When is Brent oil always described as ’sweet’?

“Pork bellies are the raw material for bacon, and can be fresh or frozen and stored for 12 months. The futures contract on the CME is for frozen pork bellies.”

I didn’t know pork bellies were on the CME!

I also didn’t know bacon came from pork bellies!

Tale of two ends;

I saw an Eliot poem etched onto the ground when I was walking by Thames…or what appeared to be parts of it….

THE river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.	175
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;	180
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept…
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear	185
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

Ah Londoners love Eliot, they always have, around the city, I always find Eliot’s poems, written everywhere. Even pop songs by locals steal lines from Eliot…

I’m doing a commodities tutorial now…. maybe it can refresh me on contagoes and everything…but I skipped time value of money. I keep doing time value tutorials in my life, this is my fifth time and I still don’t remember anything! Maybe one day when I really need it…0.0 but right now I still feel demotivated to learn exact formulas knowing Grace has the formula memory of an owl (yes crows are smarter than owls, the myth is a lie, the owl is dumb)…

I missu Beansprouts!

I think this blog will be a raging missu tirade for my best friend until he comes back.

 Remember this piece by Ivor Novello?

“My dearest dear,
If I could say to you
In words as clear
As when I play to you,
You’d understand
How slight the shadow that is holding us apart.”

I must resolve to do very.exciting.things (what? 0.0) so I can share them with you when you come back! Do you think I can fly off for a holiday by.myself? Go for a shopping trip and buy the Vuitton bag like your mother’s, and visit the Shakespeare bookshop? Go for a helicopter ride? Become a poker master?

Knowing the weakness of the Bibimbap Lawyers (we always take 1-2 hours after class just deciding where to eat and where to go), by the time I decide what to do, we’ll be fifty and having dimsum in a Hong Kong restaurant, and Beansprouts will be married to Bakery Girl and have Little Claire. I’ll be Susan Boyle 2, with my two cats, Tempura and Precious.

I was talking to an old friend who went off to Poland to do some sort of art project. K used to be in acting projects with me when I was young, and is now a full fledged artist/designer. Similarly, people who were involved some way or another in stageplays of my youth have became amazing directors, actors and performers in Hong Kong and Singapore, and are acting with some of the actors which I used to watch and rave about it high school. They are producing and singing in mtvs, appearing on the stage, drinking cola in commercials, producing their own art/clothing lines… it is startling and simply spectacular. It is quite a lovely deja vu feeling seeing an old friend getting ‘raped’ in a series drama after all, or hear their songs… and think, they took the path less treaded upon…

Since I was eleven, and started in drama, those eight years involved in drama have been some of the most wonderful and cherished experience of my life, in each and every piece I participated in- the thrill before the curtains open, the late night rehearsals, memorizing lines, the impromptu practices, the stage games, meeting other zany actors who love what you do. I never was that good to make acting a career, but perhaps in acting I found a little love, I still miss. I wish I had been truly good enough to stay, because I loved that world so much! But hard work is not everything in theatre, and in the end my nature to overthink myself will always stand a hindrance to acting. K asks me if I would like to join them again when I go back Singapore, do impromptu stage performances, and once-weekly performances on weekends. I told K perhaps, but already I know given my nature the opposite is more likely. I don’t know, is the drama-obsessed part of my life over? I hope not, because it is something we just don’t think about – just like how despite being grade 8 in piano and violin, we never heard Beansprouts play a piece even once *cough cough hint hint. But at least Beansprouts has talent! I don’t know what exactly to do with this acting and debating business, it is as if at the end of it all, I have nothing to show for it, besides the memories.

Its a bit like law school- Beansprouts asked me our night conversation before he left, whether he thinks I have ‘learnt any skills’ from law school. My boss constantly tells me, that despite becoming a trader, ‘law was the best thing’ that he chose to go into. He did elaborate, and there is a whole list of skills, including ‘how to think like a lawyer’. But what on earth is ‘thinking like a lawyer’, besides the fluffy tirade we provide to interviewers? Sometimes I am tempted to think law students have nothing to show for it, we think in pretty much the same way, and in terms of skills- we are not able to demonstrate effectively the level of our competence, unlike the immediate practicality of a skill like statistics or chemistry. Lawyers ‘learn to learn’, and the discipline of law is also dependent on our personal habits and level of commitment, and demonstrating a particular competence in a particular law subject does not necessarily mean that you will succeed in that area of your career.

