Happy Halloween

Nothing to write today. Just some pics of Mia since it's been a while. I know what you're thinking. How is someone this ridiculously adorable even remotely related to me? I'm not sure.

Smart Politics

The Republicans have done it again. Those of you that know me know that I’m a pretty loyal Democrat (to be honest, I’m really more of an anti-conservative who is frustrated with the lack of choices in U.S. politics). The Republicans aren’t popular right now. The Senate and House are both, according to most political experts, up for grabs on November 7. Unfortunately, I don’t have confidence that the Democrats are even going to take back the Senate OR the House. Why? While I strongly disagree with most Republicans on policy (particularly on social issues – who cares if John wants to marry Mark instead of Marcia?), I have tremendous respect for their ability to play politics intelligently.

Case in point #1: The November 2004 elections. Utah, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, and, most importantly, Ohio, all had same-sex marriage bans on the ballot. Primarily Republican states, with a couple swing states in Michigan and Ohio. What happened? Christian conservatives rushed to the voting polls, Bush took 8 of the 10 states, including Ohio, which he won by around 118,000 votes out of a total of 5.6 million cast (51%-49% over Kerry). With it, he took the 20 electoral votes and thus the election (Kerry would have won if he carried Ohio). To make things worst, the same-sex marriage bans passed in all 10 states.

More recent case in point: Read this article. While I don’t know all the details, there’s a stem-cell research initiative on the state ballot, and in response to Democrats rolling out a national celebrity in Michael J. Fox, the Republicans have returned the punch with state celebrities. Kurt Warner…MVP of Superbowl XXXIII or some other Roman numerals. Jeff Suppan…MVP of the NLCS that just ended on Thursday. These guys are local heroes campaigning against a local initiative. I’m not sure what the poll numbers looked like before these ad campaigns, but I’d be willing to bet my business school salary (all $0 of it) that the initiative doesn’t pass.

Well played, Republicans.

There’s a reason they’re called non-profits

It’s because these morons probably couldn’t turn a profit if their lives depended on it (fortunately for them, it’s not their lives, but the lives of those less fortunate, that actually do depend on it).

To explain why I’m writing about this, I’ll just summarize part of my Friday morning (aka “my day off”)

7:15 a.m. Wake up (I’m just used to waking up early, and there’s always sooooo much to do)

7:15 – 9:00 Brush, shower, check email, surf the web, eat breakfast, buy some stuff from Staples, get some coffee from 7-11 (very good coffee, at less than half the price of Starfucks)

9:00 – 10:00 Drive to Deloitte’s office downtown for volunteer training. Pay $12 to park. For volunteer training. I’ve already spent more money than I did yesterday. Fantastic.

10:00 Show up at the 18th floor of Deloitte’s office for training. Here’s where the non-profit comes in. Junior Achievement is the name of the non-profit organizing this training session and next week’s volunteer event at a local elementary school. The training session is scheduled for 10-11a.m.

10:05 Continue to sit there, chatting with classmates and some Deloitte employees. Still not being trained.

10:10 The “trainer” passes out some registration forms. Tells us that we will all be getting “kits” which include the materials we need for the activities. Tells us that some of the kits are not yet available (e.g. for those of us who will be assigned to teach the 3rd graders). We fill out the registration form (as well as signing a form promising not to have any inappropriate contact with the students. Why don’t Congressmen have to sign such forms????)

10:15 More disarray. Start chatting with neighbors a little more. Send a couple text messages. Enjoy my $12 diet coke.

10:20 We start getting “assigned” to various grades. First I’m randomly assigned 5th grade and given a kit; instructed NOT to open the kit.

10:25 Done with my diet coke. Go to the restroom and get a bottle of water. Lowers the average cost of my “free” beverages to $6 each.

10:35 I am unassigned from 5th grade. We are instructed that the UCLA students there are NOT to take any kits home with us – they are for the Deloitte employees (each of us is partnered with a Deloitte employee). How are we supposed to read the materials and know exactly what we’re supposed to do when we get there?

10:40 I realize the Deloitte employee I’m sitting next to might not be able to show up next week at the actual volunteering event. So, I’m left without a partner. Story of my fucking life.

10:45 I’m assigned to the 3rd grade, and to a partner who happens to be a classmate, not a Deloitte employee. She’s not here (she went to an earlier training session, I HOPE). Does she have a kit? I wonder.

10:50 Training starts. Woohoo! Finally!!!

10:55 The trainer acknowledges that she only has five more minutes. Leaves the floor open for questions. Gives logistical instructions for next week.

11:00 I leave. Having received five minutes of training. Realize I won’t be able to read any of the materials in the kit before the training session because I don’t have a fucking kit.

Oh. Did I mention I missed a chance to see Bill Clinton speak at UCLA so I could attend this training session?

