The Trifecta

No, fellow Seinfeld aficionados, I’m not referring to sex, TV, and hot pastrami w/ mustard on rye (though I’m admittedly partial to all three). Instead I’m referring to three of my other passions which I managed to pull off in a quick 19-hour trip to Omaha.

Omaha?

Yup, Omaha. A group of 40 or so of us from Anderson made the trip to Omaha (in Nebraska, for those that don’t know) on Thursday evening for a Friday visit with The Man himself, Mr. Warren Buffett. Since Smitty doesn't read my blog, I'll assume that you all know who Mr. Buffett is. When the invitation was first sent out to the Finance Club at school, I was hesitant. Do I really wanna spend a day of my life and a few hundred dollars traveling to Omaha just to be part of a huge group getting a glimpse and a few bit pieces of advice from Buffett? I’m not sure what took me so long, but eventually I realized the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with which I was being presented, so I RSVP’ed and booked my flight and hotel. Needless to say, I was surprised/excited when I found out that the hotel most of us would be staying at was a Harrah’s. Those of you who know me can probably start to see how the trifecta is coming together.

So I got to Omaha along with a handful of my classmates at around 11pm on Thursday night. We were welcomed by the Omaha winter – 19 degrees, and not even any pretty snow to look at. Our courtesy shuttle (we were staying at a Harrah’s, remember) dropped us off, and we quickly checked in, dropped our bags off and headed to the casino. Several hours later, I was up $60 or so thanks to some fantastic rolling by a fellow-Patel classmate as well as a dealer who paid me (on a double down, no less!) on my 17 against his 19. In my defense, I had given money back that I had not earned not once, but TWICE, that night. I figured if the dealers can’t keep track well enough to avoid three mistakes, it’s no longer my responsibility to keep correcting them. Besides, it was pretty late, and I figured if bad karma started to kick in, I would simply walk away after a couple bad hands in a row and call it a night.

After sleeping five hours (thank God the Harrah’s stopped serving liquor at 1:30 a.m., or else I would have been suffering from a serious hangover), I woke up, got ready and we headed over to Berkshire Hathaway’s offices. As a sidebar, if you’ve never been to Omaha, and I assume/hope that you haven’t, it’s got rural suburbia written all over it. Modest houses, no traffic. It actually reminded me a lot of the intro to The Office, where they show Scranton, PA. Steve Carell, however, is no Warren Buffett. And I didn’t see anyone who was even remotely as cute as Jenna Fischer. Anyways, we get to the offices, where we were joined by another 60 or so students from an MBA program in Brazil as well as undergrads from Omaha’s local university, Creighton, the alma mater of the great 3-point shooting specialist Kyle Korver, who I just found out 15 seconds ago on Wikipedia was born in Lakewood, CA, right next to my own hometown of Cerritos.

We were then treated to about two hours of Q&A with the great Mr. Buffett. The questions were pre-screened by one representative from each of the three schools. Buffett, however, had no idea what was going to be asked, and it didn’t matter, because the man knows so much about so many different things that he really couldn’t have done anything more to prepare himself anyways. He talked about everything from Investing (obviously), how to get girls (give them See’s Candies – a company owned by Berkshire, and NOT Russell Stover chocolates), and politics (despite being one of the wealthiest men in America, he adamantly opposes eliminating the estate tax and instead believes income/payroll taxes on lower-income workers should be dramatically reduced). While Mr. Buffett didn’t really say anything in the talks that I am likely to remember even a year or two from now, I will always remain impressed by his general sharpness, intelligence, and surprising sense of humor (while the fact that he’s a billionaire many times over likely got him some bonus laughs, he was actually pretty funny in his own right). And for a man of 77 years, he has an amazing memory, even recalling the locations of different CBS/ABC affiliates that The Washington Post owned in 1972 when Berkshire acquired a large stake.

After the Q&A, we all went to Piccolo Pete’s, one of several famous Omaha steakhouses. Of course, Omaha is known for their beef, and one of the things I was most looking forward to about the trip was enjoying a true Omaha Steak. Unfortunately, since Buffett was footing the bill for 100 or so hungry students, it was a prix fixe menu with a pretty underwhelming steak (I would have much rather spent $50 and paid for a proper slab of beef, but whatever). Technically, though, I did have an Omaha steak, thus completing the trifecta of the trip – gambling, investing, and steak.

