Tag Archives: Econ

Just Follow Law

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While channel flipping the other day, I came across this Singaporean comedy called Just Follow Law. Having just visited Singapore, I took a quick interest in the film and lmao-ed to the end because Singlish amuses me, the Dilbert-esque comedy made me laugh, and Tanya Chew, played by Fann Wong, was oh-so easy on me eyes.

Needless to say, I liked the movie and so should you. There is at least one subject matter in the film, which touches on everything from family values, government, and work place issues, that everyone can relate to. I’m too tired to construct anymore sentences  so I embedded a clip of the movie below. Looks like youtube has 13 more clips which could very well be the entire movie. Enjoy please!

Warren and Bill at CBS

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Bill Gates and Warren Buffet appeared on CNBC’s “Keeping America Great”. Filmed @ CBS, Buffert’s alma mater, the show was a town hall like forum where students got to ask Bill and Warren about the economy and how America will persevere through the crisis. I’m about 1/3 of the way through the show but both Warren and Bill talk very optimistically about the future of America. Warren goes as far to say that he would love to be in the shoes of any of the students in attendance. I’m sure any of the students would love to trade places and be in Warren’s shoes.

20 Miles From Mexico

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Work

For the rest of the month, I’m going to be out in beautfiul Yuma Arizona where the sun always shines and the desert sand is smoking hot. I’m not sure what I’m doing out here other than if I didn’t come out here, I might not have a job for the rest of the year. That doesn’t sound good but it’s the reality of an economy that has supposedly hit rock bottom. The days are going to be long but at least the work seems easy from what I’ve gathered. Crossing my fingers that things stay this way, especially the weather which has been surprisingly cool.

School

I finished the first and third essays for Smith over the weekend and sent it off to Tiff for review. The first essay is the goals essay and is applicable to all the schools. The third essay is the optional essay and again, it is applicable to all the schools. Thumbs up to me for getting that first draft done. Hopefully Tiff doesn’t rip the essays to shreds. I’m also having my resume reviewed by TL who has already redlined the hell out of it.

Some of the better guides that I have used to help me with my essays include: Montauk’s Big Book, Mba Game Plan, and The Techie’s MBA Guide. If you only want to buy one book, get the big book. It is the encyclopedia britanica of the mba guides.  MBA Gameplan is good too. It’s got a really good guide for the Top 30 schools that’s worth a look if you need todo a prelim run down on schools. The techie’s guide for mba is written by the people from www.accepted.com. It’s OK. It walks through a fictional engagement between an Indian technologist who is working with an accepted.com admission consutant. I found most of the material applicable to my case, but since I can’t relate to the fictional character, some of the value is not lost.

On the GMAT side of things, I spent an hour with a MGmat tutor on Saturday going over strategies, assessing my practice test results, and doing some problems to illustrate some review concepts. One thing that I thought was interesting was what the tutor said after he asked me why I was taking the test again. I gave him my reasons and he said “fair enough, but realize that the GMAT is just one data point. if you can, focus on essays because those are just as important if not more so”. he talked to me about his experience and how even though he got a 770, he got rejected by the schools that he applied to last year. Food for thought. I’m certainly regurgitating and chewing it again.

On a work related note… minus McCombs, I got all my recommendation provider forms sent out. I’ll be putting together a briefing that I’ve put off for a while for my recommenders to help them out with the forms. My manager also told us that he highly recommends taking vacation before the year ends because of the reason I sort of alluded to above, but also because we’re supposed to be crazy busy starting next year. I’m going to take his recommendation and plan some school visits as well as taking the last couple of weeks of the year off. Owen and Broad have “preview weekends” in November that I’m planning on going to. Similarly, Smith has a couple of class visits/info sessions that I’m thinking about as well, though they’re in the middle of the week so TBD. I looked over the itinerary for the preview weekends @ Owen and Broad and it looks packed, especially Owen’s plan. For Owen, we can also schedule an evaluative interview, though I’m not sure I’m ready for one yet. It seems like there’s a lot of value that can be extracted from these school visits and @ the very least, I’ll be able to notch East Lansing, Nashville, and College Park/DC on my travel belt.

OK time for bed. Even though it’s PST here, we’re working EST hours so i’m way past my bedtime. Booo. At least we get two free beers from the hotel everyday to comfort us after a long day in the sandbox.

Business as Usual

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Remember Obama’s promise of  “I will go line by line and cut projects that are too costly or don’t work” (paraphrasing)? It’s time to step up to the plate man because the Senate almost passed a $410 billion bill with more pork stuffed in it than a Dunkin Donuts has cops(bu-dum-bump). The Republicans, to my suprise, were one vote shy of having the bill passed through the Senate and onto BO’s desk. I’m skeptical that the reason the bill didn’t pass (yet) is because of the Republican’s disciplined conservative princpiles about not spending more dough on earmarks and pork but rather because they’re grandstanding and negotiating that final vote for more concessions (ie money). If the Republicans were serious about being “conservative”, how did the vote come so close unless to tease the Dems? Niener-Niener-Niener, you aren’t getting the porkwiener.

What upsets me more about this is what Obama said, but more importantly what he didnt say earlier this week. BO outlined a plan that would cut defense spending by $40 billion. Sounding as if he were still campaiging to be the Pres, BO’s plan was to have more over sight, more competition, more reform, and no more no-bid contracts. This certainly caught my attention since he was talking about something that affects my livelihood. Although I agree that some programs are too costly (F-22, even though it’s so cool), I disagree about the need for more oversight, especially for non-in-theater programs (I can’t think of a better way to say, programs that aren’t directly fighting/supporting the war). In fact, all the oversight is the reason why programs are overrun because everything needs to go through so much scrutiny, aka process. Take for example the tanker deal that went kaput. The competition started four years ago (?) and we STILL don’t have a tanker! How much more oversight and competition can there be?! I’m sure the competition has cost everyone, including the taxpayers, millions of dollars. Thank goodness for all that oversight.

But all that ranting from me is a digression from my original point of why I’m upset. If BO wants to come down with a hammer on wasteful defense spending, that is alright with me but he better bring a sledgehammer to domestic spending programs like “pig odor research” or “honey bee labs” that’s stuffed into the spending bill. Let me save those programs some money and suspense; pigs smell but they’re real tasty and bees don’t need a lab, they don’t need to conduct science experiments. I haven’t heard a peep out of the White House about how much crap is in that bill and how it needs to be trimmed. Instead, everyday is another day where some bank/industry gets bailout money and ridiculous spending bills get passed.

It’s frustrating but I do have a solution; try to get a piece of the pie by coming up with some ridiculous ass research program like the mating habits of the striped desert gecko. If you can’t beat em, join em.