To Party or Not To Party

Well, that’s actually NOT the question. For those of you that know me, which I assume is each and every reader, that’s NEVER a question for me. At least not as long as I’m in my mid-20’s and have some semblance of energy remaining. Lately, the question has been: WHO to party with. I’ve been back in LA for almost two months now, and have pretty much exclusively been partying with my South Asian friends – Anuj, Smitty, Vijay, etc. – the non-Andersonians I mentioned in a previous posting.

Now, enter, the Anderson friends. So far, most of my social outings with my classmates have been during the week – happy-hour type events that people organize and discuss at school. While I've yet to form a “core” group of people that I actually call to go out and do stuff, I’ve made a few friends who I do keep in contact with on evenings/weekends when we’re not on campus (this really applies more to weekends than evenings, as despite my 8am classes, I find myself on campus til at least 6 or 7 on most days).

Now, it’s Friday evening, and I’ve spent most of the last few hours ignoring my Managerial Economics textbook, instead trying to figure out where to go tonight and with whom (or is it “with who? Shashank, help me out here). One of my Anderson friends called me a few hours ago mentioning a house party being thrown by a classmate. Advantages: I get to meet and hang out with some of my classmates that I don’t know that well, and house parties are significantly cheaper than most Friday night options. Disadvantages: I drink a lot more heavily on Fridays than I do during the week, and most of these people have yet to see “drunk Yat” just yet. And I’d kinda like to keep it that way.

Of course, the non-Andersonians are making their own plans, with a couple options being discussed by varying groups of people. Of course, the advantages of hanging out with these “existing friends’ (to mix up the terminology a bit) are a bit more obvious – I’ve known most of these people for ages, and they’ve all seen drunk Yat thousands of times. More importantly, they drink just as heavily as me, so even if I do something out-of-the-ordinary stupid, they probably won’t remember it. Plus, when I DON’T hang out with them, I inevitably get the “you’ve known us forever and now you’re ditching us for new people” and “why can’t you hang out with all of us together?” comments, even though I’m sure most of the non-Andersonians would get scared away by the large groups of non-Indos that constitute most of the b. school social events.

My big concern is that if I regularly say “no” to the Andersonians in these early days, they’ll obviously stop calling and inviting me out. That said, I’m highly tempted to go to the house party tonight. Or, ideally, go to the house party for like an hour, show that I want to meet and hang out with my classmates, and then head out with the non-Andersonians. Unfortunately, the non-Andersonians usually consist of about 8 dudes for every non-dude, so we always have to go places earlier, thus ruling out that option.

Final verdict: I’m gonna hang out with the Indos tonight. But I’m gonna call the Andersonians beforehand, mention where I’m going (and probably lie and make it sound like some I-have-to-go birthday party – J/K to any classmates that might be reading this :-) and invite them, and ask what they’re all doing tomorrow night. Business is all about negotiation, right?

DISCLAIMER: I know this posting had a very “Hey! Look at me! I’m Mr. Popular” feel to it. Definitely NOT how I intended it. To prove this, I’m more than willing to admit that I ran for not one, but two elected positions within my section at Anderson, and lost BOTH. Clearly, I’m not Mr. Popular.

Vegas Baby, Vegas

“It’s hard to imagine how anything I did this weekend could have any positive contribution to my life.” H.M., October 1, 2006, 6:50p.m.

That pretty much sums up our weekend. As I write this, I’m driving back from Vegas Baby, Vegas. Well, to be exact, Hirsch is driving, and I’m riding shotgun in his mom’s SUV. Unfortunately Vince Vaughn had it completely wrong. I’m so NOT money. And I know it.

We arrived at our hotel, the Treasure Island (which apparently now is referred to by everyone, myself included, as TI), at around 10:45p.m on Friday, after a grueling 6 ½ hour drive from LA. The weekend seemed to be getting off to a solid start from a financial perspective. My sandwich at Panera in Fontana had a hair on it, so they kindly gave me a new sandwich, my money back, and as many free cookies as we could eat, which unfortunately was one fewer than they gave us because Hirsch started spazzing when I started to eat a chocolate chip cookie in the car – he’s allergic. Then Hirsch and I won free drinks from Nipa and Ena since we were closer in guessing our arrival time – thanks to Nipa for the $15 mojito and to Ena for all the Goose. THEN the guy at TI whose day we made by throwing some Saved by the Bell trivia into the check-in process gave us a free upgrade to a suite and hooked us up with a bottle of free champagne, which, of course, we drank directly from the bottle while playing blackjack at the Venetian on Saturday night. THEN we strolled in free to Tangerine, the club at the TI, since we were hotel guests. I figure at this point I was already up $50, before even playing a hand.

After all the east coasters finally got to the club at around 1, I made the detrimental decision of ordering 8 Patron shots. $88. Then Anuj (the one from NY) ordered mind erasers. Game over. They might as well call it the “business school loan check eraser”. After wreaking havoc in the club for a few hours, we took off to do what we do at 4 a.m. in Vegas. Actually, what we do at 4 a.m. in Vegas is go to a strip club, but we decided to gamble instead, as several of our regular strip club attendees weren’t arriving until Saturday. To paraphrase the next couple hours, I lost $250, threw my last losing chips in the direction of the dealer, and stormed away in search of greasy food.