In certain ways, Charles Dickens (aka author of ‘Bleak House’) was right. On a separate note, I do think without a love for the law, and what it means to you personally, it is difficult to term the law as imparting any sort of immediate practical meaning.

Just spent five hours transcribing the first of the tapes….and I’m really slow! I think I am one of those who is really bad at accents + I seldom go to class, which makes for very bad attention to every single word as I automatically feel inclined to just get the gist of the argument and write it down. So transcribing every single word has proved really difficult. ST was teasing that the job would be very easy, but it is actually much harder than I thought interpreting a Scottish accent! Anyway I’m so tired and leaving the office…and don’t know what to do on a Saturday evening….go clubbing? *keke

I missed Beansprouts in the train so much this morning on the way to work. There is no one to talk to really cause everyone is gone and those who are not are hard at work… which I am supposed to be as well, to finish the incredibly confusing tutorial on Taylor’s Approximation formula, which would be remarkably easy to all students who did math, but the last time I did any rates of change or convex such thingies was like, when I was 16? I keep telling ST, please give me your F Math memory! Please!

But I did an equities tutorial last night and I was mighty proud I knew all the answers before they came! I think company law does help because we had to learn everything for the insolvency question, and now I know parts of financial assistance, and the breakdown upon liquidation on the back of my hand!

Come back soon Beansprouts…and tell me about the strange people on your flight and what you thought of your Jostein Gaarder book….

ooh remember there was a time when I kept asking what BT’s ex-dividend meant? I just found out….ooh….. XD Maybe the courses are really good after all… they are answering all the questions I had (which I ought to have found out earlier haha)

But yay! We now know what an ex dividend is!

Leaving of the misnamed sprout;

So Beansprouts departed today, leaving CP alone! Immediately after work ended, I rushed from the office to get tiramisu, pesto pasta and salmon risotto, and went to join Beansprouts, L and Y for the goodbye affair. *huuu Beansprouts terms the tiramisu from Ooze as the ‘best tiramisu in London’, and the three of us talked about so many things in the sweltering weather, and Beansprouts finally departed with our air hugs and Italian rainbow straps on his luggage. It is so strange, to sit here and not receive replies to my messages, to finally fathom that dear Beansprouts is not on the other end!

L and I talked about how much we missed Beansprouts. *huuu And how we are going to have parties in his London room and ebay all his jackets (heard that, Beansprouts?) Like Spinach, Beansprouts is the opposite of me, for his room remains immaculate, with every single file and book kept intact from first year- whereas I only kept my favourite law books, a treatise on company law, my beloved law subject, and several banking/trading and technical analysis books. Of course, my poetry books, and Turgenev, are keepers! When I see Beansprouts’ room, I feel a little sad, because there are so many items I remember stories of- the CP curtain which was my namesake, the armchair, the mice poster, the poster of us in France (Spinach and I hiding behind the trees), the lava lamp (which was suppose to be for Spinach). Beansprouts! You must come back soon…

I also talked to L at length for quite the first time! Previously we were always in the midst of a crowded affair, and he was always ‘the housemate of Beansprouts and Spinach’, with the really cool room…. But today I was so happy just sitting in the doorway talking to him that we ended up talking for hours! He shared with me about Vietnam (I have two other friends from Vietnam, and I think I really love people from Vietnam, they are so heartwarming and wonderful to converse with), and how even when young his mother wanted him to do pharmacology, as it was partly his mother’s dream – which had been postponed because of the Vietnam war. He came to the UK for his A Levels, and his mother always thought he should go into this field, as when young he used to converse happily with doctors and speak to other patients happily. She would also share with him her knowledge on the field (but she is now a businesswoman!). His father, on the other hand, wanted him to be a football player… so he can play football too, but people like Mosey push him over with their size! (okay…hope Mosey isn’t looking… XD) His siblings can practically set up a hospital- for he has five other siblings – one who is a government/civil servant, another who is a lawyer, the third as an engineer, a doctor, and him and his sister are in the medical field! I think it is simply fascinating- maybe I should consider having six children too and span that career list (though I really hope my son becomes an international concert violinist too!) 

