Wah

I couldn't think of anything more meaningful, so pardon me for the title.

• Last week finished last week. I had 3 exams in 1 week. Believe it or not, I did accounting! If you even remotely know me, you will know that such things were anathema to me till even very recently. Accounting, as many of you may know, is complicated. It has the same consistency, desirableness (and general effect on health) as a large bowl of spaghetti into which has been poured half a bucket of sticky melted cheese.
• That brings me to an interesting question. Why is accounting so complicated? A more general question would be, why are law and accounting so complicated? An even more general question would be, why are all these things that control the behaviour of people so complicated? Thats simple. Thats because, people do bad things. Some of the bad things break rules so those people go to jail. However, some of the bad things don't. So, you need to change the rules so that those bad things do. But, there will be still some bad things that don't. So, you need to create more rules so that those bad things do. Its like this whole cat and mouse game. In the end you are left with one psychotic mess.
  
• This week was fun. We went competitive sailing! Bunches of 4 got popped into 25 foot boats, and we randomly careened around Lake Michigan for a couple of hours. It was good fun, though its way too slow paced for my liking. This whole thing was a company 'socializing' event (i.e. free food and alchohol).
• Over the last few days, my training program has transitioned from the 'learning' phase to the 'practical' phase. So, we had some senior guys coming to give us talks about their respective businesses. Some of these guys were totally amazing. There is this guy who was about 35. By the age of 32 he had become the CEO of one of the top electronic exchanges in the country, which he had started up a few years earlier. This was for a guy who had graduated from school with a GPA of 2.7/4.0. Maybe he didn't study. (Because, he had almost qualified to the Olympic Fencing teams in 1996 and 2000!) His energy and zest for life was phenomenal. You would think that he would be like this super intense wired person. He was just the opposite! Great sense of humor, relaxed, loved what he did, and well as you would expect, knew exactly what he was doing! Something that did strike me about him was that he seemed to be one of those born risk takers. One of those guys who always keep moving on to new and fun things, and wouldn't do anything that others found easy to do.