Thanks to Terence for waking me up when his flight landed at 11a.m. on Saturday. You owe me $750 bro. Instead of doing the wise thing and heading to the pool to lounge, swim, and stare at hot chicks, we headed over to the Venetian to drink bloody marys and vodka sodas and play more blackjack. Second worst decision I made this weekend, only behind that stuffed slice of pizza I ate at Sbarro this afternoon. I don’t know if it was my aggressive betting, Ronak and Poo’s presence, the three hundred lemon drop shots I drank (all ordered by females FYI), or just general bad luck, but I headed over to the Sportsbook at around 6 p.m. down another $550 or so. I had even started to make a nice little comeback, turning $100 to $350 in two quick hands. Unfortunately, I decided it would be smart to keep up the big bets, losing all $350 in another two hands. Thanks to Ohio State for salvaging me $50 of my Saturday afternoon.

After getting ready, a few of us played some more blackjack and chugged the aforementioned champagne. Lost another $200 or so, bringing the weekend total up to around a G. Then we headed over to Tao, the fantastic restaurant and club at the Venetian. Even from a slightly biased perspective, we looked like total ballers. There was 20 or so us at a long-ass table in its own private little nook of the restaurant, that was at a slightly higher level than the rest of the restaurant so we could observe most of the other diners, Jamie Foxx and Vin Diesel included. The drinks were good, the company better, and the food somewhere in between. Mine was damn tasty – I think I had steak but it was pretty hard to tell in the darkness of the restaurant. Apparently the sea bass was incredible – thanks for sharing Shef 

After finishing up dinner at around 1:30, we had to figure out how the hell we were gonna get into the nightclub part of Tao. Unbelievably, eating dinner and spending around $1,500, didn’t get us into the club. Thanks to Poo and Fake for developing a gameplan and acting on it – that’s what happens when you get a consultant and a trader together. We gave the bouncer $500 - $25 a head – and strolled into the club. For those of you that haven’t been, Tao is a gigantic club – I get lost several times each time I go there (seriously, it’s a HUGE club – it doesn’t have anything to do with the 20 drinks I’ve usually had before going). I’ll keep it brief on Tao because, frankly, I don’t remember much. But apparently the following all happened: we saw a bunch of celebrities, e.g. Lil’ Jon, Paris Hilton, and K-Fed (who, yes, I realize isn’t really a celebrity, but he is famous), Smitty got hit on by a dude, and Atur got kicked out for being too drunk. Keep this in mind – I was drunk to the point that I don’t remember shouting “WHAT?!” when I was next to Lil’ Jon, and I didn’t get kicked out. So the question is - how drunk were you Atur?

Outside of the hardcore gamblers, which would probably have included me if I wasn’t already down a grand, we all drank and danced at Tao until around 5. At that point, T and I had one thing on our mind – strippers. Unfortunately, the 4 hours of sleep I had on Friday night combined with the 17 hours of consecutive drinking had caught up with me, and I was just too damn tired to make it. I’m pretty sure I would have fallen asleep in the middle of a lappie, which has never happened to me, but I imagine has got to be really embarrassing, not to mention a waste of $20. But Terence, congratulations. You made it to the strip club BY YOUR DAMN SELF!!! Very impressive.

After getting 6 or so hours of really shitty sleep on two of the chairs in our room at the Venetian b/c I was too drunk and tired to simply cross the street and go to my room at the TI, I woke up and debated what to do in the few hours I had before leaving. Fortunately we had a good group of people in the room, most of whom were still drunk. The jokes, people falling over themselves, and general silliness in the room were entertaining enough that I didn’t feel compelled to play cards and give more money to the shareholders of whatever big-ass corporation that owns the Venetian and/or the TI.

The only real highlight from Sunday (and pretty much the only highlight from the lowlight-filled weekend) was 20 of us eating lunch at the food court before heading out. As I mentioned, most of us were still pretty drunk, Fake in particular. Keep in mind this is Vegas, and there are families with little kids all over the place. The terms “penis” and “ass sweat” were all shouted loudly enough that some parents are gonna have to have some of those birds-and-bees conversations with their kids about 10 years earlier than they wanted to.

Now we’re stuck in traffic about 100 miles out of LA. All I wanna do is eat, drop a deuce, and sleep. Fortunately the Eagles play tomorrow night, so I don’t have to waste any time watching football highlights when I get back. Pretty much every friend I have in the world was with me this weekend, so checking email should be really quick. And being single, showering isn’t really on my list of priorities right now. Classes start tomorrow, and I’m already behind as I only read about 25% of what’s already been assigned. Yup. I’m pretty damn sure that I’m not money.