We talked mostly about Spinach and Beansprouts probably XD , about Beansprouts’ music, and Spinach’s xxs shirts (jealous!) We also talked about Spinach’s twin brother and conclude that Spinach has sharper features but Spinach 2 looks more sporty. We also contemplated their love lives *ahem XD

Gosh L was so fun to talk to, Beansprouts you have a great housemate you never shared with me about!

Meanwhile, in the office, the boss has been repainting, and the whole office is now white, with a new toilet/shower and all! While still working on the finance newsletter, he and I are now starting on an exciting new project. Years ago in 1982, my boss had recorded lecturers of a certain famous figure in commercial law (who has since passed away), in his LLM  in Cambridge. Then, Lauterpacht was also one of his professors. Though new to the subject, the plan is to transcribe the lectures (focusing on the jurisprudential roots of commercial law, or something like the philosophy of commercial law, involving Grotius and Lauterpacht and really intriguing figures and philosophies) and produce a book on the subject. This was something which my boss had wanted to pursue long ago, but after that, work took over, and he had never had a chance to start it. This is terribly exciting, my first proper collaboration on a book (though it is a miniscule part, but maybe in future co-writing with Beansprouts on our company law/jurisprudence/greek tragedy?? book!)

I have also been hired to write synopsis statements for a fashion designer (keeping it secret which!) But it is a current London designer who utilizes japanese influences, and her designs range from high street to couture. I’m gorgeously excited and thankful to P for the opportunity! I can’t believe I am getting paid for flowery lackadaisical writing… 0.0

I have also started studying bonds again, because of the mas courses. Bonds bonds bonds, then time value of money, and I have forgotten everything from the two weeks at Morgan Stanley where my mentor had tediously drawn out all the bond makeups for me. It is ridiculous, the devices which traders devise to evade capital rules. I remember all the really cool makeup and funds and application though, whilst forgetting yield and maturity related formulas again and again. Calls and puts. I can fly but I cannot walk. The ridiculous thing is that after the de Larosiere report, by the time I make out again what exactly I ought to know about bonds, there might be some newfangled thing coming out.

The news is out that gold is too strong, the dollar is weakening, that Obama is hiring from Chicago School, that the economy is ‘recovering’ (I doubt so, if you look at durables, output figures, employment, house prices). But it is an exciting world, two friends are starting hedge funds with their counterparts, another three have gotten starting contracts as traders (practice the swear words!) and without Beansprouts I sometimes feel like a little part of my world is broken, even if the work is engaging (I complain about anything if you know me, even things I like, the trick about knowing CP is to know what she is *really* complaining about, or whether she is *actually* saying no).

Beansprouts, I want to know *everything* about your first day in Silk Street!

Irving, an ofte’ mentioned vegetable on this blog, is returning to Hong Kong tomorrow! I am despairing because I simply, SIMPLY cannot imagine life without Irving, listening to him walking….having tiramisu….talking about the most unfashionable things and making law puns….(do you have good faith?…bona fide)

When you go back Irving, I’ll keep imagining you in your daily affairs, working in top law firm Linklaters (my interpretation, 1 silk street being *really* 1 silk street…ha ha ha) and having an all Western boss who likes opera too (but I suppose you can’t be lucky to have a boss like that twice?) and having xiao long bao without me, with the whole restaurant waiting in trepidation to see if your xiao long bao will break.

I’ll imagine you locking yourself in your room again, huddled in darkness, watching a Kate Hepburn movie on this very same laptop I am now typing on (I will miss using your laptop when you’re gone….*huuuu)

I’ll missu like tiramisu.

My best friend better come back soon to London and not leave me alone with boss!