Sayonara

Another quarter of school has come and gone. I can't believe I'm already 1/3 of the way through my business school curriculum. It's kinda sad, really. In an interview yesterday, I was asked "you're spending a lot of time and money on business school - what's the most important thing you've gotten out of it thus far?" I hope the guy couldn't see me struggling to come up with an answer (which I think had something to do with the people and new experiences or something useless). As evidenced in my Operations final on Tuesday, I really haven't learned anything yet. Nor do I have a job lined up.

Oh well. Not the time to get depressed about the blown tuition. I'm off to Japan tomorrow for a little over a week. Enjoy the first week of Spring everyone.

March Madness...

Is quickly turning into March Sadness in Palo Alto, as the Louisville Cardinals have jumped out to a 17-8 lead over the Stanford Cardinal, in what I have cheesily dubbed the "Battle of Singular vs. Plural."

These 4 days are amongst my favorite of the year - 48 College Basketball games in a 4-day period. Last year, I spent all 4 days in a drunken, sleepless stupor in Las Vegas. From a gambling perspective, I approximately broke even, which I thought was pretty impressive considering I bet on probably 25-30 of the games as well as played hours upon hours of blackjack every day - like I said, on little-no sleep and with 10-50 drinks in me.

Unfortunately, this year, I was unable to make the trek to Vegas due to Finals that start on Monday. In hindsight, I probably should be there anyways, considering I did pretty well last quarter in terms of grades, and I'm still sitting here without a job. Oh well, lesson learned I suppose. It'd be the first one since I started school again. I am quite proud of the fact that no one else in last year's group made the trek this year, as without my leadership skills they were not able to properly coordinate.

Anyways, since I decided to skip most of my classes today to sit on my couch and watch basketball, and since CBS insists on showing this blowout (now 25-10 plurals), I figured the least I could do was write this quick blog. Quick question - is 9:59 a.m. too early to drink Scotch by myself? It's 18-year-aged Scotch, if that makes a difference.

Who Says I'm Risk Averse?

OK fine, I AM risk averse. But I’m going out on a limb here and taking, probably, the biggest chance I’ve ever taken with my blog. At this point, as I write this, I’m honestly not even sure if I should post this, because this could kill me in so many ways. But it’s (to me), an interesting topic, and I have strong feelings about it, so I feel I must do my journalistic duty.

I was inspired to write this by a fellow classmate’s question, as I sit here in an Economics Review Session. To keep this as anonymous as possible, I won’t even repeat the question. Basically, it just reiterated most of what I’ve thought over the past couple months about my experience so far at Anderson: disappointment.

Before I rant, let me be clear about a couple things. I’m not throwing anyone “under the bus” here. Frankly, there’s a lot of blame to be spread around. Also, I do not (yet) regret my decision to attend business school generally or Anderson specifically. I needed to leave New York, and I needed to find a buy-side job in L.A. I also needed a break from work and an opportunity to expand both my professional and social networks. Anderson was clearly the best of my options.

My disappointment started as early as Orientation. And I’m not just talking about the fact that we had to be on campus every day at 8 a.m. In various presentations from Anderson administration and second-year students, I discovered that Anderson students had a general reputation as being light on quantitative skills. Nice talk for “bad at math”. Then I found out that some of our second-years don’t know how to write cover letters, to the point that recruiters who are Anderson alums have contacted the Parker Career Center to express their concerns about the reputational harm being done to Anderson. Fantastic. One of the biggest reasons I came to Anderson was to crack my way into the Investment Management industry. Seems like having “Anderson” on my resume isn’t the best start.

During the second week of Orientation, I found out I was awarded a company-sponsored fellowship. Woohoo!!! More money!!! Unfortunately, Anderson’s policy on these fellowships is to simply take the money out of any other merit-based aid you have received. So the $7,125 Payden & Rygel Fellowship that I won was simply deducted from my Anderson Fellowship. On top of this, no one actually told me about this policy until I went into the financial aid office to clear the whole mess up. Not so Woohoo :( What better way to alienate our loyal, generous donors than to say, “Thanks for the kind donation. On a net basis, this is going to mean absolutely nothing to the winner of the Fellowship, but this means we have an extra $7,125 to spend on unqualified, tenured professors.”

