La Vie

I sit in my office writing this post. What does that mean? Nothing deep, just that I have some time to spare. The training program is winding down. I have passed all my courses, which is actually a big deal as 6/17 failed, and had to retake. Writing 3 exams in Investments, Options and Accounting, after a month of preparation, is a pain in the derriere. I didn't know a debit from a credit when I joined the job. Finance was this weird field whose point of existence I really couldn't get. See, its the only profession that doesn't produce anything of its own (e.g. Steel makers make Steel, Law firms make legal documents, Financial firms manufacture money?!). I wasn't even sure why I had quit my Ph. D. program.

See, I had no real problems with my Ph. D. I found my research interesting. We were developing computational methods to wade through the flood of experimental data that current high-throughput methods were producing (the days when you stare at the test tube for 2 weeks for something to happen are over!). I liked my advisor. I had a fairly fun social life. So, no real complaints. However, I was bored. A Ph. D. might be a number of things, but fast paced it is not. Also, I tend to lose interest quickly with most things. So, for fairly random reasons I got this job, and decided to take it up.

Then, life wasn't boring. It was the opposite of boring. Ok, not the opposite of boring but crazy. The opposite of crazy is sane, so technically life was the opposite of sane. In any case, I survived and learnt a fair bit about finance. For example, I know that Sarbanes Oxley is this new totally hep accounting rule, that is forcing companies to spend billions of extra dough on accountants, and give employment to all the Keshav Patels down in Bangalore. Then, as I said earlier, I wrote my exams. Didn't do that well, for the reasons I mentioned earlier, (usually I ***@#@ hate excuses, but an exception had to be made, or I have to dent my self image, and assume unto myself a less capable persona).

Then, lady luck decided to throw some change my way, and I found potential employment in this group that pays me to study nice problems. And so the tale comes back to the point where it started. Thus spake Zarathustra, throught Nietzsche, for no specific reason really.

In other breaking news, winter has arrived. It snowed a bit last week. So, the jackets and pullovers and skull caps and mufflers and gloves and snow boots and thermals are out. I live right by Lake Michigan, and as I walk back home from work, I feel like one of those heroes who against all odds, continue to trudge through the dark, foreboding, wind swept, snow laden fields, not knowing what miseries lie ahead of them, never slowing, never yielding, showing no fear, whatsoever.