On exotic tastes and the love of a cookie;

I was originally dozing off to sleep, halfway in a message with Irving on a line of lyrics of Chicago… and contemplating about houses and the way we live in houses. It started from a beautiful photobook which I had found across O’Neill’s near Kings Cross – they had lovely photobooks on all sorts of topics, like “Spanish Boats”, “Postmodern Temple Art” and the like- I was so fascinated by the place, that I even impulsively declared to the owner, a rather nonchalant male, that “I love your shop, I could bring back every single book you have!” He wasn’t too excited about that comment given that after the long hour perusing, I only ended up bringing back one (because of weight issues, and my habit of buying only one photobook each place to add to my collection).  From each trip, I have collected rather different photobooks, black and white photographs of France, old theme parks that run on coal, vintage hats, smoky art, Kafka, and now to add another, of American Writers’ Homes. Through the law examinations, whenever I felt exasperated with a certain topic, sometimes I would munch on a little piece of peppered salami and browse through the photos and slowly be fascinated by each and every item (or recreated item of sorts), imagining what they must have meant to each owner.

One of my favourites, rather expectedly, is Eugene O’ Neill. His house looks exactly as I would have imagined it to be. I first came across Eugene O’ Neill through his stageplay, “Iceman Cometh”, which was my A-Level Theatre Studies Modern theatre text. It was especially interesting, to say the least, because I was originally not that interested in the play- a group of men in the same spot? Long dreary three hour lines which do not come back to anything? A climax as a singular revelation from a raving alcoholic? But in time, as we worked through the text, and through the talented guidance of Lofthouse, I began treasuring and seeing so much within Iceman Cometh, the motifs of the sea, and aimlessness, and the hope of the inhabitants and their dark secrets. I began loving each and every character so much I would constantly think of them- in buses, in front of the sea, when I was walking home- and thinking about how they would react in the next day, how I would want to stage the play. It was so wonderful I had even considered doing “Mourning becomes Electra” as my set design text (utilizing kabuki) because at that time I was just obsessed about kabuki and was trying all sorts of ways to combine my crazy ideas together with any text that passed my way.

Just listen to this evocative description of the house: “The house itself, just a single room in depth, is built of baselite, an early type of poured concrete-block, painted white, inside and out. One notices the feng shui touch at once. The floor is made of Mexican clay tiles, buit they are laid in no pattern, to represent the randomness of life on earth. Overhead, the ceilings are painted blue. That of the entrance hallway is a very dark blue, and the ceilings of the rooms that radiate off it are each a paler shade of blue to replicate the effect of staring at the sky, the intensity of whose color diminishes as the horizon is approached. The entrance hall is decorated with a series of Oriental masks…”

On an irrelevant note, the description of his wife: “One of Carlotta’s dresses, in the dressing room off her bedroom. She was a theatrically elegant woman, sometimes called “The Swan”, sometimes compared to Cleopatra. Ilka Chase, who acted with her, called her “the most immaculate creature I have ever known”.

I don’t know if it has anything to do with my dad who is a sailor, but I have always been fascinated by motifs of the sea, as obvious from some of my favourite texts – Joseph Conrad, O’Neill, Coleridge… Maybe if I had been born male, I would have became a sailor. Always floating, never staying permanent in one place…to be a sailor to just to see what those lights look like from a distance at night.

Today I was talking with Irving, how it is the foreign which is often deemed ‘exotic’, in so many ways than one. The context and issue we discussed was personal, but it brings to mind a recent affair, when I had dinner in my favourite japanese restaurant alone, having ikurasakedon (the best way to end a spate of examinations with) and a book, and there was a British gentleman besides me, who first aroused my curiosity as he was reading a set of Morgan Stanley fund research notes. He striked a conversation with a japanese woman on his left, and being eternally curious (read: busybody) I listened into parts of their conversation, and learnt that his girlfriend was from Beijing, and he was recalling his experiences in Beijing, and how beautiful her home town was, the places he cycled to, and the history of the castles. Last night, similarly (and rather interestingly), ST was telling me how I had aroused his curiosity about Singapore, a place which originally was relegated to the same place as Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers. In another way, I had first begun thinking about Iceland, Rekjavik and rice fields in Japan because of Pico Iyer, who wrote Falling off the Map so beautifully, about 12 of what he regarded as ‘lonely places’ in the world.