There’s my second disappointment. The Professors. If any of my classmates happen to stumble on this (which I will pray tonight doesn’t happen), they’ll know who I’m referring to. Of the 5 professors I’ve had this quarter, I’d say 3 were good professors who taught us the material and, as corny as it sounds, made learning kinda fun. I think my classmates agree about 2 of them. The fourth was clearly incompetent, to the point that many of my classmates would sit in on the other professor’s lecture. The fifth basically taught us how to manipulate a certain software product to do our work for us rather than teaching us the basic concepts and theory of the subject.

I save my biggest (and most controversial) disappointment for last. My fellow classmates. I’m trying very hard to keep in mind that most of them, unlike me, haven’t had the benefit of seeing most of this “core” material before. This lack of relevant background notwithstanding, I’m still disappointed with the book intelligence of most of my classmates. Until proven guilty, I’m going to assume that most of them were pretty good at their jobs, and that’s why they’re here. And I know book smarts are not at the top of the list of characteristics of successful businesspeople. However, I expected a minimum level of these book smarts from my classmates, and so far I haven’t seen it.

Last, but definitely not least (yeah, I know I said the previous disappointment was the last – deal with it), is what happened yesterday. Sometime in the afternoon, we FINALLY got our Marketing grades (posted online). While I pretty much expected to get the grade that I received, several classmates that I spoke with were quite surprised about their grades, given how well they had been doing up through the Final. About six hours, many data points, and some frantic emails from students to the professor later, the truth was discovered. The professor had never submitted final grades to be posted online. The system somehow decided to distribute grades based on last names. So if your last name started with an A, you would have been pretty happy because you got an A. If you’re Notre Dame safety/Professional boxer Tom Zbikowski, you failed. Better luck elsewhere. So surely there were several freaked out Y’s and Z’s who were surprised that they failed (not to mention the few pleasantly-surprised A’s and B’s who got A’s in the course). The process is currently being fixed, as the professor just arrived back from an international trip a couple hours ago. How in the world does something like this happen? My disappointment lingers.

UPDATE: I just got home from a Review Session. Not only were there about 25 more students than there were chairs, but the prof/TA leading the review session was high as a kite. Go Anderson!

UPDATE II: You may have read about someone hacking into a UCLA database and stealing personal info (including SSN's) on approx. 800,000 current and former students. Yup, you guessed it. They got mine. F*ck.

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.

ALERT: B. School is NOT a joke...seriously, i'm not joking

Well, the day has finally happened. My 80-day weekend finally ended. This actually happened on Monday, but the first week of school has actually been extremely busy. Orientation starts at 8am every day, and we basically have lectures or other "leadership" exercises nonstop til 6pm. After that it's a combination of mandatory nighttime events at school, reading case studies (WTF? I thought I didn't get into HBS???), working out (MUCH easier to do thanks to the UCLA co-ed's...can't wait til the undergrad classes start), and drinking/socializing with my new classmates. I haven't seen my "non-Anderson friends", as they will now be referred to for the next two years, since Sunday, which is quite a change from the previous few weeks when I was seeing them every day. I gotta say, I don't miss them all that much. My new classmates are (generally) pretty cool - outgoing, funny, social, smart, etc. I am dissapointed by the ratio though - my class is 72% male. I feel like I'm going to an Indian party where there's literally three guys for every girl, and about half the girls are already spoken for. Only difference is that at the Indian parties, the single girls are generally bitches who think they're far better looking than they really are (ladies, just cuz you happen to have one Friendster pic that makes you look average to slightly above average, doesn't mean you really are average to slightly above average).

This week, which is the first of two weeks of orientation, has been a weeklong course called "Leadership Foundations", which basically consists of a series of lectures and activities designed to teach us the theories and best practices of leadership. It's been four days, and as far as I can tell, they've pretty much just taught us that good leadership = good teamwork. B-School is all teamwork. We're even assigned study groups. It's still early, but so far I'm VERY happy with my study group - the two international students actually speak proper English (which sadly is all too often NOT the case), and everyone mutually agreed that we won't meet on the weekends except when absolutely necessary. You know what that means my LA friends - Vegas 2-3 times a month (starting with the wknd of September 29th).

More to come later. Right now I suppose I should be working on my "Leadership Map" which is due tomorrow. What the f*ck is a "Leadership Map", you ask? Well, I haven't really done mine yet, so I'm not quite sure. But I think it's supposed to be some self-reflective essay about my leadership goals, experiences, strengths, weaknesses, blah, blah, blah. Then Saturday we have mandatory volunteer day - yeah, that sounds pretty oxymoronic to me too. And speaking of morons, it's Atur's engagement party on Saturday night. Congrats buddy!