine are so different. She grew up in a family of seven, two sisters and two brothers, all of which only barely finished high school, and none of which went to university. At the age of eighteen she moved out to the big smoke to find work. At the age of twenty-two she got married, two years later she was pregnant. That’s the age of twenty-four.

I am turning twenty-four this year, and intentionally no where close to having a baby. Try as much as my mother may, to understand what I do and how I want to lead my life, there are occasions of which she blurts out things, that, if I were a rebellious teenager, I’d chuck a fit. But now, I just smile.

Tonight she told me that maybe I should think about not rowing, as the muscle tones as a result and hence making me look more masculine. That, is my mother’s concept of being unattractive, because attractive girls are fair skinned, soft spoken, and importantly, “lady-like”. Not the tan-skinned, loud, raving lunatic that I am.

And I understand where she is coming from. She does not always understand the things I do. She does not understand why I am ambitious, why I would fight for what I think I want. She does not understand the notion of competitiveness, a trait that I possess. She does not understand why I have no desire to “settle down”, nor does she understand the way I see the world.

Or maybe she does know, but knows better of it, and have left me to make my own mistakes.

It’s only so rarely she blurts out these little notes, to remind me that my mother wants the best for me, in her own way.

“So are you dating a boy?”
“No, mom.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am too busy, I have other things to do. Besides, no one suitable.”
“You know you have to settle down some time you know.”
“Why? I like the way it is now.”
“No one likes to be alone. What are you going to do when you’re old if not get married?”
“Mom, I’ve told you so many times. I’m going to go to Ghana and build an orphanage and adopt the disadvantaged kids. I will save the world and not be alone.”
“Aiyah! Don’t say that…”

Sounds terrible, but I love provoking my mom.

And your faithful scribe is taking a few minutes off her awefully interesting studies yet again… to blog.

Except there isn’t actually a lot to blog about. I suppose a single, date-less life is relatively boring. Or peaceful, depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist.

Monday tomorrow, and it’s the start of another week. I love my days, I just wish they were slower. Anyone know how to stop time?

Canberra the coming weekend. Then New York soon after. A bit miffed that I will be missing a few friends’ birthday, and another friend’s wedding. Life seems to be filled with things to do, and appointments to make. Over the next few months I will have to start to say “no”. And when they ask why, I have to be a loser and say: “I have to study”.

Bah.

I finally decided to start studying tonight, and two pages into Book 1 I recall why I had procrastinated CFA 3 studies for so long. I really, I really have a dis-taste for statistics.

Trend analysis, time series analysis, multi-period forecasts, chain rule of forecasting, Durbin-Watson test, Student’s t-test, Dickey-Fuller test, autocorrelation, serial-correlation, Dickey-Fuller-Engle-Granger test, autoregressive models, homo- and heteroskedasticity, seasonalities, correcting seasonalities, autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity, covariance stationary, random walks with and without drift…

Don’t worry, I have no idea what they mean either.

Whoever (and I am almost convinced it’s a bitter actuary who had nothing else better to do) decided to make stats a whole world of its own has obviously also decided that it does not like to make visitors feel welcomed - subscripts that you’ve got to squint your tired eyes to see, distribution tables of which each work in different ways, repeated testing of things to its death. Don’t even get me started on the names of the test (sum of squared errors v squared mean root v root mean squared error v standard error of estimate v mean squared error).

I mean, don’t we have computers to do all this regression and model correction and significance test crap?

… have… to… finish… this… chapter… on… stats…

One down, two more to go. Think I will do that tomorrow.