Yet in another way, as D mentioned, there is also another sense of this curiosity, of being curious again about a hometown, and feeling like a tourist in Singapore each time we return. It is true – when I was on homeground before touching down on London, I used to dread change, seeing my beloved places (like Clarke Quay) transformed into newfangled places, and old favourite shops becoming the most bizarre shopping places. But now the feeling is different- I can’t describe it, it is not that of a tourist fully, but I feel a new strange longing to see certain places I had never even thought of before on homeground, and going to an old place evokes lovely memories. It is true- when you have something simple in another location (even soft beancurd), the memories from one old dish can be so plentiful and arousing. It is as if the old and new are merging together, and you always see stuff of the old condensing in surprising ways in the way you live your future. But yes.

Sometimes now, especially after exams and I have more time to think, I feel a certain fear in my stomach. I don’t really know what it is- then I throw off a message to Irving, and keep that fear in my stomach to think about. While driving back today, my boss talked about how, in my 30s, 40s, 50s- the world will be radically different. What we want to do and love- will it be the same? I love law and the financial markets ardently now, but will I read it differently in the times to come? Maybe I will put an old record on the gramaphone and hear it differently. The trick, says Boss, is to find new ways of treating my work so that I can find a way to enjoy it.

It is a quiet night, I have just showered (I shower at strange bizarre times in the night), and I finished half a bottle of rose today, so I have a heady feeling but still cannot sleep. Maybe I’ll do some reading of the news and the markets, finally. I start work proper on Friday, and will be returning to morning days and contangos and whatnot.

Yes, I think about it often. That tremor in your stomach just before the curtains open, when you are acting in a play.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I always wake up too late for the ice cream truck nowadays….

Very random old image I found in my album…I don’t recall…whose house was this again?

Sometime this year my friend from Sweden visited, and she looked down at my row of shoes…and she declared….”Grace! Your shoes are all pointy…they are all like…the same shape!” It was then when I realized she was right! All I seem to have or like are boots/ or pointy shoes. And they are like, *similar* pointy shoes. Then I watched this random video of this girl who was sharing her shoes, and she had like, 20 pairs of undistinguishable nude boots. But she never realized that she kept buying only nude boots… Interestingly, if you look at Imelda Marcos’ shoe museum collection, her shoes are also largely similar, of the same type of shape and design…

Maybe women’s tastes in shoes fundamentally don’t change.

The rights pair of now termed ‘pointys’ have a rather long story to tell. I got them from Prague, and they had been love at first sight, and were the same shoes I wore for my mooting competitions, and possibly one of my top three favourite pair of shoes for comfort. Once, the thin black bow on the shoe dropped off,  and I had not noticed it after slipping into a taxi with ST and friends on the day of his graduation- We headed off to the Oriental Club for lunch, and I only noticed at the club that the bow on the shoe was missing! I was decidedly embarassed as the setting was quite posh and even contemplated tearing the other bow off to match. Later, I went with W, searching everywhere for the black bow, and W found the black bow on a sidewalk! I was so happy, to be reunited with the bow!

So yes, the story of the shoes which have seen me through all the formal events of my law years.

On cats;

Would you believe, Facebook has a new Neopets like version of animals in a little town! After awhile I got bored (and I really ought to do more constructive things haha but for a few minutes I created a little white cat with blue eyes.

One year after I had little Tempura, my mother told me about an aunt who had these big beautiful posh siamese cats with blue eyes, and how they had kittens. She asked whether I would like a really posh white kitten, and I was so extremely tempted! Can you imagine combing a little white kitten in the morning, and to have a kitten roll under the covers again? But she insisted to choose between Tempura and this new posh stranger, and Tempura triumphed of course.

She doesn’t even know how lucky she is for her fellow sibling had to go to SPCA!

On Russian Trees;

Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow never caught on me as did the rest, but he is said to be the most well-loved American poet of his time. Villagers hummed his poems, the Queen adored him, Lincoln was said to have wept over his poems, and he outsold Browning and Tennyson. Sometimes, just in a moment of happy mornings, I remember a line or two of Longfellow, and alike those faithful lines of Tyger by William Blake, Longfellow’s lines enter in heartily as if cheering up the spirit with a bit of morning medicine. When I first met James Campbell, I thought of him as a sort of Longfellow spirit too, the moment he mentioned his versatility in languages. Longfellow himself knew eleven languages- and his roots in poetry were quite late, for he earlier concentrated in modern languages and had even been offered a place in the Harvard faculty. In his house, affectionately termed ‘Craigie House’, everyone visited, even Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde, two men I could as truly brilliant poets of their time.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal “

Someone shared with me about Russian trees today, and flowers in tea. M is starting a hedge fund with a couple of his buddies, just as some of my old friends have made similar plans to start officially trading on their own. It is a strange surrealistic knowledge that maybe three years from now, some of these will be names to speak of, and will be those same traders I had shadowed back in Lehman. With that easy demeanour and intensity, reciting off equities off the top of their heads, sharing research and sharing a drink just as we did in intern times. Time passes fast, and within a few years it would be interesting to see what would have became of the Lehman or Morgan Stanley class by then.

It was a lovely moment to return and pass by Regent’s Park again, for there I have lovely memories with ST, feeding little squirrels and pigeons, and strawberries in The Honest Sausage (yes, I do think that was the cafe’s name!) There then the roses were in full bloom, and the names were unusual and were called ‘Deep Secret’ or ‘Belle Epoque’. My favourite flower is the lily, which never blooms in crowds in gardens the way you see the deep passionate roses, but still theire is something about seeing a flush of roses which makes you forget the last thought of work for a moment. It is one of my only affinities with Wordsworth, the return to nature, and the ’solitude’ he speaks of when one returns to nature. Just the first moment of walking into a park, or seeing the trees and the side river, blends together an evocative mix of past and present. In that one moment in a walk, I am reminded of things I love most.

I also think about my dearest Lydia, who would have again so affectionately, reminded me to ’save the trees’!

Meanwhile, most of my time has been spent in my room, packing and trying to sell off things like my mirror, my executive office chair etc. It is more tiresome than I originally thought, but at the same time I am hesitant about just giving them all away since they cost a considerable amount initially. I do wish I could bring a little bit of my London room back to Singapore, for I have been so happy in this room, the time for contemplation and secrecy, for long conversations with Beansprouts, to read in nights with thunderstorms outside. Despite being quite an extrovert and constantly needed new things, parties and events to occupy my attentions, there is a certain space where I always long to be exceptionally private, which is sometimes difficult even as an only child at home. It is something which is difficult to explain to most, the happiness of being well and truly alone.

On japanese swords- so today M shared about his secret fancies … M is currently into sword throwing (or the specialized term you might call it), and he has swords for that purpose, with a 180 degree curve with each throw! In Russia, M would make hydrogen peroxide bombs (tipped with tubing mechanisms and tablets), and when M was younger he made bows…M knows about swords of different tipped sharp portions, and reminds me suddenly of several friends’ houses which also store japanese swords (interestingly, most of them doctors). It was an exceptionally intriguing insight…maybe in olde times M would have been a pugilist of his own? (did the Russians have pugilists?) I love finding out about these little secret insights about people…and bushy eyebrows which resemble a grandfather!

I haven’t been reading anything about the markets, for shame, and I don’t know the price of Berkshire Hathaway. D has been sending me reports and urging me to read them and send in my opinion. But I feel so reluctant to start work until another part of my life is settled. There is still a book of poetry to read, and luggage to heave to W’s place, but still is a beautiful part of possibilities that start each new day that I love.

But really, I ought to buy my fourth piece of luggage, tomorrow.

Some photos as I promised, for Beansprouts….from L’Escargot and the poker-barbecue affair…I want to play poker again soon….

Smoke gets in your eyes heh heh….

We hear Irving is a fantastic player…. and we look forward to crossing paths soon!